Clarendon Leadership

Lean in Nursing?

jscott — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:26:30 +0000

Ensuring value added care delivery processes is critical in today’s tough economic climate. While many organizations have made changes to nursing roles, staffing and work environments, these changes are complex and challenging to implement. Recently in healthcare management engineering approaches such as Lean and Six Sigma have been found to be very effective in introducing process changes in healthcare. I believe that these approaches are successful not just because of their powerful tools and methodology, but because they heavily involve front line staff in redesign efforts. There is a well known saying that people do not turn their back on what they create. So let’s harness the power of nurses to redesign care delivery – reducing waste and enhancing quality and value!

Team Development

jscott — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:15:31 +0000

High performing teams are essential in managing the complexity and challenges of healthcare today. According to Lenconi, there are five behavioural patterns that undermine leadership teams and cause them to fail. They include absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results.

Members of cohesive teams on the other hand, trust one another, engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas, commit to decisions and plans of action, hold one another accountable for delivering against plans and focus on the achievement of collective results.

Insights on Benchmarking

jscott — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:38:38 +0000

Many organizations are undergoing benchmarking as a means to identify opportunities for efficiencies and cost savings. The fact is there is tremendous interest and stakes in knowing how our organization compares to others. Consultants respond by delivering products that the market desires – remember that. Benchmarking is a tool – that is all that it is. Sometimes it turns into a weapon unfortunately and as a consultant who – I admit – participates in benchmarking projects from time to time – I have some words of advice. First of all, make sure you understand the approach the consultant firm is taking, in particular who you are being compared to and how they allocate costs. Also, don’t be afraid to ask tough questions. A strong consulting firm can and should be able to back up their methodology.

Centralization vs Decentralization

jscott — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:56:32 +0000

As a fan of complex adaptive system theory, I was intrigued by the discussion of centralization versus decentralization in recent book “The Wisdom of Crowds”, by Jim Surowiecki. Jim points out that in the past 15 years, increasing attention has been given to self-organizing and decentralized systems – systems without central control that connect, adapt and learn. He then discusses the failure of the American intelligence community to predict any of the 4 major terrorist attacks, from 1993 to 2001 and asks what went wrong. Surely these were independent, intelligent individuals and groups, working on roughly the same problem? Was decentralization the problem? Will the creation of a super centralized security agency solve the problem? According to Jim, decentralization’s great strength is that it encourages independence and specialization on the one hand while still allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems on the other. It’s great weakness is that there is no guarantee that valuable information which is uncovered in one part of the system will find its way to others who require it. What is needed is are systems where local knowledge and specialization are supported but there are tools or mechanisms to aggregate local knowledge and private information into a collective whole.

So, we can have decentralized staffing in hospitals, as long as there processes to share information (and staff) across units. We can have central intake systems, as long as there are mechanisms to share information with local branches or units. Fascinating!

Talent Management

admin — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:24:59 +0000

Forward thinking organizations are elevating the human resource perspective to one of vital strategic importance, focusing on identifying needed talent and developing systems and structures to attract and maintain it. Recruitment strategies are evolving from short-term fixes to longer-term talent management ones including :
- Designing and implementing formal recruitment and retention strategies;
- Using data and evidence to understand and inform hiring needs;
- Promoting your organization and employees in positive ways;
- Targeting advertising and marketing to potential talent sources, using a variety of media;
- Designing customer focused recruitment processes that engage and follow prospective employees through the process;
- Focusing on understanding and retaining current staff; and
- Continuously evaluating the success of recruitment and retention strategies, adapting them as necessary based on results.