Banging Heads Against The Walls
Over the last few decades, leaders in performance improvement have often felt like they were just banging their heads against the walls. Don’t you think it’s time for a change?

Boeing: A Pay-for-Performance Example
One of the best examples of Pay-for-Performance is Boeing. There is no more direct line of sight Pay-for-Performance program than handing the decision-making to the consumers.

Couch Cruiser
Sometimes the thrill of a new technology, and the competitive desire to be first, can cloud our judgment. This example shows the need for safety precautions and careful planning.

Disney Values
We have a lot to learn about values from Walt Disney. By rank-ordering the business values for his theme parks, he empowered every employee to know just what to do in any situation.

Do you have to be French to make an impression?
Do you have to be French to make an impression? No matter what position you’re in, you can add brush strokes to the masterpiece your institution is creating in patient care.

Ferrari
One of our greatest challenges in hospitals today is making 21st-century technologies work within our dated 20th-century infrastructure.

Helicopter Crash
This maiden flight of a new helicopter can teach us a valuable lesson about the adoption of new technology.

High Reliability
This E-CTR describes how applying high-reliability principles to the risky environment of aircraft carriers has dramatically affected the number of accidents. These same principles are being employed in other environments and industries with similar results.

Level 5 Leaders
“Level 5 Leaders” is a concept coined by Jim Collins. These Leaders are driven by humility and fierce resolve, and they take their companies from good to great. Sheryl Dodds, Senior Vice President of Operations of Cirrus Health, and the former CEO of the Nebraska Heart Institute, is one of our industry’s Level 5 Leaders.

Pay-for-Performance Tsunami
A tsunami metaphor can be used to describe the emergence of the P4P movement. Quietly building offshore in a climate of stakeholder unrest is a tsunami that threatens all but the best prepared. Under a sea of complexity, long-ignored fault lines in the tectonic plate of healthcare have finally snapped into a major fracture with unprecedented force. At the end of the day there will be the surfers who make things happen; the swimmers who watch things happen; and the sinkers who wonder what happened.

Steve Martin
Communication is a major component of almost every serious system failure. This clip captures the essence of some of the challenges we face.

The Elephants, the Prophets, and the MIAs
The Elephants are the excuses that defeat quality and safety initiatives. Sometimes they are voiced; more often they are the “elephants in the room” that no one wants to acknowledge, yet they are ever present. The Prophets are the safety leaders who are energized by national meetings and the evidence for impact, yet when they return home they meet a huge wall of resistance. They are “prophets who have no honor in their own country” who need actionable concepts, tools, and resources to drive change. The MIAs are the “missing in action” – those people and hospitals who are missing at national safety meetings and not participating in national performance improvement programs. They need to see the reality that demands action. They need clear opportunities to join the quality movement before they are left behind.

Values and Leadership
Leadership gurus Ann Rhoades and Jim Collins discuss how values and workforce are the REAL drivers of economic performance. These decisions start at the top with the leaders.