Implementing organizational change has been a troublesome issue for leaders for decades, if not centuries. During the 1940s, Kurt Lewin created a model to help leaders facilitate change in their organization. His model Unfreeze - Change - Refreeze offers a simple paradigm to build your change management plans.

The simplest method of understanding the concept is to consider a cube of ice. Let's assume you made pink ice cubes as a summer treat but then thought your children would enjoy pink ice cubed shaped like unicorns. You're also out of the dye and don't want to make a special trip to the store. To create the change you wish, you will unfreeze the cubes, place the colored water into a new mold, and then refreeze the water. Creating change in your organization will a similar process. The first step of change is unfreezing the organization.

Step 1 - Unfreeze  

Change can only begin after the leader has identified the need. Only then can you begin to develop the change you...

Designing and implementing a quality service involves four key ingredients. As you design your service, consider these aspects to ensure you deliver exemplary patient care.

1. It's based on a solid mission and purpose. What is the mission and purpose, you might ask? The mission and purpose is perhaps the most important concept of any business or practice. Simply stated, it is the what and why a practice exists. The what is the service you provide to your patients. It's the combination of the knowledge, skills, and processes of your practice to deliver care to the patient. The why is the benefit your service provides to the patient. The why isn't to make money. Earning a profit is an indicator of how well your core business operates. It's a metric to monitor, not an objective to attain. The mission and purpose are always rooted in the world of the patient. Your mission and purpose are what you do and why you do it for the benefit of the patient. Every process, touchpoint, and...

Groupthink. It’s probably one of the biggest hurdles you will encounter as you lead change. It’s common and subtle in the impediment it places on your efforts to make things better for your organization. 

Recently, I attended a group meeting of a physician group who is a client. The group does have elected officers, but each physician of the group feels they have an equal voice. The group feels it’s incredibly important to have a consensus before making any decision. If a decision isn’t reached, they opt to stay the same and maintain their current trajectory. In this case, a vendor owed the group a large sum of money. However, not everyone wanted to take action against the vendor. While it is in the group’s best interest to terminate the vendor and stop losing money on a bad deal, there were not enough physicians who wanted to terminate the agreement. Therefore, the group finds themselves in the position of contenting to work with a vendor who is...

Waiting is inevitable. It seems very few things run on time. There usually is a little cushion unless my arriving flight is five minutes late, then the connecting flight leaves early. Part of my satisfaction as a customer and that of your patients is the time we spend waiting. More importantly, it is the emotions we feel while waiting.

As you work to improve the process of your clinic, consider these rules of time when dealing with queues in your practice. Manage the queues better, and I guarantee patient satisfaction will rise.

The Rules of Time

1. The perceived waiting time is greater than the actual waiting time. We all do this. If the restaurant says, it'll be ten minutes for a table, at about five minutes I'm looking at my watch wondering what's taking so long. That's when my wife reminds me it's only been five minutes. However, it feels so long to me. I'm sure you've experienced the same thing. Remember, your patients who are waiting on you will experience the same time warp.
2. ...

Any service will have some downtime or wait time. It’s safe to say you will encounter block necks in your office. What is a bottleneck? A bottleneck is a part of a process that constrains or restricts capacity and typically results in queues.

Queues aren’t much fun and the time spent in one can hurt the entire customer experience. Sometimes we tolerate the queue and other times we don’t. Think back to the last time you had to wait for a flight or at a restaurant. How did you feel about the waiting time? How did the wait make you perceive the entire experience? Your patients experience the same feelings when they wait in your clinic.

Given the fluid and dynamic nature of clinical medicine, bottlenecks and queues will occur. But we can plan for them and help our patients experience those queues more positively.

The Effects of Queues

When your patients experience bottlenecks, they are spending time that doesn’t accomplish anything. We’ve all experienced...

After you’ve picked the metrics you want to monitor, the next, and perhaps most critical, is implementation. I’ve witnessed metric after metric, which were good, poorly implemented. It only led to frustration, finger-pointing and a general drip in morale. To help you avoid making these same mistakes, I’ve outlined a few points to provide guidance.

Tips on Implementing Metrics

1. Keep everyone informed. It can be hard to perform well when you don’t know how you’re being evaluated. To overcome their hesitation, let everyone know the reasons for choosing the metric. How does it support the mission and purpose? How will using it help them be better at their jobs?
2. Post the metric where people can see it. Once they know how and why the parameter is being used, place the results in a space where everyone can view it. Give them up to date information. Do this so they can see the consequences of their actions and make the appropriate changes. You’ll see...

The Productivity aspect of exemplary patient care focuses on the services you offer to the marketplace, your patients. In healthcare, we provide our patients services. First, let’s examine what a service is. A service is the combining together various materials, equipment, people, a fund of knowledge, and technology to create benefits for your customers or patients. These services include not only the benefits of what you do for them but the feelings your customer experience as they receive your services.

The Two Parts of Any Service

Any service can be thought to possess two separate parts - the outcome and the experience. The Productivity element concerns itself with the experience of the patient. The Performance element focuses on the outcomes of the service rendered to the customer.

With the Productivity part, there are a few things to consider as you develop your service. The first step is to know and understand the mission and purpose of your organization. What you do and...

Being a pilot, I’ve discovered the power of using a checklist for many things in life. As an anesthesiologist, checklists are also paramount to ensure a safe anesthetic is provided to the patient.

However, when we go about changing a process in our businesses, it frequently seems there is no rhyme or reason to the decisions that are made. This perception, whether real or imaginary, can have a deleterious effect on your efforts.

To help you approach your change management efforts, I’d like to share a few questions I have on my process improvement checklist. I recommend spending some time asking and jotting down the answers to each of these questions. You will discover you will not only have greater focus but also easier implementation of your change.

Questions

1. Will this change benefit your customers? How will this change benefit your customer? Does this change make it easier for the customer to receive our services? Will this change delight the customer or increase their...

Change is constant. Nothing remains the same forever. What worked in the past might not work today. Why? Because the market and environment have changed. If you’re leading change in your organization, here are a few ideas for you to consider that can help your change be easier to manage and succeed.

1. Recognize the problems for what they are. Today’s problems are actually a result of yesterday decisions and actions. Those decisions, good or bad, might not have been the best decisions. Remember the old system in place contributed to the problems you see today, and those problems are symptoms of a broader issue. Use the issues created by the old system as a launching point to change the system into something new.
2. Set a marker. When you’re leading change, set a specific point in time, an event, that signifies the end of the old system and the beginning of the new. Mark it as a point of no return. You’ve crossed the Rubicon, and there is no going back. Share with...

Last week I was asked to attend a multi-departmental meeting to solve some process issues one of our hospitals was facing. Members representing each department sat around the table, each with their desires and objections. After about an hour, we had designed a plan, and everyone was on board. How did that happen? Someone walked into the meeting prepared. Here are a few ideas you might want to implement.

Start with Mission and Purpose

Your mission and purpose is the what and why you do what you do. What you do are the actual services or goods you produce. Why is the reason behind your what. If you want to be successful in business, your why should be centered in the world of the customer.

In the case of this meeting, our what is providing safe, efficient patient care. The why is to improve their lives. Every decision and action we take should be to benefit the patient. We spent a brief bit of time reviewing this premise before we began to discuss the issues facing the departments....