HealthCare Voice

Lloyd Self's Five Rules for Business

As we race to the end of yet another year, I am taking some time off to rest and recharge, and to reflect on a very successful 2011.   

This is a great time of year; we are enjoying the fruits of our hard work and our considerable success.  I am using the time to plan for the next business year. The is particularly exciting for me because we bare making some changes that are designed to significantly enhance customer value while accelerating our growth.

I spent some time this week reviewing my blog archive.  I ran across the following blog entry that I wrote a year ago about my father's values in business.  It seems particularly relevant for 2012 and so I want to share it with you again:

    ____________________ 

Working for my father during my teenage years in his highly successful retail bakery in Tyler, Tex., I learned some  of life's important rules and key lessons of business.  He died in 1989 but today he remains my True North. 

Here are Lloyd Self’s Five Rules.  He never wrote them down; he just lived them.

1.  Do what is right, even when no one is looking .

2.  The customer comes first.  Honor that.  It is not just a rule; it is who you are. 

3.  The customer is not always right.  See rule #2. 

4.  Quality counts. 

5.  We all make mistakes.  We all get tired.  We all want to cut corners because of time or fatigue. When that happens, remember rules #1 and #2.

 In more than 16 years of interviewing and watching CEOs and other senior executives as a partner in an executive search firm, I have added another very important rule.

6.  Respect your employees as if they were your customers.  You will get more for your money.  Do not yell at, bully, or criticize your employees, especially in public.  There is no room in any company for an abusive leader.

We should pause and reflect throughout the year and measure how we are doing against these "rules."  If we do that, we will become a better leader. 

Happy New Year to you and your family.

© 2011 John Gregory Self

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Technology and Media: Remarkable Visions For The Future

As we cruise through the final days of 2011, the scribes of media and technology are busy laying their visions for the future.

Based on two articles in Monday morning’s New York Times, we should all fasten our seat belts, 2012 is going to be a fast and fascinating ride.  For healthcare organizations, many of which are struggling mightily just to implement and remain current with basic  information systems infrastructure to improve patient safety and operating efficiency, these predictions may evoke a dire question: How can we afford to keep up?  For an industry that trails other business sectors from five to 10 years in terms of information systems, that is a legitimate concern with some interesting consequences.  But that is a question for another day.  

Let’s start today with something as basic as the remote control for the television.  Respected media writer David Carr of the New York Times characterizes the current evolution of the remote as “...a little like hitting your television with a stick until it delivers what you want.  If things go as they should, we will spend less time looking under the couch for the remote and more time telling our television to get us the seventh episode of the second season of ‘Boardwalk Empire’.”  This month “Xbox 360 owners were already able to search TV shows by voice.  “...someday I should be able to walk into a hotel in Kansas, tell the television who I am and find [all the content that] I have [previously] bought and paid for, there for the consuming,” Carr writes.  This is one of the many promises of Cloud computing.  

“The iPad on your lap is a screen that makes it easy to navigate toward a completely personal experience.  That screen on your living room wall is going to have to perform the same way to remain relevant.”

Traditional content providers like the Wall Street Journal are already adding hours upon hours each month of video content to the web site to provide greater context for the stories in the morning business newspaper, still the largest daily circulation in the United States.  Venerable papers like Mr. Carr’s New York Times will either master the integration of video with written content, creating new value for paying subscribers, or they will perish.

Once news content providers with minimal presence in the U.S., like the BBC and Al Jazeera, “are no longer regional curios, they are here,” Mr. Carr explains. (FYI, current and former state department officers say Al Jazeera is a good source of information regarding developments in the Middle East, and the thinking of the Arab Street.  BBC broadcasts on numerous US NPR outlets.  This, too, is a great source of world news that most US TV networks and newspapers no longer cover.)

Most people do not know who Bernie Meyerson is and feel no compulsion to learn more about him.  They should.  He is the Vice President for Innovation at I.B.M. and a highly regarded researcher in advanced microprocessor design and computer systems.  It is Mr. Meyerson who ovrsees I.B.M.’s list of technological innovations that they think will come true in the next five years:

1. Small amounts of energy created by actions like people walking, or water running through a pipe, will be captured and stored in batteries and used to power things like phones, cars, or homes. ”You will see new ecosystems for generation and capture,”  the NY Times quoted Mr. Meyerson in its Monday morning BITS section.  “You [people] generate 60 to 65 watts [of energy] while walking.  You could easily use that to power your phone forever.”
2. Passwords as used today will disappear as increasingly powerful phones and sensors will store your personal biometric information.  This will enable computers and other machines to validate who you say you are.
3. Sensors on and inside the human brain will allow for the mental control of objects.  There are already experiments where the mind moves sensors, but Mr. Meyerson goes further: “You will observe thought patterns, which are highly personal.  You can use this to better understand stroke or disorders like autism,” Mr. Meyerson predicted.
4. Powerful mobile devices capable of precise language translation will belong to 80 percent of the world’s population.  Ubiquitous voice recognition and translation capabilities will make the phones useful to large segments of the population that are illiterate  or who use languages that are not easily written with keypads. (Does anyone think the world can become flatter?)
5. Personalized information filters and search will bring you only the information you want.  “This will invert the premise of marketing. The [smart] phones will start to be your advocate, recognizing what is near and dear to you and getting it.  Instead of companies speaking to you, you will reach out to companies.” (This makes Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, a novel concept of the Fast Company era of the 90s almost irrelevant.)

A county judge in Fort Worth once said of major change:  “The train is on the tracks.  You are either on the train or on the tracks.”  

That seems to be remarkable guidance for those of us in healthcare as we scramble to adapt to these technological changes.

© 2011 John Gregory Self

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Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

As we wind down the year enjoying the spirit of a magnificent holiday season with family and friends, I want to take this opportunity to thank you, my readers, for your support and, most importantly, your contribution of ideas.  Ideas are one of life's great treasures, and I value your contributions.

As a former newspaper writer, this blog has allowed me to reconnect with that experience and has provided me with enormous joy and satisfaction.  

The New Year will bring a major change for the blog.  Since its inception, it has been hosted by TypePad, a site that was created to accommodate the rapid surge of the blogosphere.  Sometime in the next 30 days we will move HealthCare Voice to my web site, www.johngself.com.  This move will coincide with the unveiling of my revamped web platform and integrate the blog with expanded news and career management information that will be featured on the upgraded site.  We will provide you ample notice  along with instructions to ensure that your subscription continues uninterrupted.  

As always, if there are issues or ideas that you would like to address, let me know.  Ideas, even the ones about which we disagree, are important and worthy of discussion.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or a fulfilling Kwanzaa.  Cheers.

CEOs, Meet The Millennials

There is an age-old conflict in business:  the friction between the established leaders of today and the newest crop of the leaders of tomorrow. 

Meet the Millennials.

This large generation of rising adults, born since 1982, are starkly different from their older managers, teachers, and colleagues. Also known as Generation Y and the Echo Boomers, several million of them have joined the adult world since 2000, and they are entering the workforce faster than you can say “retiring Baby Boomers,” according to a research report from the former MillennialGeneration.Org site.

This group poses a unique set of hurdles for today’s leaders in terms of attitudes and practices in how they work and communicate.

Facing “big ticket” challenges, not the least of which are significant reductions in spending on Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years, CEOs and Chief Human Resource Officers aren’t always attuned to the nuances of a particular age group, most especially how to recruit, develop and retain the top talent from this working class.  This is a critical consideration.

The payor’s focus on customer service and the negative financial implications that will occur for those hospitals who do not achieve top scores in service and satisfaction, will require the leaders of today to harness the incredible intelligence and remarkable creativity of this new generation. 

For someone who frequently lectures to graduate management students, my only advice is to pay attention and engage your "up and comers" about what they think and believe, not what you want them to think.

© 2011 John Gregory Self

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In Interviews, Words Have Consequences

Words have consequences in job interviews.

Over my 18 years in executive search, I have heard hundreds of candidates describe their leadership style as “consensual -- I build consensus.”   When a candidate gave that as an answer to a query regarding their leadership style in my earliest years, I would nod my head, as if I really understood what that term meant. 

I learned my lesson, fortunately not at the client's expense.  Now, I ask, “What does that really mean?”  The truth is, candidates use that line because it sounds so collegial, so non confrontational.  Considered in rapid time, consensual leadership sounds like the first cousin of a “collaborative” style.  They are not.   

Adam Bryant’s Corner Office column in Sunday’s New York Times provided an excellent case in point.

Consensus “...sounds wonderful but it was a very, very difficult way to manage anything, because to convince everybody to do one particular thing, especially if it was hard, [is] almost mpossible,” said Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a non-profit which has offered education, social-service and community building programs to children and families since 1970.  “Convincing people to give your way a try will work if you neutralize -- and sometimes you have to cauterize -- the ones who are really against change.  They’re the kind of person who, if you tell them it is raining outside, they will fight you tooth and nail.  You take them outside in the rain and they will say, ‘But it wasn’t raining five seconds ago’.  I spent a year a year trying to convince those people to change and give me a chance.  Then I realized it was a wasted year.”

Consensus leadership is a sure way for healthcare executives to get bogged down at a critical time in our history.  The challenges in healthcare are significant.  Most executives, employees and physicians inellectually comprehend what will transpire over the next five to 10 years as the result of out-of-control deficits and the national debt and Medicare’s central role in fueling the fire.  Major cuts will occur.  Healthcare delivery as we know it today will forever change.  Getting people to actually undertake the necessary change is another matter.  We might be able to collaborate on finding alternative strategies, but we will NEVER experience a time when everyone agrees to this kind of gut-wrenching change.  Those who fear and resist change may nod their heads in agreement -- giving the consensual leader a false sense of hope or security -- but when the first sting of change pain occurs, they will dig in their heals and resist mightily. 

So, as a healthcare leader, if you think a consensus building leadership styler is the answer, that it will help you through these tough times, perhaps you might want to rethink that proposition, because many of our leadership styles and techniques that worked 20 years ago, will not work in this new healthcare economy.

 

© 2011 John Gregory Self

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Missing the Little Things: When Service Is Not First Class

Random observations from a week’s worth of traveling across America:

Most business organizations profess a commitment to understanding and delivering first class service to their customers.  This implies a level of service is more than just being polite, helpful or customer-centric.  

Most companies that make these claims are guilty of misleading statements. First-class customer service is indeed rare.

Exceptional service on the sales floor, in the first-class cabin on a long fight, from your bank, or the most sophisticated medical center, can be undone  -- the brand damaged -- by the small details that go unnoticed or executed without care.  These seemingly insignificant miscues include: 

• A dirty, smelly public bathroom near the dining room of a state-of-the art hospital
• A financial decision not to serve first class passengers a meal because the flight time is 10 minutes under the airline’s three-hour threshold for meal service
• An airline squeezes the leg room in first class so they cram in another row of seats in coach; there is more leg room in an exit row in coach class
• The broken desk chair in a famous New York luxury hotel room that is reported to the management three times but never repaired
• The very profitable “money-center” bank which accepts your deposit from a tripple “A” rated insurance company drawn on a larger money center bank but does not give you access to your funds for up to 15 days even though the transaction will electronically clear at midnight on the date of deposit

Great service is more than doing the obvious things right.  It is simply not a catchy advertising slogan or an employee customer experience improvement campaign.  It is about getting the small, seemingly insignificant details of what we do, perfectly.  It is about the thousand moments of truth that happen every day and every time --  at the end of the day, when shifts are changing, when workers are tired, when airline executives make a calculated financial decision not to serve meals because they can get away with it with a captive travelers with few choices, or when management is just not paying attention.

Great companies deliver exceptional service because it runs deep in their DNA, a passion to do the right thing for their customers, not just when it is convenient or they feel like it. 

Sadly, truly great customer service is rare today because it is not in the DNA of most organizations  When that is the case, we can only look to the CEO.  Most things DNA within a company, most especially customer service, originates in the heart and the mind of the person at the top, not some expensive pre-packaged consulting product.

© 2011 John Gregory Self

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Video Summaries of Candidate Interviews Leads To Greater Success

Video Summaries of your search firm’s recommended candidates can help organizations avoid a costly leadership miss-hire; not video conferencing, which is widely overused in executive search, but edited video summaries of your recruiter’s in-depth face-to-face interview with the candidate.

Using videoconference technology to conduct the defining interviews that will be used to select their recommended candidates is a big mistake, the purported cost expense savings notwithstanding.  Reviewing an edited version of the interview allows the client to make an informed decision as to which of the four or five candidates on the panel should be invited for a site interview.

The proof is in the record of success.  Clients who have used search firms that incorporate video summaries as part of their candidate presentation say that it is “incredibly helpful” in selecting the right candidates .  “In the past, we had to rely solely on the recruiter’s judgment, and in many larger firms, the partner has only limited exposure to the candidate in the screening process,” one CEO said who asked that I not use his name out of concern that there might be negative repercussions.  Anyone who understands how most large consultancies work -- and search firms are consultancies -- knows that the partner is a rainmaker first, a client relationship manager second, and a working consultant a distant third. 

Providing clients video summaries is a game changer in the client-search firm relationship.

The CEO continued that over a seven-year period and 12 searches, “having the videos helped us avoid some big mistakes.  Over that period of time we only had one candidate who did not work out and that individual left after two years and the search firm provided a replacement.”  He is not alone in his assessment.

The cost of a miss-hire at the executive level is extraordinarily costly, from 50 to 500 times the failed executive’s annual base compensation, depending on the size of the company and the that individual’s scope of responsibility.

Using videoconference interviews between the recruiter and candidates for the final panel is penny wise and pound foolish.

© 2011 John Gregory Self

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