Have it your way... no, really.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of connecting with an outpatient nurse, named Holly, for a day. It's hard to beat a richer experience than working alongside a nurse for the day. They remind me of Mr. Fix-it, the jack-of-all-trades pretty much. Knowing that my passion is in informatics, she geared the whole day in that regard. As we walked through Holly's daily routines, I reiterated to state the process as is, be 100% honest, and highlight all aspects of IT and informatics within these processes. And boy, did she ever! Before long i had 5 pages of process notes, many of which were highlights of areas for improvement. Many of her process, as I learned, were doing the trick, but it was extremely inefficient. This is because different teams were tasked with creating various widgets/tools, and they weren't interoperable in the end. The result? 378 IT systems across the university. Interface much? Sheesh. By the end of the day, I had a huge tally of process improvement projects to forward on to the hospital strategy and innovation council for consideration. As I've found in the past, some of the best ideas come from a newbie with a neutral mindset... who isn't afraid to speak his/her mind.
Anything you can do i can do betteeeeer.
Working at a massive AMC, I never thought I'd experience stiff internal competition. I gotta tell ya--- things are pretty fierce around this joint. And while it sometimes can work to your advantage in creating innovation and constructive conflict, this definitely isn't the case. So i'm helping to manage a project on anticipatory patient care, and naturally, I took a scan of fellow projects across the health system. While none were identical to what I was partaking in, at least 5-6 were, in some way, shape, or form, related to or in parallel with our project. It's taken the last 3 months to convince the leadership to have these projects dotted-lined to one another! The result? Saving many months of duplicative work with potentially very similar outcomes. I've started a spreadsheet of both duplicative initiatives/projects and related/parallel projects, with plans to soon share with leadership in hopes of merging efforts. And we wonder why so many projects fail-- lack of communication.
Does that come in platinum?
Being a big bro has been eye-opening these last few months. I think above all else it's made me realize that many kids of Gen-Z have a defining sense of entitlement. An extremely generous donor gave us 2 tickets to the Titans game a few weeks ago-- on the 2nd row back!! We could practically touch the players. So as we left, I asked Andre if he enjoyed the game. He explained how it was okay, but in his thank-you to the donor (which i have him write to every donor/supporter) he was going to request that he get us box seats for next year because these weren't good enough. Wha?! The flipside of this experience has taken a while for me to build but i'm seeing it like so-- people of all types walk this green Earth. Regardless of upbringing, people have different desires in life. My goal is to teach Andre that nothing is free and he must work for it. I want him to see not only the value of a dollar for all people but also the importance of appreciation. A few weeks ago, he told me at the end of a trail hike that I 'am the best big brother ever'. That definitely makes it all worth it... over one hill and on to the next. I guess this is what 'making a difference' is all about...
