Patients Come Second: Leading Change by Changing the Way You Lead

Unfortunately, many leaders begin to make excuses when it comes to firing an employee, principal among them that the HR department is somehow a nuisance or a barrier to getting things done. One executive Paul met at a conference, for instance, blamed his HR department for dragging its feet when it came to letting people go, forcing him to wait up t

Winners then receive awards and recognition—things like gift certificates and preferred parking spots (not just one, but five: one for each of the winners of that quarter’s PRIDE award).

from the landing gear to the ailerons (which control the up and down movement of the plane during flight).

I think laughter in the workplace is critical. Even in life-or-death institutions like hospitals, it is important to enjoy the work. If we cannot laugh and enjoy the good times, it is hard to handle the inevitable difficult times. We spend more time at work than we do with our families. Work that is drudgery doesn’t create proper work–life balance

The more our employees are engaged, the more satisfied our patients will be—which will then lead to more and more business for the organization. It’s really that simple. Your financial performance is actually the lagging indicator, not the leading indicator, of how healthy your organization is.

definition of patient experience: “the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perception across the continuum of care.”

This is something even the feared military leader General George S. Patton understood all too well. When it came to how his soldiers dressed, how they carried themselves on and off the battlefield, and even how they saluted, Patton was as old school as they came. But when it came to how those same soldiers named and decorated their tanks, well, Old

A mentor of mine once shared a very simple equation with me: If employees and physicians are happy, you’ll get an increase in patient volume. If you increase volume, you’ll find ways to decrease cost. With that, you’ll increase margin and be able to invest back in employees.

The key, as Dane Peterson, CEO of Emory University Hospital Midtown, told us, is to create a culture where the engaged employees significantly outnumber the disengaged, perhaps by a four-to-one or even a five-to-one ratio. “When this happens, the disengaged go quiet and lose their negative impact on the culture,” he pointed out. That should be one