Week one and I am already stunned at how much we have been exposed to in a short time. Another semester down and another opportunity has already presented itself to add more insights and suggestions to our leadership suitcases. As we learned in going through our case study this week, change implementation becomes more successful when leadership, management and employees have a connection to all of the impacts and aspects of change …” (Starke, Sharma, Mauws, Dyck, & Dass, 2011). Prior to my last semester in MSLD 511, I previously failed to consider the impact that change has and the time it takes “…for people to embrace a new set of values and meaning for their…work…” (Starke et al., p. 44), and our case with Quantum is no different. The executives there found a formula they feel has shown great rewards with little to no repercussions. However, without considering the entirely plausible implications of their actions, they could put their three years of stupendous growth at risk by not finding alternative ways to build and foster teamwork without the use of alcohol on company property.
This week we also began our exposure to organizational development (OD) and a myriad of ways in which we can use it in order to “…improve organizational effectiveness” (Brown, 2011, p. 17). I think that understanding the organization and its cultural foundation is one of the keys to the success of how OD can help us as leaders identify ways to bring about positive and impactful change. For example, all organizations have to learn to adapt to change, but OD takes this to another level. Organizations can learn new ways to help members collaborate and adapt during times of change by identifying a “new mindset” that allows for and encourages “…flexibility, speed, innovation, and the challenge that evolves from constantly changing conditions” (Brown, 2011, p. 8). Furthermore, OD allows for everyone, including those at the top of the organization, to receive support and stability while constantly working towards a future that embraces a culture in which they can still attain goals and focus concerning “…action plans, strategies, and techniques” (Brown, 2011, p. 16) during challenging times of change and unrest.
We also watched a short video this week demonstrating the importance of our leadership not only having a vision of a future worth working towards, but also having a voice that articulates what is necessary for the entire team to contribute towards achieving the new version of our future. I am incredibly luck to work for a charismatic and visionary CFO; he is loved by everyone, incredibly personable, and is able to consistently able to deliver a message to our team in what needs to be done and how far we have already come to get there. This time last year, our finance team was putting together budgets and preparing annual business plans. We spent countless hours, weekends, and holidays in the preparation of all these regional reports and requirements. Then the unthinkable actually happened; we were told that our already ambitious growth goals were too low and we needed to increase our P&L by another $3.5M contributing to our bottom line. We had already increased our year end EBITDA by almost $2M more than we were on track to deliver by the end of 2014. At the by the middle of this past January, we were already discouraged thinking about the year-end bonuses we wouldn’t get, the capital funding that wouldn’t come and the wasted hours of putting together an unrealistic budget that month after month was going to take hours each time to explain why we weren’t going to be able to meet it. During our revenue cycle monthly meeting, he consistently reiterated his faith in our ability to find ways to cut additional costs, increase various efficiencies, and to think of innovative ways that we could uniquely contribute each month to a larger bottom line. In fact, he challenged all of his directors, even those that are not really finance oriented to do the same.
Against all odds, and we still cannot figure out how we have done it, for the second quarter of 2015 we were ahead of our impossible 2015 budget by almost $1M to the good. Having that much financial cushion is vital to our season; yes, hospitals have seasonality to them. Believe it or not, especially here in Florida, the summers tend to be the slowest months because everyone is out of school, snowbirds have already gone home at the end of spring, and most of our tourism is not surrounding our area within the community. Summer months are usually where operation vitality is closely scrutinized. In a perfect world, less patients means less labor, supplies, utilities, contract labor, and other operational expenses that can make or break an entire year in less than one month. If our leadership is not constantly coaching, encouraging and monitoring the team for improved efficiencies, it can literally tank our entire year. So in order to prevent this at all costs, we had to find a way to address these areas with people who were mostly clinical and much less business operational minded. We had to figure out a way to roll out the message for everyone to understand, and get everyone on the same page in order to support the vision.
We developed a set of easily identified reports, coached all directors in how to read them to know how much they are spending in their area at any given time, and provided technical expertise so that they could maneuver through these reports instead of us telling them they are spending too much, teach them how to identify how much they saved. This methodology worked thus far; some directors just literally signed invoices for payments and never even looked to see if the bill had already been paid causing duplicate expenditures, others didn’t understand how the accounting portion of their job worked, let alone having a clue of how much money they are spending for office supplies in their area. Now with these reports, and our senior management’s support of them, we have as an entire organization, been able to save almost $200,000 per month by staggering schedules, borrowing excess office supplies from other departments on site, and reduce duplicate payments to vendors by paying the same bills over and over again.
Don’t let me fool you; change is HARD and getting people who deal with patients all day is not at all easy to get them on board to reading reports. However, by explaining to them that if we are able to save on these tiny little daily things means we have more money to go buy new equipment for their floors resulting in better quality patient care, we were able to make great strides in many areas over a short amount of time. Most of our nurses are resistant to change because of how fast paced and challenging their jobs already are; hearing they had to do one more thing almost sent them over the edge. However, implementing change with an entire support structure to help all those in need whom are either resistant to change, adverse to change, or just simply don’t know how to cope with change, seemed to make a great difference in our success and the overall organization’s attitude towards it. Change will always seem like a “bad” thing to some people; growth always seems like an opportunity to me!
Looking forward to learning so much more about OD this semester; I truly cannot wait to see what we uncover next.
Until
we blog again!
References
Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experimental Approach to
Organizational Development, Eight Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Starke, F. A., Sharma, G., Mauws, M. K., Dyck, B.,
& Dass, P. (2011). Exploring archetypal change: the importance of
leadership and its substitutes. Journal of Organizational Change,
29-50.
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