Unity Health Toronto
Living the Mission: Turning values into action for equitable health care.
What we did
Systems Change Consulting, Strategic Planning, Brand Strategy, Messaging
Defining a new set of values for Toronto's largest Catholic healthcare network.
Unity Health Toronto, one of Canada's largest Catholic healthcare networks, faced an identity crisis as it moved from Catholic founding values to an inclusive framework for Toronto's diverse population. The organization's five core values—Human Dignity, Compassion, Excellence, Community, and Inclusivity—existed as aspirations disconnected from daily practice. Staff felt unable to act on organizational principles under pressure. Leaders struggled to hold teams accountable to undefined standards. Unity Health lacked organizational self-knowledge: a shared understanding of who they were beyond aspirational statements.
Values don't fail because people don't understand them—they fail because organizations haven't built the systems that make living them easier than ignoring them. We approached this as organizational design work requiring behaviour change methodology, following Wiseblood's four-phase process: sensemaking to surface truth, strategizing to create direction, solutioning to build what works, and scaling to ensure sustainability.
We led conversations where doctors, caregivers, and spiritual staff could debate how traditional care models survive in a secular, multicultural city—helping teams bridge the gap between their heritage and the current reality of the wards.
Through extensive facilitation sessions across Unity Health's network, we surfaced the critical gap between aspiration and reality. Engagement sessions addressed the friction between Unity Health's Catholic foundations and Toronto's rapidly diversifying population. We led conversations where doctors, caregivers, and spiritual staff could debate how traditional care models survive in a secular, multicultural city. By navigating these difficult conversations, we helped teams bridge the gap between their heritage and the current reality of the wards.
Our first deliverable was the comprehensive Living Our Values toolkit. But Unity Health recognized this was only the beginning—the challenge became bringing that document to life in the culture of hospitals and care sites.
Our first deliverable was the comprehensive Living Our Values toolkit—translating the mission team's learnings into meaningful language that introduced the values framework. But Unity Health recognized the toolkit was only the beginning. The challenge became bringing that document to life in the culture of hospitals and care sites.
We grounded our campaign approach in B.J. Fogg's Behaviour Model, recognizing that sustainable change requires ability, motivation, and prompts converging simultaneously. We developed a "Get/To/By" strategic framework that focused every decision on behaviour change rather than brand awareness.
Values don't fail because people don't understand them—they fail because organizations haven't built the systems that make living them easier than ignoring them.
The Living Our Values campaign emerged as behavioural infrastructure designed to embed reflection into organizational culture. We focused on three strategic innovations: environmental design that transformed passive spaces into active prompts, peer-to-peer modelling through "Living Our Values champions" sharing stories on social channels, and integration into existing organizational rhythms through Mission Moments and email templates. By reducing friction rather than adding requirements, we made living values easier than ignoring them.
The result: an organization with a clear sense of self where alignment accelerates action.
Most critically, Unity Health gained organizational self-knowledge—a shared understanding of who they were beyond aspirational statements. The campaign created self-coherence between stated principles and daily behaviour, with concrete behavioural anchors making abstract values actionable. The organization developed self-efficacy to live those values even under pressure, equipped with tools and systems that made reflection easier than avoidance.