Human Development’s Impact on Everything

by Jon Kuehler

After working for healthcare measurement and improvement companies in the experience and engagement space for nearly 17 years, I was burned out, frustrated, and felt like even after all those years of trudging along the path, I was still staring at another massive mountain to climb. 

On average, and in the aggregate, the national performance on HCAHPS (an admittedly imperfect measure) had not moved much for decades, and post COVID, it had dipped to some of the lowest levels since its inception. There wasn't a rosier story when looking at engagement and burnout levels. 

It seemed that any pre-COVID momentum had stalled, so I started by removing myself and tackling a new problem, one that was exciting and that used proprietary data in unique ways. The work stretched me to lead strategy, product, and engineering to build a data solution in MedTech. While working on that problem, I became intrigued by what Practicing Excellence was accomplishing. Practicing Excellence was an organization leading with a "tech-enabled microlearning application" message that seemed to be moving my previously perceived mountains; producing case studies outlining improvement in metrics as broad as engagement, burnout, retention, and patient experience.

I couldn't help but want to understand how they were doing what they were doing—and it didn't take long to realize that it wasn't just microlearning. It was an approach to human development that was powerful and practical. 

For much of the last year at Practicing Excellence, I've been sitting down with hundreds of executives to learn how they apply professional development principles to overcome their big rock challenges.

And what I've found to be true won’t surprise most people: organizational development, cultural transformation, and change management are complex endeavors. 

That said, I've found incredible work being done across the country: from regional health systems to massive integrated delivery networks, there are organizations moving from bottom to top decile performance in patient experience, realizing significant decreases in turnover rates and aligning entire cultures around the joy in medicine. 

Even when sitting down with successful organizations, they've admitted struggling in three key areas:

Time and Space

When confronted with all of the other things on the plates of clinicians and healthcare leaders, the idea of targeted and meaningful development work often takes a back seat. Two phrases repeatedly came up; "We don't have time to pull clinicians out of the care setting for immersive learning," and "Our leaders are treading water right now; we can't put one more thing on their plate." The other is space, and one of my favorite explanations of this comes from Adam Grant's book "Hidden Potential" when he discusses "scaffolding"--the idea of an individual having the framework and environment for which they can apply their learnings. In healthcare today, we have a HUGE portfolio of AMAZING conferences for which we send our leaders and clinicians, yet upon their return, gravity hits. The take-way: Learners don't have the time nor the space to put into practice any skills they may have developed.

Scale

I spoke with organizations that had focused development opportunities ranging from five people to thousands, and each of them told me that they loved what they were doing but simply couldn't scale it across the organizations. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing an intervention that profoundly impacts everyone involved, but one that they must admit to not having the resources to scale. Scale comments spanned; "I can't create new content fast enough," "I don't have a mechanism with which I can disperse the content effectively." We're doomed to limited impact without the ability to share learnings with everyone, and to reinforce those learnings through a longitudinal journey, and to implement best practices at scale. Have no fear: even organizations that recognize their scale problem have seen excellent outcomes because great leaders find a way. This is not a time to throw your hands up and let perfect get in the way of good. The take-away: There are still countless organizations today that are developing leaders and clinicians with incredible results.

Cohesiveness

There is no shortage of resources outlining evidence-based best practices shared across healthcare. In their book, “Compassionomics,” Stephen Trzeciak, MD and Anthony Mazzarelli suggest that connectedness to others is the fastest path to decreasing burnout and driving engagement. Many change-makers in countless organizations have hardwired best practices, yet here we are, facing the most significant levels of burnout we've ever experienced, more turnover and clinicians leaving healthcare than healthcare can afford to lose, and patient experience scores at or near their lowest levels in two decades. So, what did I hear from executives in my rounding? Nothing they were doing felt "authentically us" nor "connected to their organizational vision."  How could we expect meaningful change if we rotate a small group of individuals to attend varying conferences? How many people can we expect to read through the 30-page PowerPoint we've put together on the best practice intervention the organization is deploying. The take-away: True change management happens when everyone on the team sees every intervention as a part of a broader strategy of the grand vision. 

At Practicing Excellence, we've zeroed in on helping organizations overcome the challenges of time and space, scale, and cohesiveness. We're evolving from a "tech-enabled microlearning app platform" to a "human development" company by working with leading health systems and actively engaging with healthcare leaders. 

Our unapologetic intent is to coach and develop the healthcare workforce. We know that development leads to improved collaboration among colleagues, stronger leaders of teams, and enhanced experiences for everyone within healthcare (physicians, nurses, staff and patients alike), and we're confident a focus on this work will lead to profound change across healthcare. 

In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing more about the three pitfalls above and what I've learned through my rounding here.

Now, more than ever, skill-building in healthcare is crucial. If you’re seeking support to kickstart your organization’s continuous improvement journey, get in touch with us now.