ZachEvans

Believer. Husband. Dad. Coach. Healthcare Thought-Leader. All-Around Good Guy.

Leadership

Where Opportunity Meets Mission

by

I was recently asked by Faith Family Medical Center, a non-profit organization I am honored to serve as a Board Member, to head up their tri-annual strategic planning review process. Having been through this type of exercise many times before (both in the for- and non-profit worlds and as both a leader and participant), I was honored to agree to take on this leadership role. At the kick-off meeting for the team–which included other Board Members, staff and a consultant–I gave the welcome and introduction and laid out my definition of what constitutes a strategy:

Strategy is where opportunity meets mission.

I have seen too many organizations struggle with what to include as part of their strategic plan. For me, there is a litmus test that an idea needs to pass before it should be considered as a candidate for inclusion:

  1. Is the idea consistent with the mission of our organization?
  2. Does this idea respond to an opportunity that our organization has identified?

If the answer to both of the questions is “yes” then you should consider including the idea in your strategic plan. If the answer to one or both of the questions is “no” then you need to eliminate the idea from those under consideration for inclusion in your strategic plan.

Just because the answer to both questions is “yes” does not mean that the idea is automatically included in your plan. You still need to consider what competencies your organization has that can support the idea (or what competencies you will need to develop or acquire) along with dependencies and other limiting factors. These two questions, however, should help you slim down your list of idea and provide focus on those ideas that merit additional investigation.

Are there components of your strategic plan that fail one or both questions posed above? It is not too late to re-consider their inclusion. Do you need help with a strategic planning process or review? Contact me for more information as to how I may be able to help.

Rethinking Support

by

When I took on TriStar Centennial Medical Center as their IT Director, I inherited a team of nearly 30 seasoned, dedicated team members that were good at their jobs. The knew the facilities (650+ beds spread out over multiple campuses) inside and out, had long-standing relationships with both staff and leadership, and were–generally speaking–well thought of by their peers. It was, in my opinion, a good team to take on as a leader.

Talking with the team over my first few months, however, I discovered underlying feelings and perceptions that ran contrary to the results we were delivering. While we had reasonably high employee engagement scores, there was a sense of discontent and a feeling of being beat down by the work. When I took a step back and reflected on all of conversations with the team, I had a few questions that I needed to answer:

  1. How can such a well-established team, with positive working relationships, feel this way?
  2. How are these feelings impacting the service we are being asked to provide?
  3. How are these feelings limiting our relationships with the rest of the hospital?

As I dug in to the answers of the questions, I came to the conclusion that the team loved the people they worked with but they did not love the work and I thought I knew why.

Imagine a job where, generally speaking, the only time your phone rings or you get an email is because something is broken and needs to be fixed. That even with the implementation of a new project, most of your time is spent answering the question: “Is it done yet?” The very basis of your work is rooted in negativity that will–over time–impact your view of the work that you do. No one may be trying to run you down, but run down you become.

After quantifying these feelings, I tested my theory with the team and they confirmed that, yes, it is difficult to constantly feel this way. The celebrations of success were few and far between (something that we fixed) and there were not many ways to measure success available (also something that we fixed). In my quest to further solve this problem, however, I began to rethink the entire concept of what it means to provide support (in this case, specifically, IT support).

What happened over the next several months was a transformation of the work that we did in the hospital, measured by our top marks in employee engagement and customer satisfaction (out of the 14 facilities in our division). How did we accomplish this? By putting the patient in the middle of the support we were providing–even when no one on my team was involved in direct patient care.

Gone were the days where we were fixing a broken printer. Now we were enabling a nurse to print out discharge instructions on a timely basis to help a patient get home quicker.

No longer did we install new equipment simply because a clinician asked for it. Now we installed new equipment because it provided additional tools to the clinician to provide higher quality care with better outcomes.

Furthermore, I wanted my team to ask themselves two questions each day (since refined): 1) “What can I do today to impact the care given to our patients?” (beginning of each day) and 2) “What have I done today to impact the care given to our patients?” (end of each day).

By putting the support our team did in terms of how it helps the patients we are called to serve, we now had a foundation for greater satisfaction in our work and happiness in our jobs. All by rethinking support and what it means. It is a process I am just now beginning to roll-out to another team I have the pleasure of leading. This time, however, I am even taking it a step further by implementing the concepts in coordination with the clinicians we support. I suspect that I will see similar (if not even better) results.

6 Things to Consider Before Joining a Non-Profit Board

by

As careers progress and successes (hopefully) mount, you may be asked to consider serving on the Board of Directors of a non-profit organization. Before you follow the pleadings of your better angels and agree to serve, here are six things to consider:

  1. Organization Staff. Does the organization have a large staff? A small staff? No staff at all? The size and skill set of the staff will have a direct impact on your role. The smaller the staff, the more operational of a role you may be asked to play. With a larger staff your role may be solely strategic.
  2. Financial Stability. A non-profit needs to have a viable financial model just as much as their for-profit cousins. You need to understand this model before committing to serve. Yes, you may be able to help fix a bad model from the inside but you need to know about any challenges before you begin.
  3. Staff-Board Fit. You should always talk to as many staff members and existing Board members before you agree to serve. Understanding the current working relationship between the staff and the board–and its impact on the programs of the organization–will be critical to early and long-term success.
  4. Mission-Individual Fit. It is not enough simply to know what the mission of the organization is, you need be comfortable with how well the mission is being implemented on a daily basis. Furthermore, you need to agree with and be able to fully support the mission.
  5. Governance Processes. Good governance processes and adequate controls not only allow an organization to function efficiently, they are key to protecting both the staff and the board from unwise or ill-advised actions. Governance should never be viewed as unnecessary bureaucracy, but, rather, a key component to success.
  6. Board “Asks”.  Every board member should be added for a reason, whether it is a specific skill, knowledge, or professional and personal network. Additionally, most organizations will have specific “asks” that you need to understand at the beginning of your service (e.g. meeting attendance, ,introductions, financial support, etc.).

If you feel confident in you analysis of the above-mentioned items, you will most likely have a successful and enjoyable experience serving on the board of a non-profit. I know, personally, how much I treasure my experience serving Faith Family Medical Clinic and Grassland Athletic Association.

Being a Stonecutter

by

Perseverance. Patience. Stick-to-it-ness. Staying the course. Whatever you want to call it, the will to keep going in the face of what feels like unrelenting opposition is hard.

With the baseball teams I coach I talk about the most important pitch being the next pitch. It does not matter what just happened because you cannot go back in time and change it. What does matter is that you get ready for the next pitch and try your best to not make the same mistake again. I came across this quote by Jacob Riis that I really like and that speaks directly to this thought:

When nothing seems to help, I go back and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it–but all that had gone before.

As a leader, it is challenging to take the path of the stonecutter, putting in tremendous effort day after day with what appears to be little to show for your work until, one day, the stone spits in two and you get the lasting result you want. Keep at it. You will get where you want to be, even if it takes longer than you think it should, because you have fought the good fight and won the day.

Put Off Until Tomorrow

by

Benjamin Franklin is credited with first speaking the famous words:

Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

Many have lived their lives by this maxim and have become more productive because of it. Other productivity gurus will encourage you to do your most distasteful task first each day so that it is out of the way and you will not have you dread doing it (and be distracted by it).

I agree with both of these principles if your goal is maximum productivity. I also believe, however, that as leaders sometimes the best thing we can do is to put off until tomorrow something that can be done today.

Leaders often find themselves in emotionally-charged situations. Justified or not, appropriate or not, these situations demand that the leader take a step back, attempt to remove as much of the emotion from the situation as possible, and respond in as productive a manner as possible. Respond too quickly to a situation fraught with emotion and you may find yourself wishing you had let just a bit of time pass before you answered.

Wait an hour before hitting send on the email reply, thereby allowing yourself time to re-read and edit your text. Put off until tomorrow the crucial conversation you need to have with your rouge employee about their response to another leader so that you have time to craft a reasonable response.

Take a deep breath, calm some of your own emotions, and you will be much happier with your response to the difficult situation as well as the response of others to you.

Why Vulnerability Matters

by

There has been no shortage of articles written on the value of transparency in business. Drivers behind transparency include increased trust, higher employee engagement and buy-in, realized brand authenticity, and improved loyalty. As a leader, I am a big believer in being as transparent with my team, customers, business partners, and stakeholders as possible. I believe in transparency for all of the reasons mentioned previously and for one additional simple fact: It is the right thing to do. When I am asked to lead a new team or my existing team adds a new teammate, there are four promises I make to them:

  1. I promise to give you a truthful answer when asked a question (aka: transparency). I may not always be able to give you all of the details at the present time but I will not lie to you.
  2. I promise to wear the black hat and tell people “no” on your behalf so that you can maintain as positive of a relationship as possible.
  3. I promise to remove as many barriers as possible that are keeping you from being as productive and as happy as you can be.
  4. I promise to help you find a healthy balance between your responsibilities both inside and outside the office.

I am considering adding a fifth question to my list: I promise to be vulnerable to you when appropriate.

Vulnerability is different than transparency in that, while transparency allows those around you to look inside your operations, vulnerability allows those around you to look inside you. It allows co-workers, team members, and stakeholders to see the less-than-perfect you. The you that, if you only make three mistakes before lunch, considers the day a success. The human you. The personal you.

Leaders understand the need for both transparency and vulnerability. Both engender loyalty from your team and can lead to greater passion and productivity. With transparency comes buy-in but with vulnerability comes connection.

I have, on more than one occasion, been given the opportunity to admit mistakes I have made in my career and I have never regretted doing just that. When a leader admits a mistake, it frees their team to try their hardest, safe in the knowledge that calculated risks–and the inevitable mistakes that come about because of taking them–are acceptable to the organization.

Note: For a more detailed discussion on vulnerability and its power, please view this excellent TEDxHouston talk by Brene Brown.

Being Visible

by

Management by wandering around is not a new concept for most leaders. This type of unplanned, ad-hoc process has been proven overtime to engender transparency and trust while facilitating informal conversations that can be wildly productive but may otherwise never happen. At TriStar Centennial Medical Center, this takes place during rounding sessions where leaders take the time to visit with staff on the floors–to be visible–to get a sense for how the organization is functioning on the front lines of patient care. This kind of information gathering (and dissemination), however, is only part of the battle.

Generally speaking, individual contributors want to hear from their organization’s leaders on a regular basis. They want updates on the state of the organization, how the team is tracking to plan, what strategic initiatives are going to be starting up, and how are we responding to the ever-changing business and regulatory environment in which we operate. For large organizations (TriStar Centennial has over 3,000 employees that work in shifts around the clock), these updates happen in a multitude of forums:

  1. Leadership Team Meetings. Targeted to Directors and above, these meetings are the foundation of top-down communication where the organization’s leadership team is brought up to speed on the state of operations as well as educated on strategic communications and themes that need to be passed on to the larger staff.
  2. Departmental All-Hands Meetings. Often held monthly (I “bribe” my team with breakfast to make the thought of yet another meeting more palatable), these sessions allow for department leaders to communicate both the broader messages from the senior leadership team as well as discuss department-specific ideas, themes and strategies.
  3. Facility Town Hall Meetings. Held quarterly, these sessions are open to anyone that can attend and include discussion segments led by various members of the senior leadership team. Because of the size of our campus, we break them down by facility to keep the group size manageable.
  4. Night Meals. Operating in a 24 x 7 x 365 organization creates communication challenges that need to be creatively addressed. One way that we do this is by hosting quarterly “night meals” where our 7P/7A employees can a) get a free meal and b) interact with and hear from their leadership team. For some of these employees it may be the only times throughout the year that they get to see certain leaders.
  5. Weekly Emails from the CEO. Our CEO does a great job of sending out a quick note via email every Monday communicating a key, strategic message for the week. Often based on personal observations and experience, they serve as a touch-point regarding what we believe in as an organization and how we strive to serve our customer. HCA’s CIO, Marty Paslick, produces a similar weekly communication via podcast.
  6. Monthly Newsletters. Long a part of many an organization’s communication strategy, we produce both printed and electronic copies of a monthly newsletter that reaches a large section of our employee population.

Taken individually, each tactic may leave out certain portions of our employee population. When building upon one another, however, we are able to communicate the desired and necessary messages while also providing forums for feedback and questions. The design of each of these communication opportunities is to increase the visibility of the leadership teams with the staff so that ALL members of the team feel valued, respected, and communicated with.

These are just six of the more formal strategies that my organization employs to increase visibility to, and communication with, our talented team of employees. What other strategies have you seen successfully employed by organizations you have been a part of?

One Team

by

Since I joined HCA IT&S in 2010 the organization has been talking about building “OneIT”. IT&S within the larger enterprise had, historically, been fragmented and operated in silos. This can be somewhat easy to understand when you realize that IT&S is an organization with about 3,000 employees spread out over five data centers, 14 regional support centers, and multiple corporate offices. Some of these employees had worked together on projects for years but had never met each other face-to-face. Much effort was being put in to building a culture where all IT&S employees, regardless of where they sit, viewed themselves as part of one team. This was the macro-level opportunity.

On a micro-level, I have experienced the same opportunity since I have moved inside an HCA facility, taking on leadership of all of IT for TriStar Centennial Medical Center. I am responsible for the service provided by a team of more than 25 dedicated IT&S professionals (both technical and clinical) but have only one direct report. While we may physically sit together, the teams still lean towards operating in silos at the very moment we need to be presenting one unified front to our colleagues in the facility.

I believe that there are several phases that a manager needs to both demonstrate and lead their teams through on the journey to building one team. I will discuss each phase in turn but here they are, in order:

  1. Communication
  2. Transparency
  3. Vulnerability
  4. Trust
  5. Voice

As I fill in the details on each phase, I will link through to the individual thought but I am excited about the journey I will be taking in my own mind as I share my ideas on how best to accomplish a feat that all managers should be driving towards: How do I create an environment where we operate as ONE TEAM?