I had a conversation last month with a hospital administrator — someone who has led through budget crises, staffing shortages, and a global pandemic. She said something that stayed with me: “I’ve been doing this for twenty years. I’m better at it than I’ve ever been. And it has never been this hard.” She’s not alone. In our work with […]
A senior manager at a mid-sized healthcare organization once described her team’s dysfunction this way: “We have all the right processes on paper. The problem is nobody trusts that anyone will actually do what they say, people are afraid to speak up when something’s wrong, and half our decisions get made on gut feeling and office politics.” She wasn’t describing […]
A few years ago, I was driving to a client meeting, half-listening to TED Radio Hour, when Margaret Heffernan said something that made me pull over and write it down. “Culture is the accumulation of everyone’s actions.” Seven words. I sat with them for a minute. Then I turned off the radio and drove the rest of the way in […]
A few years ago, I was working with a mid-sized healthcare organization that had just completed a grueling Joint Commission accreditation visit. Their quality director — a smart, exhausted woman who had spent six months preparing — leaned back in her chair after the surveyors left and said, “Thank God that’s done for three years.” I didn’t say anything in […]
A few years ago, I was working with a mid-level manager who was, by every external measure, succeeding. Promotions on schedule. Strong performance reviews. A team that consistently hit its numbers. But in a conversation that started as a routine check-in, she said something that stopped me cold: “I don’t know why I keep coming back.” She wasn’t burned out […]
Dan Goodman said it plainly in a recent LinkedIn post: “PIPs suck for everyone.” The employee wrongly being managed out through fabricated documentation. The manager forced to manufacture performance claims to justify a decision already made. The HR professional doing leadership’s dirty work. He’s right about all of it. But here’s where I’ll push back: PIPs don’t suck because they’re […]
Three weeks into a major project implementation, a junior staff member caught me in the hallway after a meeting. She started to say something, hesitated, then said, “Never mind. I’m sure you’ve thought of this.” I was busy. I had the answers. I let it go. Three weeks after that, we hit a critical issue that pushed the project back […]
