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How Does VSP Do It — Again?Seven Steps to Being a ‘Best Place to Work’

By Don Lipper

Before he got on themechanical bull, VisionService Plan (VSP) CEORoger Valine enjoyedbeing a maverick in business and inlife.He rode his Harley-Davidsonmotorcycle to work and, because he did his best reflecting on airplanes, heinstalled two airline seats in a special“thinking office” at the company’s Rancho Cordova headquarters.
    But it was the bull that got him. The mechanical one. The kind you plug in.
    Boarding the bull was supposed to be part of a team-building exercise. Is this what it takes for VSP (www.vsp.com), founded in 1955 and now the nation’s largest provider of eye-care-coverageplans, to be picked for the sixth consecutive year as one of Fortunemagazine’s“Best Places to Work in America”?
    Hardly, but what was the 55-year-old Valine thinking when he boarded the bull? His response: “It seemed a good idea at the time.”
    “You had to stay on for 10 seconds,” he recalls. “The first eight were fine. Then I lost my balance. I should have just let go. That’s when I felt and heard my groin muscle give way. I hit the floor and immediately got really hot and sweaty. When I got up, I knew I was in trouble.”

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