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18: Organizational Change Management - A Practical Approach
5 Plays4 years ago
On this episode, guest moderator, Brine Hamilton, talks to Mike Cummings and Lisa Terry about how to affect change within an organization. Both Mike and Lisa have decades of leadership experience and are recognized experts in the healthcare security industry.
During the interview they focus on the processes they followed for overcoming organizational barriers to creating change. They describe practical and actionable tips to advocate for new initiatives. These include creative ways to tap into available resources, influence key stakeholders and utilizing data in decision making. Mike and Lisa also talk about how to create sustainability to ensure continued and future success.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Confidence in Conflict podcast, your destination for learning how to prevent and better manage conflict in both your professional and personal lives.
00:00:14
Speaker
Here in Milwaukee, I think we finally had the last snowfall of the season.
00:00:19
Speaker
And now we're looking forward to spring, which, by the way, won't start in probably until June.
00:00:25
Speaker
Every year we get tempted to
00:00:27
Speaker
by a few nice days, but then every year the weather continues to feel like winter until May or early June.
00:00:34
Speaker
Then we get just a few days of spring until summer starts and that's just life in Milwaukee.
Training Adaptations During Pandemic
00:00:42
Speaker
Here at Vistalar, we got some real interesting things happening.
00:00:45
Speaker
First, as a result of our commitment to virtual instructor-led training due to the pandemic, this part of our business is exploding.
00:00:55
Speaker
However,
00:00:56
Speaker
Then a few weeks, all of our trainers will be fully vaccinated.
00:01:00
Speaker
So we're starting to schedule on-site training courses again, which is great.
00:01:04
Speaker
Get back on the road.
00:01:06
Speaker
Although it'll be great to have the economy fully open, we really expect to continue to do a lot of this remote training because we found it just works better for many of our courses.
00:01:14
Speaker
And it's so much more efficient for both our participants, you know, to travel, hotel, you know, meeting rooms, whatever, and clearly for us.
00:01:23
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So obviously our physical training will need to be
00:01:26
Speaker
taught face-to-face, but most of our non-escalation, de-escalation, crisis management content can be taught very effectively using a virtual format.
Formation of Conflict Management Advisory Board
00:01:35
Speaker
So anyway, for this episode, we have a very special treat.
00:01:39
Speaker
As you may know from a press release we sent out in early February, Vissler has formed an advisory board consisting of world-class experts in conflict management.
00:01:49
Speaker
The chairman of this board is Mike Cummings.
00:01:52
Speaker
He's one of the panel members on this episode.
00:01:54
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Mike's had more than
00:01:56
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30 years of experience in healthcare security and as a former president, former president and chairman of the ASUS International.
00:02:03
Speaker
Joining Mike is Brian Hamilton, another VisWire Advisory Board member and the current president-elect of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety.
00:02:14
Speaker
Brian is the host of the popular podcast, the Healthcare Security Cast.
Implementing Change in Organizations
00:02:20
Speaker
Be sure and check that out and will be the moderator of this episode instead of me.
00:02:25
Speaker
Also joining Mike is Lisa Terry, a consultant to the VISA Advisory Board.
00:02:29
Speaker
With years of healthcare and higher education experience in leadership roles, Lisa is a past president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety and is the current regional vice president of the ASUS Healthcare Council.
00:02:43
Speaker
These three experts will be discussing how to affect change within your organization.
00:02:49
Speaker
Brian, Mike, and Lisa will take things from here.
00:03:01
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Thank you for joining us today.
00:03:02
Speaker
I'm your host, Brian Hamilton, and I have the pleasure today of being joined by Mike Cummings and Lisa Terry.
00:03:09
Speaker
Mike and Lisa, could you introduce yourselves for those of us who are meeting you for the first time?
00:03:14
Speaker
Thank you, Brian.
00:03:15
Speaker
It's my pleasure to be here today with you and Lisa to talk about change leadership.
00:03:20
Speaker
I've been in the private security profession for 47 years, the last 35 in the healthcare space, and I'm certainly no stranger to change.
00:03:29
Speaker
I've also had the honor and pleasure to serve in many volunteer leadership capacities in two premier professional security organizations, IAHSS and ASIS International.
00:03:42
Speaker
During my career in healthcare, there was and continues to be tremendous change in the industry in general and to many of the departments within, including security.
00:03:54
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It was necessary for me to learn how to both envision change in my area
00:03:59
Speaker
and also develop processes to affect that change.
00:04:03
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And it is that which I am pleased to discuss today.
00:04:07
Speaker
Foundationally, I adapted one of a number of change management processes as my general approach, and then layered that with four approaches of support to help make those changes.
00:04:22
Speaker
One example is that I use these in combination to introduce and then change the type and scope of conflict management training used both in the security department and ultimately throughout the enterprise.
00:04:41
Speaker
Thank you, Brian.
00:04:43
Speaker
I'm Lisa Terry, and I'm happy to be here as well.
00:04:46
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I'm originally from North Carolina, and that's where I currently reside.
00:04:50
Speaker
After college, I began my career in municipal and higher education law enforcement.
00:04:56
Speaker
After five years, I made the move to healthcare security, policing, safety, and emergency management.
00:05:03
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I've been privileged to work within some of the finest hospital systems in the country, as well as consult with many more over the past 30 years.
00:05:13
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I have happily served and continue to serve
00:05:16
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in some of the same volunteer leadership positions as you and Mike with ASIS International and IAHSS.
00:05:24
Speaker
Finally, I'm fortunate to currently serve as the Vice President of Healthcare for Allied Universal Security Services.
00:05:33
Speaker
Excellent.
00:05:33
Speaker
Well, thank you for sharing that.
00:05:35
Speaker
And as you alluded to Mike today we're going to be discussing change management.
00:05:39
Speaker
And I think just given your experience, it would be good for you to get this conversation started.
00:05:44
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But what's your experience in actually implementing change over the over a large healthcare organization?
Preference for Cotter Change Process
00:05:52
Speaker
Well, I personally seem to lean towards the eight steps found in the cotter change process.
00:05:58
Speaker
There are many processes out there and they all provide a roadmap, if you will, to getting that change done the steps that Carter includes are to create urgency to build a team.
00:06:10
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To connect to strategic direction to communicate To remove barriers to create short term wins to monitor progress.
00:06:22
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And finally, to anchor the change.
00:06:25
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I found that this was generally easy to implement these smaller steps that built on each other.
00:06:31
Speaker
There are times when the steps overlap, kind of like a Gantt chart, but generally it is somewhat predictable and it's a linear process.
00:06:39
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The downsides are that you really can't afford to skip steps going along the way.
00:06:45
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And because there are a number of steps, it can take a while.
00:06:50
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So you can't skip steps along the way.
00:06:52
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It sounds like you had some experience that you can speak to from that.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yes, I think that, as I recall, when you try to take shortcuts, and there have been times when in our zeal to get the change done and maybe some impatience that goes along with that, you skip a step or you shortcut a step.
00:07:14
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And in my experience, I found that
00:07:16
Speaker
What that creates is probably more rework because there are really no shortcuts to change.
00:07:23
Speaker
There are some overlaps, as I mentioned, which, you know, they build on each other and they support each other.
00:07:28
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But if you out and out, don't get the influencers, you don't build a team, the appropriate team and the right team that's going to support the change, you pay the price down the line and you end up having to redo some work.
00:07:44
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:07:45
Speaker
Now, Lisa, what about yourself?
00:07:47
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I'm sure you have lots of experience with change management as well.
Career Transition and Data-Driven Change
00:07:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:07:52
Speaker
When I initially transitioned into the healthcare security space from that of municipality and higher education law enforcement, healthcare quality was the thing that was defined in terms of processes and by the ratio of clinicians, the number of clinicians assigned to a particular clinical area.
00:08:13
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So basically, that's initially how I learned to request staffing and training for each clinical area, whoever had the loudest voice.
00:08:25
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And thankfully, change occurred in the healthcare area and quality basically became measured by predominantly patient outcomes.
00:08:37
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So healthcare security started, of course, being impacted by those outcomes.
00:08:43
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So it is important that we, as the change leaders, were able to come to the table with data to demonstrate the full value and the changes that were requested.
00:08:53
Speaker
So we had to be able to measure how to reduce the number of assaults over time and workers' compensation costs.
00:09:02
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We had to quantify the value of that request and build a data set.
00:09:07
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We had to stratify risks and action plans and
00:09:11
Speaker
basically learn to communicate, things of that nature.
00:09:18
Speaker
Excellent.
00:09:18
Speaker
Now, in terms of project management, Mike, you touched on using the Cotter methodology.
00:09:24
Speaker
Now, Lisa, you made reference, I believe, to lean.
00:09:29
Speaker
And given that, what do you guys feel like are the pros and cons of either
Evaluating Change Management Methods
00:09:34
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approach?
00:09:34
Speaker
And do you have any reason in particular for choosing the methods that you chose?
00:09:42
Speaker
As I indicated, Brian, I agree that I think there are a number of really solid change management processes that have been out there.
00:09:50
Speaker
Lean is certainly one of them as well.
00:09:52
Speaker
I think when I was earlier in my career and trying to struggling with how to approach change, which can be a kind of daunting at times, especially if you're inexperienced.
00:10:03
Speaker
I chose one that I've just kind of stuck with, at least as for the basics.
00:10:07
Speaker
And that's what I liked about the Coddard.
00:10:09
Speaker
It had eight definitive steps that I could follow, kind of a roadmap for me.
00:10:14
Speaker
And I've just, probably in my later career, I've been able to merge and
00:10:19
Speaker
and expedite them a little bit, found where there are some of the similarities were, and that's been helpful.
00:10:27
Speaker
But like lean, very solid in an approach that gives you direction.
00:10:34
Speaker
And until you do the change processes over for a number of times, it's good to have that roadmap, I believe.
00:10:43
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:10:45
Speaker
I've utilized lean in the past and partially because as we built in my hospital system, a centralized communication center for our hospital.
00:10:55
Speaker
We had a project that involved more than 40 departments and basically it lasted more than two years from beginning until the center went live.
00:11:05
Speaker
We had identified problems with some efficiencies in several areas to include inpatient scheduling, outpatient scheduling,
00:11:14
Speaker
some normal or emergent communications with our air ambulances and ground ambulances, the normal and emergent communications between our hospitals, police, and security, calls for service for environmental services at our system hospitals, calls for service with facility services and engineering at all of our system hospitals.
00:11:38
Speaker
And then, of course, our system incident command.
00:11:40
Speaker
We really didn't have anything that
00:11:42
Speaker
we could set up for all of our hospitals.
00:11:45
Speaker
And then of course, everybody had this concept of some sort of redundancy at a system level for our alarm.
00:11:54
Speaker
So for whatever reason, we wanted to fix all of that at once.
00:11:59
Speaker
And we decided to use the lean methodology.
00:12:04
Speaker
So we got together and we basically visited all seven principles of lean at each meeting.
00:12:12
Speaker
And I think the number one principle was to focus on the customer, which for us in healthcare is always the patient.
00:12:20
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So every meeting that we had, we focused on the customer, which was the patient.
00:12:25
Speaker
That was number one.
00:12:26
Speaker
The second one was we had to identify and understand how the work got done, the value stream.
00:12:31
Speaker
Number three was to manage and improve
00:12:34
Speaker
and smooth the process flow.
00:12:36
Speaker
And number four, to remove the non-value added steps and waste.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I think that was huge for us because we were really, we had a lot of inefficiencies, you know, with the inpatient and outpatient scheduling, calls were coming in almost all over the state and nothing was efficient.
00:12:56
Speaker
And then number five was managed by fact and reduced variation, you know, centralize it.
00:13:03
Speaker
Number six is involve and put the people in the process, give them what they need to do the job.
00:13:10
Speaker
And then undertake improvement activity in a systematic way.
00:13:14
Speaker
For us, it was important that each person was heard.
00:13:17
Speaker
I go back to that communication, you know, we've got to make sure that everybody was heard, but that those efficiencies and economies of scale were found.
00:13:28
Speaker
Some positions were eliminated.
00:13:30
Speaker
But it was important to us as a group that those positions that were eliminated, that the executives were on board, that we moved every single staff member somewhere else in the organization.
00:13:42
Speaker
And thank goodness, we were really able to do that most of the time because we had open positions.
00:13:48
Speaker
No one lost any money.
00:13:50
Speaker
They didn't lose status.
00:13:52
Speaker
They may have gotten a different position elsewhere.
00:13:55
Speaker
And the initial project seemed overwhelming, but with Lean, there is a
00:14:00
Speaker
fish boning effects that you use to really drill down.
00:14:04
Speaker
And we were able to basically bring the entire group to a consensus and reconstruct three levels of a building to fit our plan.
00:14:12
Speaker
It was pretty doggone amazing.
00:14:16
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:14:16
Speaker
Now, Lisa, one thing that kind of stuck out for me there as you were, as you were kind of walking us through that is, you know, with a big change like this, there's often, often a lot of resistance.
Overcoming Resistance to Change
00:14:28
Speaker
And for, for a lot of reasons, especially in this example, you have a lot of stakeholders in those situations, you know, not even necessarily in this one, but in situations like that, what has been, what has been your approach to overcoming the resistance to change?
00:14:44
Speaker
Yes, I have found, and I've been around for a little while, but I have found that change is absolutely difficult and stressful, even when we've looked forward to that change.
00:14:55
Speaker
In those situations, when I have met resistance, which I absolutely have had those situations, I found success by incorporating the simple but often profound philosophy of treating every single person with respect and dignity.
00:15:13
Speaker
Ego has no place when one is leading the change process.
00:15:17
Speaker
And to be honest with you, if I'm the leader, it's my responsibility to care enough to communicate with each person based on his or her unique situation.
00:15:28
Speaker
If he or she is not comprehending the overall reason for the change, then it is again my responsibility as the communicator to step back and try again.
00:15:37
Speaker
And I found that if I get a little
00:15:40
Speaker
If I get a little too close to the project, then perhaps it would be wise to have an objective facilitator lead it.
00:15:47
Speaker
And to be honest with you, we ended up with that centralized communications situation.
00:15:53
Speaker
We actually got two individuals that were not stakeholders at all to facilitate it because we were all very close, all leaders of those 40 departments, even though I kind of was the person that pushed the envelope to get it started.
00:16:10
Speaker
all 40 department leaders felt like we were the most important.
00:16:15
Speaker
So we really needed individuals that had no, you know, they didn't have, they weren't stakeholders.
00:16:23
Speaker
Right.
00:16:24
Speaker
And I guess as the person who is kind of leading that objective, even if you were kind of doing it in the background, it seems if it's important for you to just have an understanding of the value proposition for each of the stakeholders.
00:16:37
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:16:38
Speaker
And be willing, as I said, to
00:16:40
Speaker
to take your hat off, to do not have any ego, um, really respect one another.
00:16:48
Speaker
Excellent.
00:16:48
Speaker
Mike and Mike, what about yourself in terms of, in terms of overcoming the resistance to change?
00:16:52
Speaker
What's been effective for you?
00:16:55
Speaker
Um, I think that it starts as, as Lisa mentioned, I think it starts with solid communication and, and inclusion.
00:17:01
Speaker
Um,
00:17:02
Speaker
We may have very strong feelings about where we want this to go and why the change is good.
00:17:07
Speaker
And we've done our homework, so to speak.
00:17:09
Speaker
You get a team together.
00:17:10
Speaker
And as Lisa just mentioned, not everybody's gonna be on the same page initially.
00:17:16
Speaker
What we need to do is engage people and have an open heart.
00:17:20
Speaker
And you mentioned about dignity and respect, and that's extremely important.
00:17:25
Speaker
It's part of what we do in healthcare in general.
00:17:27
Speaker
So it shouldn't be that hard to achieve that outcome in a project.
00:17:32
Speaker
it's important to make sure that you really are doing active listening to the individuals who are on that team and even on the periphery of the team.
00:17:44
Speaker
If we can understand where they're coming from, listen to their suggestions, we're probably going to come up with ultimately a more coherent and successful project at the end.
00:17:57
Speaker
And so nobody's going to have all the answers that the comment about checking your ego at the door is extremely important because none of these big things get done on solely on the efforts of one or two individuals.
00:18:13
Speaker
Excellent.
00:18:14
Speaker
Now, in terms of gaining the support, getting buy-in from those key stakeholders, it's like you're having to sell an outcome to a group of people with differing philosophies or differing wants and needs at the end of the day.
00:18:27
Speaker
Is this where you would see customization and scalability playing a factor?
Strategy of Pilot Programs
00:18:32
Speaker
Definitely.
00:18:33
Speaker
I think we have to show the what's in it for them kind of approach.
00:18:39
Speaker
So with the project that I did, the large project that I did, which was to move
00:18:45
Speaker
was to move our training processes, not only just for the security department, but I wanted to implement that throughout the organization.
00:18:53
Speaker
And this was for a group of individuals that never had some of this type of training before, but we saw the value and the wisdom.
00:19:00
Speaker
First thing I had to do is kind of show where the value and the benefits was going to be for their individual departments.
00:19:09
Speaker
We had to make sure that they could see that there was some value and kind of get a couple of people that were willing to do a pilot.
00:19:15
Speaker
Pilot is always one of the tactics and the approaches that I've traditionally used kind of to see what works.
00:19:23
Speaker
We can do it because it's scalable.
00:19:25
Speaker
And once we were successful with that, and we were successful for a couple of reasons, we would identify the benefits and we would hardwire some of those benefits and some metrics for them and show the ROI and what's going to be their benefit to being one of those pilots.
00:19:45
Speaker
It's been my experience that once we can engage somebody in a pilot that turns out to be successful to a large degree, it becomes...
00:19:55
Speaker
in our experience and a situation of a mini me too movement.
00:20:00
Speaker
We heard the influencers who were willing to try the pilot and have some success with it, start talking it up.
00:20:08
Speaker
And at the end, it wasn't like we even had to go out anymore and say, this is great training.
00:20:12
Speaker
Does your department wanna try it?
00:20:14
Speaker
We were getting inundated by department leaders asking when can our department try this as well?
00:20:21
Speaker
So we started small, we had to change our
00:20:25
Speaker
delivery styles to meet the various needs of the department.
00:20:28
Speaker
That's where the listening came in because I couldn't necessarily do the same sort of training for the same length of time in the same delivery mode to the ED and do it for maybe customer service or gatekeeper roles elsewhere in the facility.
00:20:43
Speaker
And so working with Vistalar, we were able to come up with all types of different delivery methodologies
00:20:51
Speaker
that met the needs.
00:20:52
Speaker
That wouldn't have happened if we had not listened to their needs and their abilities to implement, as well as listened to those individuals who were willing to start out and build some momentum for us.
00:21:07
Speaker
Those are great approaches, Mike.
00:21:09
Speaker
I totally agree.
00:21:11
Speaker
And I will tell you one tool that seemed to work for me over the years is to ensure that my security master plan is aligned with the organization's
00:21:21
Speaker
overall strategic plan.
Aligning Security Plans with Organizational Strategy
00:21:24
Speaker
As I envisioned a change that I felt was necessary, for instance, moving to a different conflict management training model, I solicited input from emergency management, risk management, and various leaders from other security sensitive areas.
00:21:39
Speaker
And this became one of my goals.
00:21:41
Speaker
I knew that I had to be able to, again, use data to measure the quality and effectiveness of the current program
00:21:48
Speaker
and how a change could impact, again, the outcomes important to individuals with different philosophies.
00:21:57
Speaker
Of course, I had to measure and reduce the number of assaults and workers' comp claims to clinical staff over time due to additional training, et cetera.
00:22:07
Speaker
I wanted to measure the amount of time spent on training and equipment compared to the amount spent on workers' comp, turnover, recruitment, et cetera,
00:22:17
Speaker
Also measure and reduce the number of injuries via patient assault on security officers over time due to additional training and PPE, for instance, bike sleeves, face guards, things of that nature.
00:22:31
Speaker
And then also research like facilities and references when they were available.
00:22:38
Speaker
Exactly.
00:22:39
Speaker
I think the metrics can be, as I mentioned, are extremely important.
00:22:44
Speaker
They can be scalable and they also need to be kind of customized to the department or the area that you're trying to engage in the change.
00:22:54
Speaker
So for example, when we were trying to change the training and we all knew that violence in the workplace was a huge issue, but it still affected some departments differently than other departments.
00:23:08
Speaker
So for example, I heard from our chief nursing executive that one of her biggest challenges was threats or actual turnover of nurses who are going to either retire early or leave the profession because of their concern with the ongoing violence.
00:23:26
Speaker
We calculated through our talent acquisition department that it cost the organization approximately $70,000 from start to finish to hire a nurse.
00:23:39
Speaker
And by taking a very modest commitment of reducing turnover of only five nurses for the reason of workplace violence, we could have a positive impact of $350,000 to the organization, which helped the nursing departments commit the time needed for their staff to attend the training.
Importance of Metrics in Measuring Change Impact
00:24:01
Speaker
So at worst, it became budget neutral.
00:24:03
Speaker
And in some cases, it became a very positive.
00:24:07
Speaker
Similarly, you mentioned workers' comp costs.
00:24:10
Speaker
We did the same thing by analyzing the workers' comp costs, both the injury treatment as well as the lost time for those departments who had individuals who were assaulted on the job.
00:24:25
Speaker
We were able to, again, convert those dollars to a projection and create a metric of reduced dollars expended in the area of workers' comp.
00:24:35
Speaker
And then there are always some soft costs also that can be looked at or soft benefits.
00:24:41
Speaker
So for example, like most organizations we did and conducted an annual survey of our employees, kind of a satisfaction survey, if you will.
00:24:53
Speaker
And we tried to find measurements as we changed the training and that we saw a reduction in the incidents, as you mentioned, Lisa,
00:25:03
Speaker
we were able to see a corresponding increase in the customer satisfaction or the patient satisfaction in HCAHPS as well as in the area of employee satisfaction through that scale.
00:25:17
Speaker
HCAHPS, obviously a lot of things impact that, but it is something to be considered when the patients are here to be treated and they don't want to be subjected to seeing or hearing
00:25:33
Speaker
workplace violence and inappropriate behaviors.
00:25:36
Speaker
And if we can, we could reduce those, we were actually able to see some positive increase in those scores as well.
00:25:46
Speaker
Now we talked about obviously the metrics and the data that you're able to capture.
00:25:52
Speaker
I'm curious, and I'm sure some of us are curious as well.
00:25:55
Speaker
What did you find were some of the best, most effective ways to actually tell the story of that data?
00:26:08
Speaker
I think as I reflect back, I think that it was, again, kind of customizing it and having the communication with some of the individual leaders.
00:26:19
Speaker
Some of them were influenced
00:26:21
Speaker
and affected more specifically about turnover or changing the turnover.
00:26:26
Speaker
Others were just having the number of incidents reduced in their departments.
00:26:31
Speaker
And so I don't think there was a one size fits all on that, Brian.
00:26:35
Speaker
I think it was we needed to go back and kind of customize our review of success and or failure with each individual kind of stakeholder to see if when they committed to do the training,
00:26:49
Speaker
what were their expectations and where we're meeting those expectations.
00:26:52
Speaker
And you need to be able to, in today's jargon, we needed to be able to pivot and make sure that we were tweaking or adjusting either the training or our expectations for that individual or small group of departments that were most affected by that metric.
00:27:11
Speaker
So I think it's a constant process.
00:27:14
Speaker
It has a somewhat of an endpoint
00:27:18
Speaker
but I don't think it has a complete end point because you need to be constantly reassessing to make sure you're not slipping back into territory that you don't want to be.
Tailoring Communication for Stakeholders
00:27:29
Speaker
So I think too, you've got to, to know your audience.
00:27:34
Speaker
You're, you're, remember you're, you're speaking to clinicians, you're speaking to the CFO, you're speaking to
00:27:43
Speaker
a myriad of individuals that are going to be in that audience and as you said, with potentially differing philosophies.
00:27:50
Speaker
So being able to tell the numbers, need to tell the story that they most want to hear.
00:27:58
Speaker
And that may be how do we reduce costs?
00:28:01
Speaker
How do we do the right thing for the patient, for the staff?
00:28:08
Speaker
How do we do the right thing in general?
00:28:11
Speaker
And I think it's important that we know how to interpret the data appropriately.
00:28:18
Speaker
All right.
00:28:20
Speaker
Excellent stuff.
00:28:22
Speaker
Now, one area where I've often seen leaders get discouraged is when their entire proposal isn't accepted, even if they've gained partial acceptance of the proposal.
00:28:31
Speaker
I would still consider partial acceptance, at least in my opinion, a win.
00:28:35
Speaker
In the example of training, for example, if you're looking to go enterprise wide and you're only able to get approval for say the security department, what are your thoughts?
00:28:45
Speaker
Do you have a similar opinion to mine where even a partial victory is still worth celebrating and you just kind of try to build on that?
00:28:55
Speaker
Definitely.
00:28:57
Speaker
When we,
00:28:58
Speaker
As I indicated, when we were trying to introduce this training concept organization-wide, I realized that we weren't going to be able to provide this training to 34,000 employees initially.
00:29:11
Speaker
I had control, if you will,
00:29:13
Speaker
to what type of training the security department had, and we implemented it there first.
00:29:17
Speaker
We then told the story of those successes that we were having, and I think it was evident from some of our key stakeholders who had daily interaction with security, such as the emergency department, behavioral health, the ICU.
00:29:32
Speaker
that the training that our officers went through was actually making a difference in the way they approached people, the lack of significant events that were happening, the lack of physical assaults and those sorts of things.
00:29:47
Speaker
And so we built into that, again, using that pilot approach, those various departments that were seeing the benefit to doing it.
00:29:56
Speaker
Others were very resistant for quite a long time.
00:29:59
Speaker
little by little that turn.
00:30:01
Speaker
And so if we would have not accepted the small wins in the beginning, we may not have ever gotten to the point that at the time that I retired from that organization, in that three and a half years since we started the implementation, we had put 50%, 17,000 employees through some level or module of the training that we envisioned in the beginning.
00:30:27
Speaker
if we wouldn't have accepted some of those small wins in the beginning, we would have never got to that point.
00:30:31
Speaker
And I think that's an important thing to keep in mind, not to be discouraged when you have some setbacks.
00:30:38
Speaker
And now the other thing that you made me think of there, Mike,
00:30:41
Speaker
Obviously, when you got to the point where everybody was doing the training, I'm going to assume the training wasn't exactly the same for security as it would have been for, say, a clinician or even you said it was every employee.
00:30:54
Speaker
So I'm even thinking in terms of like a unit clerk.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Customizing Training Programs
00:31:01
Speaker
And so that was important that we were working with a company that was very willing and needed to help us create different delivery models.
00:31:11
Speaker
Some of it was e-learning.
00:31:13
Speaker
Certainly a lot of it was different levels of training.
00:31:17
Speaker
We did train the trainer approaches.
00:31:19
Speaker
And so the ability of us to work with our partner on this, our external partner to develop all that was really important.
00:31:30
Speaker
As you mentioned, an ED nurse or a behavioral health clinician may have wanted to attend and did attend eight hours of training with our security officers.
00:31:40
Speaker
But maybe the front end staff, the gatekeepers, those registration people that would have to deal with people acting out or being upset about an appointment, couldn't afford eight hours, and they probably didn't quite frankly need eight hours of training.
00:31:55
Speaker
And if we could provide that in a module, in an e-learning,
00:32:01
Speaker
or we could give them a brown bag lunch discussion about that, or we could do a two hour class if an area needed a little bit more than the basics.
00:32:11
Speaker
We approach that from, again, listening to our partners and respecting what they need and what they could afford in some cases, and then finding a way to make that happen.
00:32:25
Speaker
And I think that's where we grew the momentum.
00:32:28
Speaker
Right, so I guess it was really beneficial having one provider who was able to really scale that service and customize that service across the organization.
00:32:36
Speaker
Yeah, it was absolutely crucial.
00:32:40
Speaker
Excellent.
00:32:40
Speaker
Now, Lisa, I'd like to get your insights on this as well, just in terms of achieving a partial victory.
00:32:45
Speaker
Is that something that is worth celebrating from your perspective?
00:32:50
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:32:51
Speaker
A partial victory is a win and must be celebrated.
Celebrating Partial Victories
00:32:55
Speaker
Of course, during our two-year centralized communication center project, it was essential that we celebrated the small victories in order to maintain, again, the momentum of a large project, as Mike mentioned.
00:33:07
Speaker
We had some leadership changes that occurred in some instances, and staff needed to be continually reassured that we had turned the ship around and we were still heading in that same direction.
00:33:20
Speaker
I mean, that is very important that they don't assume that
00:33:25
Speaker
Things have changed.
00:33:26
Speaker
So very important that you celebrate and let people know that we're still going that way.
00:33:33
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:33:33
Speaker
Now, I'm going to ask both of you just based on your experiences and the examples that you've provided in terms of large scale changes.
00:33:43
Speaker
If you just think back to the beginning of these projects, if you think back and you're armed with the knowledge and experience and wisdom that you have now,
00:33:52
Speaker
what advice would you have given yourself stepping into that project?
00:33:56
Speaker
And the reason why I ask this is because I know there's a lot of us who are engaged in this conversation right now who are probably taking on some sort of impactful change for the first time or we've taken on change before and just have not been successful.
00:34:14
Speaker
Well, I'll start.
00:34:15
Speaker
I think my primary advice would be to realize that regardless of how great the idea is and your level of enthusiasm, that the bigger the project and the longer it's going to take, the more complicated the journey will be.
00:34:30
Speaker
It will have those setbacks that we talked about a few minutes ago.
00:34:33
Speaker
And there will be days when you question whether the juice is worth the squeeze on this one.
00:34:38
Speaker
You need to realize there will be successes, there will be failures along the way.
00:34:42
Speaker
You need to take, as Lisa was saying, you need to take the joys and every little victory is a victory.
00:34:49
Speaker
And you need to learn from the failures or learn from the setbacks because each one of those also provides an opportunity to improve
00:35:01
Speaker
and to make sure that you're meeting the needs of your stakeholders.
00:35:04
Speaker
It's going to be a journey.
00:35:06
Speaker
It's going to be a destination ultimately.
00:35:09
Speaker
But you have to realize there's going to be tough days and good days and you need to take the most that each of them offer to you.
00:35:20
Speaker
I agree, Mike.
00:35:23
Speaker
I will say that all those selecting a particular change management process is an important step in the process.
00:35:31
Speaker
that I would suggest you become even more educated in communications and non-escalation because following a process is important.
00:35:41
Speaker
However, the manner in which you communicate one-on-one as you get further into the project will actually determine your success and how you and the team feel about the outcome.
Role of Communication in Organizational Change
00:35:54
Speaker
You have to live with one another.
00:35:56
Speaker
You have to live with
00:35:57
Speaker
with the outcome, but you also have to live with one another.
00:36:00
Speaker
And it's, again, that respect and dignity and really working as a team is so important.
00:36:10
Speaker
Right.
00:36:10
Speaker
And one thing, one key thing that you said there, Lisa, that I kind of want to highlight is the term non-escalation, because I know this might be a new term for some of us.
00:36:19
Speaker
How would you define non-escalation?
00:36:23
Speaker
Really, the way you speak to
00:36:26
Speaker
to individuals with respect so that it never becomes, it never escalates into anything that would even remotely become anything more than a very respectful discussion.
00:36:40
Speaker
It would never get beyond a very respectful discussion.
00:36:46
Speaker
So this is a step that's pre-de-escalation or hoping that we don't get to a situation where we create a response that we have to de-escalate.
00:36:56
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely.
00:36:59
Speaker
And I would tack on to what Lisa just said, and I concur 100%.
00:37:03
Speaker
You used a word there a few seconds ago, Brian, when you said hope.
00:37:11
Speaker
And as President Eisenhower said many, many years ago, hope isn't a strategy.
00:37:16
Speaker
So I think the type of training we're talking about here
00:37:19
Speaker
doesn't get us to a point where we hope we're not going to have to de-escalate something or in a worst case scenario use physical interventions.
00:37:28
Speaker
But by recognizing and being respectful and treating people with the dignity that Lisa's talked about a couple times here, I believe that the training teaches us how to use those approaches from the beginning to never even get to a point, as Lisa said, where
00:37:49
Speaker
we have to deescalate something.
00:37:51
Speaker
And I think that's truly a win-win for everybody.
00:37:55
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:37:57
Speaker
Now we've covered a lot of ground in this discussion.
00:37:59
Speaker
Is there anything that I haven't asked you yet or anything that I haven't brought up that either of you would like to elaborate on?
Continuous Reassessment and Improvement of Change
00:38:10
Speaker
I guess I would just elaborate just a slight bit on the idea that the journey's never finished.
00:38:16
Speaker
And that the change once initiated is really not completed because there's always more to come.
00:38:25
Speaker
And that we have to be mindful not to sit back and rest on our laurels, to constantly be looking at the metrics we established and the outcomes that we had planned for and make sure that they're there, that they continue.
00:38:39
Speaker
You know, it's kind of that almost the old TQM, total quality management, where we're always looking to
00:38:45
Speaker
to improve.
00:38:47
Speaker
I think that that's just, we need to be mindful of that.
00:38:49
Speaker
Okay, well, I guess my last comment would be, do not hesitate to reach out to individuals that you trust and who have previously led a change in their organization.
00:39:07
Speaker
Ask for their assistance.
00:39:09
Speaker
You may be surprised at what you will learn.
00:39:12
Speaker
I have one more example.
00:39:13
Speaker
I have huge respect for Mike Cummings.
00:39:16
Speaker
During a brief conversation that he and I had amid the project that he's referenced today, he shared with me some amazing statistics.
00:39:25
Speaker
And because I had such trust for him and his ethics, I immediately became more interested and I sought out more information.
00:39:35
Speaker
I was amazed and I immediately made contact with Vistalar,
00:39:39
Speaker
just based on what my trusted colleague had experienced.
00:39:44
Speaker
And so began another change with me and my organization.
00:39:49
Speaker
But it was because I trusted my colleague and I listened to what he had gone through.
00:39:57
Speaker
Excellent stuff.
00:39:58
Speaker
Well, I appreciate you guys.
00:40:00
Speaker
I appreciate both of you taking the time and sharing your knowledge with us.
00:40:05
Speaker
And I think everybody can benefit from the information that you've shared.
00:40:09
Speaker
And again, I just want to thank you for taking the time and helping us, helping us avoid some of the pitfalls that can, that can definitely come with changes of this scale.
00:40:21
Speaker
Thank you, Brian.
00:40:23
Speaker
Thank you.
00:40:23
Speaker
Thanks again for having me, Brian.
00:40:25
Speaker
And it was a pleasure.
00:40:29
Speaker
Thanks, Brian.
00:40:31
Speaker
Well, that wraps up another episode of Competence in Conflict.
00:40:35
Speaker
I hope you gained some practical and actionable tips about how to overcome barriers to create change within your organization, advocate for new initiatives, and create sustainability for changes to ensure ongoing success.
00:40:47
Speaker
If you want more expert advice on how to prevent and better manage conflict, subscribe to this podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:40:56
Speaker
And if you like this episode, please write us a review.
00:41:00
Speaker
Also visit Vistalar.com slash blog to get notes for this show, share your comments, and access additional conflict management resources.
00:41:08
Speaker
Take care and stay safe.