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Sign up for the COMPLIMENTARY Becker's Hospital Review CEO Report & CFO Report E-Weeklies at www.BeckersHospitalReview.com or call (800) 417-2035 The next weight and priority might be spending some concentrated time reviewing and preparing for the rollout of the employee engagement survey. I have to devote enough time to this task to properly study the process and make sure I'm able to clearly communicate it at tomorrow's staff meeting. I also need to make sure I can connect the survey to our broader organizational goals in that meeting to maximize the response rate and staff input. So that gets a weight of 20. Next, I'll prioritize rounding, which gets a weight of 20. I will plan what type of feedback I want to gain from my staff so my time is well utilized and I'm efficient while on the floor. I'll plan to ask specifically about the new software product that was implemented last week so I can make any changes needed. I can also use feedback from rounding in the staff meeting tomorrow to provide updates. Even more, I can prepare to reward and recognize staff who were managed up as I round, and during the round I'll connect with the employee who is back and check on her child. Finally, the next priority would be to send the request for a thank you note to my boss so an employee I heard positive things about in my recent staff rounds is recognized. I'll give this a weight of 10. Do the math and you'll see this all adds up to 100 percent. Of course, it may not really take 100 percent of my day, but that's fine. I can always spend excess time working on items from tomorrow's list. I find this process works. Instead of looking at tasks from a surface level, I thought each one through — how it relates to one another and which tasks, when completed, help me more effectively complete future tasks, like my staff meeting tomorrow. I can also organize in a way that helps me multitask, like rounding while also checking up on an employee with a sick family member. By connecting my behaviors and allotting a certain amount of time to each to-do list item, I can better understand what constitutes a "priority." This is an empowering piece of knowledge, as everything in healthcare can quickly become a "high priority" if we don't deliberately think it through. Finally, this routine lets me begin my day with a sense of certainty that vital tasks will get finished first. That evening, I won't leave my office thinking about the one vital thing I didn't do. Another tactic: Hardwiring essential behaviors Rituals are incredibly powerful for time management. Another way to organize tasks and make the most of your time is to hardwire certain behaviors and items from your to-do list into your routine. To many leaders, it makes sense to frame items as daily, monthly and quarterly tasks. Just as airplane pilots refer to a pre-flight checklist to hardwire safety, leaders can do the same. Here is an example of a checklist you can use to hardwire leadership behaviors. Daily 1. Manage up myself, my colleagues and physicians. 2. Round for two hours each day with employees and patients. 3. Utilize rounding logs to follow up on issues, and reward and recognize employees. 4. Reward and recognize staff with the 3:1 compliment ratio. 5. Make pre- and post-discharge phone calls. Weekly 1. Manage up one compliment to a senior leader to feed the employee thank-you note process. 2. Publicly reward and recognize a high performer while rounding or during staff meetings. 3. Recruit one high performer to coach one middle performer to help him or her achieve higher performance. 57 4. Encourage employees' bright ideas and innovation. 5. Update the communication board and post weekly patient satisfaction scores. 6. Solicit feedback from staff for suggested service and operational improvements. Monthly 1. Hold monthly department meetings. 2. Meet monthly with your supervisor. Discuss identified opportunities for improvement and what you've learned from rounding. 3. Reinforce behavioral standards, both for the organization and department. 4. Conduct 30- and 90-day with new hires and help answer their questions. Quarterly 1. Review and update 90-day work plans and goals. Include initiatives, actions to be taken, timelines and rewards. 2. Attend leadership development sessions. I've found both weighting and prioritizing and breaking tasks into daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly checklists can help leaders regain control of their workday. No leader, department or hospital can wait for their external environment to calm down, as such a time will likely never arrive in healthcare. We can't change this reality — what we can change is how we live and work in the face of it. n Hospital Review 5th Annual Becker's Hospital Review Meeting REGISTER NOW! Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual Meeting Co-Chaired by Chuck Lauer and Scott Becker 100+ sessions and 190+ speakers May 15-17, 2014 Swissôtel • Chicago, Illinois For more information visit, http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ 2013conference/

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