If you aspire to be a High Reliability Organization, your primary obstacle will be the adaptive limits of your staff.
To be an HRO, your leaders must commit to zero harm. Your board must commit, your C-level leaders must commit, nurse leaders, physician leaders – leaders all the way down the line must commit to zero harm for patients and staff.
But here’s the rub:
We adaptive change experts know what drives human beings. And it’s not about intention. It’s about psychology. Most people are unconsciously committed to hiding their inadequacies, protecting their turf, showing themselves to their best advantage, covering up their weaknesses, playing politics, hiding their limitations, or just plain hiding. This has nothing to do with intelligence and applies to the board and C-suite, to your providers, nurses, mid-level leaders, and so on.
Ignore this reality and you’ll find yourself bashing your head against an HRO glass ceiling. In other words, Agile, Six Sigma, Lean, and other process improvement tools will take you only as far as your staff’s cognitive agility will allow.
To have a shot at becoming an HRO, most of your staff must have something we call the Self-Authoring Mind. Comfort with ambiguity and paradox, the ability to embrace multiple truths, internal sense of authority and agency, ability to think with complexity, and more. These are all aspects of the Self-Authoring Mind.
Fern EPC is a fast track for physicians, physician leaders, and healthcare executives to the higher levels of adult development required to form High Reliability Healthcare Organizations.