To show employees he is really listening to them, John Graham makes himself available so they can talk to him and meet with
him on an informal basis. Then, the president and CEO of North Oakland Medical Centers acknowledges what the person
suggested and demonstrates where changes are being made, explains why it isn’t realistic to do something right now or explains
why the suggestion is inconsistent with the goals of the $115 million organization. Smart Business spoke with Graham about
how to communicate change and why it’s important to balance work and play.
Set a vision. A great deal of it is active listening at the level of the board, at the level
of the medical staff leadership, to define,
very clearly, what the primary role is for
the hospital. Then, taking that broad
vision and defining the specific actions
that are required of a multitude of players
inside a hospital setting to then accomplish the vision.
There is a nursing component of the type
of care we’re going to provide in a given
setting and ancillary services and everything up to and including the way that
housekeeping is interacting with those
patients and families and nutritional services. So, it’s breaking it into the component
parts to make sure that everybody on the
team understands how their role interconnects with other team members and how it
takes everybody providing all of those
activities at just the right time to be able to
do it well.
So, everybody on the top executive team
is involved in the process in following up
on implementation of that vision. It’s a
great deal of personal communication as
well as in a variety of forums — written
communications, internal newsletters,
town-hall meetings that we routinely run
with all the employees to make sure that
they’ve heard personally what the vision is
that we’re trying to accomplish.
Then, follow up between the executive
team and the department managers to
make sure they understand and are trying
to explain to the staff where the linkage
occurred to bring the pieces together.
Balance your professional and personal
lives. We encourage everyone on the team
that you need to have a balance between
what you are doing at work and what you
are doing in your personal life. Family is
paramount, and you need to make sure
you are leaving time so you can gain the
value out of having family interaction that
you need to be a fulfilled person, and you
can passionately pursue activity here at
the hospital.
But when you leave, you have to be able to
contain it so it doesn’t become all-consuming.
That’s an ongoing exercise. We have a
very dedicated set of employees, solid
management team, where we have probably spent more time encouraging them to
focus on continuous learning and, again,
making sure they take the time off to meet
family obligations to recharge their battery.
A very concrete example: This is an
organization that banked earned time off
and would routinely have it paid out. Well,
we changed some of that policy and procedure to encourage people to take the time
off because it is very valuable to the retention of that balance.
Communicate change. As you go through a
change process, it is very important to
repeat the message several times in several
different formats in slightly different ways
because people don’t always hear what you
are trying to communicate in that process
of change. It’s very important that, to the
extent they can, they understand what
change is occurring and why it needs to
occur.
Once we’ve identified an objective, we
may very routinely write it up as part of an
internal or external written communication, and then have a slightly different perspective on that same goal as part of verbal
communication that would take place in
department-head meetings or in town-hall
meetings with groups of employees. Then, very basic follow up during tours of the
facility, touching base with individual staff
members to try to make the linkage back to
what that bigger goal or objective was.
So it’s, ‘How is it that you, as a nursing
assistant, directly affect the communication with the patient to assure that they feel
like they are getting the proper respect? So,
did you introduce yourself? Did you let
them know what you are going to be
doing?’
That’s a program that has been communicated in writing. It’s a program that has
been communicated through the management chain of command, but then we try to
reinforce it when we are out just making
rounds, as well.
Follow up and review potential hires. (There is a) fairly elaborate interview
process that we try to use to make sure
there is some type of confirmation of the
actual activity. Then, a great deal of it is
behavior-based interviewing, where you
are attempting to get the candidate to
explain very specific situations and what
their behaviors were in those situations so
you can identify that because past behavior
is probably the best predictor of future
behavior.
You are targeting specific behaviors that
are needed for their role, and then trying to
get into enough detail in the interview to
ascertain how they specifically acted in
that situation. I’m not saying that people
can’t still fake it, but it becomes more difficult.
Identify employees’ passions. It is identifying where their passions are and how we
can harness those passions into specific
projects, activities that move the organization forward based upon the energy that
they bring to the task.
It gets back to very active listening and
then identifying their strengths, identifying
the major needs of the organization and
how to bring those together to gain the
most benefit for the organization.
HOW TO REACH: North Oakland Medical Centers, (248) 857-7200 or www.nomc.org