By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA
I was struck by this quote. My brain first went to my personal tolerance for trial and error. After all, business development innovation requires ideas that are new in concept or have new approaches for implementation. Even the best new plans may not turn out as we’d hoped. That’s the truth. Yet, at a personal level, I have abundant angst when things don’t go perfect right out of the gate. This got me thinking, is my reaction natural or is it a part of the healthcare culture (and past clinical background) that defines me.
Healthcare hates doing anything that is not perfect the first time around. Obviously that makes sense in the clinical world, but does it in the areas of marketing, business development and physician strategy? Disciplines that require innovation; new messages, new ways of creating business relationships and ways to differentiate your approach from the crowd seem to be subjected to the same rigor as a new clinical approach. It’s illogical but very much a reality.
We’ve all had our share of bumps in the road. Have you been a part of creating an internal healthcare culture that embraces/tolerates the innovation process? Beyond personal management (likely more my issue than yours!) perhaps there are some ways to manage expectations for the internal stakeholders. Some of this falls into that category of internal sales. Consider these ideas and then add your thoughts on the subject and how you have been successful in positioning new ideas and innovations.
1. Earn trust with leadership first
- Conversation and preparation with senior leaders is a key step in gaining latitude to innovate
- Many leaders have great ideas. If it can be part or totally their idea, the chances for tolerance or learning without perfect success is enhanced
2. Leverage good ideas that come from within and then align
- Beyond ideas from the C-suite, embrace ideas that come from your team or from service line leaders. Even if it is not fully developed, if you get a good concept, you can do a little research and work with the internal stakeholder to fine-tune the concept. Bonus is if the idea does not work you can share the pain with the internal partner
- Talk through the pros and cons of a new idea with an internal innovation team. Use people from all disciplines to hedge your bets
- When the idea is presented to leadership, give credit to the full internal team
3. Stage expectations and results
- If you can put a percentage on the chances of success, do so
- At a minimum, call out those elements that need to fall into place for success. Likewise, think through the barriers to success
- Most important, set a timeline for the innovation trial. Far too often, organizations will bail on an idea too fast. All the work that went into the launch is lost because there was not an immediate success
4. Know the skeptics
- You know who they are. Likely faces popped into your mind when you read this one
- Innovators always have skeptics who prefer we do things exactly as we have done them. Or that we have a full research document and 10 year financials for every new idea
- Make sure you have a clear budget and a cost-benefit document that shows the business savvy of your idea
- When possible involve them in the analytics or another narrow area of the proposed innovation just so they are informed
- If you know they are capable of sabotage, work through that challenge before you go to leadership
5. Manage time and dollars on the idea stage- fail fast
- Unlike the process for rolling out clinical advances, business strategies need a short-cycle ramp up and the ability to shut it down when it is not deemed to add value
- The marketplace benefits from the ability to fail fast, learn from mistakes and try the next great thing.
What are your ideas for creating a culture of innovation that lets you learn from what works- and what doesn’t? How do you manage the internal organization and your own tolerance for failures on your journey to a better way of doing your job?