Hardwiring sustainable change
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By Marcia B. Riley, Organizational effectiveness consultant |
Change is almost a constant in today's competitive, increasingly technology-driven healthcare environment. But efforts to implement institutional changes aren't guaranteed success.
Change brings anxiety and resistance to implementing new procedures from employees and managers who have a big investment in maintaining the status quo. It also can give rise to political resistance from managers facing organizational changes and cultural resistance from powerful stakeholders who were instrumental in setting the unwritten rules that their particular organizations live by day in and day out.
I advise perioperative managers who are assigned the mission of implementing change to look to their healthcare facility's top leadership. Engaging your leadership is the critical precursor to accelerating operational excellence and "hardwiring" sustainable change.
Such leaders instigate change, set the new direction an organization will take, communicate the new vision and direction to staff, remove bureaucracy and barriers to implementing it and motivate and inspire team members to accomplish it.
Leaders who are change agents start the process with themselves. Successful change agents model desired behaviors. They know staff members carry around invisible signs saying "Make me feel important," and they take the extra effort to fulfill that desire. They freely offer the signs that they respect their team members: one-on-one conversations, a simple "Good morning" and more important, the "Thank you for doing such a good job."
Good leaders empower others to become change agents by committing to a policy that communication among team members affected by the change will be direct and clear. The goal is avoiding "triangulation," which occurs when feuding staff members or managers avoid direct confrontations but each take their tales of woe to a third person, usually a manager. Creating a culture of "straight talk" among your team members—a policy that requires their best efforts to communicate directly with each other before they can take their case to a third party—can result in miracles.
To hardwire sustainable change, healthcare institutions must offer their leaders and team managers education in the process-improvement skills needed to model workplace policy changes and assess employees' progress in adapting to those changes.
Just as essential to success is ensuring that the staff competencies, capabilities and skill sets needed to implement the change are available. This will require investments in intellectual capital, staffing realignments and fine-tuning, team building and organizational development.
Riley is an organization effectiveness consultant in Silver Spring, Md. She led a presentation on guiding healthcare organizations through cultural changes during AORN's 2007 Congress. Riley can be reached by e-mail at Mbriley518@aol.com.
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