Engaging for Quality

When building a quality organization, we are striving to do three things: get employees (and executives) to feel the need for quality in their bones; get them to understand what quality is and why it is important; and build the process, procedure, and tools to make quality happen. Practitioners in change management often call this heart, head, and hands.

In our efforts we strive to answer give major themes of questions about why building a culture of quality is critical.

Theme	Questions
Why	Why do we need quality? Why is it important? What are the regulatory expectations? What happens if we do nothing?
What	What results are expected for our patients? Our organization? Our people? What does out destination look and feel like?
How	How will we get there? What’s our plan and process? What new behaviors do we each need to demonstrate?
You	What do you need to fulfill your role in quality? What do we need from you?
Me	What do I commit to as a leader? What will I do to make change a reality? How will I support my team?

The great part of this is that the principles of building a quality culture are the same mindsets we want embedded in our culture. By demonstrating them, we build and strengthen the culture, and will reap the dividends.

Be Preventative: What actions can be taken to prevent undesirable/unintended consequences with employees and other stakeholders. We do this by:

• Involving end-users in the design process
• Conduct risk assessments and lessons learned to predict possible failures
• Ensure the reason for change is holistic and accounts for all internal and external obligations
• Determine metrics as soon as possible
• Focus on how the organization is responding to ongoing change
• Think through how roles need to change and what employees need to be accountable for

Be Proactive: What actions can be taken to successfully meet objectives?

• Participate in sensemaking
• Establish habits and rituals
• Provide role clarity
• Provide learning opportunities
• Make change social

Be Responsive: What evidence-based techniques can be used to respond to issues, including resistance?

• Learn from mistakes and resistance
• Apply learning
• Rely on partnerships

This is all about leveraging the 8 change accelerators and effectively developing strategies for change.