Start building a plan
Linares takes a lot of notes when he’s putting together a plan. When you’re plotting a major change and talking to a variety of people, you need to find a way to keep it all straight in your head.
“You are constantly communicating and constantly writing down thoughts and ideas,” Linares says. “Then you come back to your office and you have all these thoughts and different ideas.”
So what do you do at that point? You get those thoughts and ideas together into a rough plan and get ready to move into the next phase of how you and your team are going to make the plan a reality.
“Put it all together,” Linares says. “Then you go back with more of a defined path. ‘This is what we can do. This is how we can make this a reality, and this is why I think we’re making the right decision.’ You’re almost providing feedback that says, ‘What you told me is important, and I’ve created something around it.’”
While putting together your rough draft, be sure to involve your team in the process and walk them through your ideas to help shape the final draft of what you want to do.
“Everybody has to have that shared vision that this is the product that we’re going to provide, and we all need to be part of this team in making sure that this product is successful,” Linares says.
At this point in the process, you need to be laying out concrete ideas to show that you are moving toward real action and how that action will lead to achievement of the goal.
“You basically lay out that road map,” Linares says. “‘The first thing we’re going to do is upgrade all of the equipment. This is the equipment we’re getting,’ and you detail the equipment. ‘This is what the equipment can do. These are the bells and whistles that we can bring on today.’
“You provide timelines. It’s very important that you consistently communicate throughout that process and ensure that they know what the timeline is for that final product and when that final product is going to be available.”
You’re showing leadership and initiative to get a project done. You’re also respecting the knowledge base of your people in the field to offer their thoughts on how to make your ideas even better.
“In this hospital in particular, there is a lot of tenure on the medical staff,” Linares says. “So I certainly tapped into that. At the end of the day, they are also part of the execution to make sure we’re successful. They are a group of constituents that are very important for a solution to the problem. For me, that was certainly key.
“At the same time, there was a lot of tenured staff that had seen things that worked in the past and that had failed in the past. Tapping into that experience base and that knowledge base was very helpful to me to navigate which direction we wanted to go.”
You should enable these department heads to serve as the point people for their own direct reports during a project. When your department heads clearly know what’s going on with the plan, that lends a lot more credibility to your cause.
“The director of that service line or that area is probably the day-to-day communicator with the staff and fields most of the questions on a day-to-day basis,” Linares says. “We certainly keep all the staff up to date. Communicating and making sure that everybody understands everything that has gone on is critical. … You just have to be religious in making sure that you block those times and you go there and you talk to them.”
