culture

35 years

Posted On: June 26, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Opinions, VGM, Work Culture

June 24 was the 35th anniversary of my professional career. On that day in 1985, I joined Touche Ross in their Omaha office. Touche Ross was an accounting firm and was part of the “Big 8”, a term for the eight national accounting firms in existence at that time. It was a proud firm, with high expectations and a strong culture of serving clients. I worked at that firm for eleven years. I loved that job and it was very good for me. I thought this a good...

Tags: 1985, career, lessons learned

Choices

Posted On: June 22, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Healthcare, Social commentary, VGM, Work Culture

We all exercise freedom of choice. We choose our partner, how to spend our time and where we buy groceries. We choose the shows we watch, our religion and our favorite teams. The people we serve exercise their freedom of choice as well. Every person we do business with has a choice. They can choose to work with us. Alternatively, they can choose to do business with someone else, or use alternative methods that do not include us. Success comes when make...

Ownership

Posted On: May 22, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, Opinions, Social commentary, Work Culture

Renting has its advantages. No commitment. No investment. Free from entanglements. Owning on the other hand, requires investment. It means putting something at risk. Ownership comes with commitment, obligation and responsibility. You might say ownership requires you to be all-in. When it comes to your career and your life, ownership is worth the investment. In fact, it’s the only way to go. Employee-ownership of business is the pathway to career and personal fulfillment. Further,...

Power of One Principle – Make a Difference 

Posted On: May 11, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

Few things in life are more satisfying than knowing that you’ve made a difference. No matter our role – employee, leader, parent, competitor, volunteer – making a difference must always...

Power of One Principle – Welcome Change

Posted On: May 4, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

The pace of change has never been faster, and it will never be this slow again. Innovation will continue, customer demands will evolve and disruption of all sorts will continue, including a pandemic. As Darwin famously said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Our sixth Power of One Principle encourages all of us to be adaptable, be curious, adopt a growth mindset, and remain open to new ideas...

Tags: Power Of One

A Message to VGM Employee Owners: Create Your Future

Posted On: April 23, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

A stressed case manager in Springfield is looking to send out a referral on a complicated injured worker case. We can help. A guy in the New York suburbs is waiting on the CPAP cleaner he ordered. We’ll get it there. A practice in Montgomery is looking to secure insurance coverage to protect their business. We have a solution. A DME in Minneapolis has put out respiratory equipment and is hoping it gets collected today and paid to them tomorrow. We’re on it. A firm in Dubuque...

The Power of One: Provide Meaningful, Memorable Service

Posted On: April 22, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

Customers demand compelling solutions to solve their challenges and relieve their burdens, provided at a fair price. It’s easy in business to get hung up on the transaction part of the equation, and forget what makes your offering compelling. If the best reason that we give people to do business with us is that we offer the best price, then the relationship that we have with them is merely transactional. Here at VGM, we strive to create a community for our customers to belong to, where we...

The Power of One: Find Fun in Your Day

Posted On: April 21, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: VGM, Work Culture

Van Miller, the founder of our company, always made a point of telling us the same thing before any big event or important meeting with customers: “Have fun!” Van liked to have a good time around the office, so it could be easy to miss the greater point of his “have fun” instruction. He definitely wanted each of us to have some fun every day, but his real desire was that each of our customers would have the kind of impactful, positive, and compelling experience that they would...

Tags: fun, work, community, family, vgm

The Power of One: Cheer Each Other On

Posted On: April 20, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: VGM, Work Culture

VGM is in the service and solutions business, and that means that what we do is all about people. VGM has always been a place where extraordinary people give their all every day to provide extraordinary service to our community of customers, clients, patients, caregivers, and vendor partners. We encourage the extraordinary. There are a lot of companies out there that work very hard to maintain sameness within their workforce. We take a different approach. VGM strives to be a workplace that recognizes,...

The Power of One: Protect Our Company

Posted On: April 19, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

Being a business owner isn’t easy. If it were, I suppose everyone would do it. There’s a lot of risk that comes with owning a business instead of just working for one, and a lot of hard work and sleepless nights that go into protecting what you’ve worked so hard to build. If you want to continue serving your customers and offering them solutions, then you need to be vigilant against the things that might stop you from doing that. In our business, the most obvious threat is cybercrime....