Dare

From HMCwiki

Take a dare to stimulate improvement. Remember as a kid, a friend would dare you to do something that was hard. You took the challenge on as an adventure. Reckless in how you were going to do it, you were going to show them. I bet many of your immediate responses to a dare was “Oh Yeah”

Well here is a double-dog dare that is guaranteed to add value to your service and work environment:

A dare to managers

Prepare for an onslaught of new ideas. Ideas are like seeds, they have to be received in the right soil in order to become fruitful. If your area has not been rocked with improvement lately, there is a good possibility changes are needed. Examine how receptive the environment is for receiving new input, ideas. I dare you to become a walking suggestion box to your staff. Anxious to receive and operationalize anything worth considering. This requires two things:

1. A passion to consider any idea, and treasure it through to implementation if it is a keeper. That means you will do almost the impossible to get in place and sustain it. You do it because you value the staff that originated the idea, and you value the benefit it will add to the work environment and your customers. If an idea is not a keeper, the explanation needs to be clarified to the originator. And for those off-the-wall ideas, let them incubate for a day before giving a response. Many timesaving benefits are hair-brain when they are first presented.
2. An easy means to receive and maintain the ideas. Create an “Idea Card” fits in any pocket so when that creative moment arrives, the staff are ready to make a difference. Remember, one idea not responded to in quick fashion may inhibit 20 more over the course of the employee’s tenure. Get staff in the mode of questioning and improving everything. Get staff to think small, challenge each to come up with one idea a month, no matter how small. There is value in continually making improvement regardless of size. Ultimately, make sure the idea is fully implemented so it stays alive over time.

Is it work on the manager’s part? Probably. Is it worth the effort? You bet it is.

Remember it takes money to implement new things. Have petty cash available for staff to try stuff out. It was a $6.50 towel rack reimbursed through petty cash from the Container Store that led to 400 installed throughout one hospital. Go to your administration if it is out of the budget. After all, ideas don’t always appear just prior to budget time.

A dare to administration

Look at the overall merit for funding an idea. In relation to the improvement momentum and its lifetime effect in cost savings and service. Requiring an open-and-shut case for cost justification for every idea will squelch most improvement efforts. If it is logical, makes sense, then back it.

A dare to staff

You invest so much of your day performing good work. Why not designate a portion toward making things better? For your work environment and your customers. In orientation, employees should be informed that they are not hired just to provide top-notch technical service, but to improve the systems as they are. This requires them to ask the question ‘why’ whenever something looks wasteful. Get aggressive about those things that waste time, motion even thought. Question why things are set up they way they are. I dare you to set grass fires of improvement. Sure it takes time, but as a rule, there is a 5 to 1 return on efforts spent on improvement. I dare you to own the solution of the idea. Make it happen. This may mean going to the manager several times if necessary to get in the line of priorities. It means you will participate to test and implement it. If the environment has traditionally been anemic toward input, keep on going to bat for the improvement. No one said it is going to be easy. If your idea or work environment isn’t worth fighting for, it isn’t a good idea to begin with. After you get the thrill of seeing one of your ideas implemented, it will drive you to create new ones. But it starts with you.

It will be the collective effort of each manager and each staff member that will transition the culture to a learning organization which breathes improvement. Everyone gains.

Now that’s a dare you can’t leave unchallenged.

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