Category Archives: Health Care

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They Say Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Here come the buzz words and the great stampede of big corporations promising Performance Transformation in healthcare.

We’ve all heard it said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  I suppose it is true…at the very least, it’s quite validating.  I’m referring to the relatively recent entrance of two medical device behemoths attempting to reinvent themselves to take advantage of the changes necessitated by the mandated reform emerging in U.S. health care.

During a recent review of our firm’s SEO rankings related to key word searches, we came across an interesting discovery.  GE Healthcare, a company that earned billions of dollars in revenue through the sale of MRI and advanced imaging equipment over the past thirty years, popped up when searching the name of our firm, Performance Transformation, LLC™.  The Milwaukee-based subsidiary of General Electric Corporation has launched a business services unit with the title, wait for it…”Performance Transformation“, along with the tag line “Driving Breakthrough Performance Improvement”.  Also interesting was one of the tabs on their site describing their new initiative entitled, “Strategy, Leadership, and Performance Transformation”.

The Transformational Entrepreneur CoverWell, at least I know they read my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”, published in February of 2011, and cited by the academic Journal of Economic Literature in March, 2012.  I’d like to share a quote from Chapter Two:  ”Creating transformational performance is like igniting a fire; it requires three fundamental elements.  A fire requires a source of heat, fuel, and oxygen in order to burn.  Transformational performance requires authentic, conscious leadership (the heat), a visionary strategic plan (the fuel), and a creative culture that fully engages the entire workforce (the oxygen).”  In fact it was from these words that our own tag line emerged, which is a part of our trademarked logo, “Leadership ~ Strategy ~ Culture”.  Could GE have come any closer, without risk of infringement, by using Strategy, Leadership, and Performance Transformation?

During one of my appearances in 2011, with Jim Blasingame on the nationally syndicated Small Business Advocate® Show, Jim stopped the interview and asked me to repeat my insight again, commenting, “Leadership, strategy, culture. Everyone of those things, folks, you heard us talk about on the show before, but only Terry has pulled it together in one little nugget.  Remember this folks, it’s going to be on the test.”  (If you’re so inclined, you can listen to the interview on the Forbes website).

What’s even more interesting is the fact that I met with a senior GE Healthcare executive at the 2011 American Society for Training and Development Conference, who expressed her sincere interest in our approach (you can watch the video of my presentation at the conference here).  The irony is that when we followed up with her after the meetings, she told me that GE Healthcare was under a mandate that all learning and development programs must be delivered through elearning platforms.  No experiential learning or blended learning would be purchased, but she added, “Give me a call back in a year or so…we change direction every 18 months.”  I guess so!

If you read GE Healthcare’s webpage on their new programs, it reads right out of the playbook I put forth in my book and on this website over the past several years.  They talk about development through a structure of Goals and Objectives (Chapter Seven), a process of candor and consistency for engagement (my words are authenticity and congruency for engagement, Chapter Six), organizational values and culture (Chapter Eight), and the use of custom leadership development curriculum integrated with strategic projects and stretch assignments (our Accretive Coaching Process℠, Chapter Nine).

Upon reading this I humorously thought, “Gee, perhaps they should change their slogan from GE, Imagination At Work® to GE, Imitation At Work“.  The reason I am sharing this with you today is I do wish to point out that, quite often, being big doesn’t necessarily equate with being smart or innovative.  We rolled out our first program for healthcare, entitled, “The Emotionally Resilient Nurse”, in 2009, built around the same vision, approach and philosophy we’ve been following all along.  Of note, on June 5, 2013, just ten days ago, GE announced a new program for nurses; their Nurse Executive Fellowship program.  Nimble, creative thought leadership and innovation often comes from entrepreneurial firms, which is why global pharmaceutical companies pursue an acquisition strategy of small biotech firms in an attempt to fill their innovation pipelines.  But at least they pay for it.

Over the past year, we’ve integrated several exciting, advanced collaboration and talent management software platforms into our process as well.  Just two days ago, GE Healthcare announced they’ll be investing $2 billion over the next two years in software development to support their new initiatives.  Now, everyone is doing this as well, but it does seem to follow a pattern.

Just because you’re copying a business model and strategy doesn’t mean you can execute on it.  Let’s face it, migrating from a capital equipment sales and service model based around high tech imaging systems to one based upon developing the human element in health care is a wide chasm to traverse.  Especially when one’s own corporate culture is highly command-and-control and out of step with the rapidly changing needs of today’s business environment.  I understand GE Healthcare’s need to reinvent themselves; the days of imaging centers popping up on every other street corner and hospitals pursuing one-up-manship with each other by buying the newest MRI are long gone.  IBM reinvented themselves from a hardware company to a service company, so I imagine GE Healthcare is trying to follow the same survival strategy.

And, oh, by the way, Royal Philips Electronics, GE Healthcare’s primary competitor, just announced their new initiative, Healthcare Transformation Services Business, a month ago.

Just because we’re a boutique firm doesn’t mean we not on the cutting edge of thought leadership.  And while the giants are attempting to transform themselves while their trying to transform their clients, we’ll continue to be delivering our validated approach, based upon our core competencies…and at a much more reasonable price point.
One must keep one’s sense of humor about such things…perhaps imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
© 2013, Terry Murray. 

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June 15, 2013 · 10:56 am
May 30, 2013 · 12:12 pm

Research Demonstrates Efficacy of Cultivating Emotional Intelligence with Nurses Through Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning

Back in 2009 we introduced, “The Emotionally Resilient Nurse”, a relationship-based, equine facilitated experiential learning program designed specifically to cultivate Emotional Intelligence1 (EI) competencies in nurses.  This program came right on the heels of our pro bono program, “Warriors in Transition”, designed to help combat veterans and their families wrestling with PTSD, and quite often PTSD/TBI.  For anyone participating in or monitoring our warriors program, the efficacy was remarkably apparent.  Sleep patterns improved, agitation levels diminished, and family relationships improved almost overnight.  The program, which we’ve helped to introduce in six states, was formally commended by General David Petraeus in 2010.

Having worked in the health care field for two decades, I had personally witnessed the challenges nurses face on a daily basis.  Their environment is emotionally toxic and they are constantly walking a tightrope, without a net, of expressing authentic empathy through healthy, professional boundaries.  It is not a task for the faint of heart.  Having witnessed the success of our approach with combat veterans, migrating this approach into acute care hospital settings, specifically designed for other front line professionals, seemed like a no-brainer.  Unfortunately, at the time, hospital administrators were still laying off nurses to cut costs.  In the very short term, this may have helped the bottom line, but over time, lowering staffing levels only exacerbated the costly problems of nurse burnout, high turnover rates (the Florida Nurses Association reports that it costs a hospital an average of $64,000 to backfill an open nursing position.  Extrapolated across the nation, this problem adds approximately $17 billion in hard dollar costs to the health care delivery system, adding absolutely no value whatsoever.) and perceptions of quality of care with patients and their families.

As we do with the development of all of our programs, we dove into the peer-reviewed, published research on the effects of cultivating emotional intelligence in nurses on the delivery system.  Here’s a snapshot of what we discovered:

    • Patient satisfaction is a widely recognized measure of medical care quality and a predictor of several positive consequences for organizations and patients (e.g. patient adherence to treatment regimens, fewer malpractice suits, hospital employees’ satisfaction, and financial performance).2
    • Compassionate behavior is threatened by technological concerns and economic constraints.3 “Continually, we experience situations where patients received excellent technical care but, when the emotional side of their care was not met, they believed that their care was inadequate”.4
    • By understanding the patients’ emotions, and being more empathetic, nurses are more able to understand the values, worries, and fears of patients. They are more apt to automatically connect with patients, appreciate the patients’ perspectives, understand the impact of their actions, understand and satisfy patients’ needs5 and respond appropriately.6
    • Nurses need to interpret and understand how patients feel, to ascertain their motives and concerns, and demonstrate empathy in their care. They also need to understand and manage their own emotions, not just for high quality care, but for their own self-protection and health as well.7
    • Nurses capable of a self-reflective process become aware of their own emotions.  When nurses recognize their own feelings they are more likely to manage them and communicate in appropriate ways.8
    • Non-verbal interactions play a vital role in nurse-patient perceptions.  The non-verbal interactions include patient-directed eye gaze, affirmative head nod, smiling, leaning forward, touch, and instrument touch.9
    • Emotional Intelligence in nursing leads to more positive attitudes, greater adaptability, improved relationships, and increased orientation towards positive values.10
    • Emotional Intelligence has a positive impact on nursing team cohesiveness and patient/client outcomes.11
    • Emotional Intelligence minimizes the negative stress consequences of nursing.12
    • Emotional Intelligence is important in managing stress and reducing nurse burnout.13
    • Emotional Intelligence is an important characteristic for building successful nursing leadership, enhancing nursing performance, and reducing nurse burnout.14
    • Emotional intelligence scores in clinical staff nurses correlate positively with both performance levels and retention variables. Clinical staff nurses with higher emotional intelligence scores demonstrate higher performance, have longer careers, and display greater job retention.15
    • Emotional Intelligence should be integrated into the nursing profession by a model of transformational learning for nurse education.16

It seemed as if we’d made a fairly strong case for how cultivating the soft skills in nursing could save hard dollars in health care.  Unfortunately, we were in hindsight, more that a bit ahead of our time.  With the coming of HCAHPS, and the effect these patient satisfaction surveys will have on 30% of a hospital system’s reimbursements from the Medicare, perhaps it is time to revisit the value this approach represents.  An approach that is capable of delivering an ROI that soars into the thousands of percent.

Adding to the evidence, a pilot study has just been conducted and released from the University of Kentucky that warrants attention.  The study, authored by Patricia Dyk, and Robyn Cheung, et al, entitled, “The Effectiveness of Equine Guided Leadership Education to Develop Emotional Intelligence in Expert Nurses“, demonstrates statistically signifiant improvements in Emotional Intelligence competencies with nurses employing this approach.  This comes as no surprise to us, as we’ve been traveling the United States for the past four years, conducting our evidence-based approach to Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning, seeing consistent, reproducible results in very challenging populations.

The fact is, we’ve crossed a threshold into a period of adaptive challenges.  Unprecedented challenges that require unprecedented solutions.  The complexity of the challenges institutions and enterprises face today will require the integration of seemingly disparate disciplines and methodologies in order to find sustainable solutions.  One thing’s for certain, investing in our nurses would be a major step forward in improving the health care delivery system in the United States.

Copyright 2013, Terry Murray.

 1.)  Daniel Goleman, (1995).  “Emotional Intelligence”, Bantam Books, New York, NY.

2.)  Gesell, S.B. & Wolosin, R.J., (2004).  Inpatients’ Rating of Care in 5 Common Clinical Conditions. Quality Management Health Care, 13(4), 222-227.

3.)  Godkin, J. & Godkin, L., (2004).  Caring Behaviors Among Nurses:  Fostering a Conversation of Gestures. Health Care Management Review, 29(3), 258-267.

4.)  Kerfoot, K., (1996).  The Emotional Side of Leadership:  The Nurse Manager’s Challenge.  Nursing Economics, 14(1), 59-62.

5.)  Ibid., 59-62.

6.)  Vitello-Ciccui, J.M., (2003).  Innovative Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence.  Nursing Management, 24(10), 28-34.

7.)  McQueen, A.C.H., (2004).  Emotional Intelligence in Nursing Work.  Journal of Advanced Nursing, 47(1), 101-108.

8.)  Ibid., 101-108.

9.)  W. Caris-Verhallen, (1999).  Effects of Video Interaction Analysis Training on Nurse-Patient Communication in the Care of the Elderly.  Patient Education and Counseling, Volume 39, Issue 1, 91-103.

10.)  Kristin Akerjordet & Elisabeth, (2007).  Emotional Intelligence: A Review of the Literature with Specific Focus on Empirical and Epistemological Perspectives. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 16(8); 1405-1416.

11.)  Quoidbach & Hansenne, (2009).  The impact of trait emotional intelligence on nursing team performance and cohesiveness.  Journal of Professional Nursing, Volume 25, Issue 1, pp. 23 – 29.

12.)  Montes-Berges & Augusto, (2007).  Exploring the Relationship Between Perceived Emotional Intelligence, Coping, Social Support and Mental Health in Nursing Students.  Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. 14 (2);163-171.

13.)  Linda Gerits, Jan J. L. Derksen, & Antoine B. Verbruggen, (2004).  Emotional Intelligence and Adaptive Success of Nurses Caring for People with Mental Retardation and Severe Behavior Problems.  Mental Retardation: 42, (2); 106-121.

14.)  Vitello-Ciccui, Joan M., (2002).  Exploring Emotional Intelligence:  Implications for Nursing Leaders.  Journal of Nursing Administration.  32(4):  203-210.

15.)  Codier, Estelle PhD, RN; Kamikawa, Cindy MSN, RN, NE-BC; Kooker, Barbara M. DrPH, APRN, NEA-BC; Shoultz, Jan DrPH, MPH, (2009).  Emotional Intelligence, Performance, and Retention in Clinical Staff Nurses.  Nursing Administration Quarterly:  October/December, Volume 33, Issue 4, 310-316.

16.)  Dawn Freshwater & Theodore Stickley, (2004).  The Heart of the Art:  Emotional Intelligence in Nurse Education.  Nursing Inquiry. 11(2); 91-98.

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May 22, 2013 · 10:54 am

Lead As If We’re All Connected….Because We Are

As the tools of social media migrate into the business community, we are all reading a lot about the power of connectivity in the workplace.  In a study published by the McKinsey Quarterly last November, their analysts identified the application of social platforms could unlock $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in untapped value in just four industrial sectors representing 20% of total global output.  Without a doubt, unprecedented opportunities are emerging that will transform the face of business in the years to come.  However, before a firm can unlock this potential through the application of technology, they must first address a cultural artifact that represents a very real impediment; employee disengagement.  Gallup has consistently reported that upwards of 73% of employees are disengaged or, at best, only partially engaged with their employer.  The question that immediately comes to mind is how much value can emerge through the virtual connectivity of a disengaged workforce?

In order to reverse the endemic, employee engagement crisis, leaders may wish to consider a single, scientifically substantiated concept;  we’re already, all of us, connected.  Not just to one another, but to everything throughout the universe.  Before you dismiss this concept as some sort of woo woo, new age precept, please allow me to share some eye-opening research, specifically, research demonstrating the non-locality of consciousness from the field of quantum physics.

In 2003, physicists J. Wackermann, C. Seiter and K. Holger published a research study entitled, “Correlation Between Brain Electrical Activities Of Two Spatially Separated Human Subjects”, in the scientific journal, Neuroscience Letters.  In this experiment two people began meditating together with the intention of being connected.  While sustaining their meditative states, they were separated  and placed in isolation chambers incapable of receiving any signal, electronic or otherwise.  Once isolated, the scientists attached electroencephalography devices (an EEG measures and maps electrical activity in the brain) onto the two subjects.  After a few moments, the scientists flashed a series of colored lights at one of the subjects.  The EEG recorded the subject’s brain’s response.  The second subject was not exposed to the lights, yet both subject’s brains responded instantaneously in nearly identical ways.  No signal existed between the subjects, yet their brain’s shared the experience.  They were still connected.  This experiment has been reproduced by other scientists around the world.

Another example of the non-locality of consciousness was recently revealed when the Chinese government conducted an experiment with spinning electrons.  The scientists isolated two electrons that shared the same orbital spin.  They then separated the electrons by a distance of approximately 400 miles.  When they changed the spin of one electron, the other reacted immediately and in the same direction.  This occurred instantaneously, faster than the speed of light.  The purpose of this experiment is the development of communications systems that cannot be decoded because there is no signal carrying the information.  No signal, no intercept.

Perhaps you saw the headlines a few weeks ago about a study from Australia that was published in the journal, BioMed Central.  “Our results show that plants are able to positively influence growth of seeds by some, as yet, unknown mechanism,” said study author Monica Gagliano of the University of Western Australia. “Bad neighbors, such as fennel, prevent chili seed germination in the same way. We believe that the answer may involve acoustic signals generated using nanomechanical oscillations from inside the cell which allow rapid communication between nearby plants.”  Plants may actually be communicating with one another better than people do in many organizations.

Moving from plant science to molecular biology, another study, “Quantum Correlations in Biomolecules”, authored by Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford in the U.K., explored quantum signally between biomolecules.  This correlates to things I’ve witnessed firsthand.  Back in 2004, I was the lead strategist in the commercial launch of the first human stem cell (multi-lineage progenitor cells, discovered by Dr. Dan Collins of BioE, Inc.) derived from human umbilical cord blood (this is not an embryonic stem cell, but a naturally occurring cell harvested from post-birth, medical waste).  Dr. Collins was able to differentiate these rare cells into many forms of human tissue and cells.  I had the privilege of standing in the laboratory with Dr. Collins, and looking through a microscope, witnessed a single, myocardial cell twitching in heart rhythm.  I witnessed oligodendrocytes (a type of brain cell), set apart on a slide, extending dendrites towards one another to create new, neural networks.  These single cells, native to the human body, exhibited a form of consciousness in and of themselves.  They knew what to do, even outside of their host organism.

In 2009, working on another strategic project, I had the remarkable opportunity of visiting the Horn Telescope at the old Bell Labs in New Jersey.  The telescope that provided the first proof of the Big Bang, back in the 1930s.  Everything in our observable, and unobservable universe, emerged from this event.  As Carl Sagan said back in the 1970s, we’re all made up of this star-stuff that emerged in a sudden burst of creation, billions and billions of years ago.  Every atom in our bodies, every element, is from that single source.

When leaders begin to shed their conditioned blinders and entertain a slight shift in perspective to include these insights, a remarkably different world begins to emerge.  One of authentic presence, insight and engagement that sheds the us versus them orientation.  If we choose to embrace these scientific findings, and view our world through this new lens of real connectivity, opportunities for growth, innovation and productivity breakthroughs appear all around us.  With a little bit of practice, we might even begin communicating as clearly as plants!

© 2013, Terry Murray.

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What Neurosurgeons and Horses Can Teach Us About Leadership

_PPH5798Sounds strange, doesn’t it?  I’ve grown accustomed to the quizzical looks over the years when I tell people we work with horses to help leaders develop the critical competencies necessary for today’s volatile workplace.  It isn’t a gimmick, an arcane game or ropes course.  It is a scientifically substantiated approach to experiential learning.  One that greatly accelerates development thanks to the fact that our carefully structured exercises ferry participants through all four modalities of Kolb’s Adult Learning Style Inventory.  Our approach also draws heavily from the neuroscience research of such luminaries as Dan Goleman, Rich Davidson, Jaak Panksepp and Ravi Rao.  Going beyond psychology, the brain research that is continuously emerging enables us, as leadership development experts, to address the causal, neurological pathways that result in demonstrated behaviors. Traditional leadership development methodologies, focused on behaviorism (i.e., mainstream psychology’s embrace of cognitive behavioral therapy), have had thirty years on the main stage, and left us with a dearth of effective, mindful leaders.  If anything, traditional approaches to development have added to the inertia in leadership we see all around us.

If you don’t believe me, ask Dr. Allen Hamilton, neurosurgeon at the University of Arizona Medical Center.  Dr. Hamilton is employing a form of relationship-based, Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning.  An approach very much in alignment with our own.  If you happened to have missed it, here’s a story about Dr. Hamilton employing horses to cultivate emotional intelligence competencies, heightened sensitivity to non-verbal communication, and empathy with medical school students:  http://www.today.com/health/open-say-neigh-horses-help-teach-med-students-6C9790792.

Need a second opinion?  If you have a few minutes, I’d like to invite you to listen to Dr. Ravi Rao, a Harvard trained neurosurgeon (who also holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins), who joined me on a radio interview, sharing his thoughts on our approach.  

So, why is this approach so effective?  The research demonstrates our brains have plasticity.  We can, through conscious effort, literally change the way we interpret and react to the work around us on a basic, neurological level.  

Neuroscience also provides insights into why human beings resist change.  The brain consumes 25% of the blood glucose in our bodies at any given time.  The majority of it is used to support our visual cortex and our near-term memory, the two parts of your brain you are using to read this blog.  After that, the brain is very conservative in its use of energy.  It takes far less energy to follow a well established neural pathway than it does to create new ones.  Think of our established neural pathways as dry river beds cut deep into the side of a mountain.  Every time it rains, the water follows the path of least resistance, cutting an even deeper rivulet down the mountain.  Trying to get the water to flow in another direction takes significant effort.

Neuroscience guides our approach to sparking neurogenesis, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex, the brain’s executive center where the competencies of emotional intelligence emerge (self-awareness, social awareness, self regulation, and relationship management skills).  By introducing novelty, (having a professional enter into a round pen to co-create a shared goal with a horse without the use of language, touch, or dominating behaviors is pretty novel) we disrupt the established pathways associated with problem solving.  As the participant connects, engages and motivates the horse, fall-back behaviors emerge.  Interpersonal behaviors.  When we don’t know what to do we do what we know, and the leadership behaviors people demonstrate with their direct reports are revealed to the participant on their own accord.  These are powerful, breakthrough moments of self-awareness bursting to the surface of consciousness.  No one is telling the participant a thing…other than the horse.  The participant is seeing their own behaviors reflected back to them through the behaviors of the horse.  And horses don’t lie, shade or judge emotions.  Emotions are information to horses (this is also a neuroscience finding based upon the work of Dr. Jaak Panksepp), as they should be to us as well.

Research from the field also provides new assessment tools that enable us to hone in on specific areas of development.  Here’s a short, video white board describing this application:

As we move deeper into the 21st Century, adaptive challenges will continue to confront us.  Challenges in which we don’t know all the answers.  Challenges that will require collaborative efforts from a multi-cultural, multi-generational workforce to resolve.  And resolve at speed, in real time.  Working with horses from a neurologically substantiated perspective imparts learning agility in leaders.  Horses require us to park our ego at the barn door as well.  They aren’t impressed with titles, paychecks or artificial authority.  They are impressed with presence.  This approach enables leaders to learn how to dance in the moment, acting with mindful discernment even when confronted with highly novel challenges.  And to do so while maintaining congruency, transparency and authenticity.  Horses, and humans, demand no less.

© 2013, Terry Murray.

 

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May 7, 2013 · 8:43 am
Video

Establishing a Talent Management Baseline for Breakthrough Productivity

As the economy continues to gain ground, organizations are faced with the risk of unprecedented turnover.  Years of downsizing have left many workers disengaged, mistrustful of leadership, and generally burned out.  A recent survey illustrated the fact that 55% of employees feel they cannot handle their current workload and the resulting stress much longer.  From an organizational development viewpoint, this unsettling situation threatens the foundational competitiveness of many firms, fore it is the best and the brightest that are the most mobile.  The collaborative challenges of leading a multi-cultural and multi-generational workforce, in an ever-accelerating environment, only exacerbates the threat.

Let’s face it, traditional approaches to leadership development have fallen far short of their promise.  With enterprises investing $50 billion a year in leadership development, you’d think we’d see better results, yet only 1% of 5,560 executives assessed (McKinsey Quarterly, July, 2011) scored excellent in key competencies.  Nearly nine out of ten score below average.  The fact of the matter is, behaviorally-based approaches to leadership development only treat the symptoms of poor leadership, blindly missing the causal elements that differentiate mediocre management from inspirational leadership.  Even worse, these traditional approaches to talent management are failing to identify upwards of 65% of high potentials.  All of these factors are combining to create the perfect storm for many companies.  With the speed of business and demands for innovation what they are today, committing a misstep in talent management can be fatal…and there no longer exists even a modicum of time to respond.  If you get blindsided by this today, you may not be around tomorrow.

Here’s a short, video white board describing how leveraging the state-of-the-science findings from the field of affective neuroscience, along with incorporating targeted, demonstrated high performer competencies (in today’s volatile world), can anticipate this coming wave of disruption by creating a quantitative, talent management baseline that aligns with the demands of the day.

© 2013, Terry Murray.

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May 1, 2013 · 4:07 pm
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Creating a Foundation for High Performance Health Care

As health care delivery systems embark on their transformational journeys, the complexity of their environment begets the question; where best to begin?  Some are pursuing a model of Total Quality Management, a.k.a. Six Sigma. As complex as they are, the process controls necessary to ensure the quality build of a GE 777 jet engine do not have to contend with the greatest variable set of all; a continuous stream of ill, suffering, frightened human beings and their families.  As proven as TQM methodologies are in industrial settings, how will these approaches deal with the human emotional element?

The emotional landscape of every patient is effected at each touch point of the delivery system.  The breadth of this challenge elevates it to the level of being cultural.  Changing organizational culture is seen to be fraught with risks, but that needn’t be the case.  Through their interactions, people create culture.  Change the tone of the interactions and the culture will follow suit.  To create lasting change, however, one must go deeper than the behavioral interactions of clinicians, to the causal elements behind the impetus for said interactions.  This speaks to each clinician’s particular emotional style.

Emotional Styles.003Affective neuroscientist Rich Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, has demonstrated that human beings have six emotional styles.  Each dimension is a continuum upon which we reside…our orientation point, so to speak.  Dr. Davidson’s research has identified, using advanced imaging technology, what parts of the brain respond, at differing degrees in each individual, to various emotional stimuli.  He’s also created a simple assessment to measure each dimension and shared it in his 2012 book, “The Emotional Life Of Your Brain”.  Our emotional style is not set in stone, however.  Thanks to the plasticity of the brain, we can actually change where we are on each continuum through conscious effort.  These dimensions of emotional style culminate in our level of emotional intelligence; how we connect, engage and interact with both our internal and external emotional landscape.  Basically, how we show up and great the world at each and every moment.

Ample peer-reviewed research exists that supports how emotional intelligence contributes to positive clinical, financial and organizational outcomes in health care settings (drop me a note and I’ll be glad to send along the bibliography).  If we look to the patient-centric environment the HCAHPS assessment is attempting to create and measure, the importance of strong communications skills, sensitivity, empathy and responsiveness jump off the page.  Key attributes of emotionally intelligent clinicians.

Hi Perform Emotional Styles.001Here’s another strong indicator as to where to begin; today’s high performers, in highly volatile, challenging environments, share ten demonstrated competencies* that emerge from a strong blend of their dimensions of emotional style.  It’s not a stretch to see how these competencies would bring both immediate and long-term benefits to any clinical environment.  It’s also not a stretch to see how by cultivating these competencies throughout an institution would impact both real and perceived quality of care.  This approach to capacity building reaches an inflection point, once enough associates are consistently demonstrating these skills, that shifts the culture.

By assessing for emotional style and targeting for high performance, observable skills, specific developmental opportunities are revealed and can be measured.  Incorporating a talent management analytics platform (we work with technology partner Talent Sprocket) enables an institution to baseline competencies and styles.  This foundation of data sets can be used to measure developmental investments, correlate HCAHPS scores, and identify best fit candidates in the pipeline.  Over time, as the data base builds, predictive analytics can emerge to further guide strategic decisions.

Of course, it all begins and ends with leaderships’ buy-in and support.  But by taking a scientifically-substantiated approach to targeted skills development health care systems can begin to shift their culture without introducing elements of risk.

© 2013, Terry Murray.

*“Breakthrough Performance in the New Work Environment – Identifying and Enabling the New High Performer”, Executive Guidance for 2013, CEB, December, 2012. http://www.executiveboard.com/exbd/executive-guidance/index.page.

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April 17, 2013 · 2:11 pm
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How One Simple Step Can Solve Your Engagement, Inclusion and Collaboration Challenges

Many organizations seem to be mired in employee disengagement, seemingly at a loss as to how to reignite passion amongst their workers. At the same time, CEOs know they must spark cross-functional, and even cross-organizational collaboration, capturing and leveraging diverse cultural and generational experiences and perspectives in order to maintain their competitive edge and improve productivity. So why is it companies seem to be handcuffed in stasis, unable to break out and innovate in the manner they seek?

Barriers of Hierarchy.001Much of the inertia comes from the very structure of the organization itself; its hierarchy.  Several years ago I wrote in my book, “How we structure the organization is a reflection of how we perceive function, and once established, how we function is highly influenced by our structure.”   Hierarchical structure is ideal for creating economies of scale and wringing out variability of processes (think Six Sigma) in pursuit of quality through standardization.  But it comes at a price.  Hierarchies also introduce layer upon layer of barriers to communication and cooperation resulting in silos of thought and the defense of symbolic, if only imaginary, turf.  Years of downsizing and cost cutting has exacerbated these barriers as associates keep their heads down and dig in their heels with their peers and direct reports.

Source: Library of Congress

Source: Library of Congress

Hierarchies have been the dominant structure for so long it may seem this form of organization structure is the de facto, natural form of large organizations.  This hasn’t always been the case.  In fact, a recent discovery of what is quite likely one of the first corporate Org Charts, created by an executive for the New York and Erie Railroad, circa 1855, shows an entirely different perspective.  Instead of the top-down pyramid of hierarchical structure, we see a bottom up organization that resembles a tree.  The board of directors are represented at the roots and executive management moves up into the trunk while line managers branch out along the various front lines of the railroad.  This places leadership at the base and reflects a perspective of senior leadership’s role in nurturing and providing strength for the growth of the corporation, empowering front line management with the authority to make immediate decisions in real-time.  This was no small issue when trains ran in two directions on the same tracks.  Any miscommunication, in the age of the telegraph, would result in horrific, head-on collisions.  Not good for the paying customers or the shareholders, to say the least.

John Kotter's Strategy Accelerator

John Kotter’s Strategy Accelerator

This network empowered the rapid information flow and immediate decision making necessary to safely and efficiently move freight and passengers up and down the line; the very source of the railroad’s value creation.  In many ways, it foreshadowed client/server information systems and the internet.  It is also very similar to the Strategy Accelerator John Kotter wrote about in the October, 2012 edition of the Harvard Business Review.

Professor Kotter is a pragmatist, with a deep understanding of change management and the seemingly endemic resistance to change most organizations demonstrate (historically, 70% of change management initiatives fail).  Realizing one cannot toss out the baby with the bath water, Professor Kotter recommends creating a concurrent, open network to reside alongside the hierarchy.  One comprised of Affective vs Traditonal Leadership Graphic.001volunteers and guided by a coalition of cross-functional leaders.  Strategic initiatives are spun out into the network to be acted upon and associates are asked to participate.  This not only sidesteps hierarchical barriers, it provides fertile soil for Next Gen leaders to emerge.  Leaders that influence and inspire through their ideas and actions.  Leaders that can arise from any corner of the organization.

Collaborize Open Network SlideWhile this initiative is promising (and Kotter has implemented it successfully in several organizations) we saw the need to add infrastructure to the architecture.  Our open network partner, Democrasoft®, brings innovative, content collaboration and knowledge sharing technology to this organizational design.  It opens up the network for transparent communication, eliminating the dependency on emails for content sharing (knowledge workers spend an average of 81 days per year reading, writing, and searching for information on endless email threads), and capturing tacit knowledge for the support of Big Data and the application of predictive analytics.  In effect, it represents both the telegraph wires and railroad tracks of the New Economy.  It also enables senior executives to see collaboration in real-time.  The structure enables open discussions that tag Great Ideas™ to their initiators, enabling entirely new incentives to be adopted and leveraged to drive desirable, collaborative behaviors.  The platform can also reach outside of the brick and mortar to engage customers and ideas from beyond the walls of the organization.  All while maintaining the day-to-day efficiencies of the established hierarchy.

Organizations that adopt this innovative, cost effective approach and supporting technology can quickly sidestep the organizational barriers to communication and collaboration while sparking engagement (especially with Gen-X and Gen-Y), authentic inclusion of diverse ideas, and the significant productivity gains necessary to stay competitive in the New Economy.  You’re welcome to download a PDF white paper fully exploring this approach: An Integrative Approach to Igniting Sustainable, Competitive Advantage in Our World of Accelerating Change eVersion.

Great Ideas is a trademark of Democrasoft, Inc.

© 2013, Terry Murray.

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March 12, 2013 · 12:49 pm
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Want to Lead and Innovate Like Google ~ Look to Their HR Practices

In case you may have missed it, Google’s stock price recently broke $800 per share, making them the third most valuable company in the world.  Outside of multi-national petroleum companies, the other leading firms on this list of value include Apple, Microsoft, IBM, GE, J&J, and Pfizer.  Companies that are all driven by innovation and their ability to effectively commercialize the creative collaboration of their most valuable resource…people.

DecisionsAn interesting article was recently published detailing Google’s approach to what is being called people analytics.  The fact is, human beings are the the raw material for value creation in the new economy.  This is something we’ve been speaking about for five years, but is just now starting to gain traction in the mainstream business community.  This doesn’t just apply to information technology companies, but all companies, because innovative thinking at every touch point in the organization is the key driver of competitive advantage.  To refer back to a term once bandied about in corporate circles; HR can no longer be viewed as a cost center, it is truly a Center of Excellence in today’s hyper-competitive world.

Google is reinventing the HR practice to reflect the strategic imperative of fully engaging passionate people to collaborate and innovate on an unprecedented level.  The article quoted two points that reveal their strategic perspective towards reinventing the HR practice:

1. “All people decisions at Google are based on data and analytics.”

2. Their focus is to “bring the same level of rigor to people-decisions that we do to engineering decisions.”

The article goes through ten, distinct steps that differentiate Google’s approach to the Human Resource function.  I’ll refrain from rehashing them here, but I will touch on the highlights of their approach.

~ Google is focused on identifying the top, currently relevant leadership competencies that fit their culture and business objectives.  Coaching and frequent employee feedback are at the core.

~ Google is employing a retention algorithm, an effective hiring algorithm, calculating the business value of top performers, and using predictive analytics to drive the value-creating, HR flywheel.

~ Google is applying experimental pilot initiatives to determine ‘best practices’ in people leadership that fit their business and strategy.

~ Google is focused on improving diversity, creating innovative and collaborative workplace design, and migrating from traditional ‘training’ to discovery, novelty and learning opportunities for their employees.

~ Google is using the resulting, forward-looking data these initiatives are generating to influence and convince internal managers of the wisdom and business value of these people-centric practices.

You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, well of course Google is using analytics and sophisticated algorithms.  These skills are core competencies that built their dominance in the search engine business.  But we don’t have those competencies…how do we adopt these new competitive practices?”

This is part of the beauty of the new economy we live in.  You don’t need to own competencies in order to take full advantage of their being out there in the landscape.  Our firm is a great example.  We’ve adopted an open-network structure (i.e. innovative and collaborative workplace design) that taps into the competencies we need, when we and our clients need them.  We’ve invested in partnerships that deliver platforms that deliver hiring and retention algorithms, machine learning systems for people practices, predictive analytics, and content collaboration platforms that accelerate value creation at a surprisingly reasonable cost.  Firms no longer need to buy these advanced competencies by hiring the brightest mathematicians hailing from MIT or Stanford.  They can lease the tools they need, when they need them.  Our firm integrates and adds value by providing the leadership development (experiential learning programs that create a shift in perspective; i.e. rewriting the human software running in our heads), aligned pilot program initiatives (i.e. Google’s experiments), and the metrics (i.e. forward looking data) to fully leverage these evidence-based approaches that will revolutionize Human Resource practices to fully drive competitive advantage.

The fact is, any firm can begin to lead and innovate like Google, Apple, IDEO and other thought-leading companies that understand the value of their human talent.  There’s a certain irony here, too.  The same dynamics that are driving such unprecedented, accelerating change are the same dynamics that are affordably delivering the practices and tools that any firm that wishes to lead the disruptive wave of the new strategic imperative of innovation, collaboration and value creation!

© 2013, Terry Murray.

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March 5, 2013 · 11:44 am
February 28, 2013 · 9:16 am

The Top 5 Signs You’re Already Losing the Talent War

I just returned from attending and speaking at the HR Management Institute’s conference entitled, “Enhancing HR as a Strategic and Transformative Business Partner in Times of Volatility and Change”.  It was a compelling event in which our team had the opportunity to meet and interact with some of the most progressive HR executives I’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with throughout my career.  Upon my return home, I read an article about Yahoo’s CEO making the decision to end telecommuting at their company.  The irony of this decision hit me immediately.  One of the few companies to survive the dot com crash over a decade ago, a company that is entirely built around the value proposition of internet connectivity, is retreating to an Industrial Age, brick and mortar mentality.  Just as the rest of the business world is poised to leverage new thinking and new technologies that will catapult the foundations of internet connectivity to transparent engagement and rapid innovation.

These two recent experiences compelled me to share my insights on the early warning signs that you may already be losing the talent war (and by the way, 2.9 million workers voluntarily left their employer in January, the highest level since June, 2008).

1. You’re resisting flexibility in the workplace ~ I haven’t worked out of a traditional office setting since 2000.  I’ve worked with teams of dispersed associates scattered around the country, and now around the world, and we’ve created remarkable value.  Knowledge workers warming a seat in a cubicle does not ensure productivity or innovation.  At a time when, according to the CEB Executive Guidance ~ 2013 report, CEOs are looking for an additional 20% increase in productivity, forcing knowledge workers to waste time commuting to an expensive piece of real estate doesn’t make sense.  The American Consumer Institute reports that over 350 billion days per year are spent community.  The lost work time and transportation expense represents roughly 7.2% of our gross domestic product.

Even worse, the not-so-subtle message Yahoo is telling its employees is, “We don’t trust you and feel compelled to babysit you to ensure you’re getting your work done.”  Gen Y workers are interactive, online, mobile workers.  For them, the lines between work and life are blurred.  Take that flexibility away from them and you wont have to worry about engaging them; they’ll be working for your competitor.

2. You’re still exclusively entrusting psychologists to train your next generation of leaders ~ McKinsey & Co.® published a study in July, 2011 that identified only 1% of “C” level and one step down executives scored excellent in eight core leadership competencies.  Ninety percent scored below average.  The Corporate Executive Board’s Executive Guidance ~ 2013 report identified the top ten, key competencies shared by more than 23,000 current high performers in today’s fast paced, ambiguous business environment.  Of these ten competencies, only three were identified and measured by the McKinsey study. A study published a mere eighteen months ago.

According to a study conducted by Doris Gomez of Regent University, and published in 2007 in the International Journal of Leadership Studies, corporations are spending in excess of $45 billion a year on leadership training.  That’s a breathtaking investment level for the reported outcomes and painfully obvious disconnect revealed by the McKinsey and CEB studies.

I don’t mean to take the organizational psychologists to task.  I’m sure they have good intentions and work hard at their profession.  They simply are not solely equipped to train the leaders we need today and for tomorrow.  Psychologists have long dominated leadership training efforts and leadership development firms.  If they have been so successful, why do we see such a disconnect?  The fact is, leaders develop leaders, not academics that have been comfortably observing on the sidelines, with no skin in the game, while the rest of us are engaged in the day-to-day trenches, actually leading fellow human beings.  Academics enrich the discourse through their research and scientific method, but this needs to be mindfully blended with real world, leadership experience.

3. You’re still focused on yesterday’s leadership model ~ Transactional leadership is about as relevant today as a rotary dial phone.  Command-and-control leadership tactics are the fastest way to disconnect Gen Y and Gen X workers and create cross generational and cultural rifts in the workplace.  Why?  Because transactional leaders focus exclusively on leveraging extrinsic goals and values.  What motivated and engaged a homogenous workforce once dominated by white, male Baby Boomers rings hollow in today’s multi-cultural, multi-generational workplace.

To engage today’s remarkably rich and diverse environment, one must include intrinsic goals and values in their approach to leadership.  Authentic relationships, opportunities for personal and professional growth (Gen Y and Gen X don’t differentiate between the two), and purposefulness, of feeling a part of something meaningful and larger than ourselves, transcends multi-cultural orientations and multi-generational perspectives.  It speaks to how we’re neurologically wired for survival.  It speaks to that which makes us human beings.

4. You’re still focused on training hard skills and not developing the soft skills of your talent ~ Training is fine for health and safety, but it does nothing to move the needle of effective leadership, employee engagement and innovative collaboration.  It is rote and boring (a Harvard study demonstrated that traditional lectures improve conceptual learning by only 14%).  Companies must embrace more compelling opportunities that include experiential learning and environments that support the development of emotional intelligence competencies (research shows that 80% of success in life can be attributed to one’s emotional intelligence, with the remaining 20% based in cognitive abilities).

For years we’ve been told to leave our emotions at home when coming to work.  The fact is, this disengages us from our authentic selves and creative abilities.  Emotions are a part of our primary survival mechanism.  Emotions inform us, guide us, and connect us on a neurological and biochemical level.  This also harkens back to the problem of having psychologists running leadership development.  The mainstream academic field of psychology dismissed emotions as messy side effects until the 1980s.  Shocking, right?  It shocked me when I discovered, while reading Richard Davidson’s book, “The Emotional Life Of Your Brain”, that up until about thirty years ago, mainstream psychologists were entirely enamored with behaviorism.  Progressive researchers like Dr. Davidson struggled to even get approval from their institutions, never mind the funding, to conduct psychological studies that looked into the relationship between the brain and emotions!  Thankfully they prevailed, and the field of Affective Neuroscience was born.

5. You’re still conducting traditional diversity and inclusion training as a compliance-driven have-to-do ~ As an esteemed colleague of mine says, “We have diversity, what we don’t have is inclusion.”  Many organizations still conduct D&I training at the same level of enthusiasm and strategic importance as they conduct health and safety training.  Employees are sent an email, told when and where to show up, and they check off the box for another year.  The demands and pace of business are such that we had better be fully engaging our entire workforce.  And if we’re to capture that 20% improvement in productivity CEOs are looking for, I don’t think we can consciously or unconsciously relegate a single employee to the sidelines.

We need all of our associates to feel authentically cared for and genuinely included in the central conversation of the business.  If we don’t, one of our competitors certainly will.

© 2013, Terry Murray.

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Terry Murray to Speak About Affective Leadership Development at HR Management Institute Conference

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Terry Murray Warriors in Transition HawaiiFeb. 12, 2013 - Terry Murray, founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation, LLC™, has been invited to present at the HR Management Institute’s upcoming conference entitled, “Enhancing HR as a Strategic and Transformative Business Partner in Times of Volatility and Change”.  The conference will be held at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando, FL from February 24th to 26th, 2013.Mr. Murray will be presenting, “Leadership 2020 – Developmental Strategies for Delivering Competitive Advantage in the New Economy”, an integrative, research-based approach for sparking engagement, collaboration and innovative thinking for today’s multi-cultural, multi-generational workforce.  The approach leverages recent findings from the scientific disciplines of affective neuroscience, social neuroscience, performance psychology, emotional intelligence, adult learning styles, creativity research, and applied behavioral economics.

“Our approach to developing inspirational leaders, what we call Affective Leadership, is a scientifically-substantiated methodology that leverages the neural mechanisms of human emotion to connect, engage and inspire today’s multi-cultural, multi-generational workforce,” commented Terry.  ”The intention is not to manipulate emotions, but to develop keen insights into how our presence, congruity, authenticity, transparency and communicative style affects those we lead and seek to positively influence.”

Through the application of collaborative, experiential learning, in combination with Performance Transformation’s proprietary Accretive Coaching Process℠, leaders and high potentials are provided the opportunity to experiment and discover these lessons for themselves and immediately begin to apply them within the context of the business.

While the approach incorporates insights from more than 200 peer-reviewed research studies, it is far from an academic treatise.  Affective Leadership, and the firm’s developmental process is grounded in more than twenty years of real-world, executive leadership success.

“Simply put, Affective Leadership is the leadership of engagement,” added Terry. “Going as far back as the 1990s, I had the chance to lead multi-national business units for a global corporation.  I was twenty years younger than my Managing Directors in Europe and Latin America.  I had to learn how to lead multi-cultural, multi-generational workforces.  I didn’t have a choice as I had been tapped to turn around an emotionally and cognitively disengaged workforce overseas.  Our approach reflects those lessons and the rapidly emerging research supports our philosophy.”

“A quick canvasing of the contemporary business literature clearly demonstrates the importance of leveraging intrinsic values to engage and inspire today’s knowledge workers.  Personal development, authentic relationships, being of service to others, and a sense of purposefulness cuts across the broad spectrum of perspectives that are conditioned into us through culture and generational experiences.  This is especially important for creating a culture that attracts and helps retain the best and brightest workers from Gen-X and Gen-Y and for connecting these generations with the knowledge and wisdom our rapidly retiring Baby Boomers are taking with them.”

Performance Transformation exemplifies these intrinsic values through their community service programs.  Warriors in Transition, which has been introduced in six states since 2009, received a formal commendation from General David Petraeus in 2010.  The firm has also invested in developing programs for the Autism Spectrum Disorder community, and most recently, a leadership and life skills program for at-risk girls.

“Part of what we teach is congruency…the motivational power that can be unleashed by walking your talk.  In order for us to impart these lessons with integrity, we must embody them in our actions,” said Terry.

© 2013, Performance Transformation, LLC™.

 

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February 12, 2013 · 3:20 pm