I heard a saying that if you set yourself on fire, then people will come watch you burn. Does not sound like any fun at all from a physical standpoint.
Make the World Take Notice
This is not meant in the literal sense, but is a statement that if you do something innovative or revolutionary, then people can not help but notice. You will no longer blend in with the background of status quo, or the land of familiarity. We see this fire demonstrated in athletics all the time. The University of North Carolina basketball team winning the 2017 National Atlantic Coast Conference (NACC), is definitely considered to be a team on fire! They stand out!
Status quo is safe and predictable, mostly non-challenging, and actually not very interesting. One may feel this is a sharp contrast to the healthcare industry culture. Healthcare remains in the public eye continually, and there is a keen awareness to internal and external stakeholders that the industry is forever changing.
Traditional Leadership Needs a Spark
Unfortunately in many organizations, the way we lead healthcare has been more traditional and generic. This statement may create a little bit of an internal burn, but industries are known by their patient outcomes and colleague engagement. Many publications continue to show symptoms of a culture that is not an optimal foundation for colleagues and patients, in fact a culture can exist that is a risk to patient’s safety and quality care.
We need to ignite a fire of transformation in healthcare to revolutionize the way we operate daily, beginning first and foremost with our healthcare organizational culture!
Don’t Stick Your Head in the Sand
To transform, we must think differently and acknowledge our present culture and not be an ostrich with his head under the sand. Culture has to be the centerpiece on our executive boardroom table, and become a top priority on our healthcare industry agenda. Among the competing areas for leadership attention are finance, quality of care and all the thousands of governance and regulatory requirements, but regardless, culture must be priority and always focused on first.
If we want to turn around healthcare in America, it must begin as an internal job, we have to light the match internally to transform our culture. Our government can not be considered the answer to workplace culture, but healthcare leadership can!
How to Get Started
Healthcare culture rises and falls on healthcare leadership. Healthcare leaders desire to have a highly motivated, accountable, reliable culture of excellence, but struggle on how to achieve this. So if you want to learn more about how to begin to transform or ignite the culture fire of excellence, I suggest you read my book The Culture Cure: Transforming the Modern Healthcare System.
The Culture Cure is the kindling to starting the fire using a blueprint to transform organizational culture. This blueprint is called Corporate Transcendence™.
Ignite the culture fire in your organization, and all will watch your light brightly burn!
