Effective Questions: An Example with Measured Value

This morning’s The Denver Post came with a front-page article titled, “Thinking Like a Factory Helps Heal Hospital’s Bottom Line.” It was an excellent article about how the Denver Health Medical Center has saved many jobs and much money by asking the right questions, a critical leadership skill. They asked two questions:

What are the things that keep you from working efficiently?
Are there things you see happening to patients that shouldn’t?

These two excellent questions demonstrate “enlightened leadership” and address efficiency/effectiveness and patient safety/satisfaction. The answers were definitely “in the room,” as was indicated by some of the data. The overall process they were using is lean conversion, which respects people and their value, while using their talent to address process issues.

Peg Burnette, chief financial officer, said that since its Lean conversion (process started) in 2005, the city’s public health system has benefited to the tune of $54 million in increased revenue, money not spent, and expenses cut.

Our people DO have the solutions we need to deal with the challenges we face! Enlightened Leadership Solutions has lots of online tools to help you ask the right questions and deal with the challenges and perspectives of greatly enhancing the effectiveness of your organization.

Hats off to the DHMC leadership team! They are making a difference. And doing so in a tough environment.

The Enlightened Leadership Team