Innovative Express
"Improving effectiveness by making the complex simple and making the simple work!"
February 2008
In this issue:
Last month's Change Management topic generated several interesting thoughts from the readers.
Kay Sever, a fellow management consultant, had this to say: "As you know, these barriers are common to every organization, regardless of the industry, product or service because they always involve people, not equipment or processes."
Marvin Gottlieb, an author of several books including his latest The Matrix Organization Reloaded had this to say: "I have seen many companies destroyed by top management attempting to affect cultural change by fiat rather than engaging the entire organization in an evolving process." By the way, Marvin's new book has a two-paragraph chapter introduction quoted from my project/change management article "Forest for the Trees."
This month's newsletter takes a closer look at diversity from the point of view of a real-world practitioner. Although an environment based on inclusion and mutual respect may seem like a no-brainer, creating it is easier said than done! I sat down with Marion Kelly, Director for the Office of Community Affairs for Mayo Clinic, to understand his approach to diversity and how he has overcome challenges in institutionalizing it.
Inspired to agree, disagree, or otherwise comment? Have an interesting or humorous story to share? I hope that you will let me know your thoughts.
Abhay Padgaonkar
President, Innovative Solutions Consulting, LLC
Quick Update: Client Needs
You know who your clients are, but do you know what they really want?
In her cover article "How do you know what your clients want?" Ann Gynn explores multiple avenues to identify what clients need to boost the bottom line. The article is in the Winter 2008 issue of The Leading Edge published by The Leading Edge Alliance- an international professional association of independently-owned accounting and consulting firms. The article quotes extensively my data-mining approach to elicit customer insights. It even has an anecdote I shared with Ann about third-party, independent interviews to collect context-rich data directly from the clients. (You may not always like what you hear though!)
Looking Closer
Mr. Marion Kelly, Director for the Office of Community Affairs for Mayo Clinic, provides leadership for the organization's efforts to build solid neighbor, civic, and corporate relationships. In addition to providing leadership in Community Affairs, he has also been responsible for institutionalizing diversity as a corporate objective within Mayo Clinic's strategic plan, specific to Arizona. He was honored in January, 2008 as the Diversity Champion at the MLK dinner celebration in Scottsdale, Arizona for his tireless efforts to promote civil and human rights.
Here is the synopsis of my interview with Marion Kelly:
How do you define diversity?
I define diversity broadly. Race and gender are included, but it's much more than that. Focusing on race and gender is really just scratching the surface. Diversity is about mutual respect and inclusion. You see diversity everywhere, so it's difficult to put it in a box. It's personal and different for different people when they come to work. But the bottom line is to become optimally productive-individually and collectively-through an environment of mutual respect and inclusion. For example, take something that we don't often think of. Everybody learns differently and has different learning styles. If some people learn better online as opposed to in a classroom, shouldn't that be taken into account? So diversity is about many things like that as much as race and gender.
Do you find it defined too narrowly?
I think diversity is defined too narrowly! However, change is always difficult. If you consider the history of diversity, it began with the civil rights movement 40-50 years ago. That led to Affirmative Action. Unfortunately, Affirmative Action became misused, misguided, and not carried out with the intent with which it was written. It was intended so that if two candidates were equally qualified, the one disadvantaged was to be chosen. But many people saw it as a lowering of standards and quasi-quotas. That perception is still haunting us. If Affirmative Action were to be implemented, we must be clear about it and educate people about the broad differences and how mutual respect and inclusion cover the whole gamut.
In your opinion, what's the business case behind diversity; or should it be followed just because it is morally and ethically right?
From a business perspective, you have to look at the missed opportunities. For example, in the health care business that Mayo Clinic is in, imagine the impact on our understanding and delivery of medicine if diverse populations were not represented. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to create better medicines and therapies. We would have millions of people on the outskirts and we would end up creating even greater healthcare disparities. Not being inclusive in medicine would eventually affect all our pocket books. That is exactly why many of the research grants are tied to having a diverse pool of research study participants. If we didn't embrace diversity, in addition to being less comprehensive, as an organization we would lose research grants and dollars. Ouch! Applying our research efforts to emerging populations also results in new patients for our clinical practice.
One research showed that less than half of senior management accepts the business case for diversity. Why do you think that is? What obstacles have you observed in your experience?
You do run into people who are not convinced. But diversity of opinion is diversity too! Sometimes we have to agree to disagree. It starts with the individual. There are moments every day with opportunities to learn and educate. I go into board rooms and find people who talk to me differently than the way they talk to others. By looking at my skin color, there are assumptions made relative to sports. Well, I am not a sports enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination! Or, sometimes they will say things like, "you are a lot different or nicer than they imagined." I ask them, "I am trying to understand. What were you expecting?" After a minute, they become a bit nervous, but I have uncovered something about their biases. It is important for people to understand the biases we each carry with us. We all have biases about something or the other. We just have to examine them, understand them, and manage them.
(At this point, I mentioned Project Implicit at Harvard with its research into conscious and unconscious preferences. Their finding is that implicit biases are pervasive and people are often unaware of their implicit biases. If you are curious about your own preferences, you can go to the Project Implicit site.
What approach have you taken to overcome these obstacles?
At Mayo, we have a Diversity Committee. The committee provides oversight and has input into all policies, and sets policy for an inclusive and mutually respectful environment. Diverse staff is just one component of that. We have our CEO on the Diversity Committee. Having the highest level of representation is very beneficial.
It's one thing to have great policies. It's another thing to have them translate into practice.
That's right! Of course, we have education and training. That is very much part of our culture. Some classes are mandated, others are not. We also have many diversity networking groups and we sponsor activities to reach out to the broader community. For example, the Asian Connection group participates in the dragon boating on Tempe Town Lake. Our CEO, Dr. Trastek, when appropriate, weaves in the themes of mutual respect and inclusion in presentations and group discussions. It does help in building a culture of diversity, inclusion, and mutual respect. Mentoring and role modeling is vital. We provide individual mentoring in formal and informal settings. We also have mentoring circles
Many times actions speak far louder than words. How do you demonstrate that?
Just like we want our staff to be mutually respectful, we expect the patients to respect our staff as well. There have been instances where we have actually "fired" patients. We had a situation where a patient insisted on seeing another doctor as soon as the assigned doctor walked in. The doctor asked the Department Chairperson to speak with the patient. The patient expressed a desire to see a white, male, older doctor. It was determined that as much as we wanted to accommodate our patients, we needed to understand the reason for such a drastic request. There was no apparent reason. We stabilized the patient and in 6-8 weeks we transitioned the patient to care outside of Mayo Clinic.
How do you measure success?
There are many ways to measure. Obviously, there are some things that are more tangible than others. In measuring internal performance, we look at business metrics such as employee retention, staff satisfaction, and external publications that survey our industry, etc. On the patient side of performance, we consider metrics such as growth in patient volumes, clinical outcomes of patients, and their length of stay. We try to take a holistic approach at measuring our success. Our belief is that when the patients are stressed, concerned, and worried, it takes longer for them to heal. In a mutually respectful and inclusive environment, people heal faster and with better clinical outcomes. And it costs all of us less.
Dr. Charles Mayo was one of the pioneers responsible for the growth of Mayo Clinic. There is a picture in our concourse from 1913 where he is teaching a group of doctors how to perform surgery. What is striking about the picture is that the doctors Dr. Mayo is teaching, represent a broad group of people from all over the world including women and physicians of color that were normally not allowed in the average healthcare organization. You have to remember that this was nearly 100 years ago. Mayo's motto has always been to allow anyone and everyone access to Mayo. We become the richer for it!
The ultimate aspiration is when we will not need a diversity committee at all. But I don't think we will reach that point as long as we remain a continuous learning environment. As long as there is change, there will be differences and we will need a way to manage those effectively.
Bottom Line: As Mahatma Gandhi said, "Be the change that you want to see in the world."
Personally Speaking...
After the interview with Marion, I wandered the concourse at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.
It has a free-standing sculpture called Cycles of Life. It consists of three circles, which evoke the three key aspects of Mayo: patient care, medical research, and medical education. The circular nature of the entire sculpture demonstrates the cycles of life.
The sculpture contains a stream bed, stones, and small waterfalls. The streams join and flow back into the main pool. It is important that the streams unite, depicting the interdependence of patient care, medical research, and medical education.
John Richen created the sculpture. One of the dominant features of Richen's work is the interplay of opposites. "Art should make you look closer," he says.
Bottom Line: "Looking closer" is not a bad advice in the context of mutual respect and inclusion either. Let's just hope that we like what we see when we look closer inside!
Disclaimer: "This written advice is absolutely intended to be used, and if used under expert supervision is known to improve organizational and individual effectiveness substantially."
© Abhay Padgaonkar 2007. All Rights Reserved.