We are not short of “Best Practices” in our Healthcare Transformation Programs

Returning from ACMP Global Conference attended by more than 1,200 delegates from around the world back to the reality of work and daily expectations, including the one-million-dollar question/statement; which is; guess what?

Ah! What we must be doing is way beyond the best practices that you saw there!

This question, while completely understated in our part of the world, shows that the allure of best practices is so strong that the expectations of our own selves are unrealistic, if not unfavorable.

I do not suggest that we take best practice at face value, but we should not be inclined to take the value of best practices as given. Obviously, the question reveals our appetite for an abiding faith in the notion that the most direct route to improved performance is to study what successful companies in the west do and emulate them as they unfold. This notion stems from the mindset of the leaders who often assume that everything successful organizations do is a best practice. Nonetheless, many such practices aren’t necessarily critical to the success of the organizations that embrace them. Hence there is a downside to anything which is labeled as “best practice”.

Best practices certainly do have their own benefits. But these practices come from diligent performance, creative thinking, empirical studies and more importantly learning from failures. Often, leading organizations are those who learn from their failures and often-messy processes of trial and error. Additionally, people in these organizations continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly believe in, where a new and expansive pattern of thinking is cherished and encouraged, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. These practices boost “Organizational Confidence” and hence such organizations become learning organizations.

With more than 20 years of experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that adopting a best practice is a great way to achieve average results. Interestingly, the life cycle of a book from research right through final publication before the book hits the shelves and ready to be discussed in the media takes around 3 years. So in essence, many of the researched best practices are 3 years old on average. Espousing a best practice with a local and customized flavor is the way to achieve outstanding outcomes. Undoubtedly, adopting a “best practice” that turns to be inappropriate for your organization can destroy your value proposition. Having said that, I also believe one cannot unlearn legacy based thinking.

Undoubtedly, adopting a “best practice” that turns to be inappropriate for your organization can destroy your value proposition.

I have been privileged to work with some leaders and put together plans that really demonstrate “best”, if not “leading” practices, such as:

1. Building a Coaching Culture to Develop Change Management Capabilities: Coaching is generally and traditionally is considered as a part of the performance management system. Organizations have a tendency to circumvent or at best substitute anyone as the role of coach. They often ignore that Coaching is built upon a trustful relationship and engagement to the vision of change rather than the mechanical relationship that an employee has with the person they report to. Our plans on embedding Coaching Culture helped highlight a great benefit realization on the alignment with values, instilling the DNA of innovation in mindsets and behaviors of our smart transformation leaders and contributed to peak performance. We have instilled the notion that senior executives should value coaching and that managers/leaders receive accredited coach-specific training. Our plans made sure that Coaching and Positive Leadership is a fixture in our growing clusters and top leadership layers with a dedicated line item in the budget and leaders and Champions of Change have an equal opportunity to receive coaching from professional coach practitioners. In this regard we have adopted a strength based model to Coaching and leadership development. The model is used in many FTSE 250 and Fortune 500 companies with mote than 15,000 leaders who had some form of assessment based on the model. Identifying people’s strengths (and what they do right) and building on them created more benefit than identifying weaknesses (or what they do wrong) and trying to correct them. Our Leaders became significantly more engaged and more productive. Four of our top leaders had been benchmarked as “global transformational leaders”

Leadership development has to be hands-on; real play rather than role play

2. Selection, vetting and development process of Champions of Change based on a non-hierarchical basis: We have adopted a very rigorous process of selecting our Champions of Change through a gated way approach; 

a) Defining our social capital of influencers;

b) The former serving as a talent pool, selecting and vetting Champions of Change is done against a well-defined and internationally referenced “Behavioural Model” using the assessment / development center techniques and tools; psychometric tools, simulations/exercises/semi-structured interviews, etc.;

c) Provide structured coaching and training plans to all vetted Champions of Change based on individual and overall group norms including change management certification programs.

3. Setting up a support model for change practitioners: this is done through

• Efficient communication that supports individual change
• Visibly participating in the change
• Setting development expectations & career progression prospects
• Setting role expectations & communicate key messages and themes
• Running awareness sessions for "Nominating Leaders" of Champions of Change
• Design the reward model for attracting & retaining Champions of Change.
• Building the coalition of support with other senior leaders and managers.
• Both change champions and change leaders have to have some form of CQ Certification/ training. This is to ensure that both cohorts take a deeper dive into CQ and investing in their professional development to become an even more competent and confident “change leaders”.

4. Visible and active Sponsors of Change: indisputably, the greatest overall contributor to the success of change is active and visible sponsorship throughout the project. Our executive sponsors are not only aware of the importance they play in making changes successful, but they are really with us in the game of change. We built a coalition of sponsorship with managers and peers and they are actively involved in building a wide network of leadership through multiple interventions such as leadership resorts, leadership executive coaching, enterprise dashboard on transformational programs, to mention a few. This makes the priorities regarding change initiative clear, hence keeping executive sponsors ahead in the game of change. In fact, our Key Executive Sponsor is ahead of us in the game of change.

Our Key Executive Sponsor is ahead of us in the game of change.

I think the approach towards best practices should be that we should not live down to expectations, but rather collectively roll-out our sleeves and do something remarkable that becomes a set expectation for others to emulate and achieve.