The 2020 epidemic exposed the basic flaws in public health delivery, the vulnerability of the staff, the fragility of supply chains, and the systems. It also resulted in innovations in the delivery, a change in how organisations are managed. The hierarchies were eliminated, senior leaders were easily accessible, there was a sharp focus on what required to be done, raid experimentations and greater tolerance toward failure.
How can this energy and enthusiasm be preserved, when many felt they were at their best, and put to work on new problems that health care needs to focus on. How can the staff creativity and rapid learning be supported without compromising the quality and safety standards?
here are a few steps that empower, encourages and supports leaders across professions to address the uncertainties they face.
Publicly accept the uncertainty
Acknowledge the uncertainty. It no way diminishes the authority by asking for help. Such transparency would be appreciated and takes the pressure off staff who might believe they should know what to do. legitimises investment of time and effort in search of solutions.
Focus the search
Simply admitting uncertainty without committing to learning serves no purpose. When resources are limited, problem-solving needs to be efficient and leaders need to focus on the most urgent needs. By shortlisting, priorities leaders define what is critical and what can wait, assign a lower status to minor matters an focus on urgent issues.
Delegate authority
Many a tie, there may be junior members in the team who would relish challenges and the license to tackle problems that the urgency has created. Leaders should allow them to take charge, acknowledge their expertise. They should delegate authority to the staff member who had the best expertise irrespective of status.
There may be more capable people in the organisation than what the leaders know or acknowledge. In delegating, it is important to give a clear sense of accountability, clarify expectations by setting goals, defining acceptable solutions.
Do not delay making difficult decisions.
Leaders have to create an inclusive and empowered work environment where dissent, challenge and debate are encouraged. They must also shut down unproductive lines of enquiry quickly to preserve resources for more promising ones.
Shorten feedback cycles
In many organisations, many layers of decision making and ambiguity about the ultimate decision-making authority is common. Even no can take a very long time.
In contrast, it is better to have frequent progress assessment through data review and multi-disciplinary team meetings. A regular system of team meetings, decision-making meetings should examine both the pros and cons of proposed solutions. It should again be supported by daily information on key data, meaningful issues and keep everyone alerted about priorities.
Legitimise reversal
A necessary complement to decision-making is making it easy to change them. In crisis situations decisions may be made very quickly and later may seem faulty. So the decisions taken should be reviewed over a few times to ensure that they stand the test of time. This may lead to an occasional reversal and reinforce the idea that a well-designed solution that fails is a key source of learning.
Set expectations
Freedom to experiment should be within the parameters set by goal clarity, scientific process and individual capabilities. Tolerating failures assumes competence and rigorous methodology. Leaders must set expectations by distinguishing failures that lead to learning from unproductive ones. Those who are not up to it must be coached o must be removed from the team.
Include customers
In a crisis response, one may be focussed on the technical problems. However, it must be remembered that the target audience is critical to uncertainty reduction and problem-solving. Their perspectives and insights would lead to better solutions especially from a usability perspective and should never be overlooked.
Look after the team members
Frontline members are at most risk and maybe taking the biggest risk to find solutions and may at times suffer unexpected consequences. Take proper care of theses members and ensure that they are taken care of fully both physically and mentally
Be where the action is
Leaders should be present at the place of action and be available to offer suggestions, solutions where required, in short, be part of the team.
The epidemic may have run its course but the lessons learnt will be with us always and help us draw a new way of managing businesses. Uncertainty, instability, system fragility may persist as new and unexpected problem crop up. The learnings honed during the worst of the crisis would stan in good stead. The conventional approaches would never have worked in a crisis situation. These learnings should become a permanent part of each leader across all situations.
10 Leadership Lessons from Covid Field Hospitals
by Richard M.J. Bohmer, Jeanette R. Ives Erickson, Gregg S. Meyer, Bonnie B.Blanchfield, James Mountford, W. Craig Vanderwagen,
and Giles W.L. Boland
HBR 2020/11
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