Instill contingent thinking. You demonstrate that if someone comes up with a plan, that it may not be the greatest idea but you certainly appreciate them coming up with it and you give them credit for that. Don’t be critical if the idea’s not one that you use, but be appreciative for the fact that they’re trying and they came up with an idea in the first place. What they came up with might not be the right answer, but it may spur an idea from someone else that does turn out to be the right answer.
You start not only coming up with some good ideas, but you get people used to thinking about, ‘Well, if it doesn’t work, what do I do then?’ so you increase the ability for people to be flexible.
By doing this contingency planning and showing how planning works and how to be flexible and ‘if this doesn’t happen, then you try that,’ you try to create a culture of flexibility and having the people thinking in an opportunistic way. Anytime there is a downturn in the economy, anytime there’s change, anytime there’s chaos, there’s typically an opportunity that’s built into that if you can find it. So we spend a lot of thinking about, ‘OK, things are not good. So how can we actually use that to our advantage?’
I think it actually increases optimism, to give them the confidence that even if something goes wrong, that they have a way of solving it. If somebody is going along assuming everything is going to go in a certain way and it doesn’t, then sometimes there’s some panic. But if you’ve talked about it and you’ve said, ‘We can get where we want to go a lot of different ways and so don’t feel like we have to go in exactly the direction that we’re going,’ I think that builds confidence as opposed to tearing it down.
Stay on watch. As you put a plan together, one of the things that you have to do at the beginning, and then at the end, too, is have an environmental assessment where you look at your business, your competitors, your potential market share, your products as well as economic and regulatory or legal issues. From that, you’re able to identify opportunities for growth.
Something that I would expect to see on a regular basis is what our market share is compared to the competitors, what our plans are and how we intend to improve that market share. So monthly reports — where you look at not only what your business is doing but what all the business in that area is doing — give you a sense of how well we’re doing compared to our competitors and our peers.
You do an assessment of what they’re doing that works. It’s a continuous process of trying things that have been successful, evaluating them and doing the things that are most successful and discontinuing things that haven’t worked as well.
How to reach: Molina Healthcare of Texas Inc., (210) 366-6500 or www.molinahealthcare.com
