Get out of your office
While MacKenzie says data is critical to the success of a company and can lead to improvements in operations like increasing emergency room efficiency, data can’t replace your abilityto be out in the organization.
“I say that because sometimes the housekeepers can tell youthe most critical of things,” she says. “If you are not out andabout connecting with all levels of people, and that’s where thecommunication process comes in, you might miss something.Leaders have the best of intentions, but they often tell youwhat you want to hear, what the objective is.
“It’s not that they’re not connected. Generally, you want tosay things that are pleasing and that sort of go with the objectives, and no one wants to bring up the contrary. But, I thinkyou have to have some contrary in an organization, and youhave to have people willing to speak up.”
In order to establish that type of environment, MacKenziemade it a priority to make sure she was visible and makingrounds in all
t
he departments of the organization, which issomething MacKenzie and her management team still practicetoday.
She says the senior executives are often the mysterious people in an organization, so it’s just as important that they visit with employees. It’s required that MacKenzie and her management team visit with their approximately 50 departmentsand 15 off-site locations every couple of weeks to make surethey are staying in touch with employees.
“It’s required because rounding is one of the things that, ifyou had to leave it to chance, it would be the thing that I can’tget to today because there is always some emergency or somemeeting or someone needs to see you,” she says. “So, werequire that we actually put it in our calendars, and we do.
“So, it doesn’t leave it to chance. It’s scheduled so that thebreast center knows we are coming on a specific day. We generally use it for celebration and recognition. We say to the leaders, ‘Who’s done a great job, and who can we recognize whilewe are here?’ But, oftentimes, people are free to talk aboutwhat doesn’t work or what’s working well and we need to domore of it.”
By her second year on the job, MacKenzie began hostingbreakfast, lunch and dinner gatherings every month with staffto keep in touch with her employees. While she has quarterlyreviews in a town-hall setting for the whole organizationwhere she comes with an agenda, the breakfast, lunch and dinner idea is open for people from any department to speak withMacKenzie or with each other about what’s on their minds.
“It’s interesting because you would think the nurses mightnot be interested in what the housekeepers want to talk about,but you don’t find that at all,” she says. “You find a lot of camaraderie. (One night), we got on one topic, which was communication devices, and we had four different groups weigh in. Ithink it’s enlightening for them to see how common the issuesare across different categories of people.”
Those open lines of communication helped the companyshow steady improvement.
In fiscal 2005, it had operating revenue of $477 million, posting an operating loss of $6.5 million. In fiscal 2006, operatingrevenue was $514 million, and the loss was $1.7 million. In fiscal 2007, operating revenue was up to $550 million, and theorganization eliminated the loss, posting $19.4 million in operating income.
“(Open communication is) promoted, and we see in our surveys that people believe this is an open organization and thattheir opinions are valued and that they have access to leadership,” she says.
Because MacKenzie couldn’t have turned the organizationaround without everyone chipping in, most employees hiredbefore October 2007 received between $75 and $250 based onhours worked because the health care system did better thanthe original budgeted goal.
“Which, on the face of it, it’s not a lot of money, but, I think,it was more the principle,” she says. “We’re sharing in theresults.”
The reasoning for the reward was simple.“Because without everybody’s hard work in the same direction, we aren’t going to do better than what our budget callsfor,” she says.
HOW TO REACH: Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, (800) 764-8255 or www.smh.com