Find victory
Everybody likes to be a winner, and it’s no different in the business world. By taking the time to celebrate victories along the way, Perry kept everyone at ADVANTAGE focused on positive results.
“I don’t care how big or little they are,” Perry says. “Sometimes little successes can drive a lot of momentum and get you over that hump to really get back on track. Departments will celebrate successes. On a larger scale, we may have team competitions to drive some type of action. It’s really celebration and competitiveness. We found that competition is a very strong motivator for driving forward on an initiative or a goal so we create fun opportunities to drive change.”
One thing to keep in mind when instilling competition into the workplace is to always keep it simple.
“If it’s a competition merely to drive change, it’s probably going to fail,” Perry says. “If it’s simple and fun and part of the organizational culture, it is going to be successful. But it truly has to be simple.”
Perry used a game to help her employees get more familiar with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that spelled out privacy standards for patients in the medical industry.
“My compliance team made a game of it,” Perry says. “It was a cartoon. They had a theme, and each aspect of learning, they would have a contest and throw that contest out on the Internet. The first five people that got all five answers right would get some type of reward. You can make it fun like that to drive change, education or compliance. You get people’s attention, and it makes it kind of fun, and you recognize them, and it’s a way to keep them motivated.”
Motivation becomes very important when you begin to look at accomplishment and how close you came to meeting your goal. Even if things didn’t go exactly according to plan, you often can still find victories to celebrate.
“Every initiative can be declared a failure or success, even initiatives that may not have hit the end goal you thought it would 12 months ago,” Perry says. “If you declare it a success because these five things occurred, maybe it was nothing real glitzy, but you identified three other specific issues that by changing those three things you’re going to have a higher degree of success, that’s a success. You have to be flexible.
“Being CEO or a president of a company doesn’t automatically give you the right to be respected or trusted and confident about what you can or can’t achieve,” Perry says. “The ability to adapt communication style and to be more effective when dealing with people who may have a different style of listening or learning, that is so critical to a successful outcome. That flexibility and the ability to interpret other perspectives is what really drives influence. If you can influence the team, you’re going to have a higher level of success.”
How to reach: ADVANTAGE Health Solutions Inc., (877) 901-2237 or www.advantageplan.com
