John Coxon & Associates work with managers in hospitals, aged care facilities and medical centres. We provide management consulting services when asked and we work one-to-one with managers in a coaching relationship.
This case study involves one of our coaching clients. This client is a a part of the management team of a combined hospital/aged care provider. The client is a registered nurse working in acute care. Over the past five years we have provided a variety of services to this health provider and I have been involved in a coaching relationship with a number of managers. During the past few years, sparodically, I have worked with this particular manager to help develop her management skills.
When I first met this client she was a registered nurse working in a number of roles and showing potential by standing in for various senior roles when called upon. During 2008 an opportunity came along when the position of Director of Nursing became vacant. After some discussion my client decided to accept an offer to fill in as Acting Director of Nursing pending a recruitment process being implemented. My clients abilities were soon recognised in the acting role and she was eventually successful in her application for the role full time.
Why am I so excited about this outcome? Because this represents, to me, what a well executed coaching relationship should be about. It should be about developing potential. The title is nice, the pay is even better - none of this matches the excitement I heard in this ladies voice when she called me to confirm her full time appointment. Position and money are a result of developing potential, not the reason for doing so. I can tell you now there is not one single nursing manager anywhere in Australia experiencing a higher level of job satisfaction than this person at this moment. This person took responsibility for her own employment outcomes and took advantage of every opportunity, for professional development, available to her.
You can do the same. If you are a manager or aspiring to be in management and you wish to maximise your potential, call me now. It costs nothing to explore the options and I can guide you through the process of putting together a business case to your manager for a coaching program designed to maximise your potential and maximise your value to your organisation.
Let The Journey Continue
John Coxon
John Coxon & Associates
Taking You from Frontline Manager to CEO
www.johncoxon.com.au
Email john@johncoxon.com.au
Skype: john_coxon
Blog: http://healthsector.blogspot.com
Blog: http://nfp-management.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johncoxon
Follow john_coxon on Twitter
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Where is the evidence of need to change
Deming, the godfather of quality management, once said people are not very good at diagnosing problems because they are involved in it. We don't like to admit that what we are doing may be wrong. We don't like to change our behaviour unless we have a very good reason for doing so.
Regrettably for many, the impetus for change is in the form of a crisis. Such action is unnecessary and wasteful. Yet there has to be a reason for people to change. The clues lie in the evidence or the data.
Managers are judged upon their ability to acheive results; they need others to work with them to achieve this. Teamwork is required. Equally importantly, other people have to do the things they said they would do.
How often do you seek feedback from your people as to progress? How often do you know about potential issues before they become problems? If your response is not often then you are setting yourself up for a fall.
Issues cannot be resolved, problems cannot be solved and critical decisions cannot be made effectively without some supporting data. Try this. Form a working team with other managers. Bring to the discussions data and evidence of acheivement and issues. Share this information with each other. Avoid competition, instead work in a collaborative manner. Other managers bring an external perspective, they also being additional experiences, to your issues. As you do to theirs. In this way the management team is looking collectively and collaboratively at the systemic issues within your organisation. The group is able to distance itself from the issue and is able to use the available data and evidence to inform their decision making.
Let The Journey Continue
John Coxon
John Coxon & Associates
Taking You from Frontline Manager to CEO
www.johncoxon.com.au
Email john@johncoxon.com.au
Skype: john_coxon
Blog: http://healthsector.blogspot.com
Blog: http://nfp-management.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johncoxon
Follow john_coxon on Twitter
Join John Coxon on Facebook
Regrettably for many, the impetus for change is in the form of a crisis. Such action is unnecessary and wasteful. Yet there has to be a reason for people to change. The clues lie in the evidence or the data.
Managers are judged upon their ability to acheive results; they need others to work with them to achieve this. Teamwork is required. Equally importantly, other people have to do the things they said they would do.
How often do you seek feedback from your people as to progress? How often do you know about potential issues before they become problems? If your response is not often then you are setting yourself up for a fall.
Issues cannot be resolved, problems cannot be solved and critical decisions cannot be made effectively without some supporting data. Try this. Form a working team with other managers. Bring to the discussions data and evidence of acheivement and issues. Share this information with each other. Avoid competition, instead work in a collaborative manner. Other managers bring an external perspective, they also being additional experiences, to your issues. As you do to theirs. In this way the management team is looking collectively and collaboratively at the systemic issues within your organisation. The group is able to distance itself from the issue and is able to use the available data and evidence to inform their decision making.
Let The Journey Continue
John Coxon
John Coxon & Associates
Taking You from Frontline Manager to CEO
www.johncoxon.com.au
Email john@johncoxon.com.au
Skype: john_coxon
Blog: http://healthsector.blogspot.com
Blog: http://nfp-management.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johncoxon
Follow john_coxon on Twitter
Join John Coxon on Facebook
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Systemic crisis of failed management
Paul Fitzgerald, a former health advisor for the New South Wales Government, writes in The Australian newspaper that the Australian health sector is suffering from a systemic failure of management.
Paul's argument is that the delivery of health services is mismanaged due to non-clinical managers with a focus on financial management having control of hospitals, rather than clinicians themselves having management control. Paul also argues that poor management leads to higher turnover of all staff, the best leaving the industry, mediocre performance by those remaining and in Paul's, opinion, low standards of health care for the consumer.
Paul makes a number of other arguments in his article related to the efficiencies of health service delivery however I wish to focus on the management aspects. The first realiy of public health in Australia and New Zealand is that every manager must learn to deliver a service within budget and political constraints. Having to achieve this is not the cause of poor management. Managers are people and they work with people. They are ineffective as managers when they make poor decisions about people without regard for the people they work with.
Yes public health providers are professional bureaucracies, as are all Government funded organisations, and yes bureaucracies have their share of poor performers, as do organisations in the private sector. The challenge for management is to achieve the best from each person within the resources avaialable. Highly effective managers do make a career choice, they do seek to engage in management practice and as such they make a commitment to manage effectively.
It is erroneous to assume good clinicians will also be effective managers of people. They may be able to identify supply and demand and they may be able to adjust service delivery to meet demand yet if they fail to manage and develop the people that work for them then the outcome will remain the same.
The funding challenge for the public health sector is two-fold; firstly to adequately fund clinicians, equipment and facilities and secondly to adequately fund the development of management. Effective managers, clinicians or otherwise, with a good understanding of health processes, a well developed ability to get the best from people, an understanding of patient needs and the ability to manage within financial constraints are the key to high quality health care delivery at the lowest cost.
Research conducted in the USA from 2002-07 amongst 200,000 people from 500 health service providers, and published in a white paper by Success Profiles, titled Organisational Culture and Performance in Healthcare Organisations, clearly illustrated the relationship between effective management practices and operational efficiencies. The message was clear, develop your management capacity and capabilities. Develop the ability of your managers to lead and develop people. Hire the right people with the right skills to do the right job.
Let The Journey Continue
John Coxon
John Coxon & Associates
Taking You from Frontline Manager to CEO
www.johncoxon.com.au
Email john@johncoxon.com.au
Skype: john_coxon
Blog: http://healthsector.blogspot.com
Blog: http://nfp-management.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johncoxon
Follow john_coxon on Twitter
Join John Coxon on Facebook
Paul's argument is that the delivery of health services is mismanaged due to non-clinical managers with a focus on financial management having control of hospitals, rather than clinicians themselves having management control. Paul also argues that poor management leads to higher turnover of all staff, the best leaving the industry, mediocre performance by those remaining and in Paul's, opinion, low standards of health care for the consumer.
Paul makes a number of other arguments in his article related to the efficiencies of health service delivery however I wish to focus on the management aspects. The first realiy of public health in Australia and New Zealand is that every manager must learn to deliver a service within budget and political constraints. Having to achieve this is not the cause of poor management. Managers are people and they work with people. They are ineffective as managers when they make poor decisions about people without regard for the people they work with.
Yes public health providers are professional bureaucracies, as are all Government funded organisations, and yes bureaucracies have their share of poor performers, as do organisations in the private sector. The challenge for management is to achieve the best from each person within the resources avaialable. Highly effective managers do make a career choice, they do seek to engage in management practice and as such they make a commitment to manage effectively.
It is erroneous to assume good clinicians will also be effective managers of people. They may be able to identify supply and demand and they may be able to adjust service delivery to meet demand yet if they fail to manage and develop the people that work for them then the outcome will remain the same.
The funding challenge for the public health sector is two-fold; firstly to adequately fund clinicians, equipment and facilities and secondly to adequately fund the development of management. Effective managers, clinicians or otherwise, with a good understanding of health processes, a well developed ability to get the best from people, an understanding of patient needs and the ability to manage within financial constraints are the key to high quality health care delivery at the lowest cost.
Research conducted in the USA from 2002-07 amongst 200,000 people from 500 health service providers, and published in a white paper by Success Profiles, titled Organisational Culture and Performance in Healthcare Organisations, clearly illustrated the relationship between effective management practices and operational efficiencies. The message was clear, develop your management capacity and capabilities. Develop the ability of your managers to lead and develop people. Hire the right people with the right skills to do the right job.
Let The Journey Continue
John Coxon
John Coxon & Associates
Taking You from Frontline Manager to CEO
www.johncoxon.com.au
Email john@johncoxon.com.au
Skype: john_coxon
Blog: http://healthsector.blogspot.com
Blog: http://nfp-management.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johncoxon
Follow john_coxon on Twitter
Join John Coxon on Facebook
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Team Building
Building effective teams can be a challenge. In a perfect world we would be able to select the most effective people for our teams. We would discard those without the ability to be good team players.
Such a sentiment tends to disguse a fundamental factor. Building an effective team does not happen by accident. It has to be worked upon; just as we work upon developing individual competencies, we also need to work on developing team competencies.
Many managers actually do not understand this. They tend to assume team work will just happen. They tend to assume that if you have well developed people on the team then the team will function well. In a sense this is a reasonable assumption. The problem with this assumption is that it assumes access to balanced individuals. In reality we inherit our teams, we often have little control over who is in our team, therefore we have to work with what we have.
This is where the hard work comes in. Instead of assuming the team will work fine if it is full of well balanced individual; managers must instead be proactive at developing the capabilities of each individual team member - so that they are able to contribute in a balanced manner towards achieving team goals. The difference is this. Individual development doesn't cease the moment someone joins a team; in fact, it is at this point that individual development needs to move to a higher level.
Teams are effective because each person in the team contributes something. Rath & Conchie, from Gallup, emphasis this in their research into strengths based leadership. Their research into leadership teams found there were four key domains of leadership strength, these being:
1: Executing
2: Influencing
3: Relationship Building
4: Strategic Thinking
Each of these domains contains a host of strengths characteristics. The point being made by Rath and Conchie is that while individuals may not always be balanced, each individual brings strengths to the team, and when the team operates to the strengths of its members then the team is balanced and rounded. The key activity for team leaders is to be able to identify the various strengths characteristics required by the team and either (a) import those strengths into the team or (b) develop the latent strengths amongst existing team members.
Let The Journey Continue
John Coxon
John Coxon & Associates
Taking You from Frontline Manager to CEO
www.johncoxon.com.au
Email john@johncoxon.com.au
Skype: john_coxon
Blog: http://healthsector.blogspot.com
Blog: http://nfp-management.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johncoxon
Follow john_coxon on Twitter
Join John Coxon on Facebook
Such a sentiment tends to disguse a fundamental factor. Building an effective team does not happen by accident. It has to be worked upon; just as we work upon developing individual competencies, we also need to work on developing team competencies.
Many managers actually do not understand this. They tend to assume team work will just happen. They tend to assume that if you have well developed people on the team then the team will function well. In a sense this is a reasonable assumption. The problem with this assumption is that it assumes access to balanced individuals. In reality we inherit our teams, we often have little control over who is in our team, therefore we have to work with what we have.
This is where the hard work comes in. Instead of assuming the team will work fine if it is full of well balanced individual; managers must instead be proactive at developing the capabilities of each individual team member - so that they are able to contribute in a balanced manner towards achieving team goals. The difference is this. Individual development doesn't cease the moment someone joins a team; in fact, it is at this point that individual development needs to move to a higher level.
Teams are effective because each person in the team contributes something. Rath & Conchie, from Gallup, emphasis this in their research into strengths based leadership. Their research into leadership teams found there were four key domains of leadership strength, these being:
1: Executing
2: Influencing
3: Relationship Building
4: Strategic Thinking
Each of these domains contains a host of strengths characteristics. The point being made by Rath and Conchie is that while individuals may not always be balanced, each individual brings strengths to the team, and when the team operates to the strengths of its members then the team is balanced and rounded. The key activity for team leaders is to be able to identify the various strengths characteristics required by the team and either (a) import those strengths into the team or (b) develop the latent strengths amongst existing team members.
Let The Journey Continue
John Coxon
John Coxon & Associates
Taking You from Frontline Manager to CEO
www.johncoxon.com.au
Email john@johncoxon.com.au
Skype: john_coxon
Blog: http://healthsector.blogspot.com
Blog: http://nfp-management.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johncoxon
Follow john_coxon on Twitter
Join John Coxon on Facebook
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