GRANITE STATERS FACING AND CONQUERING CHALLENGES
Gathering strength through adversity D-H CEO Joanne Conroy on the management and personal lessons she learned during the pandemic Pg. 28
A SUPPLEMENT TO:
Tom Raffio: ‘How we bounced forward, not back’
Up from the ashes: the rebuilding of Rustic Crust
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RESILIENT NH
re·sil·ient [ri-`zil-yənt] adjective
Definition of Resilient
Characterized or marked by resilience: such as
a: capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture b: tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change
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RESILIENT NH
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CONTENTS
Welcome to Resilient NH
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Profiles JERRIANNE BOGGIS: Learning from NH’s Black history
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THIS IS THE SECOND EDITION of “Resilient NH,” a special publication from NH Business Review that celebrates a characteristic so many of us have become familiar with over two years of a pandemic and economic and international crisis. Yes, “resilience” has been an overused word these last couple of years. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable in describing just how individual Granite Staters and New Hampshire as a whole have been able to withstand the upheaval we’ve been faced with. As human beings have shown throughout their history, we learn and we bounce back. If anything, the past two years have taught us the very meaning of the word “resilient.” The ability to bounce back from adversity is at the heart of “Resilient NH.” In it, we feature reflections by and stories about some impressive, successful — and, yes, resilient — Granite Staters. Their stories are insightful, compelling and inspirational. And they offer lessons in how to learn from adversity and become all the stronger and wiser because of it.
JOANNE CONROY: Gathering strength through adversity
28 BRAD STERL: Up from the ashes: the rebuilding of Rustic Crust
32 JEFF FEINGOLD Editor NH Business Review
AMY LABELLE : ‘Never give up’
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Essays ‘Resilience Shmesilience’
22 How we became resilient and bounced forward, not back
26 Always think about the big picture
35 Ernesto Burden, Vice President/Publisher eburden@mcleancommunications.com, ext. 5117 Jeff Feingold, Editor jfeingold@nhbr.com, ext. 5118 Amanda Andrews, Associate Editor aandrews@nhbr.com, ext. 5158 Jodie Hall, Creative Services Director jhall@nhbr.com, ext. 5122 Nancy Tichanuk, Senior Graphic Designer ntichanuk@mcleancommunications.com, ext. 5126 Kimberly Lencki, Advertising Sales Director klencki@mcleancommunications.com, ext. 5154 Karen Bachelder, Sales Executive kbachelder@nhbr.com, ext. 5148 Cynthia Stone, Sales Executive cstone@nhbr.com, ext. 5146
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‘Resilience Shmesilience’ Whether or not resilience is truly achievable, we can glean wisdom and gratitude from adversity and traumas • By Loretta Brady
O
K, admittedly it’s not the most approachable, or pronounceable, title for an opinion piece on resilience. We are, however, heading into our third cycle of Covid-19, with its now recognizable ebbs and flows of increased community transmission and variant emergence. When I began putting thought to page in an effort to offer NHBR readers some context and encouragement, it turns out “Resilience Shmesilience” was the most PG-friendly title I could muster. I’m exhausted from being resilient, and I think most of us feel the same. Over 6 million dead globally, with a million of those deaths here in the U.S., the developed and inclusive country with world-leading scientists and distributed public health system that set the standard for the world bearing the largest proportion of loss from a now nearly preventable illness. Right here in New Hampshire alone, with 2,408 deaths — just under 600 fewer than was lost in the 9/11 attacks — and now a call from every corner of political leadership signaling a return to normal, when by all evidence there is no return to what was for so many families and organizations. It’s hard to be a cheerleader for resilience — a term that suggests an ability to weather adversity with a bouncy return to baseline — in the face of such loss and contrast. Yet that is the call to arms we are collectively receiving. It is a reality more than many of us are experiencing in significant ways, and it is a desire that permeates many intervention and mitigation efforts unfolding in response to the social, economic and community loss that we have collectively been experiencing since March 2020. Is it a worthwhile or achievable goal for us now? I am not so sure, but let me explain. My lab focuses on community resilience and social equity. In our work, we develop tools to support workforces that confront adversity, and we support organizations trying to do their best by the people they employ and serve in the face of social inequity. I am all about resilience in many ways. Yet this moment of reflection brings me a pause in my cheerleading of resilience as a strategy or desired outcome. Resilience in the face of ongoing adversity or trauma is not possible. Our nervous systems and social structures wear away in the face of pouring out without renewal and repair. There are some losses we simply must bear and move through — true for individuals grieving the loss of a loved one or a personal dream, and true for communities changed by hardship. It may seem, then, an impossible task to discuss bouncing back from an ongoing
pandemic while acknowledging some of us will stay low from our experience, while others of us may indeed feel energized by the life changes that have eventually arisen from the ashes of the once normal. I don’t think it’s impossible for resilience to be attained, but I think it falls short of the true reality of our historical moment and limits the potential of what is ahead. WE ARE ALL CONNECTED There is a concept in trauma recovery known as “post-traumatic growth.” It is a phenomenon that can happen after adversity, when individual perspective, belief in oneself and others, and hopefulness can be experienced as greater than the sense of these things we had prior to adversity. This isn’t to say we want to experience trauma, rather it’s a reality that the meaning we make of our experiences can deepen our abilities to process and endure in our day-today lives. We may grieve and experience pain at reminders of our trauma, but we also have wisdom and gratitude alongside these other emotional realities. Collectively, in our companies and in our homes, this moment is a chance to move ahead into the world we now have while also acknowledging and working sincerely with the knowledge of what we now know about ourselves and our communities. What might this look like? Every employee is essential, every worker is a human first and deserves the dignity of attending to their actual lives and families and not only to a bottom line. Every desire doesn’t need to be filled, and indeed as we face a global crisis that will mean even sharper increases in costs of commodities and supply chain interruptions, this is a valuable lesson indeed. We are all connected, and those connections are the things that bring us forward when we respect them for their real function and opportunity. When we can operate with these lessons at the forefront while acknowledging our needs and serving the needs of others as graciously as we can in a given moment, we
are on the path to not only being resilient but to flourishing. A SENSE OF PERMISSION It may be hard to recognize wreckage and see beauty, but unless and until we honor the wreck, we won’t be able to realize the growth we have all experienced these past two years or to prepare for the growth despite trauma we face in hardships surely ahead of us yet. And after a working lifetime of “do more with less,” it’s time for organizations to take their own adage to heart: expect less and give more control, flexibility and compensation to the humans holding up the sky for your systems. Their flourishing is yours, and we won’t weather the storms ahead unless we take this reality as seriously as we took lockdown … well, perhaps more seriously than that after all. We can take our lessons and our losses, however life-altering they have been, and move ahead with a sense of permission to live as fully as we can and to be forgiving of ourselves and others when that fullness misses our expectations or our needs. In these moments, what resilience means to me looks a lot like accountability, reflection, making meaning and making commitments to living well, and everything we can do that empowers that wellness is worth doing for ourselves, our families and our organizations.
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Loretta L.C. Brady is a professor of psychology at Saint Anselm College and directs the Community Resilience and Social Equity Lab. She also coordinates the annual resilience and equity conference, “Repair & Renew,” which is accepting sponsors and presentation submissions and will take place virtually, June 16-18. Her creative nonfiction book, “Technology Touchpoints: Parenting in the Digital Dystopia,” will be released in November 2022 by Rowman & Littlefield.
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YOU SURVIVED 2021
LET’S GET TO WORK IN 2022! Enroll Now in our Small Businesses & Community Resiliency Academy May 25 | June 1
June 7 | June 14 | June 16
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Learn from business owners and experts on how to implement resiliency practices into your operations.
Celebrate resiliency in our communities with a visit to a local downtown.
The Academy is free and designed for businesses, community leaders, economic development professionals, nonprofit organizations, and anyone interested in small business and community resilience. Find out more at NHSBDC.org/resiliency-academy
Funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and through assistance provided by the State of New Hampshire. The NH SBDC is an outreach program of the UNH Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, in conjunction with SBA, the State of NH (BEA), the University of NH, and the private sector. This programming was made possible due to CARES Act funding.
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Learning from NH’s Black history Suffering inflicted in enslavement is ‘beyond anything else you can imagine’ BY A M A N D A A N D R E W S
“All this upheaval is really a resetting of our relevance in society. What work we want to be doing and how we want to do that work.”
JerriAnne Boggis, executive director of Black Heritage Trail NH, stands at a trail marker in Portsmouth. (Photo by Allegra Boverman)
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IT’S OFTEN SAID THAT THE GRANITE STATE LACKS DIVERSITY, but New Hampshire’s history shows a different story. Thanks to the efforts of the Black Heritage Trail NH, we are now learning that people of color have called the Granite State home since the 17th century. “Every day we get a piece of somebody’s story and you go, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know that,’” said JerriAnne Boggis, executive director of the Black Heritage Trail. “As a person of color, finding these stories in New Hampshire, in a place that often tells us there are no people of color, we’re finding these links to the 1600s — these stories that are full and fleshed, (showing) what it means to be human.” Based in Portsmouth, the Black Heritage Trail NH (BHTNH) helps to promote African American history in the state to create more inclusive communities. Through the nonprofit’s efforts with educational programs and guided trail tours, we’re constantly learning about resilient and courageous African Americans. For instance, Boggis told a story about when the Pittsfield Historical Society placed a marker to honor a formerly enslaved man who was also a Revolutionary War veteran. At the unveiling, both his descendants and those of his enslaver came together. “That’s what reconciliation is all about. Looking at these stories and trying to reconcile that past and come to an understanding,” shares Boggis. “These stories are totally entwined.” There’s another story that tells of a Black woman from Henniker, Lucy Prince, who ended up traveling to Russia to work for the czar, and then went to Jamaica to work for freedom fighters. “She traveled to all of these places from a life of enslavement to world traveler. An activist in that time is just amazing. And we see those stories over and over again. When you look at that and the adversities, coming from enslavement, from poverty, where you’re treated less than human, to actually define yourself in an environment that doesn’t define you, it’s beyond anything else you can imagine,” said Boggis. To help share these local stories, the Black Heritage Trail NH relies on in-person meetings and tours — initiatives that were upended due to the pandemic. “Not being able to meet, not having that personal contact, made our work a lot more difficult. … The good thing is we were able to reach a much larger audience (with Zoom), and that was not only due to Covid but also to the George Floyd murder.” Because of these major events occurring around the same time, “people (were) at home, watching the news more. Being isolated gave people that moment to reflect,” said Boggis. “We had to look at how we got here, and our role in the community got really important.” Boggis explained that in order for change to happen in our communities, “it needs the heart to be involved. For the heart to be involved, you need to be in person.” Moving educational programs online is challenging work, but staffing was also a major issue for the organization.
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APRIL 2022 JerriAnne Boggis, pictured here, is on the hunt for more stories like Harriett Wilson’s, a Milford resident who was the first Black woman to publish a novel in English. (Photo by Allegra Boverman)
NEW DISCOVERIES
“When you look at the adversities, coming from enslavement, from poverty, where you’re treated less than human, to actually define yourself in an environment that doesn’t define you, it’s beyond anything else you can imagine.” “All this upheaval is really a resetting of our relevance in society. What work they want to be doing and how they want to do that work … but everybody is looking for the same people right now,” Boggis remarked. LEARNING FUNDAMENTALS Also affected were the Black Heritage Trail’s school tours and programs. Group numbers obviously had to be limited, so while individual tours were still flourishing, group tours were few and far between. But a certain recently passed state law that’s garnered some controversy is a potential boost for the Trail’s programs. Boggis shares, “We are developing a tour specifically for the middle schools and high schools because of the divisive concepts law, where teachers are afraid of addressing some of the (racial) issues we do.” The divisive concepts law bans teachers from using certain language when educating students about the racial truths found in U.S. history, and the confusing legislation has educators worried about how to best present the subject. “Because the law is not clear on the role and what they can say or cannot, it’s an opportunity for us to work with teachers and see if we can meet the needs of our school population in getting a more honest and inclusive look at
our history. That includes New Hampshire’s Black history,” said Boggis. As the Black Heritage Trail works on expanding its services in schools, Boggis is still searching for ways to build on the model currently employed. One such effort is a plan to enhance the interpretive center in Portsmouth, retrofitting the nonprofit’s current building to be the premier center of New Hampshire’s Black history. “Somebody was interested in how we could use AI to really (promote) the material culture but also tell a story. … We met with somebody else (who had the idea) where you could go to a site and someone could project a tour guide at that site,” Boggis said. “It’s not going to happen for us tomorrow or the next year, but just thinking about it and the ways we could get this history out to everyone is exciting.”
While the Black Heritage Trail offers a robust catalog of African American ancestors and their families in the state, more individuals’ stories are still materializing. “There’s so many. One that people know is of Harriett Wilson. She became the first Black woman to publish a novel in English. She was from Milford, NH. Who knew we produced the first Black woman to publish?” Boggis remarked. Another surprise: Boggis and her team got a call from an organization in Windham that discovered a burial ground for formerly enslaved people in town. “Windham was not on our radar at all,” exclaimed Boggis. The Trail plans to erect a marker at the site. Boggis will also help to expand an oral history project that founder Valerie Cunningham started years back, thanks to some new research and more stories coming to light. “We started putting together some documentation to try to get to those stories,” said Boggis. “The whole civil rights movement in New Hampshire is part of that story.” How they plan to share those histories is still to be decided, but what visitors can count on is continuous education on the state’s Black history. “History shows us that if we don’t know our history, we’re doomed to repeat it. That’s clear from anything that’s been written or done,” said Boggis. “There’s something strange about our humanness. Even though we know a path that’s been gone down before, we think it’s somehow going to have a different result. I believe once we know our history, even if we’re making some of the mistakes that’s been done before, we’re not doing a circle, we’re spiraling instead. We have the chance to move that bar just a little bit further along, rather than keep running that same circle.” As the Black Heritage Trail NH continues to grow and restart in-person programs, it’s clear that there’s still much to learn about our own communities and the people of color who were resilient in the face of adversity and paved the way for future generations. “I think right now in our environment, it’s needed work. And it’s also work that we all enjoy, so that makes a difference,” Boggis said.
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How we became resilient and bounced forward, not back Lessons we can learn from Northeast Delta Dental’s Covid experience
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t is over two years since the start of the Covid crisis, and I find myself asking exactly how Northeast Delta Dental managed to not just bounce back but to actually bounce forward from where we started. That’s what I think of as resilience. As defined by the Baldrige Excellence Framework of proven management practices for high performance, resilience means anticipating, preparing for and recovering from disasters, so that when they occur the organization can react quickly and with agility to continue functioning effectively and safely. How did we manage to thrive when so many organizations struggled? No two organizations are exactly alike. We are a nonprofit dental insurance company with about 200 employees. So, all the things that worked for Northeast Delta Dental will not work for everyone, but perhaps our story can still be instructive.
HAVE A CRISIS RECOVERY PLAN Like many organizations, we have a robust strategic planning process that identifies our financial and operating goals and tactics for the near and long term. But we were very fortunate that in 2016, we added disaster recovery planning into the mix. It covered all types of disasters including weather, fires, bombs, accidents, intruders and, yes, pandemics. I felt the odds were low that any of these crises would occur, but we wanted to be prepared. So in March of 2020, when we realized that Covid was a serious matter, we implemented our crisis recovery plan and evacuated our offices. The plan had identified the need for secure technologies (including a remote call distribution and measurement system) for working from home. While our new call distribution system wasn’t in place until the summer of 2020, we benefited because we had ordered it well in advance. Another important part of the plan was having 500 high-quality surgical masks. While we didn’t need all the masks because
most people weren’t in the office, our relationship with the mask vendor turned out to be very valuable: We were able to extend the contract and provide 110,000 masks and other PPE (gowns, wipes and gloves) at fair prices to our participating dentists, so they could care for patients. So having a disaster recovery plan was important in our resiliency. BE GUIDED BY YOUR AUTHENTIC VISION AND VALUES For over 30 years, Northeast Delta Dental’s boards, management team and employees have worked together to define our organization’s vision and our shared values. The vision description I talk about most is, “Everybody deserves a healthy smile.” We interpret that to mean that we will do all we can to ensure our customers and others less fortunate in our communities have access to quality dental care. Our four values (effective communications, collaborative teamwork, high-quality service and respectful integrity) are taught to new employees and lived by existing employees. After Covid hit and we made sure our people were safe, we asked ourselves what to do next. Our leadership team met with the executive team of board members and together realized our vision and values should set our direction. That meant we needed to work to get people the dental care they needed, which meant helping dental offices reopen safely (remember our masks) and reassuring the public it was safe to get care. It also meant that we should put the needs of our team of stakeholders (our employees, our customers, our dentists, insurance brokers/ benefit consultants and our communities) ahead of short-term profits. We came up with a plan to invest in all our stakeholders and secured board and regulatory approval for us to spend $27 million toward our vision of healthy smiles for all. This was 7 percent of our 2020 revenues, but it kept our stakeholders going (and incidentally built incredible customer loyalty). I like to say our organization did well by doing what was right. COMMUNICATE TO BUILD TRUST One of the most valuable traits of great leadership is trust. That requires consistent and honest communications. Before the Covid crisis, we regularly used many forms of communication. With customers and dentists, we used email, face-to-face meetings, videos, social media, newsletters, appearances in public media, participation in community groups and more. For employees, we had regular all-colleagues meetings and communication by walking around the office. These methods allowed us to listen as well as talk — to foster two-way communication. And, of course, we were always honest in our communications so that people knew they could trust what
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By Tom Raffio
we said. When Covid hit and we determined to invest millions to help our stakeholders, we had to communicate what we were doing for them and why. My main goal was to reassure them that we were doing all we could to help them come through the crisis. Even when I had to share news that was less positive than I wished, I was always honest, supportive and timely, so I could head off unfounded rumors or speculation. I sent emails every day to our employees for nearly two years. In those emails, I often included photos of my young granddaughter, because I wanted to convey a sense of family and of taking care of ourselves and our families, so that we could take care of our customers. For dentists, I sent weekly emails with instructions about how we could supply them with protective gear at discount prices. For customers, I sent personal letters as well as emails about how we would forgive their premiums for July 2020. In return, I received hundreds of personal notes and emails back thanking me for all that Northeast Delta Dental was doing to support them. To this day, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude that we were able to communicate so deeply with our stakeholders and to hear how much this meant to them. PREPARE FOR THE NEXT CRISIS It now appears that Covid may be here to stay. And, even if we learn how to live with it as we would any serious illness, we must assume that other crises are inevitable. Cybersecurity threats, for instance, are almost certain to grow in volume and impact. So, regardless of what happens with the pandemic, we all would be wise to prepare for the next crisis. To me, this means building a strong foundation on three dimensions. First, build a financial cushion so that we can get through a crisis that cuts into revenues. Second, hire the best people and treat them well, so they will serve customers well and remain loyal to the organization. Third, adopt best management practices in terms of operations, board and community relations, and customer focus — just as described by the Baldrige performance excellence program. The better we are at managing ourselves in good times, the better we will manage in tough times.
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Tom Raffio is president and CEO of Concordbased Northeast Delta Dental. This essay is adapted from his book, “Plan to Thrive: The Inside Story of How One Company Did It Right.”
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Gathering strength through adversity D-H CEO Joanne Conroy on the management and personal lessons she learned during the pandemic
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THE FIRST CASE OF COVID-19 in New England was discovered in an employee of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon — on Joanne Conroy’s watch. The employee had just returned home to New Hampshire from a trip to Italy, and brought a hazardous souvenir back with him. While the transmission to others was low — there were only three confirmed cases from his interactions while infected — it was the starting point of a system overhaul that would carry the hospital through the pandemic. “We stood up Incident Command the next week. Incident Command at hospitals like ours is a group of 15 to 20 people that are chosen because of their level of expertise, but there are no senior leaders there,” said Conroy, CEO and president of DartmouthHitchcock. “Our role is to not get involved; just step away and let them do their work. They met two to three times a day solving problems: standing up a lab, looking at our supply chain, how many masks we had, how prepared were we?” Like most everywhere else, a lot had to change structurally and logistically. When businesses started to shut down, Conroy stepped in. At the time, she spoke with Dan Jantzen, D-H’s chief financial officer. “I said, ‘Dan, this is a big deal. Not just from an operational perspective, but I don’t know how long we can survive financially by shutting everything down.’ So, we went in and met with the team.” After considering their options, Conroy made the decision to shut down 75 percent of the organization’s operations. “We didn’t lay anybody off. We didn’t furlough anybody. We were going to need everybody,” she said, adding that she told employees, “We don’t know in what role, but we’re going to need you. So don’t worry about your job. Just worry about taking care of patients.” TRANSPARENCY, COMMUNICATION
Joanne Conroy led Dartmouth-Hitchcock staff through the pandemic without layoffs. (Photo by Allegra Boverman)
As if leading a large healthcare organization during a pandemic wasn’t stressful enough, Conroy’s husband Douglas died shortly after its start and, only two weeks later, her mother suffered a debilitating stroke. “I had to bring her up here from South Carolina and renovate the first floor (of my
house), so she would have a place to stay,” Conroy said. “My life has changed considerably. I’ve got mom duty before and after work — a live-in caregiver. I feel so fortunate that I can do that. I appreciate there are some people who can’t do that.” Instead of keeping personal matters secret, Conroy chose to inform her team about them. “It’s important to share that with the employees, so that they know that we’re all dealing with the pandemic in our separate ways,” she said. “I try to be as authentic as possible, even pre-Covid. But I think it became even more important during Covid. When people are exhausted, they want leaders to be straight with them … They want to know that you’re in it with them.” In an effort to be as transparent as possible with her team and patients alike, Conroy created “Joanne’s Journal” online in early 2020, to show that she was working through the thick of it alongside everyone else. “I am in awe of employees that are dealing with child care, aging parents, home situations that aren’t optimal and then showing up to work every day and being 100 percent present. It’s pretty impressive. But unless you’re being authentic and sharing that, they don’t want to see you as this sort of
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“Together we will be a stronger organization because of this. We will learn from it. There are things that we will change about how we do business, all in a good way.” Joanne Conroy, and other hospital leadership, signed a beam during construction of D-H’s Patient Pavilion. (Courtesy photo)
stiff, predictable person,” she said. Conroy said she makes sure she connects with employees on a regular basis, even if it’s by sending a simple email. She takes a ground-up approach, where she’ll ask managers to learn questions or receive feedback from employees, so she can address everyone’s questions as thoroughly as possible. Conroy said, “We operate on the principle that we have to keep our communities and employees safe. But also, we had to create a sense of psychological and economic safety for our employees as well. They shouldn’t be worried that they wouldn’t have a job. And they shouldn’t be worried that they were going to get sick at work.” EMPLOYEE BURNOUT The pandemic exacerbated many prevalent problems in the healthcare industry but none so much as burnout and mental health. When the first surge of Covid cases hit in early 2020, the staff at Dartmouth-Hitchcock took it in stride, she said. “They were pretty pumped because they did a good job and recovered quickly,” said Conroy. The second surge? Not so much. “(The staff) were exhausted, and they were like, ‘Really? Again?’ It was greater numbers, more intense. People were sicker … They didn’t have a lot of gas in their tank for the second one. And that’s when we actually started to see the signs of burnout.” To address this issue, leaders at D-H, including Conroy, established an employee assistance program with chaplaincy at the hospital visiting high-intensity units, where workplace stress and burnout were widespread. A 24-hour phone line was also set up for employees to talk to someone, offering resources where needed. Conroy also invited a psychologist from the West Coast to be available for full-time residents at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. Some
of the residents were in training, which is stressful enough sans pandemic, and others had just moved to the area to help out during the beginning stages of the pandemic, often dealing with increased feelings of isolation. She said she plans to organize a similar program for the rest of the staff, providing access to a psychologist for mental health resources and counseling. As another outlet for employees, Conroy said their team plans to roll out a social media-based platform for peer-to-peer support to address behavioral and mental health in the workplace. “Peer support is very effective with burnout, exhaustion, energy depletion from just being in healthcare,” she said. “We’re roll-
ing that (platform) out this year, because (the pandemic) is not over. It’s going to be a long time to get to a place where people feel like they have a normal life.” TEAM-BASED APPROACH One organizational change Conroy wanted to pursue was addressing a need for more teams to handle the increased number of patients and cases. For instance, nurses who didn’t normally work in the ICU would be paired with ICU nurses to ensure there was a more appropriate allocation of medical staff to patients, thereby distributing their knowledge and expertise efficiently. “We need to weave some of those team-
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“When people are exhausted, they want leaders to be straight with them … They want to know that you’re in it with them.” based concepts into how we deliver care. Sometimes we think a lot of healthcare is solo — you’ve got one nurse, one doctor. But it’s more effective when there’s more peer support,” Conroy said. “I do think in the future we have to look at how we deliver care in a different way, and it’s going to be led by teams. It’s empowering the teams to make those decisions.” The hospital also deployed a volunteer program called D-H Reserves, where supervisors and other leaders were helping out in other departments such as housekeeping, pharmacy and food services. The goal is to surface logistical and structural issues that can be addressed to increase efficiency and better distribute bandwidth throughout the hospital staff. Conroy mentions, “These jobs are difficult to recruit for in the workforce shortage we’re in right now … (and) you actually see
some things that you should change when you’re helping, and you’re like, ‘why are we doing that?’” Throughout it all, Conroy said she knew she had to be a strong leader for everyone, so she makes sure to follow a couple of guidelines of her own. “I learned to give myself a break … I don’t give myself a bunch of grief about (being late). Sometimes it’s not the most important thing. Especially since I’m traveling between sites, and I’m always cutting things down to the last five minutes. “The second thing is sleep. I look at my FitBit every morning to see how long I slept and the quality of my sleep, because if you’re exhausted, you can’t lead … It doesn’t matter who you are or what your job is, you need at least seven hours of sleep,” Conroy advises. While Covid-19 caused a lot of strain on
businesses everywhere, Conroy used it to push Dartmouth-Hitchcock into becoming an organization that can better address access to care, establish more avenues to provide mental health care, and maintain the well-being of all staff. “Together we will be a stronger organization because of this. We will learn from it. There are things that we will change about how we do business, all in a good way,” she said. “I think we’re at an interesting inflection point in terms of how we deliver care, where we deliver care and our business model. “It feels like we pushed over the crest and all of a sudden, things are going to be happening more quickly than they had over the last 10 years. I think Covid has catalyzed that. That’s a good thing. I’m a cup-half-full person. And my cooking skills are way better.”
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Joanne Conroy receiving a flu shot on-site at Dartmouth-Hitchcock along with other staff members. (Courtesy photo)
APRIL 2022
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THE JOURNEY BACK TO “NORMAL” OPERATIONS: DEVELOPING RETURN-TO-WORK POLICIES AND PROCEDURES By Robert L. Best and Allyson L. Moore
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oughly two years ago, the Covid-19 pandemic forced remote work upon employers, many of whom had likely never attempted to manage remote work on that scale. In the beginning of the pandemic, many employers were unsure whether their employees could be productive at home. Now, after a two-year long emergency field test with their own employees, a significant portion of employers are electing to continue this remote model, or a hybrid-working arrangement for their employees. Why? Because employees proved they did not need to be in the office to do their work. The days of employer concerns regarding employee productivity at home have primarily been left in the past, because, in many cases, remote working resulted in increased productivity and lower on-site costs for the employer. A win-win. As such, for many businesses, remote work has become the new and welcome “normal.”
SHOULD MY BUSINESS HAVE A HYBRID OR REMOTE WORK POLICY? WHERE DO I BEGIN? Yes, for employers that have not yet adopted remote or hybrid work policies for employees that have job functions amenable to remote work, now is the time to do so. Employers with remote or hybrid work policies already in place should consider reviewing and revising the existing remote work frameworks to incorporate interdisciplinary input to enhance the remote work policy. There are three elements to contemplate before beginning to develop a remote work arrangement: the positions, the infrastructure and the interest. First, the employer must evaluate which positions in the business can adapt to remote work. Next, consider whether you can support the remote work adequately (e.g., equipment and administration). Finally, determine whether your employees have an interest in remote work. Generally, this third inquiry is directed not only at your existing employees but at the employee market. For example, consider whether recruitment will improve with the offering of remote options.
EMPLOYERS SHOULD TAKE AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO POLICY DEVELOPMENT If after addressing these elements an employer has determined a remote or hybrid policy would be a benefit to operations, the employer can develop the policy that fits its industry and business model. Remote or hybrid work policies should be developed in consideration of industry-specific requirements, along with the following general categories: • Tax impacts: Can an employee residing outside of New Hampshire work remotely without incurring income tax impacts? • Wage and hour laws: For out-of-state employees, are there more favorable home-state laws regulating wages and hours, such as requiring a higher wage payment? overtime payment?
• Workers’ compensation: For out-of-state employees, are there different requirements? Must you notify your carrier? • Equipment and supplies: Will these be company-provided or owned by the employee? • Cybersecurity and privacy: Are employees required to purchase a certain type of internet service or have a dedicated work space at home? Are you prepared technologically to protect sensitive data while working remotely? • Hybrid arrangement: Do employees have certain designated days to work remotely or flexibility as to when to come to the office? What serves the business need? • Supervision: Are there regular check-ins with supervisors scheduled? • Employment policies: Do the same handbook policies apply to employees while working remotely? Are there any necessary changes to accommodate remote work?
EMPLOYERS SHOULD BE COMMUNICATIVE While employers are developing and implementing plans for bringing their employees back on-site on a full- or part-time basis, they should communicate a clear framework for implementation. Regardless of the type of return-to-work plan selected, employers should advise their employees on who is eligible, how to schedule their remote working days/shifts, how to request a remote working arrangement and who to go to with questions. While it’s clear that remote working arrangements are likely part of the new “normal,” they raise several logistical and legal challenges, changes and considerations. Employers should tread cautiously by taking an interdisciplinary approach to policy development and clearly communicating the policies to their employees. Robert Best is a member at Sulloway & Hollis and chair of the Business & Corporate practice group. Allyson Moore is an associate at Sulloway & Hollis, working with insurance carriers and business, labor and employment, and real estate clients.
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Up from the ashes: the rebuilding of Rustic Crust Founder Brad Sterl recounts how he brought back his business after a fire devastated everything
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WITH 2013 TRANSITIONING TO 2014, Brad Sterl felt his Rustic Crust business was, as he put it, “firing on all cylinders.” “We were seeing really great growth. We had the American Flatbread brand that we had acquired in 2010, and that side of the business was just growing substantially with wide acceptance at the retailers,” he recalls. “For a small company, we were growing pretty quick,” Sterl added. “At the end of 2013, we were really looking forward to the next steps in the evolution of the company — how big of a facility we might need if the business kept growing?” Sterl started Rustic Crust in 1996 after years of experience in the food service industry, the company producing ready-made organic pizza crusts. In acquiring American Flatbread in 2010, the company expanded its offerings to fully made, ready-to-heatand-eat pizzas. He is the founder and president. The head count of employees at that point stood at about 100, working two shifts, five or six days a week, depending on the orders. Production of the Rustic Crust products was concentrated in its 19,000-square-foot facility in Pittsfield. It was also using a portion of a very large warehouse located down the street. Then a fire overnight on Thursday, March 6, 2014, changed everything. “Fire destroys Rustic Crust pizza in Pittsfield” read the headline on the WMUR-TV website. Sterl was at a trade show on the other side of the country when he got word and
‘MY STUFF WAS SECONDARY’: BRAD STERL ON RECOVERING FROM A BRAIN TUMOR BY P A U L B R IA N D
A devastating fire ripped through Rustic Crust on March 6, 2014. (Photo courtesy of WMUR-TV)
saw video of the devastation. “When I got on the plane — and the last thing I saw was flames coming through the roof — the whole idea of a long-term plan for the next evolution of the business went right out the window.” Any number of decisions had to be made. What to do about outstanding orders? How many weeks of product were available in the warehouse? What about the employees? When can we rebuild? What can we rebuild? How do we replace the lost equipment? It was critical, according to Sterl, not to lose momentum, because space on a
As if the challenge of a fire that destroyed his production facility wasn’t enough. As if Covid and how it disrupted and challenged his business wasn’t enough. As founder and president of Rustic Crust, Brad Sterl had to overcome a personal challenge during this period: a brain tumor. The first indication that something might be wrong was when he’d try to sleep. “My heartbeat would keep me awake at night,” he recalls. This was in 2016, two years into the recovery from the devastating fire that destroyed Rustic Crust’s production facility in Pittsfield, two years into
retailer’s or grocer’s shelves is not easy to come by. “You can’t afford to be off shelf,” says Sterl. “If you lose your shelf space, somebody else will happily come take it. So I was looking at how do we survive? Anything from that moment forward was about how do we do this as quickly as possible to meet the needs of our current customer base?” The decision to continue to pay his employees wasn’t a hard one to make. “I knew in order to be successful, we needed to keep that team,” he says. “Two days after the fire, we called all the employ-
getting the company’s stride back. “I had a hard time sleeping. Literally, I could lay on my pillow, and it would sound like my heart was in my ear,” he says. A visit to his doctor led to an MRI, which found a tumor that doctors thought was benign but warranted watching, with follow-up MRIs every six months. In the months that followed, Sterl pushed through his personal challenges — the surgery, the rehab, the hearing loss — the way he pushed Rustic Crust through the dual challenges of the fire and Covid. “You can sit back to kind of let things happen as they are, or you
can choose to move ahead,” he says. “It’s just always been my style — I’m not about failing or being held back. It’s about making sure it gets done.” It got to a point after several months in 2019 that Sterl started falling, breaking an arm, and the decision was made to remove the tumor. With his wife, Marissa, who has a medical background, they researched the options for where to have the surgery and the risks involved. “It was putting pressure on my facial nerve, my hearing nerve and my balance nerve specifically, in addition to the base of my brain,” he says. “Almost every surgeon I talked
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Left: Damage from the fire left the staff at Rustic Crust unsure of the business’s future. But founder and president Brad Sterl was able to keep to his 30-day timeline of returning back to full capacity, despite the extent of the damage. (Courtesy photo)
Below: Rustic Crust offers ready-to-bake organic pizza crusts, available in multiple retail locations. (Courtesy photo)
“You can’t afford to be off shelf. If you lose your shelf space, somebody else will happily come take it. So I was looking at how do we survive? Anything from that moment forward was about how do we do this as quickly as possible to meet the needs of our current customer base?” ees to the Grappone Center in Concord, and had a meeting with all of them and their families to let them know what we were doing.” Communication was essential — to his employees and to his customers. “Communication became probably the thing that I think was most important, and I think it went very well with all of our employees and our customers,” he says. “Even during the reconstruction phase, we were bringing people in small groups,
to said, ‘You’re going to lose your hearing. It’s likely it’ll disrupt your facial nerves, you could have paralysis and there’s a likelihood you have significant trouble walking.’” The 12-hour procedure to remove the tumor took place at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston just before Christmas 2019. He recalls getting up to try to take his first steps 15 hours later. “My attitude was I was going to walk,” he says. In fact, when he moved a few days later from the ICU to a regular room, he walked without a wheelchair. “I won’t call it pretty, but I walked, and two days later I was out of the hospital instead of being in the hos-
keeping them active on what we were doing, we did some training. We wanted them to really believe that we were going to be back to work in a very short period of time.” They were back making products within Sterl’s promised timeline of 30 days. Settlement on the insurance claim would eventually come, but immediately after the fire, Sterl needed money, cash flow. He says he was fortunate to have a supportive board of directors … and a no-limits
pital for up to a month. It’s just an attitude, in my opinion,” he says. The surgery left him without any hearing in his left ear. He notes that the acoustic nerve was sacrificed during surgery so that his facial nerve stayed intact, saving him from a drooping face. As he literally worked to regain his footing, he also had an eye at getting back to the office, despite some medical encouragement that he take an extended leave. “Look, I run my company; that’s not going to work for me,” he told the doctors. “It was five weeks when I decided to go and see if I could drive, and I was in the office at week
six,” he says. Surgery to place a cochlear implant in his head took place in late October 2020, also at Brigham and Women’s, which he described as “exceptional.” According to Sterl, the implant was a recently approved model. “It was one of the newest versions, which allowed you to transfer hearing through the bone in your head right into my left ear,” he says. He needed physical therapy to train his brain how to maintain his balance without the use of the body’s natural balancing mechanism — the vestibular system — in his left ear. By the spring, he was able to sail
again during a trip to the Caribbean … without getting seasick. And he wasn’t going to use the excuse of his surgeries or the aches and pains that followed or the rehab challenges to stay home, especially in the early spring of 2020 when Covid-19 upended life as everyone knew it. “It’s about making sure it gets done,” he says. “We had all these people during Covid, and as that came out, it was all the more reason for me to be engaged in the business. I wanted to make sure my employees felt comfortable. We were mitigating their fears — my stuff was secondary.”
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NOTIFICATIONS American Express card. “We were on the phone pretty much all day long, calling people all over the world, saying, ‘Here’s the equipment we need, what do you have?’ In some cases, I was giving my American Express to pay for it on the spot and having it put on planes and shipped,” he says. His out-of-pocket expenses went well north of $1 million as he waited for the insurance reimbursements. They rebuilt the production facility on the same site, expanding it to 28,000 square feet with the help of an expedited approval process from supportive Pittsfield officials. He expanded the use of the warehouse down the street by another 18,000 square feet. By 2019, says Sterl, “we got back on real par with where we are operating” before the fire. NEXT, THE PANDEMIC
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Then Covid-19, which took root in this region in early 2020, offered its own, new set of challenges to the business. Those challenges included keeping his people safe from the highly contagious and sometimes deadly consequences of the early strain of the virus, and keeping the production lines staffed while maintaining production levels to keep up with a soaring demand for their products. Consumers, held inside by lockdowns and quarantines, were eating at home far more than they ever were, picking grocery shelves clean of certain foods. “Every grocery store we sold our product to sold out,” says Sterl. The company’s response to the pandemic had some similarities to its response to the fire, according to Sterl, especially when it came to communicating with staff on top of the efforts to make sure work stations were kept clean and that there was plenty of personal protection equipment on hand. “We started educating our people in February, because we expected something was coming,” says Sterl. “We started letting employees know that they would be considered essential workers. We let them know what we were doing for their safety and everybody else. I was in the office every day. There wasn’t a day that I didn’t come in, because I expected the workers to be here.” He, like employers everywhere, had to find ways to keep workers, some of whom, for fear of Covid contamination or other reasons, left their jobs, taking advantage of state and federal benefits that, according to Sterl, paid them incentives not to work. “Because we have a pretty good group of folks that understand that we need to fill the orders for the retailers, during Covid we maintained 95 percent to 98 percent fill rates to our customers,” says Sterl. Supply chain difficulties affected him too, noting, “We had places shutting down that supplied us with materials.” The demand for their products has remained high through the pandemic years. “We grew our top line sales tremendously during 2020. Then in 2021, even though a lot of people expected 2021 to be flat or down on a year-over-year basis, we were still up in business,” says Sterl.
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He has employed up to 180 people. He has between 130 and 140 on the books now. He needs more and echoes what employers are saying everywhere of his greatest need: “workers that want to work.” “That’s been the largest challenge, not just us but other companies all over the country,” he says. “I’m in some manufacturing groups, and it was forcing companies to look at how to eliminate certain job functions, possibly by investing or restructuring how they would produce products because of staffing shortages.” Right now, according to Sterl, the company “is in a good space. “We’ve made a lot of investments over the last few years, some of it to make up for being short of staff as Covid came through and wiped out our workforce.” He says his personal drive to continue to succeed is what will carry him and the business forward. “You have to have that drive,” he says. “And you have to have that culture of everybody around you that believes the same thing. They don’t accept mediocrity, they don’t accept it. They don’t become complacent.”
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Always think about the big picture It never pays to assume things will remain as they are
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By Paul Forte
f the pandemic has shown us anything, it is that life is full of surprises and that we shouldn’t get too stuck in our ways.
Those who run commercial businesses, nonprofits, not to mention governmental entities, need to remember that the unexpected happens from time to time. Remember Donald Rumsfeld? Not the most likeable of men. But he did try to get us tuned into thinking about various kinds of risk. You will recall that he talked, after 9/11, about “known knowns,” the “unknown knowns,” and “the unknown unknowns.” For business leaders, the known knowns include legal, reputational and expense risk, which can stem from such things as building faulty products, failing to deliver on time, allowing expenses to run wild, failing to listen to customers and treating employees poorly. The known unknowns include changes of corporate control, changes in legislation or regulation, antitrust lawsuits, cybersecurity breaches, weather/climate change and severe economic downturns. But there are also unknown unknowns, like Covid-19. The effect has been devastating. A million people have died in our country from Covid-19 — more than from any other infection since the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Hospitals and clinics have staggered under the impact. Governments at every level were largely unprepared, as were schools and businesses. Those with dependence on physical supply chains were in a world of hurt. Even service companies were challenged to ensure that remote workers would have reliable connectivity at their houses and apartments. THE BIG PICTURE Regardless of the nature of one’s business, it’s important to be able to cope with interruptions, irrespective of the cause. Power outages, snow and ice storms, fires, floods, terrorist attacks, sabotage and infections that can morph into pandemics — all must be taken into account. There is no infinitesimal risk that is not worth considering, if only for a moment. It’s also important to connect with your workforce. Good communications are critical the larger any organization grows. Our military understands this, which is why it typically fares much better than civilian government or business. One factor that Rumsfeld didn’t mention in his analysis of risk was culture — whether it was strong and resilient or not. Culture is what enables you to respond, not just to the
known unknowns but to the unknown unknowns. It is what you have when plans fail. Peter Drucker, the greatest management theorist of the 20th century, liked to say, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Mike Tyson, the great heavyweight boxing champion, put it differently but made a similar point: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose.” What Tyson was referring to was the importance of discipline and preparation. Strategy can go right out the window once the ground shifts. All the assumptions you relied on may be wrong. What you have left is your training, reflexes, will, attitude, sense of mission. In a word, culture. Culture is what enables you to go on, to pick yourself up off the mat after you are hit. Effective leaders have to be focused on more than the competitiveness of their products, the effectiveness of their distribution channels and the size of their balance sheet. They have to have a sense of the big picture — the powerful forces that can rock our world. They can only get this by listening, reading, thinking and consulting with others. This applies to boards as well as management. Leadership requires keeping an eye on the horizon, on what has not yet arrived but might. During the Civil War, General Grant had his men get down on the ground and listen to the railroad tracks that carried sounds and movements of enemy troops and equipment otherwise impossible to hear. Those who would lead must listen to the rails. Only in this way can they pick up on the almost inaudible sounds of the future and prepare.
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Paul Forte is CEO of FedPoint, which is based in Newington.
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‘Never give up’ Strength and persistence help LaBelle Winery endure BY A M A N D A A N D R E W S
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EVEN THOUGH AMHERST, DERRY AND PORTSMOUTH are on different points of New Hampshire’s map, there’s one thing that ties them all together: LaBelle Winery. IIn 2010, owner Amy LaBelle and her husband Cesar Arboleda opened their flagship location in Amherst, and quickly grew the hospitality business to two other locations, offering event spaces, wine tastings and gift shops on top of producing award-winning wines grown and packaged locally in the Granite State. The growth of the business over the next several years far exceeded the duo’s original aspirations, but then came 2020. All nonessential businesses were forced to shut their doors for fear of spreading the Covid-19 virus, including LaBelle Winery’s three locations. Amy LaBelle’s first thought, she said, “was for my team. We were ordered shut. I had 102 employees, and I immediately had to lay off 90 of them. That was a very bad day for me and for them,” she recalls. “My team is like my family — they work so hard to grow the brand and do the right thing to provide the best hospitality experience in New England The LaBelle Winery team with owners Amy LaBelle and Cesar Arboleda (at right) behind the scenes at their wine production facility. (Photos by Allegra Boverman)
at all of our properties.” Another major concern was cash to keep the business flowing. “We were terrified that we would not only lose everything we built over the last decade, but that we would lose our house,” says LaBelle. Her first course of action was to establish company-wide communication. Through text messages and emails, LaBelle kept her entire staff updated, including those laid off, to share information about what exactly she and Arboleda were doing to save the business. Among their efforts was to establish an employee emergency fund raffle, giving customers a chance to buy raffle tickets for prizes. Money raised helped pay employees’ rent, groceries or anything else they needed while stuck at home. The real saving grace for the company came within five days of shutting down — LaBelle Winery developed a family meal program that included an entire dinner of salad, soup, bread, the main course and dessert.
“It’s not a business we’ve ever run before. We didn’t know how to do takeout like that. We’re a fine dining restaurant,” LaBelle said. “The real blessing of Covid was that we figured out how much support we have in the community. People were coming out in droves to buy those family meals.” At the time, LaBelle only had 12 members on staff, and most didn’t work in food service. “We had our HR person packing lunch; the vineyard workers were packing lunches. It was all hands on deck in an assembly line. Pictures of that time make me happy and sad, because it’s amazing to see what my team can accomplish.” A FAMILY AFFAIR LaBelle and her husband have built a strong business that relies on its team to produce the best possible experience for all customers. “Our company culture is family. It’s strong, and it’s never wavered during this entire time.
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Top Left: The team of LaBelle Winery attends the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Derry location. (Courtesy photo)
“Our company culture is family. It’s strong, and it’s never wavered during this entire time.” Having people at work you don’t want to let down, (that) you still want to give your best to, I think that’s huge,” LaBelle says. To her, “it’s important to not just run a successful company; it’s important to me to run a company of people that I love to see. When I walk into my senior leadership team meetings every week, I am genuinely happy to see these people. It feels like planning with friends and family.” Things started to look up for the LaBelle team in 2021 with the opening of the LaBelle Market on Route 111 in Derry. Guests to the market can pick up some wine, healthy food to go, freshly baked pastries, coffee, grocery items like milk and eggs, and more. Also at the Derry location is Americus Restaurant, serving farm-to-table cuisine with an international flair, as well as The Links at LaBelle golf course, mini-golf and an art gallery. “I renovated the Derry Market to be a Parisian-style patisserie. But the restaurant in Derry is spectacular. That place is just beautiful, and I’m so proud of it,” says LaBelle. “I saw such potential (in Derry), and I knew I could transform it into a LaBelle property that made sense for the brand. There’s a new sheriff in town, and she plants grapes.” On top of the new restaurant and market, LaBelle is building another production facility in Derry that will focus on sparkling wine and aging some of their reds. “We’re running out of room in Amherst, so we’re building this beautiful barn. It’ll be ready in May for guests to start visiting.” Fulcrum Associates, the Amherst-based construction company that built the LaBelle Winery Amherst location, worked on renovations for the Derry Market and
Top Right: Amy and her husband, Cesar, help out in the vineyard. (Courtesy photo)
Americus restaurant, and they’re on board to help LaBelle with the barn. Peter Niemitz of the Niemitz Design Group in Boston, helped bring LaBelle’s architectural vision to life for both properties.
Left: Amy and Cesar at the newest LaBelle Winery location in Derry on Route 111. (Photo by Allegra Boverman)
‘NEVER GIVE UP’ While weddings are back in full force at LaBelle Winery, corporate events are taking a bit longer to return to normal numbers. The winery is also starting to get more involved again with nonprofit events. LaBelle also runs her own nonprofit foundation, Empowering Angels, that supports young people looking to learn more entrepreneurial skills. She continued, “It was one of the greatest moments of my life — thinking these girls are now empowered who can think along the lines of a business owner, and even if they can’t go to college, maybe it’s not in their future, even if they don’t have that opportunity, they can still open a business.” “I was trying to break the stigma that to own a business you have to be rich. I wasn’t. I kept my day job for 12 years while I built the winery slowly, little by little, at night and on the weekends, until I got it to a place where I could make that full-time leap.” The LaBelle family motto is: “never give up,” which both Labelle and Arboleda bring into their business practices. “Things got a little dicey the past couple of years. There were definitely some pretty dark moments, but we just kept going. You don’t even have to keep going in giant leaps and bounds — you just have to move that one step forward. We never, ever, ever give up,” she says.
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“The real blessing of Covid was that we figured out how much support we have in the community.”
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OUR DOCTORS GAVE THEIR BEST THIS YEAR. 154 OF THEM WERE RECOGNIZED AS TOP DOCTORS. Whatever challenges our doctors faced this year, nothing stopped them from providing exceptional care across the region. With 154 of them selected as this year’s Top Doctors by New Hampshire Magazine, there’s no better time to say “thank you.” Our community wouldn’t be the same without you.
Learn more about our top doctors at go.d-h.org/topdocs
Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital • Cheshire Medical Center • Dartmouth-Hitchcock • Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center New London Hospital • Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire (VNH)
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