Perspectives
Healthcare Leaders Embrace a New Accountability
Leadership accountability is more vital than ever, according to the Evolving Healthcare C-Suite: Trends, Predictions and Strategic Advice, a new white paper from InveniasPartners, a Chicago-based healthcare C-Suite and board executive recruitment, assessment and talent management advisory services firm.
“Healthcare organizations will increasingly insist on board performance and accountability,” says the white paper. “Board members, in turn, will hold healthcare C-suites accountable, insisting that executives adhere to strategic goals and priorities.”
The need for increased accountability is urgent. Absent accountability, even the most courageous, transformative healthcare executives will miss the mark. They may fall short in reaching their clinical, financial and operational goals. They may fail to recruit top talent, develop teams or communicate with clarity and candor. Healthcare C-Suite and board leadership demands authentic accountability.
What happens when C-Suite executives accept personal accountability? Consider your own leadership style. On a five-point scale, how would you grade yourself on the following dimensions of professional accountability?
- Responsibility: I answer for the outcomes of my decisions and actions.
- Action: I fix situations and make things right rather than laying blame on others.
- Understanding: I grasp what makes my organization tick—its success secrets and hidden opportunities.
- Advocacy: I champion and support opportunities for others to achieve success.
- Challenging: I question the decisions, policies and processes that shape my organization.
- Inquiring: I ask others questions to access the best, most creative answers.
- Team Oriented: I take ownership for team and group performance.
How can C-Suite executives enhance their sense of accountability? Whether you seek a new position or want to accelerate success in your current senior executive role, consider making the following strategies part of your professional development plan:
Demonstrate candor. Hiring organizations seek executives who are willing to set aside personal pride and admit their failings. Decision-makers often present C-Suite candidates with scenarios like the following:
“Give me an example of a recent challenge or crisis you faced related to clinical integration, value-based reimbursement or performance management. How would you describe your role in the situation? How did you help others design a solution that resolved the challenge or conflict? What would you have done differently if you had an opportunity to re-engineer the situation the led to the crisis?”
Reveal a willingness to share blame. Accountable healthcare C-Suite executives are quick to say, “I’m sorry,” “I apologize,” or “I regret what just happened.” When a situation “heads south,” these executives resist pointing fingers. Instead they accept responsibility for whatever happened. They make amends, zero in on the task at hand and deliver what they promise—on time and on budget.
Arrogance is out of style in the healthcare C-Suite. Hiring organizations seek C-Suite executives and board members with a sense of humility and servant leadership. They want leaders who understand the power of an apology supported by practical plans to fix troublesome situations. They recruit and hire candidates who reach beyond everyday problems and crises to focus on clinical and business goals.
Show your desire to seek input. Accountable healthcare executives seek out the ideas and opinions of others—colleagues, managers, employees and clinicians—on situations that failed to work out as planned. Their challenge to friends, family and associates is this: “This is what happened. How do you think I could have handled this situation differently? What could I have done to produce a better outcome?”
Accountable healthcare executives tend to look and think three steps ahead. They realize that they’re likely to face similar challenges in the months and years ahead, so they seek ways to do things differently and achieve better results. Among the questions these leaders pose of others:
- “How would you have handled this?”
- “What if I had waited to make the announcement? Do you think the response would have been different?”
- “What would you change the next time around?
- “Who else should I talk to about this?’
Present yourself as a person who accepts responsibility and takes action. Accountable healthcare C-Suite executives rarely avoid responsibility, procrastinate or under or over commit. Disciplined and focused, they know when to say “no,” “later” or “sorry, not now.
But these leaders also understand how to say “yes,” and “let’s do it.” They agree to new programs, but only if they have the time and resources to make the program a success. Or they may say “no” to the program but “yes: to the underlying concept. In this way, they champion new ideas but free themselves from the stresses of implementation.
Forward to Your C-Suite Future
Accountability offers benefits to healthcare organizations and the careers of healthcare C-Suite executives. Accountability builds trust within teams, generates respect among executives, managers, clinicians and employees and infuses the entire workplace with fairness and positive regard. Evaluate accountability levels by looking at yourself and your colleagues and posing the following questions:
- How accountable are C-Suite executives and board members? How do they demonstrate accountability?
- Can the organization do more to develop accountability within C-Suite executives and board members?
- How can the organization be more accountable to patients, consumers, employees, clinicians and the community?
- How can we build a more accountable healthcare system?
Curt Lucas is president and CEO of InveniasPartners, A Chicago based healthcare C-Suite executive and board recruitment, assessment and talent management firm. With offices in Los Angles, Salt Lake City, Dallas and Princeton, New Jersey, InveniasPartners serves the executive talent needs of hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers, medical groups and payers. For more information and to download a complimentary white paper on the healthcare C-Suite, so to http://www.inveniaspartners.com.