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November
20, 2000 Issue 6
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FROM
THE FIELD Thinking out of the "Doctor Box" |
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SHOP
TALK Are E-Business Companies Really All That Different from Their Predecessors? and Reader Response to Tools for the Empowered Team |
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LEARNING
LINKS "How Am I Supposed to Work with Her?": The "Accidental Adversaries" Storyline |
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FROM
THE FIELD Thinking out of the "Doctor Box" One of the challenges of current medical practice--for patients and doctors alike--is the limit on how long physicians can spend in the examining room. With pressure to boost profits by squeezing in more patients, doctors often feel rushed as they diagnose and treat symptoms. Patients aren't able to develop a relationship with their providers or to ask questions. The result is frustration on all sides--and perhaps even a decline in the quality of care. To address this problem of access, some medical practices are experimenting with group appointments. Instead of waiting several weeks for an individual visit, patients can drop in on a group appointment at the last minute. In the case of a Palo Alto, California group, 10 patients meet with a doctor for 90 minutes to discuss their symptoms and receive advice and treatment. The tradeoffs include less confidentiality, a relatively long time commitment, and limits on the kinds of problems that can be treated. But for some people, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. What can organizations outside the medical profession learn from this "out-of-the-box" experiment? One key lesson is the need to examine our assumptions. Just because we've always done something one way doesn't mean that it's the only way. In this case, by shifting how they thought about a limited resource--doctors' time--caregivers found a creative way to offer patients greater access to medical care without compromising the quality of that access. Source: "Doctors Find Quality Time with Patients in Groups" by Rusty Dornin, cnn.com, October 6, 2000. Join the new Healthcare Community Forum at the Pegasus Forums. | |||||||||||||||
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SHOP
TALK I can't pick up a magazine without reading how volatile and different the current crop of e-business companies are. But are they really all that different as organizations? Or were the Fords, Shells, and GEs in their infancy more similar than we admit to the Cisco Systems, Amazon.coms, and E-bays of today? --Submitted by Jose Pacheco Please take a minute to share your thoughts about this issue at the Leverage Points Discussion forum, part of our new online Pegasus Forums. Selected comments will be shared in a future issue of LEVERAGE POINTS. From Issue #5: We often tell people they are empowered, but empowerment cannot be imposed, and teams who have been told they are empowered do not always act autonomously. What tools can we use to develop a shared model of action for the empowered team? --Submitted by Malcolm Jones I often find this tool useful with any team that finds itself "stuck." It is based on something called "The Swamp Model." 1. Ask the team to list its current "projects." 2. Rate each project on two dimensions: A. Who is able to get the project done? B. How soon can the appropriate people accomplish the project? 3. Create a two-dimensional grid from the ratings, with "Who" on one axis and "When" on the other. The scales on each dimension run from "close to us"/"now" to "far away from us"/"a long time out." 4. Create two regions: The single quadrant that is "close to us" and "soon" is referred to as "Dry Land." Only those projects that fall into this quadrant are likely to be accomplished. The other three quadrants are referred to as the "Swamp." Any projects falling in the Swamp are unlikely to get done. How can the team move projects from the Swamp onto Dry Land? 1. If they require people too far from the team, try to recruit those people or get their authority transferred to the team. 2. Failing that, ask "What part of it can we do with just the people we have?" 3. If the project takes too long, figure out the most useful first steps and do them. By recontextualizing the project as a series of "next steps," each "next step" comes onto Dry Land. jgunkler@sprintmail.com To judge if our environment supports empowered teams, we need a surprise-o-meter. If team members are truly empowered, they will surprise us fairly regularly. This indicates that the individuals are feeling enabled to take risks, encouraged to think outside of organizational boundaries, and free to take chances. If you are never surprised, then they are likely feeling limited by organizational norms (written or not). dedwards@this.org We used a model that included: Using open dialogue to develop a shared picture of success. Building on each team member's intrinsic needs. Setting an expectation that we would celebrate each other's successes. Building a learning community in which we all learned from our mistakes, learned from each other, and worked with the help of others to create new solutions. Always having measurable stretch goals so we had to continue to learn. We used a formal process to welcome people to the team. After three months, we noticed a "blossom effect": People became radiant with an observable glow. They now believed that all their energy could go into creation and that they didn't have to engage in dysfunctional corporate games. sratlanta@bigplanet.com Readers who wish to view the complete responses to this question or to continue this discussion are invited to go to the Pegasus Forums section of our Web site. Look for the Leverage Points Discussions forum. | |||||||||||||||
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LEARNING LINKS "How Am I Supposed to Work with Her?": The "Accidental Adversaries" Storyline by Philip Ramsey and Rachel Wells Managers are becoming increasingly aware that strong relationships among team members, departments, and even companies and their vendors are essential for organizations to thrive. When relationships are healthy, people can direct their energies toward revenue-generating activities. When relationships are weak, however, energy is dissipated as people focus on politicking, self-protection, and game-playing. In any relationship, some of the things you do contribute to my achieving my objectives and others get in my way. Often the "getting in the way" occurs when you inadvertently make my life more difficult while pursuing your own goals. In response, I might set up safeguards for future interactions. These safeguards end up making your life more difficult. You then act to protect your interests, unintentionally obstructing me in turn. In this case, we have become "Accidental Adversaries." Although it is tempting to think we can sort out our disagreements by finding out "who started it," this approach is unlikely to help us break out of the vicious cycle in which we've become trapped. The good news is that we can choose to focus on the benefits that we offer one another, and we can cultivate our capacity to act in selfless rather than self-interested ways. For this to happen, we need to form relationships with those whom we trust. Then, if we do encounter conflicts, we can work together to overcome them. View the complete article from THE SYSTEMS THINKER V11N8, October 2000. |
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| Copyright 2000 Pegasus Communications. LEVERAGE POINTS can be freely distributed in its entirety, or reproduced or excerpted for another publication with written permission from Pegasus Communications. | ||||||||||||||||
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"We live in a dense and tangled global
system
in which everyone has a different vantage point....
We can look at that fact in a negative way,
as a description of a new Tower of Babel, where
we can't hear each other because of so much
diversity. Or we can look at it as an invitation
to come together and truly listen to one another--listen
with the expectation that we will hear something
new and different, that we will hear what we
need to hear from others in order to grow and
survive."
