To the Point

No matter what position we hold within an organization, or what place we are in our career, we all need mentors. At the very least, we need colleagues with whom we can seek professional advice in order to get open and honest feedback as well as spitball ideas.

I am often asked what traits I look for in a mentor or colleague. I find myself drawn to folks that are open, honest and direct. Over the course of my career, I have learned the most from people that practice the art of being direct. I say “practice,” because I think there is a skill to being thoughtfully direct without intentionally hurting a team member’s feelings or belittling them. 

I realize that being completely open and direct can cause a bit of anxiety. You don’t want to make a colleague feel bad and or engage in conflict. There are also times when one’s instinct is to believe that telling folks what they want to hear is more comfortable than being honest and upfront.

However, the reality is that beating around the bush doesn’t ultimately work and it takes away from what is important—getting the job done. Being direct, straightforward and honest with colleagues is the only way to go in my experience. 

Direct communication has a lot of benefits, and there are ways to speak openly and honestly without being punitive or demeaning. By being direct you:

• Build trust with your team. 

• Demonstrate that you are honest and authentic.

• Show that you respect colleagues by telling them the truth.

Being direct is also much more efficient than avoiding the problem. Direct communication cuts through the drama, saving energy, time and money.

They are ways to be direct while being mindful of others and their feelings. Here are a few tips:

• Provide feedback that is about the quality of the work and not the person doing it. 

• Be clear and concise.

• Be constructive rather than aggressive.

• Don’t put others in the middle. Speak directly to the source and focus on their work and not that of others.

• Ask follow-up questions to make sure you are being heard and that you are both on the same page. 

• Work to come to an understanding and get “buy-in” from the team member before ending the discussion.

The reality is that there are times when discussions with team members are not going to be fun, and you have to give feedback that is hard to hear. But if you approach the conversation with honesty and thoughtfulness, the news is much more likely to be received in the spirit in which it was intended, and you and your team can move forward with the great work you are looking to accomplish.

Meeting in the Middle

I’m often asked by colleagues and those I mentor to define my management style. I’ve found, what they’re really asking is for my advice on how I manage a team. A friend recently posed this question to me, and as I had been thinking about the lessons I’ve learned through the mistakes I made, I realized that the way I approach the management of my direct reports today has been significantly informed by my learnings from the past.

Micromanaging is not my style. It never has been, and I can’t imagine it ever will be. I want my team members to feel empowered and accountable. I want them to trust me and know that I trust them. I want morale to be high and team members to feel like they are valued and have significant input in decision making. I feel like none of this is possible when folks are being micromanaged and the team leader is holding the reigns too tight.

Earlier in my career, my mistakes in managing were rooted in the opposite approach—giving my direct reports too much autonomy and freedom. As a result, I experienced moments where team members felt lost or unsure of their direction and tasks failed to get completed or projects remained stuck in place. I encountered a few situations where team members took their new-found level of authority too far and decisions were made that were not in line with our overall objects. Their struggles were a direct result of my choices as a manager and I own that.

Creating a management balance has its challenges but it’s totally achievable. I think over the years I have met my team members in the middle and found a way to create a healthy work environment that is rooted in a mutual trust and respect. I strive to delegate, manage from a safe distance, hold team members accountable and empower them to make decisions and take risks. For me, this is possible by practicing the following:

• Providing clarity around a shared goal of purpose—clearly communicating the how and why so my team has the knowledge to move forward.
• Operating from a place of transparency—letting everyone know what I expect from the start.
• Developing a series of benchmarks and checkpoints for my team so they feel secure and we are all kept up to speed.
• Building an environment where autonomy and accountability make the others possible.

At the end of the day, I want my team members to view me as standing with them as opposed to on top of them or completely out of the frame. My role as a leader is one of the things I cherish most about my work and is the aspect of my job in which I take the most pride. 

On Their Own

As I explained in my last post, I often think there is far more to learn in failure than in success—particularly when it comes to leadership. We all make mistakes—that’s a given. We also tend to beat ourselves up when that happens, and that isn’t productive. Over the last several years, I have started to see things a bit differently. I have begun to celebrate my mistakes. I now choose to see them as an opportunity to learn more about myself and as a tool to develop and improve my skills as a leader and colleague.

As a manager one of the mistakes I have made along the way is too often protecting my team members from failure. As a parent I have often felt the urge to jump in and solve problems in order to protect my child from disappointment or failure. I have experienced a similar impulse in my professional life. There have been times over the years when I have swooped in and taken over to prevent a direct report from experiencing a setback. 

While the desire to protect a team member comes from a good place, the results often don’t benefit anyone. By circumventing failure, I cut off the opportunity for them to learn how to be innovative and find solutions to recurring problems. And so instead of rushing to catch them and stop them from making a mistake, I had to learn to step back and let them try and figure it out—or fail trying. My goal in doing this is to teach team members to be self-sufficient, to problem solve and to take risks—three critical ingredients to success.

Nine out of ten times, team members will successfully navigate the obstacles in front of them. It might take a few recalibrations and coaching to get where they need to be, but for the most part, they get there. Occasionally, a team member is simply out of their depth and cannot succeed at their role. Frustration abounds on all sides. 

And while you must know when to step back, you also must realize when enough is enough and step in. There are times when a team member is not the right fit for a role or the duties assigned, and you must make the tough call and take the appropriate action. This is not pleasant for anyone but letting a team member flounder again and again is not helping them, the rest of the team or the organization.

When stepping back and removing the safety net, there are a few things to be mindful of:

• Don’t let team members be paralyzed by failure after the first attempt. Coach them on recovery and teach them to scenario-plan. 
• Let them know that it is safe to fail and the parameters in which to do so.
• Help team members see the trajectory of their full careers—full of wins and losses—instead of focusing on the immediate success or failure.
• Celebrate and celebrate publicly when failure leads to innovation or discovery.

Finally, and most importantly, be willing to tell your own failure stories. You are leading by example--which is huge. We all have failures to share and we all have a lot to learn from them.

The Road Less Traveled

We’re often asked to benchmark our success—to celebrate what we’ve accomplished and impart to others what we’ve learned from our achievements. This is a valid and important exercise. There is a lot to learn from success. 

When you work hard and achieve something great, there is always something to learn—takeaways to deploy on future projects. You also feel good and want to share that with others. Success can be a great motivator, and you can certainly inspire team members with victorious war stories. 

But what if we step back for a moment and think about things a bit differently—take the path less traveled? What if we take time to consider our failures? What if we spent time reflecting on the mistakes, the missteps, the things we should have said and done?  

I realize this can be difficult, and sometimes stirring up memories and feelings that you would rather leave alone, can be painful and challenging. Taking the time to really evaluate our mistakes requires one to be vulnerable. And while vulnerability is hard, it is also incredibly important. By being vulnerable, by allowing ourselves to see who we really are—warts and all—and letting others see that to, we attain a level of honesty, clarity and a way of being in the world that is invaluable.

Today, and thanks in large part to social media, we spend a significant amount of time curating our world to look perfect to the friend or follower. We obsess on capturing the perfect moment and positioning what is happening in our lives to be viewed like a “best of” highlight reel with the desired goal of driving up likes and engagement. But what if we spent some time reflecting on the moments we chose not to share and really taking a hard look at what we experienced and what we can learn from them?

In the coming posts I’m going to challenge myself to do just this and share with you some of the mistakes I’ve made and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I think there is often far more to learn in failure than in success. 

While we will go more in depth in upcoming posts, here is a quick story to share. I am incredibly passionate about what I do. When explaining to my team a new program or initiative, I tend to get excited and pumped up about what lies ahead and this can sometimes be overwhelming for people. The excitement can cause me to move quicker than the time needed for other team members to process the idea. And while I have a completely solid and well thought out rationale for why we are tackling the project or idea, in the past I have not been as effective as I should have been in clearly communicating that to others. 

As I think back, there have been a few times over the course of my career when I am working with a team member to resolve something that has gone wrong with a project, and after some back and forth, it is revealed that they had no idea (or the wrong idea) as to why we were doing what we were doing. If they were lost, then of course, there were going to be mistakes. And that is completely on me. I take full responsibility for that.

And so how do I apply this knowledge today? I am currently spending time walking the whole Tampa General Hospital team—all 8,000 of them—through our new strategic plan which will serve as a guide for the organization over the next several years. As I prepared to do this, I intentionally and clearly built into my presentation addressing the “whys.” I made sure to stress the “and this is why” as I went through each section of the plan, leaving time for the team to challenge assumptions and ask questions, until they fully understood the plans being put into place. With this approach, everyone from the physicians to the maintenance staff, are clear on our direction moving forward.

I look forward to sharing some of my journey with you in the coming weeks. As always, thanks for engaging with me. I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

Not Your Grandma's Health Care

The health care landscape is quickly and dramatically changing. In my last post--the first of my three-part series on consumerism--we talked about this change and how critical it will be to design a consumer facing health care strategy in the new environment.

As I explained, the first step in plan development is taking an inventory of your current services, determining where you would like to expand or grow your consumer base and evaluating your capacity to do so. The second step, which I believe is the most critical, is all about your customer – getting to know who they are, what they want and what matters most to them. This is really the key to success.

But how do you achieve this?

Today’s health care consumer is not the same as in previous generations. In the past, we would focus on one core customer—the critically ill. Now, what people want, need and are willing to pay for in terms of care and services depends on age, health and family needs, priorities and preferences. We can no longer design health care services with one consumer in mind. In order to develop a successful consumer facing plan, you need to know and understand the four types of health care consumers:

• Young invincibles: healthy, active community members who are health conscious but are not big users of health services
• Young families: healthy young parents with various health needs for a range of ages
• Healthy adults: established community members who lead active lifestyles but may opt for preventative and elective care and services
• Chronically ill: individuals with chronic diseases that require specialty care and resources 

Next, ask the right questions:

• How can I anticipate and address the SPECIFIC needs of each of these four core customer groups?
• How do these groups traditionally show up in our community? What do I anecdotally know about them and is there historical data I can review to help me understand their engagement patterns?
• How am I going to get them them what they need, where they need it and when they need it at a reasonable cost, at a high level of quality and accessibility?

And if you’re not doing so already, you will want to engage (full tilt) with a database or Customer Relationship Management system to help you better understand your consumers and track and trend their behavior. Your ability to apply analytics and deploy data in your decision making will be critical to your success.

Once you have answered these questions, you should be armed with the information you need to determine the value you can deliver. Here, value can be defined as the ability to provide access to affordable high-quality care and services. Just remember: when it comes to health care and services, value means something different to a 27-year old versus a 50-year old.

At the end of the day, value, and our ability to create it, is the end goal.  If we are to provide our consumers with services that they deem to be of value, we will be well on our way to keep them coming back for more. And once you have answered the value proposition, you will be one step closer to fully realizing consumerism in your organization.

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Next: In the third of this three-part series, I will offer five tips to ensure success in implementing a consumerism plan in your organization.

Give the People What They Want

I recently read a fascinating article in the Wall StreetJournal on the changing model of hospitals and the new ways in which they are beginning to deliver care. As the author, Laura Landro, explains “the sprawling institutions we know are radically changing—becoming smaller, more digital, or disappearing completely. The result should be cheaper and better care.”

As more of my work pushes me into the consumer-focused health care space, I find myself deeply intrigued by Landro’s vision of the future. She defines a new health care landscape where providers are shifting their focus away from their monolithic inpatient facilities. Instead, they’re placing their energy and resources in serving their patients out in the community where they live—moving from an internal service model to an external one. To do this, providers must expand their service lines to offer more outpatient treatment and convenient care options at strategic locations across the regions they serve. In addition, they’re increasing their investment in technology and turning to telehealth (delivery of health care remotely via the internet) to serve more patients in real time.

As the leader of the second largest hospital in Florida, I know the critical importance of a high quality, accessible and traditional health care setting.  But I also believe that health care providers and facilitators will quickly need to adapt to a changing environment that is highly influenced by consumer behavior. Our ability to be nimble and operate in this new space will be critical to our success and survival.

As Landro acknowledges, many of the changes in care delivery are being driven by economics, but they’re also significantly informed by desires of the patient, or as I now refer to them, the health care consumer. In today’s world, consumerism drives our business - and price, quality and convenience are more important than ever. Increased access to technology, the availability of medical information online, and the rise in smartphones, apps and wearable fitness and health devices, are other factors driving consumer-focused health care.

While many of us understand this in theory, how do we begin to think about putting it into practice?

Like everything we do, careful planning and strategy design are critical to success. When developing your consumerism health care plan, consider the following key questions:

• How will you gather and analyze meaningful patient data? Developing insights into patients’ behavior and expectations is vital.
• Have you begun to segment your customer base based on age, risk factors, lifestyle and activity level?
• Which service lines are in the greatest demand within your consumer population and community? Does offering or enhancing these services makes sense to your bottom line and to the consumers you serve?
• Do the spaces for care and treatment center around patients (both their experience and efficiency)?
• Have you considered the ways in which you can holistically integrate all patient management—appointment, tests, etc.?
• Do you have a plan to invest in technology? Technology is a key driver in consumerism. More importantly, patient-facing technology is critical in order to drive digital natives to engage with your health care organization.

There’s no secret sauce in designing and implementing consumer facing health care but there are two key elements to start with. First, you need to work to have the sufficient services available and second, you need to know your customers. This means spending a significant amount of your time developing a deep understanding of your customer base—who they are, what they want and need and what messages resonates with them. At the end of the day, health care is no different than any other business marketing to a defined customer demographic and/or consumer base.

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In my next post I will offer some tips to help make consumerism a reality in your organization.