“Getting The Right People With The Right
Incentives, Looking At The Right Things, With The Right
Performance-Focused Processes, And The Right Leadership And Discipline
To Stay The Course.”
Ever since the
concept of teaming was introduced in the 1990’s to achieve
organizational goals, we were told by teaming guru’s that if a team’s
focus was on soft skills like togetherness, consensus,
communications, conflict management and other interpersonal skills you
could and would create high performance teams. Unfortunately, this
advice hasn’t born out to be true!
In fact what we
have found to be true, after forming, training, coaching and
facilitating the deployment of scores of value teams for our clients
since the 1990’s, is that focusing on these soft skills will more
often hold the team back from high performance. In contrast, what we
have found that works in creating high performance value teams is
“getting the right people with the right incentives looking at the
right things, with the right performance-focused processes, and the
right leadership and discipline to stay the course.”
Getting The Right People With The Right Incentives
All winning value teams are a
combination of attitudes, talent and traits matched
with the right leadership and incentives to give them the right vision,
goals and objectives and “can do” attitude, a team that takes
responsibility for its actions and pride in its accomplishments.
Ideal competencies for outstanding value team leaders and team
members need to be identified (e.g. analytical thinker, organized,
reliable, enthusiastic, takes initiative, computer literate, welcomes
changes and change, etc.) if you are to get the right people with
the right competencies on your value team and create a high performance
environment, as opposed to the selection of value team leaders and team
members based on their organizational titles (e.g. director of
nursing, director of material management, infection control manager,
operating room manager, etc.) or their influence or power in
your organization (e.g. medical director, chief financial officer,
chief of medical staff, etc.).
Looking At The Right Things
Most value teams spend most of their
valuable and limited time evaluating/selecting new or renewal GPO
contracts when they should be focusing their efforts on looking at the
high cost spends that their healthcare organization purchases
annually. If new and renewal GPO contracts are of such volume to
warrant it, there should be a value team designated for this purpose
only, thereby not holding back huge savings from being generated
by your value teams in other areas of supply chain management.
There is also a tendency for value
teams to be inundated with requests from department heads and
managers for new purchases, which is a symptom of an ineffective
or disastrous supply chain management. For hospitals with this
warning sign I would recommend establishing an ad-hoc committee to
review the reasons for these out-of-control requests. Usually the reason
is, a cultural tendency to buy everything that is requested, because
“we have always done it that way”
The
Right Performance Focused Processes
Most healthcare organizations are
“Winging It” with their value team’s processes. Their processes are
informal, not scientific or systematic and they are not based on
outcome-based performance goals and objectives (measurable savings
or quality gains). And they are always reinventing the wheel with
each value study they conduct.
To have really effective and
performance oriented value teams you must have a function-oriented,
repeatable process to drive out all waste and inefficiency in your
supply/value chain and a team-based performance model that is
outcome-based, not activity-based. By activity-based I mean, there
is a lot of activity (meetings, reports, dialog, sub-teams, etc.),
but little or no results to show for your efforts.
The
Right Leadership And Discipline To Stay The Course
Every team’s
performance looks great at the starting gate (when they are being
formed and for their first few meetings), but can quickly deteriorate
into an unruly horde of undisciplined individuals who
don’t come to meetings, don’t do their assigned work or drop off the
radar screen all together. Finally, the team disbands after few
short months, because they couldn’t make savings and quality gains
happen.
This is the
history of many value team initiatives, due to the lack of leadership
and discipline imposed by team leaders, whose responsibility
it is to hold their team members mutually accountable for their
actions and their performance outcomes. The lesson to be learned here is
that all great value teams have a great performance ethic
that sets them apart from failed value teams. This performance ethic is
brought about by strong team leadership, by being a role model for their
team, (attending every meeting, pointing out weaknesses in team
performance, challenging negativity, being available when needed,
providing interventions, etc.) and holding team members
accountable for their actions or inactions.
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by
Robert T. Yokl, President