“Old Models To
Effect Change And Influence Decision Makers Aren’t Working Today,
So You Better Find New Ones That Do!
A Medical
director at a Midwest hospital recently told a reporter from the
Wall Street Journal that, “(Clinicians) don’t want to be told how
to do things, especially the older providers, the baby boomers. They
don’t want to hear about new fangled ideas.” “Why Change?”
quoting one of his colleagues, “When things are working pretty well
around here.” With this type of pushback, which is a very
common response to change at most healthcare organizations today,
how do you make necessary and needed change happen?
Go With The Flow,
Not Against It
If we look at
resistance to change as a natural state for all humankind that
must be understood by change agents as the first step in
making any positive change, we won’t fear it or avoid it. Further, I
believe that resistance to change is a built-in primal response that
all human beings are born with and is a necessary safeguard
to prevent us from irrational behavior. Otherwise, we would all be
walking and talking Evel Knievels, which would disrupt our world’s
disciple and order.
The
antidote to resistance to change is that our clinicians need to:
(i) expect the change, (ii) participant in the change and (iii) feel
it is necessary. The reason why that this is so important, as the
late great professor and consultant George S Odiorne once said, “most
people like those changes they cause to happen, for they are
adapting as they create the change. When people participate in
making decisions, they make their expert contribution. Thus, they
often are able to prevent the kinds of errors which grow out of
ignorance. They also acquire more enthusiasm for the decision, or
at least have some of their serious reservations removed, and
accordingly work more diligently to make the decision work in
practice”. This is how to go with the flow to influence your
change resisters, not fight against them.
Persuade, Lead
And Coach To Effect Change
And Influence
Your Decision Makers
It’s high
time that supply chain professionals drop their old change
management models which aren’t working and learn to
persuade, lead by example and coach to effect
change and influence your decision makers.
This new
paradigm can best be achieved when supply chain professionals
empower their department heads and managers to lead their
healthcare organization’s cost management initiatives, by first
organizing them into value teams.
Next, in
order for your value teams to realize their quest for peak
performance supply chain professionals need to fill new roles as
consultant, coach, trainer, facilitator,
and evaluator to your teams. As opposed to supply chain
professionals assuming the position of team leader for your value
teams.
These new
roles for supply chain professionals are a major shift in
philosophy, principles and practices for those individuals who just
love the ego gratification of leading their own value teams,
thus leaving little or no motivation for their department heads and
managers to realize breakthrough results.
Times
are changing and so should you!
The time has come for supply chain professionals to decide if their
egos are standing in the way of effective change and
influencing their decision makers to save money and improve
quality.
Whether you
really want to make a great leap forward in the art of change
management or not -- the choice is yours.
by
Robert T. Yokl, President