May 2009 Archives

If You Think Worst Is Over, Take Benjamin Graham's Advice, the offering in Jason Zweig's Intelligent Investor column in The Wall Street Journal print edition of May 23, provides some thoughtful guidelines to managing an investment portfolio in uncertain times. Interestingly, and perhaps inadvertently, the same guidelines hold for managing a leadership portfolio in all times. And truthfully, what times aren't uncertain? In today's economic upheaval we are simply more aware of the same uncertainty that exists in "good times." So read this with an expansive mind, with an eye to leading health care organizations today....and tomorrow...

From Moore's Law to Barrett's Rules, Michael Malone's May 16 op-ed piece on departing Intel CEO Craig Barrett in The Wall Street Journal is another one of those sketches of an iconic business leader that holds more universal messages. About to step down, Barrett led Intel as President (since 1998) and CEO (since 2005) in the years following the legendary founding leaders: Andy Grove (of "Only the Paranoid Survive" fame), Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore (visionary of "Moore's Rule"). This pithy article describes Barrett's peripatetic style while codifying his managerial wisdom in a way that can be very useful to health care leaders...

The May 13 May 14 issues of The Wall Street Journal ran multiple stories about the current NTSB investigations into the tragic February 2009 Colgan Air crash in Buffalo. While the agency has not yet ruled on the cause of the accident, there's been a lot of testimony and documentation focusing on the role of pilot training, pilot error, and the interactions between crew members that prevented correction of what a senior test pilot for the airplane manufacturer termed a "recoverable stall." In medical safety terms, "a near miss." So it should be no surprise that I found these articles both riveting and highly connected to the dilemma of health care leaders charged with safeguarding patient safety. Since airline safety practices, especially crew resource management (CRM), are seen as models for medical error reduction, the failure of airline safety practices should teach us something important. These articles are rich and provocative so I'll hit on just a few points and leave it to you to read them and more fully relate them to health care...

As soon as I saw the title of the May 25 Business Week's cover story (How the Mighty Fall: A Primer on the Warning Signs) I knew I'd found my mark for today's post. I didn't even realize at the time that this was an excerpt from Jim Collins' (Good to Great and Built to Last) new book that turns his prior work literally upside down. As the title implies, it's the quick guide to how high performing companies lose their edge and end up in the toilet. And while it's about companies, it's also implicitly also about leaders. Perhaps even more about the leaders than the companies. And while it's not about health care, it's all about health care. Having worked for at least one of those "great to ashes" leaders myself, I can vouch for the soundness of the analysis and its relevance to health care leaders. Read the excerpt and when it is published, read the book...

We've all had a roller coaster ride through financial uncertainty as a result of the recent housing and market collapses. As a result we are much more attuned to thinking about risk - at least to financial risk. But as health care leaders, we face risk that is not on its face financial on a daily basis. In their May 12 article, What's Your Company's Risk Culture? posted on BusinessWeek.com, John Michael Farrell and Angela Hoon - both at KPMG's Enterprise Risk Management Services - explore corporate risk culture in a way that is relevant for health care leaders and their organizations as well. It's worth reading and considering in the context of your own leadership experience...

Retaining patients, physicians, vendors, and partners is a the best and cheapest way to build a medical practice, hospital market, or health related service customer base. Bedrock principle, right? Not so fast say Timothy Keiningham (global chief strategy officer at Ipsos Loyalty) and Lerzan Aksoy (professor of marketing at Fordham University) in the Harvard Business Online Conversation Starters column - When Customer Loyalty Is a Bad Thing - which appeared on May 7, 2009. This short piece examines some aspects of customer loyalty that can suboptimize or sink business to customer or business to business enterprises. It struck me that some of these red flags could be useful to health care leaders as well...

The Economist runs a regular column, Guru, in its Management section. The column, which is a quick read and worth glancing at regularly, reviews management theorists, researchers, or academics who have had significant impact on thought in the fields of leadership, organizational dynamics, economics, or similar business related disciplines. Last week's Guru column (May 1) commented on the research of the organizational psychologist Elliott Jaques (1917-2003). The topic was differentiation between "the boss" and "the real boss" in business systems. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you won't be surprised to learn that I was drawn to consider whether, and how, this distinction applies to health care leaders...

Bill Taylor's Practically Radical online column in Harvard Business Online on May 4 poses the provocative question: MBAs vs. Entrepreneurs: Who Has the Right Stuff for Tough Times? It made me wonder whether it matters for health care leaders. The answer, as I learned early in my own MBA classes is "it depends"...

In addition to my day job advising health care leaders, I have a shadow life recruiting senior physician leaders (in addition to blogging here). So you can imagine the delight when my favorite source of blog content (the Harvard Business Review) published The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad with tips and principles for filling senior level positions - aimed squarely at the global corporate market. Reading the original will be very useful for you. And by applying standard Health Care Leadership Blog wizardry, this well written piece can be transformed into a sensible set of (albeit scaled down) insights for health care leaders to consider when on the prowl for talent...