ZachEvans

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

Thoughts

Where Opportunity Meets Mission

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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

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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

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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.

Governance, Change Control & Communication

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One of the first things I examine when I take on a new team are the existing processes (or lack thereof) that are used to manage their work. Some think that processes and governance are unnecessary bureaucracy that slow teams down and add little value. Most leaders, however, understand that they help drive efficiency, account for exceptions, set prioritization, and promote repeatable outcomes.

When working with a technology team, one of the first processes I review is change control governance and implementation. For software systems specifically, I recommend a governance process similar to this:

Governance Process

This process takes a feature or enhancement request through a month-long due diligence process intended to inform, and gain consent from, business owners and then, assuming the agreement of those business owners, pass along the request to the governance committee for review and vote. Why so many steps between request submission and governance? The due diligence process should eliminate clutter from ever reaching the governance committee.

Once a feature or enhancement request has successfully gone through the governance process, the request enters a software development life-cycle as described below:

Software Developmen t Lifecycle

The requirements gathering and development-testing processes may both need to be completed multiple times prior to acceptance but teams that skip any of these steps put themselves at risk for developing solutions that fall well short of the desired functionality.

As the development effort nears the implementation state, having a robust communication plan becomes critical. End users need to be educated on the change or enhancement coming their way but this communication plan serves another purpose as well: To showcase the work that the technology team is engaged in. Below is an example of a communication plan that I have used successfully:

Change Control Communication Plan

This basic communication plan takes two (2) weeks to implement once the message(s) have been developed and approved. Some plans may take longer to complete due to training requirements or the scope of the changes being implemented.

As an aside, why, as a technology leader, should you be concerned with the visibility of the work that your team is successfully doing? Three reasons immediately come to mind:

  1. Communicating effectively minimizes the risk that the end-users are “surprised” by the enhancement or new feature that is being implemented.
  2. Communicating effectively highlights the work that the team is doing that supports the work of the organization as a whole, contributing to the view that the team is a strategic, valuable part of the larger team.
  3. Communicating effectively highlights the work that the team is doing that supports the engagement of the team, contributing to higher levels of job satisfaction.

I believe that good processes are the foundation for team success and should be ignored at the peril of an organization. New leaders should not simply scrap existing processes but, at the same time, all processes should be reviewed from time-to-time to ensure that they are still relevant and operating as expected, or are candidates for review, revision and improvement.

Learning to Code

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Like most boys his age, Carter really like to play video games and, while Mandy and I try to limit the amount of time all of our kids spend on them, there are some I like more than others. One game I do not mind him playing as much is Minecraft, which can played be like a digital LEGO adventure. In an attempt to take advantage of his love of the game, I was excited to hear that Code.org had recently released a Minecraft module.

Code.org uses basic drag-and-drop interfaces to teach kids how to code using JavaScript and fun characters (including Star Wars and Frozen). Here is one screen shot of Carter’s work last night:

Minecraft - Code.org

You can see the end-results of Carter’s code online here and you can even view the source code by clicking on the “How It Works” button: https://studio.code.org/c/130452489. It is only a start, but he had a lot of fun playing around with this teaching tool last night, much to the delight of his two younger brothers that have both already asked for their own Code.org accounts.

Actively Managed Knowledge

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Project management standards state that a project is not truly over until any lessons learned throughout the project are discussed, documented, and cataloged for use on future projects. When I was in my MBA program I developed an interest in knowledge management that has stayed with me. Whether this interest is driven by my generally-organized nature or my love of reading and teaching, it is a topic that I have passion for and enjoy discussing.

You can find countless articles and papers on the theoretical aspects of knowledge management just as you can find a tremendous amount of guidance on the best way(s) to ensure that knowledge is disseminated throughout an organization. What I fear gets lost is this discussion, however, is the more fundamental topic of what is the best place to store (and share) this knowledge in the first place. On this topic, I believe a structured hierarchy approach is the best way to tackle the problem.

Actively Managed Knowledge

An organization (or individual) that does not take a systematic approach to managing its knowledge will so find itself disorganized and unable to find an disseminate needed information in a timely manner. All of these solutions should have a back-up plan in place and should be used as progressive steps in the process of actively managing knowledge. Additionally, some knowledge may require additional security and/or encryption that is not discussed here.

Perhaps the biggest lesson to learn when it comes to actively managing knowledge is that knowledge must be curated over time. Knowledge that is never reviewed, revised, edited or sunset will, eventually, become useless and potentially harmful to an organization or individual.

Do you think I am missing an option or step or simply have a question or a comment on my thought process? Please leave a comment below or contact me for more information.