Becker's Hospital Review

62 Hospital Management 32% of CEOs Don't Think Their C-Suite is Built to Achieve Strategic Goals By Molly Gamble "Management by walking around," in which se- nior leaders visit hospital front-lines to solicit ideas for improvement, can have a negative affect on staff if leaders don't act quickly on the prob- lems they see, according to a study from Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Business School. MBWA, a management style widely used in man- ufacturing organizations, is intended to improve hospitals' safety climates and decrease medical errors. By "walking around," senior leaders and members of the hospital management team can ask front-line staff for their ideas to resolve issues and improve performance. But in the first study to examine the factors and approaches associated with success of MBWA in hospitals, researchers found the management style can do more harm than good if it is not properly implemented by leaders. In short: An unsuccessful MBWA program won't just lead to little to no improvement; it will actu- ally hurt staff 's perceptions of improvement. The study tested the effectiveness of an 18-month MBWA-based program to improve patient safety. Researchers compared nurses' perception of im- provement in 56 work areas in 20 hospitals that had implemented and completed the MBWA pro- gram with those of nurses in 138 work areas in 48 control hospitals. Study authors found the MBWA program had a negative effect on nurses' perceptions of perfor- mance. Senior managers were found to allocate too much time analyzing which problems to solve rather than taking action, and this led to a nega- tive effect on nurses' perception of improvement. Senior managers were only helpful on the front- lines if their presence enabled active problem solving, according to the study. "MBWA can backfire if management fails to meet staff expectations raised by the program," Anita Tucker, associate professor of business adminis- tration at HBS, said in the news release. "When MBWA is successful, it's the action-taking that results from the program, rather than the mere physical presence of the senior managers, that positively impacts frontline staff performance." n N early one-third of health system and hospital executives do not feel their current senior management team has members with the ex- perience, skill sets and talent needed to achieve strategic priorities. The finding is one of many from the American Hospital Association survey, "Building a Leadership Team for the Health Care Organization of the Future." Although most executives (68 percent) do believe their team has the skill and experience needed to meet priorities, more than half of the survey respon- dents identified a number of gaps in their organizations' capabilities. These include experience in leading nontraditional health partnerships, such as joint ventures or partnerships with payers and retailers (54 percent), com- munity and population health management (48 percent) and change man- agement (41) percent. Another 37 percent of CEOs said their organization lacked "advanced financial expertise." "Some talent gaps are being addressed by training or expanding the roles of current executives," the report states, as CMOs, CNOs, CFOs and COOs are being asked to develop broader sets of skills to increase their understanding of healthcare delivery. "However, some of these gaps are being addressed through the addition of new executive team positions to lead and galvanize support for initiatives in top strategic areas," according to the report. After all, 60 percent of survey respondents said the senior-management team of their organization is larger today than it was three years ago. Findings are based on responses to an online survey of more than 1,100 ex- ecutives, 95 percent of whom were CEOs and 5 percent of whom were strat- egy executives with their organizations. The majority of respondents worked with health systems or community hospitals. n In Hospitals, "Management by Walking Around" Can Do More Harm Than Good By Molly Gamble SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Becker's Hospital Review CEO Report E-Weekly Guidance, analysis and best practice information on hospital leadership, operations and management issues for top hospital and health system executives Each E-Weekly, sent every Tuesday, contains the most popular feature articles covering business and legal issues, CEO profiles and benchmarking and statistical data to immediately inform your decision-making To subscribe to the FREE E-Weekly, visit www.BeckersHospitalReview.com and click on the "E-Weekly" tab or call (800) 417-2035

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