Healthcare Business Today

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Leadership

Love is an Act of Leadership

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By Dr. Krystal White 

When previous colleagues or interested clients ask me why I wrote a book on self-awareness in love instead of leadership development (my chosen profession), my “old brain” automatic reaction is to cringe internally, logically defend externally, and deflate spiritually. In conscious response, I reply that I wrote it in order to raise more attention to matters of the heart.

Somehow, even though organizations can talk a lot about love or give family-work balance lip service, many of us feel exposed if we reveal our truths about how we let work interfere with our personal relationships, or how we let our home life take priority over our professional functioning. We sometimes tout how one enhances the other (especially in leadership speeches or at special occasions or times of the year) but rarely does the domain of the “person” genuinely come into focus during the day. 

Leaders who say, “that’s not my business!” are missing out on a critical moderating factor not only to their “bottom line” but to the tipping point of workforce engagement. Understanding why you love the way you love, reveals a few fundamental insights high-performing thought leaders can leverage. 

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Can the Future Be Female in Healthcare?

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By Shaleta Dunn

The current environment is one of tremendous opportunity for women in the healthcare industry. New technology is shaking up the playing field, opening up opportunities that did not previously exist. Women-owned firms are making huge progress by embracing new technology and addressing previously unmet needs in fields like patient experience, telemedicine and consulting.

In 2016, about a third of all US businesses were owned by women, but only 10 percent of med-tech startups were founded by women. The vast difference can be attributed to a lack of access to capital, generally lower numbers of women in technology and a lack of mentors and sponsors to help them launch a startup company. 

Additionally, the significant scale required to make an impact in the healthcare space will always be a tremendous barrier for any entrepreneurs to enter the market place. However there are many things that women-led firms can do to help them succeed.

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Using a Premortem Process to Reduce Complex Project Risks

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By Crystal Cooper

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, particularly when things go wrong in business, such as with a major project or initiative that flops. Rather than worrying about the possibility of failure on a complex project, consider instead the power of proactively identifying your project’s greatest risks and taking preventive action against them.

That is the fundamental promise of a premortem process, a managerial strategy that asks project team members to envision the failure of their project, to think backwards and determine how and why this failure occurred, and to create ways to address any risks identified. From its structure and rigor, a quality premortem process can help increase the likelihood of success for even the most complicated of projects.

The premortem process taken by a large health care organization enabled the success of a major initiative faced with multiple potential points of failure. It also provides other health care organizations with insight on how they, too, can take advantage of a premortem approach.  [Read more…] about Using a Premortem Process to Reduce Complex Project Risks

Igniting Your Team to New Levels of Performance

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By Magi Graziano

When it comes to constructing a team of people who work well together to create winning outcomes, knowing ‘how to’ and understanding ‘how to’ are two very different phenomena.

The strong and astute organizational leader is one who is committed to optimizing their resources and maximizing their return on their investment. Given the people expense is often the largest investment in any enterprise; creating this kind of culture is simply smart business. As a leader, empowering your workforce to unleash their strengths and encouraging people to collaborate, and innovate leverages people’s ability to act as a team and produce results.

In work cultures where people focus on only their piece of the puzzle it leads to silo mentality and ultimately breeds ineffectiveness and inefficiency. A high-performance team cannot exist in an environment where competition and one-up-manship prevail.  When people on the team focus on each other’s limitations and detriments—and why things cannot be done—they all too often miss opportunities to make the organization better. Additionally, teamwork is adversely impacted when the people on the team feel the need to focus on fighting and jockeying for authority or power. This need to be ‘better than’ decreases collaboration and limits innovation. It is a recipe for stagnation and conflict—neither which drive long-term results.  [Read more…] about Igniting Your Team to New Levels of Performance

Building Synergy to Handle Change

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Unifying healthcare organizations during uncertainty

By Mike Abrams, Ohio Hospital Association

As we dive into 2018, it’s safe to say that change and uncertainty represent the new normal for those of us who work in healthcare. This uncertainty, paired with fierce competition, is not for the faint-hearted. As leaders, we can work to facilitate collaboration that inspires creativity, problem solving and innovation that will serve the greater good.

As president and CEO of the Ohio Hospital Association, I have watched our members deal with these challenges, as well as changes brought on by federal legislation like the HITECH Act and the Affordable Care Act, over the last eight years. To help our member hospitals and health systems address these issues, we have elevated our role to lead, leverage and facilitate collaborations to bring our members closer together and develop new ways to address the issues at hand.

We’ve accomplished this by having open and honest conversations about industry changes and the importance of having a united front. We have also provided forums for our members to leverage their collective intelligence to find solutions to complex problems.

As an association, we are in a unique position to help our members achieve success during times of uncertainty through strategic collaboration. But these collaborations are not exclusive to healthcare associations. Any sector of the industry can collaborate on issues big and small that will impact its patients, its business or its employees. So whether you are a leader in health IT, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, supply chain management or another segment of the industry, there are ways for you and your peers to put your competitive differences aside and work toward collaborative change. [Read more…] about Building Synergy to Handle Change

What Makes a Leadership Program a Success?

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Among the things I have enjoyed most during my three decades as a healthcare executive and consultant has been the past five years serving as a senior leader with the Practice Change Leaders for Aging and Health (“PCL”) program. Funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation Inc. and The Atlantic Philanthropies, this program’s singular purpose is “to develop, support and expand the influence of organizational leaders who are committed to achieving transformative improvements in care for older adults.” 

Under the direction of MacArthur Fellow and University of Colorado professor Eric A. Coleman, M.D., MPH, this program brings together a team of senior leaders who are not only experts in the field of geriatrics and community-based services, but who love to share their experience to each year’s cohort of change leaders. How we get to achieving the mission may evolve, but it is all about helping mid-career healthcare/community services professionals figure out how to develop and execute on improvements in care for elders.

Like so many of my peers, I’ve been involved both as a learner and a teacher in many other healthcare-related leadership programs, some of which have been worthwhile and some of which, sadly, have not. So what makes the PCL program so special, and what can other leadership programs learn from its success? Here are four takeaways learned from the trenches.

Ratio of Senior Leaders (“faculty”) to Change Leaders (“learners”) [Read more…] about What Makes a Leadership Program a Success?