The Rise and Rise of Releaf

“Don’t confuse results with performance,” says CEO Tim Kirby

High performance has nothing to do with results; results are an outcome, performance is a behaviour, it’s essential not to confuse this.

Creating a culture that focuses on the behaviours required to achieve the results desired, has been the root cause of Releaf’s success in the UK’s medical cannabis sector  – a sector that has stagnated since medical cannabis became legal in 2018.

The data tells its own story…

Releaf spent £2M pre-revenue on building a proprietary HealthTech platform, the likes of which have never been seen before in the sector.

At the heart of the thinking behind the design of the tech stack was the question: How do we create a data ecosystem that drives high-performance behaviours? The ability to never have to ‘run a report’ or ‘analyse the data’ ahead of operational meetings was baked into the spine of Releaf’s tech stack from its inception—technology that drives behaviours.

Releaf’s domination of the sector is now a matter of record, not opinion.

As a result of using data-backed insights to drive high-performance behaviours, our patient outcomes are exceptional – as is patient engagement and advocacy. Alongside being the fastest-growing (see above table), Releaf is also the most trusted medical cannabis provider in the UK, with the greatest patient advocacy.

This is evidenced by our volume of Trustpilot reviews (a greater volume than providers that have been active since legalisation six years ago in 2018) and the highest number of 5-star ratings, in which patients share deeply personal and often moving accounts of the quality-of-life benefits they’ve experienced since starting their Releaf treatment plan.

It’s the patient experience, led by Releaf’s behaviours, that marks the key shift in focus: behaviours – not results.

Culturally, Releaf never talks about the thousands of patients joining on to its treatment plans each month, instead, the mindset is to think of having just one patient. Then, it acknowledges how to replicate this during rapid growth and scale, by deeply understanding the performance delivered (as opposed to the results) and applying this across thousands of instances of that one patient. Does that make sense? It’s a cultural mindset shift to behaviours, away from results, get behaviours right and results take care of themselves.

As a leadership team, Releaf focuses on psychological preparation, emotional control and the mindset management that is essential for consistent high performance, not results! That focus is always based on behaviours – this is where performance lies. Performance improvement does not come from results analysis. Results analysis often leads to people using market conditions to justify why results are as they are.

What gets missed in a results-based culture, as opposed to a behaviours-led culture, is that if market conditions are the same for all participants (which they are), and one participant (Releaf in this case) has a much-improved outcome, the only differentiator has to be behaviours. Behaviours, behaviours, behaviours!

This methodology, which supports the high-performance operating framework embedded in Releaf, was there from the very start – it’s the foundation of Releaf’s culture. It was present when the whiteboard was blank and the technology platform was being designed.

The team constantly asked, what are the data points that are lead indicators of high-performance behaviours? These data points were placed at the core of the platform, available to all on our dashboard, in real time, driven by the millions of data points processed each day by Releaf’s technology platform.

And it doesn’t stop there, Releaf has a commitment to the continuous improvement of the patient experience through great tech UX that’s unrivalled.  Releaf has 7 full time developers reporting to our Chief Technology Officer – and rightly so, Releaf is a tech business!

The patient experience is at the heart of everything Releaf does…it’s our purpose. One example of this is showcased in the release of the ‘Patient Portal V2’ which is being rolled out to patients this week.

So, while the rise and rise of Releaf may surprise others, it doesn’t surprise us.

Why? Because we focus on a deep understanding of the behaviours required to drive the results we want. We don’t spend much time talking about results – the results are simply the report in the newspaper after the game has been played.

To stretch the sporting metaphor: if management and leadership think it’s productive to run up and down the touchline shouting, Can someone score a goal?! They’re wasting their time – the team already knows the objective is to score a goal.

However, if they don’t understand the behaviours required to score that goal, then the shouting of leadership and management for someone to ‘score a goal’ falls into a vacuum.