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 […]
