Providing Time & Space for Human Development

by Jon Kuehler

In 2020, my daughter was born. The due date was right amid COVID restrictions and just weeks after NYC had closed down delivery rooms for fathers. Despite the chaotic time, there was ample opportunity for me to dive into the necessary “pre-parenting” literature. I spent many hours thumbing through the pages of every “new baby manual” I could get my hands on. 

A good friend of mine told me about the book, Happiest Baby on the Block, and I went about memorizing the five S’s of soothing a baby: swaddling, side position, shushing, swinging, and sucking. Barely having ever held a baby, I walked into fatherhood with a confidence that only the most ignorant new parent can have. I mean, how hard could this really be? After Josie arrived, it was nearly weekly, and without fail, that I would be completely unable to soothe her, and because the suggestions within Happiest Baby were merely that—suggestions—mechanical information without any actual practical application, I would go hours without truly tapping into that reservoir of knowledge I read before I found myself in this recurring parenting challenge.

Then, at the end of the day, completely isolated, exhausted, and not knowing how to proceed, I would sit defeated in a chair, shushing and rocking Josie, who would then "miraculously” calm down. Not even at that moment would I recognize that all I had done was follow the instructions I had so confidently memorized before her arrival. 

As I've been rounding with executives across healthcare, it's been rare to hear from one who wasn't 100% confident their physicians and nurses understood the primary concepts and evidence-based best practices the organization was pursuing to improve outcomes. However, they regularly told me there was massive variance in executing those practices. 

Digging in more, it's clear that the consistent theme from these executives is not that they weren't developing the rights skills or that their clinicians understood the best practices but instead that there was a lack of “time and space" for which the clinicians could consume the content related to the practices and then apply those learnings to their practice of medicine, including connecting to patients and families and collaborating with their colleagues, and leading their teams. You can find some of the quotes I heard here. I imagine you’ve been saying something similar in just the last couple of weeks.

Over the past 17 years, I've had the opportunity to witness some profound outcomes across many leading organizations. Still, it’s only been in the last year that I’ve been able to put into words how to refine an effective human development strategy.

In that last year, I've dug deep into how the highest-performing organizations address the time and space development gap related to improving outcomes in their high-reliability, value-based care, engagement, and human connection efforts. It turns out that core change management principles are fundamental to effectively providing the time and space for human development to drive organizational change.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:  

1. Development work should be plated as just that: an investment in individuals to obtain the skills necessary to address their everyday challenges. No overburdened clinician will take on “just another task” when they can’t fundamentally articulate what is in it for them. Time is relative. Will your clinicians take five more minutes a week on development work they're convinced will make their practice of medicine more fulfilling?
2. Skill-building and development work can’t take hours a day and must be broken down into minutes per week. The period in time (if there ever was one) in which we can ask our clinicians to thumb through large research and white papers, watch an hour-long training, or leave practice for a day to attend a workshop is a thing of the past. This leaves leaders to feel more comfortable asking their direct reports to invest their time as they know they aren't creating more pajama time for an already burned-out clinician, and it empowers individual clinicians to invest in their own development because it’s manageable.
3. Organizations should align and integrate all learning and development work into existing strategy, governance, and operations. High-performing organizations don’t fall into the trap of adding more meetings to hardwire their development work. They intentionally create a strategic roadmap and operating plan that aligns organizational priorities with those of local teams and, ultimately, individuals. They connect the dots by identifying current workflows to repurpose five minutes of existing meeting time for teams to learn, try, and share together - the most productive form of learning via application and group discussion. These same organizations provide materials and resources to their leaders to actually engage in crucial conversation and prompt interaction to ensure they don't have unnecessary take-home work, and they then leverage leader rounding for performance accountability. They create continuous learning cultures and with a framework that allows them to bring human development and organizational improvement to life.  
4. Creating longitudinal pathways for repetitive, active, and progressive learning is the only way to sustain improvement. The idea of continuous learning is core to every clinician’s identity. Their practice of medicine has been a journey and development work shouldn’t be dissimilar with only one-time events or siloed learning. It’s when leaders allow clinicians to learn skills that help address their everyday challenges, empower them to put into practice those skills, and create the space for them to execute that they become reconnected with their purpose, and the practice of medicine becomes more fulfilling. 

Focusing on human development allows us to build a future where clinicians stay empowered, feel valued, and know they are being supported. By promoting a culture of continuous learning that seamlessly integrates with current processes, we can give clinicians the time and space to develop essential, human-centered skills that drive better outcomes. Only then can we build a resilient healthcare system equipped to meet the changing needs of patients and the healthcare continuum.

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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.