Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013 - 40

Professional Pointers
Take Note

MANAGEMENT

Five Questions to Get Project
Stakeholder Consensus
You’ve been assigned to a new project team. Enthusiasm runs
high, yet as planning progresses things start to fall apart.
Tensions surface. Tactics get endlessly debated. What went
wrong? As a healthcare consultant and executive for more
than 35 years, my experience points to a lack of consensus at
the outset of the planning process around some basic project
outcomes. Consider the following questions to get stakeholders on the same page:
What is our business goal? Be as specific as
possible when identifying what your project is designed
to achieve in terms of increased net revenue, new customers, reduced cost per unit of service, etc. If you can, narrow your choices down to one primary goal.
How does this project support the organization’s strategic plan? Tie your project to the
organization’s strategic plan. In what way does it make
a quantifiable contribution to stated strategic priorities?
Who is your target customer? You may need to
identify both a primary and secondary target customer. For
example, if you are planning a defined orthopedic center,
your primary customer may be a candidate for elective joint surgery who has insurance, and your secondary customer may be
the “influencer” on that decision such as a spouse or physician.
What do you want your customer to do? Do
you want your target customer to make an initial inquiry,
to have a hassle-free user experience, to refer more
patients, to make an appointment? Spell it out by each
defined customer.

How will you measure project success? Your
response to this question should loop back to question
No. 1. What are the two to three primary metrics that
will be used to measure initial and ongoing success of the
project? By documenting the team’s working responses to the
above questions on paper and keeping it on the table at
each meeting, the group is much more likely to maintain focus,
progress in an efficient manner and ultimately achieve the project outcomes that will satisfy all stakeholders.
Source: Keith D. Lundquist, FACHE, president, Lundquist & Associates,
West Melbourne, Fla. Contact him at LundquistKeith@gmail.com.

LEADERSHIP

Generate Success in Your Life: You Are
the Leader of Your Own Corporation
There is perhaps no other quality that can accelerate your
career or create success in your life as quickly as accepting
that you are a leader in everything you do. You become a
leader by demonstrating the qualities of leadership whenever
those qualities are required by the situation.
Become What You Think
You already know that you become what you think about
most of the time. And what you think determines what you do.
If you think the way leaders think, you will say and do the
things leaders say and do. It is also true that you become
what you do. In fact, you are what you do. Your actions are
the only true measure of your character and your personality.
When you act like a leader, when you take a leadership role,
you begin to think and feel like a leader as well. This is why
leaders are made, not born. Everyone has within them the
qualities of leadership. As you practice these qualities regularly and systematically, you realize that you are a leader in
everything you do.

“ We can’t help everyone, but everyone can
help someone.”
—Ronald Reagan
40

Healthcare Executive
nov/dEc 2013

Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013

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