If you talk to a disruptive physician, you can figure out what is wrong with your hospital.
(Or with your group.)
All of the yelling. All of the insults. All of the hang-ups. All of the perseveration.
Strip away the emotions. Underlying it are clear nuggets of truth about what is not working at your facility.
A highly educated and highly motivated individual. They are frustrated and passionate. Their lack of self-regulation gives you a window.
Are you willing to see it? Are you willing to change it?
Read More →
We spend large chunks of our time attending or running meetings. During this webinar video which I gave to 260 American College of Physician Executives members, I highlight six steps to accomplish absolutely nothing during a meeting.
You may choose to do the opposite in order to effectively run your organization. The full transcript and other resources are also included.
How to Run a Meeting →
As I sit on this old wooden pew, I rock side-to-side to ensure that blood flows to each part of my bottom. We’ve been at this rented church for 75 minutes listening to the sounds of my daughter’s violin class recital and now it’s time for the last piece.
A high school student with a large tattoo of a stanza on her left bicep stands up and begins to play. A beautiful and tenderly nuanced sound fills the hall. Siblings, who have been leaning against parents, drop their muted handheld gaming devices and listen. We sit with a hushed hunger as we are lifted by her musicianship.
The performance ends and Learn 3 Steps To Become An Expert→
Mark Suster (@msuster) is a venture capitalist from Southern California. His blogs are potent with business thinking on topics such as negotiating, sales & marketing, and leadership. His writing targets venture capital startups, and this fits well in our hyperchanging healthcare market.
There is an old joke when referring to physician governance. “In a medical group, what do you call a 9 Yes, and 1 No vote?.”
Read the 3 Tweets →
You need to do physician things. Delegate the rest to someone else.
Look around at our most successful colleagues. They assign non-physician tasks to non-physicians. They use scribes to help them document, midlevel practitioners to perform routine evaluations and procedures, and assistants to coordinate their work. If it doesn’t need a physician to do it, they delegate it to the lowest cost expert.
Learn How to Use an Executive Assistant→
We need to take care of ourselves as well as we take care of our patients.
I am 44 years old. I have an amazing wife, two young daughters, a dog, and seven chickens.
I make good money with an easy commute to work and I live in a comfortable house in the center of a wonderful town. And I do so by helping others. Life is good.
So why am I so grumpy? And as I look around, why are others so grumpy.
We work hard. We stretch time to fit. We ask ourselves to do extraordinary things amidst limited resources and yet as we accomplish, and as we fight the fight, it is easy to forget that our tenacity comes at an expense. As a loan draws against our future earnings, we borrow against our self. We borrow against our happiness, our health, and our wellness. And we borrow against the happiness, health, and wellness of those we love.
We know human physiology. Yet we forget that the laws of life also apply to ourselves.
Learn How To Become Resilient →
Physicians are an avoidant bunch.
We tend to focus on what’s wrong with the patient. We move away from things: We avoid disease, we decrease complications, we reduce morbidity and mortality. Even as we talk of moving our patients toward health, we talk of preventative medicine. Many of us carry this “away from” motivation to other parts of our lives. We aim to decrease our risk and minimize potential loss. We ensure that we are insured against anything that might go wrong, from a patient, our house, our car, our health, our ability.
On the other hand, as physician leaders we often move toward something: We move toward efficient processes, we move toward profit, we move toward better opportunities for our organization. This creates a conundrum. As physician leaders who are moving toward positive results, we attempt to communicate with physicians who are motivated away from negative results. The resulting communication gap doesn’t have to be a problem. Instead, it can be exploited to increase your ability to motivate others.
Here are five steps you can use to better motivate colleagues:
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We were sitting around the room, and they were silently thinking: “How are we going to get rid of him?” And they were thinking of me.
Some avoided eye contact. Some smiled vacantly. Others shook their heads affirmatively in a tolerant manner.
I was decisive and divisive and though I spoke of the big picture, I was self-interested. And if I didn’t change my approach, my power would wane and my position of leadership would be endangered.
I needed to pause and ask myself two questions:
Read How to Wield Physician Power →
The surgeon and I sat at the table.
“The nurses said you were yelling,” I explained.
“I never yell. You can ask anyone,” she coldly remarked with fierce eyes as she pounded the table to punctuate each <bang> word <bang>.
She was right: She didn’t raise her voice. However, her piercing glare and table thumping would rattle all but the most modulated professional.
Read on →
