The fundamentals

Does your organization teach the fundamentals? Regularly? Here’s Don Shula on the great Paul Brown (from a WSJ article in 2008):

On the first night of training camp, he would dictate – and you’d have to write down long-hand – the fundamentals of football: how to run, how to catch, how to carry the ball. He did that every year. Otto Graham [Cleveland’s star quarterback] had been there 10 years and he’s in there doing it with the rookies.

Happy almost 2010. Here’s to hoping your 2009 was a good one.

Culture = Brand

Merry Christmas!

For those of you with a little extra time to read and think over the holidays, I think Tony Hsieh’s (CEO of Zappos) post titled “Your Culture is Your Brand” is the perfect thought to enter 2010: what will you do differently this year?

Yikes. GOOD compares current spending on chronic disease treatment to projected spending on chronic disease treatment.

Executing engagement

I think organizations today pretty well understand that an engaged workforce means a more productive workforce.  Understanding, however, has not made engagement reality. That lack of execution thing keeps coming back…

From the Deloitte Shift Report 2009 (emphasis added):

We also discovered that, despite some variations across industries, 75 to 80 percent of the workforce lacks passion for the work they perform on a daily basis. This is particularly significant given the strong correlation between Worker Passion and more active participation in knowledge flows. If companies are serious about more effective participation in knowledge flows, they must find ways to draw out greater passion from their workers.

via Ed Cotton

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8236700&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Helping Hands (Explained) – A glimpse into the future of Integrated Health Care from Ergonomidesign on Vimeo.

Ergonomidesign envisions an integrated healthcare ecosystem.

Very cool.

Via Core77

Asking questions

I think there’s a perception that the empowered patient has a profile most prominently related to age, younger being more likely.  Not always the case.  Read the story of Tom Peters’ aunt, she asked questions and insisted upon answers to turn a potentially bad story into a good one, except that the whole process is an indictment on the problems of healthcare.

An update to a very positive story

The story of Paul Levy asking the staff of BIDMC last year to make difficult decisions in order to save jobs is one of my favorite healthcare stories ever.  Here’s an optimistic update.

The demise of control

A healthcare organization that thinks it’s difficult to control employees now hasn’t seen anything yet. Signal vs. Noise:

A lot of companies seek to control employees. They have handbooks and policies. They monitor emails. They make rules about what’s allowed and what’s forbidden.

But “control” is a tricky thing. The tighter the reins, the more you create an environment of distrust. An us vs. them mentality takes hold. And that’s when people start trying to game the system.

“Reform”

This article is sickening (“Understanding Obamacare” by Luke Mitchell).  Democrats in bed with the insurers and the drug companies. The Republicans opposing healthcare reform not for idealistic “values” but because there is no other play. Someone once said to me that if we, instead of voting, randomly selected names from a phone book to represent “us” this country would be better off.  Hmm.

What is so awful is that there’s not even an underdog to root for (except for the average American I suppose, but then who cares about the patient?)

The beat goes on.

Ideas and Thoughts and Goodness

This is making the internet rounds. Seth Godin asked a bunch of smart folks to share an idea and out came What Matters Now. I’ve culled a fair share of ideas already. It’s a fantastically great read.