John Paul Getty said......"In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy"
Take note, we are in times and rapid change. So why could experience be your worst enemy? Pretty simple really......experience tends to drive our thinking, out goals and our actions to areas with which we are most familiar. And considering the changes coming down the pike, that may not serve practices well.
Change management is not a new concept, but this year especially, almost every practice will be involved directly in change management. Hospitals acquiring physicians will see change to their bottom line, but the providers they acquire will feel the change the most. Independent practices will have to spend money to acquire or upgrade their EHR/EMR and implement them successfully as new phases of meaningful use rolled out, the so called Obama care becomes more of a reality this year as 2014 becomes the starting point for full implementation, and then there is ICD 10. Do I need to list more?
So how does a practice successfully manage change? Change must be realistic, manageable and measurable. The reasons for most of the change that needs to occur this year is mandated, so going through the why are we changing step can be eliminated. But how to change and who will be most affected by change needs careful consideration.
- change needs to be understood and managed in a way that people can cope effectively with it. Change can be unsettling, so the manager logically needs to be a settling influence. Don't sell it....people usually react negatively to selling as they see it as something you are trying to get them to do that they will inherently not want to do. Check that people affected by the change agree with, or at least understand, the need for change, and have a chance to decide how the change will be managed, and to be involved in the planning and implementation of the change.
- For organizational change that entails new actions, objectives and processes for a group or team of people, use face to face meetings to achieve understanding, involvement, plans, measurable aims, actions and commitment. Encourage your management team to use these meetings with their people too if they are helping you to manage the change.
- Senior managers and directors responsible for managing organizational change do not, as a rule, fear change - they generally thrive on it. So remember that your people do not relish change, they find it deeply disturbing and threatening. "Your people's fear of change is as great as your own fear of failure." If your managers are not thriving on change, you probably do not have the right people doing the right jobs in your organization/practice. This is key to successful change management.
- "Get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency." John Kotter
- Analyses are more helpful if they identify critical vs essential task elements - this will help you to help the decision-makers to be more pragmatic (not least because by applying pressure to some of the 'essential' elements will reveal them to be habitual dispensable or traditional replaceable elements).
- Set in place ways to measure the effectiveness of change.....use it to tweak the processes.
Have fun with it.....make this process (usually painful) a way of fostering creativeness among stake-holders.....that includes providers.
Change this year is inevitable........embrace it....plan your work....work your plan.