DTC Family Spotlight | Meet Monica Smith
At DTC, we strive to create a company culture that drives strong relationships and performance which are paramount to our continued evolution. Our CEO, Steve McNamara, committed to this mission by bringing on Monica Smith as our Chief Flourishing Officer (CFLO), just over two years ago. Monica’s role is centered onto enhancing collaboration across departments, optimizing performance, and supporting career development through upskilling and continued learning opportunities.
Monica brings a wealth of knowledge and passion for helping people grow, to her role. She started her career as a federal employee at the Center for the Study of PTSD (Uniformed Services University) before transitioning into government consulting for the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs.
Here she supported clients and leaders with project management and human capital initiatives. Monica’s performance-driven results led her to join a Human Capital team where her efforts were leveraged for career development. Concurrent with her time in consulting, Monica obtained a Master’s Degree in Forensic Psychology from Marymount University in Virginia, followed by Post-Master’s Advanced Study in Counseling at Loyola University Maryland.
She then pivoted her focus to coaching, completing a series of programs to eventually become credentialed as a Board-Certified Coach (BCC-CEC). In 2017, after completing the Positive Psychology Practitioner and Resilience Trainer certification programs at The Flourishing Center, Monica relaunched her private coaching practice, The Clear Mind Project; the mission of The Clear Mind Project has been to bring the science of well-being and resilience to the addiction recovery community. She still operates her private practice in addition to her work at DTC.
We sat down with Monica to discuss her insights on culture, what this means at DTC, and why it takes more than a few “pizza parties” to elevate the employee experience.
“What does CFLO mean and how does it relate to the focus at DTC? ”
Two things on this: First, when I sat down with the CEO to discuss his priorities and craft the focus of this role, we kept coming back to this idea of creating a place where individuals and teams are thriving, knowing this will reverberate out into our families, clients, and the community to make a bigger impact.
The word ‘flourish’ has significant meaning for me as I was heavily influenced by Martin Seligman’s book of the same name, and later by my training at The Flourishing Center. The cornerstone of The Flourishing Center is the science that’s out there about the pathways to well-being. So, we reviewed the definition together, and it perfectly described what we’re after; ‘healthy, vigorous growth, particularly as a result of a favorable environment.’ This sums up my role, which is to support initiatives that are focused on creating a positive culture and experience (favorable environment) while driving healthy, meaningful growth through performance and learning.
We also want to challenge the status quo! That too, is part of the DTC culture, and I see it as part of our mission to disrupt the old-school ways of working where we tried to drop our humanity at the door and pick it back up on the way home. We know now it doesn’t work that way. We are wired for connection, and we have an entire operating system outside of just our brains. It’s all a work in progress, but we want to be part of the conversation that includes bringing our humanity and love into how we experience work.
“What does culture mean to you? ”
Culture describes the norms, values, and behaviors of a group or team – the kind of experience that is often-unspoken, but which you can feel in the air and in which you may find yourself immersed. Culture is more of a hot topic these days as it’s finally being recognized as critical to the success or failure of any group, team, or organization.
We are seeing more research that confirms the truth that I think we all have experienced in the famous saying: ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast.’ There is no strategic initiative or process that will ever overcome the power of the human element in how a group works together, (for better or worse), as a tribe. However, there is a risk of oversimplifying it to mean having more of those pizza parties or social events at work.
To be clear, I do think these things are important, because we need time to just connect as human-beings, and this is being lost in our increasingly digital world. However, it’s also deeper than that. We naturally form a culture in any group, even if we’re not conscious of it. So, investing in culture in an organization is about bringing the unconscious to conscious awareness with attention and intention.
This includes defining (or redefining) shared values and behaviors and then supporting the people, systems, and processes that will allow us to put them into practice. This also includes learning and development efforts around things like emotional intelligence, trust, and safety. Why? Because we know that without those things as a foundation, we will struggle to show up in the ways we want.
“What does success look like to you in these efforts? ”
I think this definition is continuing to evolve as we go. However, the things on our minds include:
- Continuing to attract and retain people whose personal values align with those of our company
- Seeing how our values show up in how we work with each other and support our clients
- Delivering consistent experiences both inside and outside the building
- Engaging in real, authentic relationships with each other and our clients
- Feeling clear on what success and high performance looks like
- Feeling a sense of belonging bringing our full selves to work
- Experiencing enough trust in our relationships that we can challenge and support each other in continued growth and development.
I could keep going and make this a long list, but I’ll reign myself in there for now!
“What change have you seen in DTC’s culture? ”
I’ve definitely seen disruption in some ways as we have narrowed our focus on these efforts, but disruption can be good and necessary when we are trying to change the trajectory forward. This disruption has come in the form of letting go and bringing in new talent, changing roles, and realigning teams and departments. It has also come in the form of trying new things and adjusting when they don’t work or go as planned!
We have increased our ability to have hard conversations and continue to work on our relationship with discomfort. This manifests when we hear more voices speak up with the courage to challenge the way things have always been done. We try to encourage dissention, even though it can be scary to put into practice. We have also seen an increase in cross-functional collaboration, process improvements, and people taking more risks to share more about their authentic selves. I’ve seen a huge increase in willingness to try new things – including experiential exercises that really stretch our comfort zone.
We have invested time together more frequently in the form of immersion experiences and All Hands days. We have changed our interview process to include culture and values questions that focus more on the “person fit”, not just the “role fit”. We talk about personal things that are going on, and how they impact us at work, and we continue to encourage open dialogue, even when it’s hard.
I think as we move forward, we will see even more examples. In the meantime, we continue to be open to and ask for feedback so we can adjust and improve along the way and ensure the changes we are looking to make are meaningful and resonate at all levels within our team. I see myself in the role of the student in all of this, learning each day and working to apply what I learn, taking feedback, and continuing to improve and evolve. I’m incredibly grateful to be doing this with the team at DTC!
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