E25 Healthcare Leadership: Leaning into Change, Safety, and Transformation

Catherine, a healthcare leader, discusses her journey into leadership and the importance of serving and helping others. She shares her experiences as a woman of color and emphasizes the need for competence and performance to overcome challenges. She also discusses the evolution of management and leadership, highlighting the importance of collaboration, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving. Catherine believes that great leaders are always students of people and prioritize building trust with their teams. She also mentions the changing dynamics of communication and the need to adapt to new ways of connecting with employees. Overall, she emphasizes the continuous pursuit of personal and professional growth as a leader. Welcome to CoachNomics Presents Podcast, a part of the ECS Network. This is the Masters of Leadership Teachable Moment Series. I'm your host, Laura Perez Earhart. I'm the CEO of Epiphany Consulting Solutions, a management consultant and executive coach. Catherine, welcome to the show. So, you are one of the accomplished pioneer and leaders with an impressive leadership record over the years, specifically in healthcare. What inspired you to go into leadership? And what led you into the role that led you into leadership responsibilities? Hi, Laura. Thank you for having me. When I was 17, looking at my potential career choices and which colleges I was going to go to, I thought, well, this looks like a good job. It looks like healthcare is going to be a very stable field in the future. And if I go into healthcare management, I'll get to be boss of a bunch of people. You know, at 17, that's kind of how you're thinking. But I also was grounded by the fact that, you know, my dad is a career U.S. Navy sailor, Master Chief, and I grew up on military bases surrounded by incredible, very talented military leaders. And in my upbringing, we also, the military dependents are quite competitive. So there is this desire for all of us, I think, tethered to the fact that we grew up with the condition that our fathers or our mothers hold this belief that we serve for the greater good and we serve for others before self. And so, you know, being surrounded by the selfless people, I think I always knew that I had to be in a field or in a position where I really did want to serve and help others. Years later, when I got to a place where I had these really wonderful jobs, I became quite addicted to being in those situations where I can help others, where I could build teams that could do incredible things that, you know, we didn't think we could do. And I think that is the thing that still today inspires me, is thinking that I can create opportunities in an environment where through our teams, through our people, we could really serve our community. Healthcare is noble. I mean, it's easy to be inspired in healthcare because we save lives. We help people maintain their health. But I don't touch patients. My customers are the people who, the leaders and the frontline people who really do touch the patients, and I have to keep that in mind every day, that I am no value to the patients or to the customers directly. My greatest value is to provide a condition where the people can do their very best every day. It's the joy that I hope everybody has in their career of finding those ways of being of great value to the people they serve. Absolutely. So what I'm hearing you say is, especially for those younger professionals who are career pathing right now, is get onto a stable career path, you know, one that, like you said, that's going to give you joy. Surround yourself with healthy, selfless, experienced leaders who you can learn from. Yes. As a female and a woman of color, how do you manage the pressures to stand out and prove yourself? So if you go back way early when I took my Myers-Briggs as a teen, it actually hasn't changed almost 40 years later. I am an INTJ. And one of the characteristics of INTJs is they are very, they focus on competence. And so I think that was easy for me, this whole idea that I have to be competent. I am going to be in a place where I can help others. I can't let my fears or uncertainties or my own sense of I can't or I shouldn't get in the way. And so I had a voice pretty early on. It would be upsetting to me if someone told me that my career was based on my being a female or being of color. That instead, I'd like people to confirm that the reason that I've had success in my career is because I've been competent. I've been a great student of learning how to be a good leader rather than it being about, you know, my ethnicity or trying to figure out a way around the fact that I am who I am. It is what it is. And so my job was to figure out how to overcome some of those situations. I told a great story to somebody just recently about how I had been turned down for a supervisor job at one of my organizations. I'd gone in. My mom and dad had driven me, I was very young, to the interview. I knew I had all the credentials, but I could feel very clearly that I wasn't going to be a fit. And most likely, it wasn't because I didn't have the credentials, but because they couldn't relate to me. As for 12 years later, I was brought into that same organization as a chief operating officer. And I tell you, the feeling I had of it was not meant to be then. It was not, let me be angry about it. Instead, it was, let me prove what I'm capable of doing. And someday, somehow, because of that, people are going to want me and I'm not going to have to ask you to please give me a chance. In that case, I was able to walk right up to the HR leader who, at the time 12 years prior, had said, no, we've decided on someone else. And I had asked why. Could you give me some specifics? And, you know, she gave me some reasons that I thought, well, that doesn't sound right. But okay, I will accept it. Let me go figure out how to do better. So that's my story of, you know, you can't, you just, it is what it is. And you just figure out a way to create a path for yourself where it's not the reason that someone says no to you. You really have to perform. You have to make sure you choose wisely as you progress in your career. Find the best mentors. Find those people who will advocate for you because they know you're good regardless of what. And those mentors will be your lifelong mentors. Pick them early on and make sure you are grateful to them. Yes, most definitely. Yeah. So vindication, there are no coincidences in life. And I truly believe that when things like such as your story happens, they turned you away the first time, the second time around, they chose you, and sheer vindication. Do you still feel that you have something to prove? Always, but I don't know if it has anything to do with being a woman or being of color as much as, again, my personality. As somebody who does never, who does believe that there's always room to improve as a leader, I do subscribe to this thought that I will never be good enough. Let me keep learning. Let me keep trying to figure out how to become a better and better leader and better and better teacher and mentor. And I think that's that pursuit of, you know, this is my career and this is my aspiration as it comes to work. I am a professional leader. And so a chance to learn from others. And, yeah, I have things to prove. Yes, I still have work to do. Yes, there are more people that I can help along the way and more things I can help our organization accomplish. So this will never end. And, you know, I hope I have the opportunity to keep doing some good things with our people. A hundred percent. What I'm hearing you say is it takes a growth mindset. And we are either evolving or we're dying. So I would rather be on the path of evolving. So now that we're talking about professional leadership. Let's talk about the evolution of management versus leadership over the past few decades. So back in the day, the old school approach was command and control, which was called management. Today, leaders are expected to exhibit a higher quality of leadership effectiveness, including EQ, emotional equation around behavior. Yeah, I read a survey from McKinsey and Company around effectiveness. This is a survey took a few years ago. They surveyed over 200,000 people around 81 organizations from around the world. And the results presented four types of behavior that account for 89 percent of leadership effectiveness. One, being supportive. Two, operating with a strong results orientation. Three, seeking different perspectives. And four, solving problems effectively. But we know that this doesn't happen through individual efforts. It happens when leaders surround themselves with others who know more than they do. Right. So there's a saying, Catherine, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And I know that you and I are both smart enough to know what we don't know and wise enough to know what we do know. And I know it takes a excellent team to attain goals, innovate and collaborate. This does not happen in a vacuum. And it takes these kind of efforts to create extraordinary things. In your opinion, what are the expectations of leaders today? And what's changed? Things have changed and yet I think a lot of things have not if you consider what great leaders have been even through the centuries. So what has changed is a challenge for many of us that employees don't tend to stay forever in a job. It is the reality. You know, people are much more mobile these days. They have more options such as working remotely. That has changed. And figuring out how to stay in a good relationship with those employees is still just as important. But it's different. It's different how I communicate with employees today. Years ago, I would send you a memo. Today, I can send you an email. I text you versus picking up the phone and calling you. It's the way that people want to be communicated is quite different. And you have to be flexible. But what hasn't changed in my opinion is that great leaders have always been great studies of people and others. That they understand how to create those trusting relationships with those that they support because if you don't have trust, in the hardest times when there are change, you'll be going alone. Whether it was in the 1990s or today, a great leader always knew how to create a relationship of trust with the people they served. We also have a lot of data now, which is not necessarily the kind of things that were available to us. And being able to tell stories using data in a way that still inspires people, it's not graphs, it's not a bunch of reports, as much as really helping people understand their value in the work they do towards the greater mission. And I think that is one of the things that we have to do more to help our readers learn that talent of taking a graph, turning it into a compelling story to inspire your teams to actually act. And that is still, no matter what decade we're in, the role of the leader to inspire people to use their hands, their hearts, their minds, putting the total person in with you in this journey towards improving whatever it is we're achieving, whatever missions we've got. So in healthcare, it's a people business. I think in leadership, it's a people business. And if your leaders aren't able to connect with their people, to inspire their people, then you don't have a leader. You might have a manager, but you don't have a leader. And so the challenges might be today that the how you engender trust might be a little different. The things that are important to a 20-year-old is going to be very different than somebody who's looking very close to retirement, what's important to them. Sure. The how you connect to somebody, and I cannot necessarily relate to somebody who has had a weekend as a 20-year-old, not anymore. But the fact that I'm interested in what is important to you and how you show up every day, I think that's important. The fact that you might not be your full, bubbly self coming into work today because you've had a horrible situation where you're dealing with a loved one, we have to be understanding and empathetic to that and understand that, again, these are people. Your job is to figure out all the ways that we can help keep people inspired, even in some of the challenging work that we do. Yes. Yes. And you are right. I do agree with you where you say that we are all people and they're in the people business. I think no matter who is listening to this podcast within any industry, we are all in the people business. Yes. It's about demonstrating humanity and, like you said, kindness and empathy, especially if you find someone that's disengaged or having a hard time at work. It's for the leader to find out and figure out how to have a brief conversation. Just check in on the individual's wellness to see if that stakeholder is OK and how that leader might be of service and might be able to support that individual as they're going through a hard time. For businesses, leadership generally highlights the importance of high performance and retaining and attracting top talent. However, to have high performing teams and keep talent, the folks at the top need to exhibit certain qualities and behaviors. But there's a mindset that's the caveat here. What mindset do leaders need in today's workplace to improve performance and retention? You still have to have the sense as a leader of what winning looks like. What does it mean to win? I'm not saying, you know, to beat others, but what does a winning day look like? What does it mean for your organization to achieve the goals or the objectives of the year or the quarter? How does that relate to the individual's contributions to the organization? So I think it's important for us as leaders to be clear about the vision for where we're going and the why. For instance, I say in some of my background is I am a huge student in the lean management system. And so when I start off with why lean and what is that going to bring us, I ask people to envision a day where the thousands of employees we have are solving problems on behalf of their patients and of their people. Imagine what that would look like. And I think that this journey, as hard as it is, is about doing those things every single day that gets in the way of giving the best, most efficient, highest quality care. And when you start to create that vision of what is this hard work going to do, imagine what that looks like. Imagine that you leave doing a hard job saying, that was a great day. That's the kind of, you know, how do you inspire people towards doing and coming along with you on a journey that's not that easy? And so I do think leaders have to be inspirational, but you're inspirational because you can frame up the why. Why are we doing this? And it should always, always be for the greater good. And it's so because if you do it from, and this is what my managers of the past used to do it, you do it because I asked you to do it. Okay. You must get a piece of paper and a report, but I will not keep thinking about ways to keep us moving and progressing in this goal. I also surround myself with people who have a competitive nature because you want to have leaders who know and know how to win in a team collaborative environment. And the win is not for themselves or just for their team. In my case, you know, let's win on behalf of our patients. And that's that thing of what does winning look like? You have to be clear about what that looks like. Otherwise, we're all going in a bunch of directions. So I think it's important to ensure that we've got what has been called True North, clarity around what that's going to look like, a vision that you're able to articulate, and a vision that's easy to cascade. Because I think it's so important. You know, as I progressed in my career, I could take my group of 20 employees and I can give them a vision. But now, you know, that I've got the tiers of leaders, my job is to have a vision that's cascaded through an entire, through most of this organization. And in doing that, it's got to be so clear, so simple, and easy for people to wrap their heads around. If you make it so complicated with charts, I'm telling you, we lose everybody. And then you've really got to understand who your key people are in the organization to help you carry this out. And often we forget that it's the people who are closest to the front lines that are able to really execute on that vision, execute on that new culture that you're trying to design. We often sit at the top thinking it's there. But if you're not checking in with that frontline leader, who's actually the liaison between what's happening with, you know, right, with the customers and leadership, then you're missing the greatest opportunity. And that's to ensure that that layer of your leadership is inspired. That leadership layer makes or breaks your reputation in the C-suite, because there's several layers over, if you will, above that layer. But it's them that talk to the doctors and the patients and staff about what it means to be part of this leadership team. So you've got to make sure that you know how to connect with every layer. But most importantly, in my mind, it's that layer that is closest to where the value is in our lean world, what the customers are experiencing. Yeah, absolutely. So what's the common mistake that senior leaders make and should avoid as they plan out their strategy and implement tactics? I think we often miss the people piece of deployment. The one we don't have a clear understanding of the barriers that potentially will get in our way. Because if we can remove those barriers, implementation is much easier. And the barriers could be, you know, we've got certain pockets of people who are opposed to the change. Get in front of it. Work through that before you start implementing and having to deal with backlash. We don't understand that, you know, when we're sitting in our boardrooms making decisions, that perhaps there are things in the way of the people at the front that prevent them from doing these things that we have drawn up they could do. The examples are things like I remember in one organization they were really struggling with employee engagement. And so from the corporate office, there came down a directive that if the leaders, the senior leaders, delivered flowers every Friday to the employees, it would boost up our employee satisfaction scores. And I remember sitting back and saying, do you think perhaps the fact that we just centralized a whole lot of jobs, cut the jobs here locally so that they could move to other states, that that may have been the why our employees are distrusting us right now? Let's understand and face the reality of where we are, have good conversations with our employees about the why these things are happening, and understand then what we could do to ease some of the pain that people are feeling, the fear that they're feeling. Because I think we were addressing the wrong or using the wrong solution. We understood the employees were distrusting of us right now. But to deploy a solution without a hearing from our people, I think that's a big mistake. Teach the right people in any strategy that's being done. Yeah. So leading change, now that we're, you've dipped into that a little bit, leading change takes mindfulness, courage, patience, and grit. What is a leader's role when navigating change? First, I think they need to make sure that they are clear about the why and they can connect it to people. You should have a good understanding of how your people think, what's important to them, so that you can ensure that whatever message, whatever vision that you're communicating lands. So you've got to have that connection with your people. Our job is to make sure that we work through barriers. So if you know there's a particular department that's going to be in the way of some change, proactively manage that. Don't sit back and hope that it gets better. Understand that it's probably not and go and address it. If you're in the times where you know that you've got pockets of resistance on your own team, go deal with it head on and ensure that they will not be the barrier. And be willing to listen when people are challenging you and say, this is not a good idea. Explain, please, help me to understand why. It does a couple of things. It's important to hear everybody's perspective, but it also allows you the opportunity to understand how that leader is thinking. And then for you to be able to go, okay, I understand what you're saying. Could you help me to understand how your thinking is going to help us move towards better? And then let's have a conversation. But at the end of the day, let's agree that if you cannot articulate how this is going to be better in the long run, that you will be fully supportive of this change we're about to make. You've got to have those conversations head on. And I think leaders tend to have difficulty with confronting. And I don't – it comes off as a negative word, but I don't see it as confronting as much as having a very good dialogue about what is expected of us, what we're trying to get to, and then let's talk it out. I think it's important to have that dialogue. But once we've made a decision, we've got to go. And I do not expect you to be the barrier. I hope that we've talked it all out before we've gone down this path. But you've got to remove those barriers. And you have to understand your organization. It is operational, right? Any initiative we have has an impact on operations. Don't sit back and hope that somebody invites you to the table. Get to the table. Now that we're talking about leading change, mindfulness, and a leader's role is to remove barriers and to help navigate change and have conversation, what happens when leaders take their hands off the wheel and lack presence within their teams during that change? There's a couple of things. It depends on the situation. I would never take my hands off of a change where I've got a new team. I have to be there. I take great pride in developing great teams where my presence at some point becomes unnecessary to ensure that something gets done and done right. That is something you have to develop so that while I might not physically be there, the tiers of teams understand what needs to happen, and they will do just as I know that we've developed the same way of thinking, the same way of going through a process, and they know when to escalate to me. And the teams all know that no matter what, when needed, I will be there. But if we are a new team and I'm just trying to figure things out, I need to be there to ensure that my presence is, if it's needed, I'm there and I'm able to act and react as necessary. But my goal is always to have such an incredibly capable team that my presence becomes unnecessary, which is sometimes very odd to people. Because if I do my job and I do it well in developing my people and the team, at some point my role is unnecessary because people can manage. You're going to talk yourself out of a job, right? Exactly. And then I can go on and do other things or help us do other things as an organization. But that should be the role of all of us, that we develop people so well, our teams so well, that they can function without having me be there. And that points back to what we were talking about, being a people business, right? Yes. Since we're talking about having a lack of presence within teams or, you know, for those leaders that are challenged leading their teams during the time of change, how do you approach the status quo in the company that is entrenched in its beliefs? And how do you work with leaders who are resistant to change? Great, great question. I think you have to prove that the change is actually better. We will, in our lean deployment, will often take small teams, teach deep, and then allow them to experiment and suddenly you start to see an interest or a pull for the same sort of management system. And it becomes an avalanche of we want that as well. We want to see all the employees engage. We want employees using data. We want employees getting rid of waste. And you start to get the naysayers to buy in because, hey, it's working. So when you can show that something is working, it's hard to say that's never going to work because we proved you wrong. There are times where, you know, you run into those people who are absolutely not worse than the passive aggressive ones who won't say it to your face, but behind the scenes doing everything they can to sabotage. You have to understand enough of your operations, which means that your hands have been dirty enough in your career where you know what to watch for so that you know that something is not happening the way it should. And again, I think before you go into the change, as a leader, my job is to also make sure that the environment is prepared to support the change. So does that mean I've got to make sure that I've worked with all the right physicians so that if the change impacts the physicians, that they know what's coming and they can work with me on that? Does my own boss recognize that? I want you to understand, boss, that this is what's going to happen. It's likely that I will have physicians running to you upset. It's likely that we will hear HR complaints about some of the things that are happening. I just want you to know that's going to happen. I'm telling you, we will be okay. We'll figure it out. You've got to make sure that you've created an environment where we can fail because if we don't, nobody is going to be willing to take that risk and take that chance to go do. Very important that you have an environment that encourages your organization to fail and learn and keep trying and keep doing all for the sake of getting better. In an environment where that's discouraged, you're really stuck. Yeah. So for those leaders that are stuck in the old ways or we're used to doing it this way, it's always worked. We don't need to change it if it's not broken. In your experience, what does it take to move leaders from resistance to a mindset of acceptance? You've got to show them what they can't see. So the proof is in the lean pudding. Yes. So take them to go see. I recently had an interview for a key physician leader for an organization. And they said, you know, Catherine is a huge fan of the lean management system. And the physician said, I don't believe in it. It was really a classic. How does a car manufacturing company tell us how to do things better in health care? And I just sat there quietly because this person who asked the question just was stunned at the response. And she said, would we not admire a company whose goal is zero defects, who has a mission to be of value in the communities they work, who aspire to develop their people to build as perfect as they can these cars? And we know the quality of the Toyota company. What we say in health care is no harm to any patient. But we have no management system that has proven itself over 80 years, 100 years, however many years TPS has been around. Do we not desire that same sort of outcome? So then it changes the mind because I think people have lost the what is lean all about. It's not about the tools. Toyota themselves will tell you, you can see what we do, but we can't tell you how to do this. And you will do your own way. And I think it's that. It's really the mindset that we've got to do better and better and better for our customers. We've got to be obsessed with understanding our customers. We want our people to be so engaged in problem solving every day. And we want our leaders to develop our people. I think it's really understanding the intent of any management system. What is the intent? Is it to get me short-term results? Or is it to create a long-lasting culture that will be improving even beyond my time here? That to me is thrilling to think that well beyond my time, this will continue and we will continue to do better for our community, our people. And that's what inspires me about a system like Lean. Absolutely. So now that we're dipping into the Lean and the path to change and resistance, let's talk about the strategy and change failure. I came across a statistic approximately 70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals due to employee resistance, lack of management support and engagement. But let's dive into the collaboration part of this, which is essential to meeting any successful organizational objectives. Catherine, why do organizations and their leadership ignore and develop strategies without the right operational people at the table? This is always fascinating to me. Why is that? I think those people who come from an operations background will quickly, you know, agree that that's horrible. Why would you not involve operations? Because that's where the customer meets your culture. It's baffling to those of us who are in operations when we're not brought to the table. But often what happens, and this is my opinion, we tend to rely a lot on consultants to come in, come in with a strategy, have already figured it out, and, therefore, it's you're the operator who's brought in to go and implement something. Without understanding that the process of buy-in really starts as you begin to develop the strategy. And that's where I think there's the misstep. So even if you bring in an outside consultant, bring in the people who you're going to expect to execute on it, make sure you get the barriers out of the way and you hear from them, it'll go a long way to ensuring deployment is successful. I've been in many such situations where, okay, consultant says this is the best, you know, newest way, go ahead and implement, and you're going, you didn't ask me if this is something that I think is going to work. And there are other reasons that I think we could make it work, but it's going to require all of this. And so I think that's just, again, I think some of that is does the leadership team give deference to operations? In high-reliability organizations, it's one of the requirements is that there's deference to operations. As much as that is known, it is still often ignored. You started to talk a little while ago before we even tapped into this area about deployment challenges and why they fail. Talk a little bit about the lean mechanism around deployment challenges. There are two pillars of lean, right? There's continuous improvement, and then there's this pillar of respect for people. And often what I see in the deployment of lean is the focus on the continuous improvement side or all the tools that are related to continuous improvement, right? So let's teach people how to do boards. Let's teach people how to do process mapping. But there's not a real understanding around what does it mean to develop your people, show them respect by engaging them in the process of learning. And I think many times because it is easier to put a class together and teach you how to do, you know, an A3 or to do spaghetti diagrams. And I can do that quite easily, even don't have to necessarily be there in person, learn by video. But the hardest change, if you're trying to get a full deployment of a lean management system, is the everyday working with your people to get them thinking very differently. Because it is a different approach to thinking and problem solving. It's the opportunity for us to understand where everybody is at the moment. Where is your thinking at the moment? Can you even see the problem? And then helping people develop that eye or those eyes so that they can see problems, right? That's the respect for people, meaning I come to you to help you to see what are the problems. And then you teach me in that journey of seeing, you teach me how I might be of service or help to you. And it begins to create an environment where there is trust and safety and willingness to disclose, hey, we've got problems. And we begin a journey of changing our language from it's about people to no, our processes are broken, let's fix the process. We get away from let's blame this department or that department to it is what it is. There's a defect rate that we've got to work on. It affects every department here. Let's go fix it together. So it's the piece that I think is often forgotten is the respect for people. What does it look like to truly engage your people? And often what I've seen, and this is so true of many deployments of change, it's the whole, you know, we'll give you a piece of paper, you'll learn it from reading a book, and then come back, tell us what you think, and you're done. If you do not teach your leaders how to support that continuous learning environment, nothing is going to happen to that. The difference, I think, in a lean management system is that really if you do it correctly and do it right, you show respect to the people who do the work. And in our world of where the value is, it's provider and patient interaction. That is the thing that the patients come to us for. Or what does your customer come to you for? Be very clear about what that is and focus a lot of your energies there. So it's up to me as a leader to inspire people to this different way of thinking. And you have to meet people at where they are. But we go out to see. We're out in the place where the work is done, and I'm interacting with frontline, middle management, and we're all learning together. And I think that's the coolest thing. And, you know, that's my happy place is we're all learning together. We're all learning together. We're all learning together. We're all learning together. How can we solve this problem that is reoccurring that has been here for forever, but we all know it's a pain point for patients? And I am so excited to see now that I've left organizations where it's continued and their outcomes are continuing. It's not about me. And that is the piece that, you know, some leaders just have to get over. It's not about you. If you can, like I said, work yourself out of a job, see that things keep sustaining and people are still pulling to learn more, I think you've done an incredible job. Inspire the next generation of leaders to lead in a different way where they're showing respect to people. That fills my cup every day. Absolutely. So the big R, respect. You know, I'm hearing Aretha Franklin playing my head. I love it. Success factors including, like you said, engaging the right people, knowing when to lean into them. Successful transformations often involve a clear vision, strong leadership at the top of the house, employee engagement, and continuous monitoring and adjustment of strategy. So staying fluid. Absolutely. Yeah. But also, it's far beyond strategy and collaboration. I think it's leadership, and I think you might agree because I know that this is a next topic that's a passion for you, is creating a culture of safety. Yes. I had mentioned earlier about the old school approach called management in the context of command and control. Today it's about effectiveness and servant leadership. Rather than being a manager directing and controlling people, a more concrete approach is for leadership to serve the people they lead by expressing empathy, compassion, vulnerability, gratitude, self-awareness, and self-care, which is a lot of what you've been touching base on. They provide appreciation and support, creating psychological safety for their team so others can collaborate, innovate, and raise issues as appropriate. So building an environment where people feel safe to share without judgment is essential to creativity, high performance, and overall well-being. Can you talk about the symbiotic relationship between organizational health and safety? I think healthcare is assumed to be safe, and yet I think if you just look at the statistics, unfortunately, our airline industry has much better safety records than healthcare. Oh, for sure. And I think it's this thing where let's all agree to what it is that we expect of our people. You know, Toyota, stop the line if they know that there's going to be a defect. And so when you come into an organization, you want to assess how safe it is to stop the line. How invested are we in deep root cause analysis when we have had a failure? Because that says a lot about an organization's commitment to safety and to encouraging others to be safe. A lot of this, to me, is very similar to the lean management system because in order first for us to report safety issues, you've got to be able to see. Do we have the eyes to see? If your organization, and I've come into such places, don't feel like they can report anything without a punishment, what you've got to do in a role like mine is set the stage. And you are distrusted in the beginning when you say safety is our priority. It is my personal commitment to you that we are going to commit to safety as our priority. Yeah, yeah, we've heard that before, Catherine. Of course, we talk about it, but what does it mean in action? We have to prove it, that indeed we are committed to safety. The first time a safety event comes, the opportunity for somebody with a title or somebody who's got the authority to make a change should come along and show appreciation to that employee who brought up a safety issue. The minute we start doing that, where we're appreciating the employee, and then you look at your systems that are in place to go, did our systems fail to truly ensure that we don't do this again, then you work on the systems. And that's a lot of, again, to me, it's the there are ways to do this, but every organization is different. Maybe your systems are strong, but the people who are involved in the process aren't very strong, so you've got to figure out how to train them. But there is no culture of safety when your people who are touching, you know, the thousands of touches every day aren't willing to stand up and say, I have a safety concern. Thinking can happen again, but that's at the very top of the organization. And I think a lot of us in health care have quite that journey of trying to create the environment where, you know, we are celebrating those opportunities to really make things better for our patients. But it's that. It's the language we use. You know, I think it's harmful when we use language such as, we just need to educate everybody, because you're assuming that person did not get educated when they got, you know, the hour or so of training. The example I will give you is I remember we had hundreds of employees who had been disciplined for sending wrong facts, because, of course, you have PHI that's been disclosed. And so we had to get back that we sent wrong information to the wrong place and protected information at that. But let's understand the why those employees sent those faxes to the wrong location. Let's take a closer look. Is it possible because we are having everyone, 20 people working off of one fax machine, that we made it very hard for us to ensure that we will, without defect, send and receive the right faxes or pick up the right word? What could we do instead? So we recalled all of those discipline actions that sent a message to the organization that we were serious. We're going to be different. We're going to be better at understanding the why something happened and not go to blame immediately. So I think, again, that's the same concept with respect to people. It's that we don't blame the person. Let's really beat up the process. HRO to me and Lean very much entangled in creating that environment of, you know, let's get defects out of the way. Let's see them and then effectively use our tools to ensure that we don't have repeats. Yeah. I think that anybody that's listening to this podcast is going to take away a lot of nuggets from organizational change, how to challenge status quo, and improve the change process, knowing how to engage staff when making change initiatives. Most importantly is creating that environment where stakeholders feel safe, confident, being a part of a change process where they can confidently step up, use their voice, and help with the changes within the strategy to help the overall organization achieve their goals. Catherine, this has just been an amazing conversation with you. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Thank you, Laura. My pleasure. I hope I've helped somebody today. I'm sure you have. All right, Catherine, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's it for this episode of Coachonomics for This Podcast. If you're interested in being a guest or you're a subject matter expert, please go to my website, www.epiphanyconsultingsolutions.com and submit your request on the Let's Chat link. You can also find me on LinkedIn under Laura Perez Earhart or my website, Epiphany Consulting Solutions. We hope the content and conversation will give sparks of inspiration. If you love and learn from the show, pay it forward and share my podcast with your colleagues and friends. I'm Laura Perez Earhart. Until next time, stay safe and live well. © The Epiphany Consortium, LLC.