Make the change last
Change can be exciting. It’s something new and it can create a spark that builds energy in an organization as everyone wants to see how it all is going to work out. But if you can’t get that energy to last, that spark isn’t going to help you very much.
“You need to stay on top of it and monitor what’s going on,” Chouinard says. “It’s easy to make a change that’s going to last a couple of weeks and then you go back to business as usual if you don’t monitor it.”
You need to find a way to drive home your message without beating your employees over the head with it.
“You need to try to empower them to a certain degree and, at the same time, give them some guidelines and specific parameters on what they can do and what they can’t,” Chouinard says. “You need to be able to leave them a certain level of freedom to provide the best quality of care to their patient. If you constrain them too much, they feel limited in their capacity of providing that quality of care.”
So how do you figure out where to draw the line between freedom and control?
“You just have to make a decision,” Chouinard says. “If you make a decision one way, if it’s more controlled, you have to make sure your employees understand why. If you decide to allow them more freedom, you have to make sure that you communicate properly with them in terms of training and tools to allow them to make the right decisions.”
“But I think the best way is to have your door open. … If you provide some guidelines or you put some programs in place and explain them well, then you can monitor them through your assistants. It’s just a matter of staying on top of it and keeping your team focused on the execution of your vision.”
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