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Whether you’re following certain leadership or transformational solutions, the most important piece is picking the right one for you and your organization, fits your leadership team, fits your culture, fits your organization, and is doable. So whether it’s lean, or Six Sigma, or you name it, there’s a lot of different both leadership development programs out there as well as organizational transformations.
Over the years, what I have learned is you can’t start a initiative of the month. What you need to do is to find what it is that we’re trying to achieve. What are the outcomes that we want to see through this transformation or this solution? Put some framework around it, hand it to your leadership teams, engage your employees, and then double down on it.
Doesn’t mean we’re not agile and going to change it. But what I’ve seen are too many organizations stop and start something. We start this grandiose initiative around patient safety, around workforce safety, or around cost reduction. But it ends up being a short term initiative versus a commitment, which is why I think whatever the solution is, when you know what you’re trying to solve for, you’re clear on the outcomes, then you come together with the “what.”
You get people aligned around the why is it important. And then you get everybody running in the right way around the way. And then you keep reinforcing that and you keep telling success stories. So I can’t say I can endorse any one solution. I can’t say that I think there is a go-to solution. I’ve worked in a lot of different organizations that have tried different things. It’s the leadership commitment and it’s the sustainability that I think drive a successful solution. Because then what happens is it ends up becoming embedded in your culture. Because we’re committed to high quality care, we’re committed to customer service, here’s how we demonstrate it every day, here’s what it looks like, here’s how we correct for it, here’s how we train for it, and then it starts to happen. It becomes part of who we are.
So that’s the best advice that I have. I’ve seen fantastic leaders who drive a new initiative and it sticks because they’ve hardwired it, which again is an overused term, but this isn’t just something we’re going to do for this first six months of the year. This is something we’re going to do from now on, and here’s how we’re going to do it, here’s how we’re going to reinforce it, here’s how we’re going to recognize and reward it, here’s how we’re going to correct it. And that’s how it goes.
So that’s my wisdom over the years. I’ve personally started things. We haven’t kept it going, they fall, they fall apart. Every time that happens, you lose the credibility of your workforce, which is why sustainability and engaging your workforce in whatever the opportunity is, whatever the solution is, is critically important because they’re a huge part of the success.
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