Incremental Steps to your Goal, with Merrily Orsini – TPW290

Healthcare executive Merrily Orsini is an advocate for home healthcare--and for taking small incremental steps to achieve your most cherished goals.



Consistent small steps will get you where you want to go

Merrily Orsini, President and CEO of corecubed, is considered a thought leader in the healthcare-at-home industry. She is a leader in the Help Choose Home initiative and a podcast creator and host in which she focuses on educating how and when to choose healthcare at home. Merrily is married and recently moved to Asheville, North Carolina, so she could be within walking distance of her four grandchildren. Among her other outside interests, Merrily is in the second year of a two-year term as President of the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, which is an international organization founded to develop an appreciation for art made from glass.

Merrily started her current company in 1998, and the model she chose was an early model of working collaboratively and remotely. The benefit of creating an early business model is that it is completely remote with a distributed workforce. That means her employees around the country are able to set their own schedule, raise their families, take care of aging parents, etc., all while being gainfully employed and continuing to have a job. During a time when everyone is to stay at home, her employees are able to say that their normal lives have not been disrupted.

When Merrily pioneered the work-from-home model of business, the technology was nowhere near what we have today, but she put into place systems of check-ins, check-outs, and checklists to ensure that work was being done. And as technology developed, it has certainly made things easier for everyone.

A typical day

Each morning, Merrily showers, dresses, and has two cups of coffee with her breakfast before she starts work. She works from home, but that does not mean she is in her PJs all day. At some point during the day, she also takes a hike because she lives right next to Pisgah National Forest. She finds that being out in nature gives her energy and creativity.

Merrily's workday consists of a combination of managing her employee's work, reaching out to clients and finishing the tasks assigned to her. She also runs an industry podcast called Help Choose Home and provides consulting services.

Merrily's normal 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday hasn't really been affected by the COVID19-caused stay-at-home order because the nature of her business is to work from home anyway. She says the key to productivity for working at home is having a very good project management program. Her company uses Basecamp, which allows her to stay on top of what everyone on her team needs to be doing, so she checks in on that several times a day. This program is tied into a time-tracking software called Tick which not only monitors the time someone is spending, but it also associates with a project in Basecamp. They use Box for file storage.

Biggest productivity challenges

Merrily is an extrovert and needs energy from other people, and she finds that to be her biggest challenge. When she finds herself putting off a task, she needs to find a way around it by relying on other people by either giving her a boost or starting the project for her ...