📍 Today in health, it, I tried a new management habit this week. Wanted to share with you. As you know, Fridays are stream of consciousness day, and I share some of the stuff that happened this week. And the results. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system. And creator of this week health set of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare.

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They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, let's get into it. I, um, again, Fridays, I set aside to talk about. Things that are top of mind, things that I'm working on, things that I think might help you as a leader in healthcare and health. It. So we have added obviously Sarah Richardson to the team.

And we now have a team of about, uh, 10 people at this week health. And of those people about, well, it doesn't matter how many at this point, cause 10 people is not that big of a team I've managed, uh, I've managed thousands of people I've managed. Hundreds of people I've managed, uh, you know, and this is actually the smallest thing I've managed, I think, in my management career.

So, uh, but it's kind of fun. It gives me an opportunity to test some things out and do some things. A little differently. And this week on Monday, What I decided to do was I put, I put everybody's name that. Works for this week health on the left-hand side, including Sarah she's new this week, but I put her name there as well. And I decided in that column. Put their name in the next column next to it.

What can I do for each one of them? To help them be more effective this week. Each one of them. And I gave that about, uh, an hour and a half to two hours mine time on Monday morning. And if you don't know how I work, I've shared this before, but. Uh, I get about seven hours sleep and which gets me up around five o'clock in the morning. And the first couple of hours of the day, while the first. Half hour of the day.

I, I journal and do some of that stuff, but the first two hours of work of the day, I try to really push through on the things that are strategic. And this is an interesting strategic management. Uh, practice. And I was curious to see how it would work and giving about two hours to think about each staff member and work it through and say, what's, what's the one thing that would really help them to be more effective.

And in some cases it was, uh, me automating some stuff. Cause I do the it work here and it was automating some things that are. Uh, tedious for them or repetitive for them. Uh, in other cases, it was talking about, uh, potentially a new hire. Or, uh, or a change in their job and their job description, their role, a little more focused in their role. Uh, in other cases, what I found in a couple of them was it was a lot bigger than, Hey, you just can't do this one thing. And we get there.

It was a series of things that I was going to need to do in order to help them to be more effective. I think the value of the, and by the way, we made amazing strides this week at the organization. And I attribute a bunch of it to that time spending about two hours, thinking about each one of my direct reports and actually some that aren't direct reports and what I could do for each one of them to make them more effective. Now, I don't know that I'm going to do this on a weekly basis, but I will likely do this on a monthly basis at a minimum where I just put their names up there and just think about them, their role, what they're working on.

Is it the right thing? Does it match their. Their passions and their experience and their expertise. Is there an area that I could get them to focus in on that they could absolutely hit the ball out of the park? It's amazing to me, how often we let a staff members flounder. Not knowing what we expect from them or, uh, or, or we let them flounder on things that we know are necessarily in their wheelhouse, where we can get them help in those areas and let them really. You know, just again, hit the ball out of the ballpark in certain areas. Let them be who they were created to be, let them really maximize the skills that they bring to the table.

I wanted to share this with you. Uh, I, I found it to be incredibly valuable this week. Again, lists your direct reports in one column, and then one thing that you can do for them this week. That will make them more effective. I will tell you in a lot of cases, what I would recommend is clarify their role. We spend a lot of time at this week, health clarifying people's roles. What's the expectation.

What's the critical success factor. How is it tied to our critical success factors and what's their role in helping to deliver that? Everybody is really clear on that. I remember when I was at St. Joe's, we did a survey, a poll survey of our staff, and it just absolutely. Killed me. When, one of the biggest findings that came back was people didn't know. What, how their role contributed to the larger mission and they didn't know what their exact, what they were expected to do.

So from that moment on, we spend a lot of time clarifying people's roles, clarifying the objectives. Tying it to the mission of the organization. So everybody understood what their purpose was and what, their objectives were. That was, that's a very important thing. And if you haven't done that yet, start there each person, if they clearly understand. What is expected from them and what they can do to deliver those things and how it is tied to the mission of the organization that will go a long way.

And then next month, when you list their names again, perhaps you can move on to the next thing. What's the one thing you could do for them. Alright thought I would share that. Uh, if you have any thoughts of that, shoot me know, let me know that's all for today. Don't forget. Share this podcast with a friend or colleague.

Use it as a foundation for mentoring. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are invested in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Notable service now, enterprise health parlance, certified health and 📍 Panda health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening.

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