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Leaders key to success during organizational change

Practice Management. By Stewart Gabel, MD, amednews contributor. Dec. 8, 2003.

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Planning, implementing and overseeing any organizational change is a central task for anyone holding a leadership position in a health care organization. For these physician and nonphysician leaders, the challenge can be daunting.

Unfortunately, the results are sometimes poor. Failed economic objectives, thorny issues around patient care, and greater staff discontent and turnover are common before, during and after transitions. There is often quick turnover of the leaders themselves during these periods.

Can the process of organizational change work better? I believe the answer is "yes"-- if programmatic, financial and business interests are combined with a greater appreciation of the more human elements inherent in change.

I would like to offer three examples of what I mean when I talk of the more human or personal aspects of organizational transitions.

First, leaders should make clear their personal bond to the organization, to its mission and to everyone who will carry out the change. Movement from a known place to the unknown (and maybe unwanted) is how we intuitively understand the nature of change.

The leader who is likely to succeed is someone who is able to convince others, at every level, that they are all joined by a bond, himself or herself included foremost -- to each other and the organization.

Consider the alternative: The leader who appears to be striving ambitiously to achieve change to enhance his or her own personal status or reputation. The likely response will be angry and nonproductive resistance to change.