Archive for Healthcare Letter:

August 15, 2010

By Oakleigh

Posted In

General, Healthcare

Recommended Reading for Healthcare Leaders

Early this year, I was helping a second year MBA candidate from my alma mater in his job search. He was originally from Wisconsin and wanted to return to his roots. While he did not find something in our Badger State, I was encouraged when he took an offer with a health care organization.

I sent him two books: Hardwiring Excellence and Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic. There are many valuable resources for those in healthcare, but I chose those because I believe they are timeless. At the core of these books, is the fundamental notion of recognizing how do we optimize human behavior and align resources around a sense of great purpose in a disciplined sustainable manner. Today I see many organizations looking for the next great “fix” or best practice thinking they have already done certain things or established certain norms in their culture. Instead, what they have is a culture of “options” and “at your discretion”. I highly recommend healthcare leaders to either visit these books or in many cases “revisit” them.

Berry, Leonard and Kent Seltman. 2008. Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the Worlds Most Admired Service Organizations. McGraw-Hill.

Studer, Quint. 2004. Hardwiring Excellence. Pensacola, FireStarter Publishing.