From Accountability to Ownership
A list serve post by Bob Pyke Jr., RN, NP propelled me to write about this and parrallel it to my experience in software implementation. In his post Bob mentioned the following:
Do you have employees who “rent” their jobs? You know the ones: They do competent work but that’s as far as it goes. They lack passion and commitment. They watch the clock. They never stray outside their assigned tasks, even when they see a need. And they do nothing to move the organization forward or to make patients feel that your hospital is the dynamic, welcoming place they need to go to get great service.
“The biggest single problem we have in hospitals is that we do not have a culture of ownership,” Joe Tye told a roomful of early risers at today’s sunrise session titled “The Florence Prescription: The Next Frontier for Patient Satisfaction, Workplace Productivity, and Employee Loyalty.” Too many employees, executives included, whine that health care today is stuck in a crisis. Well, Tye said, health care has been in crisis since at least the 1850s when Florence Nightingale went to Turkey to tend to British soldiers in the Crimean War. Did she let the horrible injuries and horrendous conditions paralyze her? No—they helped inspire her to pioneer concepts in hygiene, hospitals and nursing as a profession. “When does a crisis stop being a crisis and is just a problem that you have to fix?” Tye asked.
The good news is that as a hospital leader you can do something, Tye insisted. You can articulate values that will serve as the foundation of “the invisible architecture of your hospital.” You can demonstrate those values by getting out of your office and engaging staff about their work, about the hospital and about the broad mission of health care. And when you do so, leave the piety and the platitudes in a drawer somewhere. “We need to put the cheer back in leading,” Tye said. If you suffer from “terminal professionalism” you’ll never connect with your employees and nurture the fellowship that will make them want to go that extra mile.
In my experience as it relates to software implementation, it is more about the people and their acceptance of the change the software brings more than the actual software itself. What I have seen and experienced as the key differential is whether or not the department or the organization takes full ownership of the application. As nurses who are involved in the implementation, we are mere facilitators or orchestrators of the process. Success cannot be truly measured until there is full ownership. This starts with the organizational leadership, who must show unwavering support. This process is not optional, meaning you only support the process when it is convenient. Once ownership is established, I feel accountability will truly follow. A sign of accountability is when the organization and/or staff stop blaming the system for certain errors of omission or commission, not realizing majority of the issues stems from failed processes. There is definitely a lot of merit to the post above.
To learn more about “The Eight Essential Characteristics of a Culture of Ownership” and other Joe Tye leadership tips visit www.joetye.com
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