An interesting book to read is Open Leadership by Charlene Li. I am about half way through the book and it has stimulated a lot of thought about the idea of open organizations and medical practices. The idea behind the book is that engagement with employees and customers (patients) requires an understanding of openness in the organization. As leaders we have to establish our level of comfort and support for openness. From this pro-active determination of comfort and support policy and process will follow. For example, if a medical practice is most comfortable keeping all plan, strategies, and information closely held, active engagement with the community on a Facebook page will be unsuccessful. It will result in releasing information in the same way as advertizing and not be the relationship that drives people to participate. Li challenges organizations to take a first step through an openness audit. She provides it on her website http://www.charleneli.com/resources/openness-audit-2/
The questions I am considering are: how do we balance the willingness to be open with staff and patients, yet protect privacy? How willing are we to keep up the engagement with all we have to do to stay afloat in this crazy health care environment? With so many avenues to engage openly, how do we choose the right manner? What if we don’t participate openly, what will that do to us long term? Maybe the second half of the book will provide these answers.