Engage in dialogue
If you want to know what your people are thinking and what would bring them together, you can’t expect to have a complete understanding after just one individual encounter or even after a single all-hands meeting.
“It happens one interaction at a time,” Powers says. “The easiest way is to sit down with them and ask them, ‘What are we doing well? What are we not doing well? To improve our market share and performance, what are the levers you would pull?’”
Powers began her dialogue about these key issues at the top, meeting with the CEOs of each hospital in her region. She needed to get to know each of these leaders to find out what they felt was good and maybe not so good about the Tenet organization.
“To get honest dialogue established, you have to want honest dialogue,” Powers says. “If you ask someone, what can we do to make things better and they help you, that suggestion is a gift to you. It’s up to you to take that gift and utilize it. If you constantly ask the question, but you don’t do anything about it, the result of any organization is going to be the same. People are no longer going to be willing to speak up.”
When you get feedback that contains concern about a problem, it helps if you don’t try to deflect ownership of the problem.
“What’s keeping us from getting the job done?” Powers says. “What do we need to do to improve? It’s not something you ask just once. It’s something all hospitals ask on an ongoing basis. What are we doing? How are we doing it? How can we do it better? It starts at the top.”
As you and your key leaders begin to formulate the concept of a common vision for your organization, you need to involve others in the process.
“If I look at our hospital management team, they are out and about in our hospital all day long,” Powers says. “They know our staff; they know the business.”
Powers says you need to attend meetings at each of your locations to get everyone involved in the process.
“With everybody sitting down and talking about issues and talking about ways we can improve what we’re doing, everybody has a seat at the table and checks their egos at the door,” Powers says. “They talk about what they’re doing and how they can improve.”
She says she’s definitely a participant in the meetings but not to dictate terms or issue edicts as to how she thinks things should be done.
“I’ll ask questions, and they’ll ask questions,” Powers says. “It’s just the establishment of a dialogue and the development of that relationship with our hospital teams and with our physicians.”
The key is to level the playing field in the meeting room. When you take the role of asking questions and being someone who wants to learn, you increase the sense of a collaborative spirit.
“Not one of us is more important than the other,” Powers says. “How can we do things together? How can we do things collaboratively? How can we better meet the needs of our patients? We’re not building widgets; we’re taking care of people. Everything has to be done by what’s best for our patients.”
The final piece of your effort to ensure good feedback from your people is the follow-up.
“We don’t just meet once and then come back six months later and talk again,” Powers says. “We have a very structured formal process where we meet monthly and we talk about what we are doing. We listen to ideas and we execute.”
It is that execution that will convince employees that their efforts are worthwhile. It’s that execution that Powers now sees in her CEOs.
“I see a vibrant organization,” Powers says. “I see a group of CEOs that are CEOs that want to run a successful business and do run a successful business. They have excellent communication plans with their employees and physicians. All of them are committed to putting the ‘community’ back in ‘community hospital.’ They are not just inwardly focused. They want to be a good corporate citizen.”
