December 2009
18 posts
The fundamentals
Does your organization teach the fundamentals? Regularly? Here’s Don Shula on the great Paul Brown (from a WSJ article in 2008):
On the first night of training camp, he would dictate — and you’d have to write down long-hand — the fundamentals of football: how to run, how to catch, how to carry the ball. He did that every year. Otto Graham [Cleveland’s star...
Culture = Brand
Merry Christmas!
For those of you with a little extra time to read and think over the holidays, I think Tony Hsieh’s (CEO of Zappos) post titled “Your Culture is Your Brand” is the perfect thought to enter 2010: what will you do differently this year?
Executing engagement
I think organizations today pretty well understand that an engaged workforce means a more productive workforce. Understanding, however, has not made engagement reality. That lack of execution thing keeps coming back…
From the Deloitte Shift Report 2009 (emphasis added):
We also discovered that, despite some variations across industries, 75 to 80 percent of the workforce lacks passion for...
WatchErgonomidesign envisions an integrated healthcare ecosystem.
Very cool.
Via Core77
Asking questions
I think there’s a perception that the empowered patient has a profile most prominently related to age, younger being more likely. Not always the case. Read the story of Tom Peters’ aunt, she asked questions and insisted upon answers to turn a potentially bad story into a good one, except that the whole process is an indictment on the problems of healthcare.
An update to a very positive story
The story of Paul Levy asking the staff of BIDMC last year to make difficult decisions in order to save jobs is one of my favorite healthcare stories ever. Here’s an optimistic update.
The demise of control
A healthcare organization that thinks it’s difficult to control employees now hasn’t seen anything yet. Signal vs. Noise:
A lot of companies seek to control employees. They have handbooks and policies. They monitor emails. They make rules about what’s allowed and what’s forbidden.
But “control” is a tricky thing. The tighter the reins, the more you create an environment of distrust....
"Reform"
This article is sickening (“Understanding Obamacare” by Luke Mitchell). Democrats in bed with the insurers and the drug companies. The Republicans opposing healthcare reform not for idealistic “values” but because there is no other play. Someone once said to me that if we, instead of voting, randomly selected names from a phone book to represent “us” this...
Ideas and Thoughts and Goodness
This is making the internet rounds. Seth Godin asked a bunch of smart folks to share an idea and out came What Matters Now. I’ve culled a fair share of ideas already. It’s a fantastically great read.
Trust through communication
We’ve a long way to go, but the dominos will fall. Saul Kaplan (emphasis added):
Communication is personal and everyone has a role to play. The world of personal and organizational communication is merging whether we want it to or not. I have talked to many active participants on social media platforms that are constrained or even blocked from communicating while at work or about work...
Staying in business and making bad products
Jonathan Bush (the quoted) and Joseph Rago (the quoter) combine for this beauty (via Tyler Cowen):
Take the nearly $47 billion in stimulus cash the White House has budgeted to prime the pump for health IT adoption. Mr. Bush says he’s glad his industry is getting more attention from the bully pulpit, but that “It is kind of too bad that all these software companies that we’re...
What will be the impact of a microchoice-obsessed...
I don’t know.
It’s one of those thought-provoking still-digesting (very smart) posts from Jen McCabe of which I’ve become accustomed. What microchoice is and why it matters.
Now the important part: what its impact will have on healthcare delivery organizations.
The similarities will save us: farming and...
I’m completely fascinated by Atul Gawande’s most recent healthcare writing in The New Yorker. Nearly everyone has an opinion on what’s going to make healthcare better (nearly everyone has their own definition for that, too), but no one truly knows what is going to fix anything, it’s just a whole lot of speculation at this point. There’s a lot of (informed) guessing...
Going Mobile
Hope your Thanksgiving holiday break offered you just that. I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing web-related, something I’ve noticed that is needed every now and again.
Getting back to things, PSFK notes:
… mobile phone giant Vodafone is launching a Mobile Health Care Unit which will work with pharmaceutical companies and government organizations to develop health care...