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Quick Change

By Duffy Newman

The change acceleration process has been used successfully in business all over the world.

World-class leaders understand how truly difficult it is to successfully implement major change. The skill and discipline needed are rare qualities, and the complexities of today’s health care system make implementation especially hard.

Change strategies fail for many reasons, such as inadequate support from key leaders, inadequate buy-in from those affected, confusion about results and accountabilities, slow reaction to roadblocks, continued allegiance to old processes and behaviors—just to name a few.

As a seasoned health care leader, you know what you are up against. You and your teams are perfectly capable of developing the right technical solution to your most pressing and complex problems. Initiatives fail, not because of the technical solution, but because of the organizational engagement strategy. Great organizations recognize that everyone from the top to the bottom must align around a change strategy and support it to realize successful execution.

Unfortunately, implementation often gets short shrift, as outlined in a recent Journal of Business Strategy article: “Setting strategy is glamorous … however, the evidence shows that once strategy is set, interest among team members falls rapidly away, implementation efforts pull up short, operational behaviors and short-term goals take over. The result is suboptimal performance.”

To successfully implement change, organizations must focus intentionally on behaviors of leaders and teams. Competitive advantage and profitability come from implementing complex change in a very focused way, which means expending time and resources not just on the strategic decision to change, but also on the implementation.

One approach to implementing critical change initiatives is to use a structured program such as the Health Education and Research Trust’s new Upper Quadrant Program. The first primary component of the UQ Program is an adaptation of GE’s change acceleration process. This process has seven levers and a toolkit that allows for implementation teams to lead change. CAP has been used successfully in businesses all over the world.

The second major UQ focus is a behavior leadership model that has also been used successfully worldwide and is proven to reduce stress and improve morale. In addition to focusing on process and people, UQ is about efficiency and profitability with minimal stress and fewer restarts. It is about embedding change tools into an organization that will live past any single change initiative.

UQ is designed for health care teams that are ready to implement a mission-critical initiative. For more information about the UQ Program, contact dnewman@aha.org or (415) 248-8405.

Duffy Newman is senior director of Leadership Education and Fellowships for HRET, Chicago.

This article 1st appeared in the February 2006 issue of HHN Magazine.

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