Before you begin reading this post you may want to read Part I and Part II first.
Part III: Staying Healthy: Ensuring your Clinic Practice is ADEPT ℠ at Sustaining Value
In this blog series, we have been exploring how to drive value in the organization by motivating people, developing skills and promoting synergy, with the aim of maximizing the overall performance of the organization. Like with any get-healthy regime, it requires a commitment, over time, to achieve your goal and, more importantly, to sustain it. Over time, many of us have enjoyed how the positive results of any good-health commitment have paid off. We look to see how far we’ve come and it’s exciting, even though the day-to-day work of getting to that point didn’t seem so glamorous.
Recently, I had a similar review with a client whose commitment to becoming an ADEPT ℠ organization started small and has seen many positive results, over time. It wasn’t an easy process or a quick fix. The factors contributing to their troubles required a thoughtful review and commitment to change. Now, this organization is one whose success and profitability is clearly identifiable. It reflects a fundamental culture shift. After all, transforming an organization requires a long term strategy, a vision supported by leadership and an ability to share that vision throughout the ranks, inspiring a fully-engaged team. It also requires transparency of your vision and path.
A lot of organizations in the health care industry spend an inordinate amount of time devising a new workflow or launching a new service line, thinking that either or any of these new processes, products or services will fuel its success. Like learning how to live a healthy lifestyle, creating an ADEPT ℠ organization is about adopting a new paradigm and evolving your organizational belief structure.
At V2V, we consider ourselves transformationists. Some of our new clients will ask: What does that mean? My colleague and fellow V2V founder, Debra Wiggs, explores transformationists, in depth, in an earlier blog. Transformationists are part of the solution, not part of the problem, helping your practice survive and thrive amid the new business of health care. To do so requires achieving a full organizational commitment to innovation, not by looking into a singular-focused project or solution and expecting long term sustainability. Like fad diets that don’t last, the bad habits eventually come back; to truly achieve success you must transform yourselves.
Just like in developing a healthy lifestyle, you first have to find your find your VALUE, your ADEPT ℠ advantage across the organization and create an environment that allows it to sustain itself.
Creating a long-term strategy for success requires you and your team to ask yourselves some thoughtful questions. These five questions are all about finding those critical elements to truly transform your organization. What applications are needed? How do you create that brand distinction? How can your processes and practices become more effective? More profitable? And, how do you recruit, retain and develop your talent?
After all that is accomplished, how do you sustain that success, year after year? After years of advising our clients, I’ve learned it’s about an ongoing commitment to training and mentoring your people, engaging them in your culture, and monitoring your success. Personal effectiveness, organizational leadership, and business management require a long view. It requires a dedication to consistency, and is sometimes fueled by curriculum-driven programs. Our clients tie together their transformational process of becoming an ADEPT ℠ organization by developing a strategic plan of how-to accomplish their goals. And, like weight and health management, it is essential to include triggers that are put into action if you see a negative trend emerging.
Whether seeing a dip in patient satisfaction scores, or if your quality outcomes are heading south, what is your plan to respond quickly and decisively? That is what makes the difference and fosters sustainable success. Ultimately, finding your value and sustaining success means avoiding complacency, investing in yourself as a leader, investing in your team, and the ever-important process of monitoring and adjusting for new parameters. It seems simple but in the hectic day to day it is easy to lose sight of the goal.
Our team offers trusted advisors from the hospital and medical practice arena with the sole focus of creating transformational change amid the new business of health care. We help you find opportunities to enhance success across your organization, act on them, and sustain them over time!
Are you ready to look in the organizational “mirror” or step on that “scale” of measuring organizational effectiveness?
Call us.
We can help.
