Utilizing the 3Ms of Process Improvement in Healthcare: A Roadmap to High Reliability Using Lean, Six Sigma, and Change Leadership PDF

Preface

Why is it that some improvement efforts succeed and many fail despite the analytical skills, leadership cheerleading, change management programs, and sometimes a "do-or-die" pressure to improve? Quite simply, there are three elements that come in a "package" that differentiate improvement efforts that succeed from those that fail. To make it easier for you to remember them, I call them the 3Ms (Measure, Manage to the measure, Make it easier). Absolutely every improvement that has succeeded and sustained had the complete package. This is a "how-to" book to improve processes in healthcare using these three elements "packaged" for you in a step-by-step fashion.

I weave in stories throughout the book of role models who have succeeded. Failed improvement efforts, I think, also are powerful learning experiences, and those also are shared. The specific element that was missing or defective teaches us a lot about how the three elements work together.

This book is for you whether you are your community hospital's chief executive officer preparing for a major change in reimbursement that could bankrupt your organization and leave your community without healthcare, a nurse manager dreading the resistance your nurses will vehemently evoke when yet another new technology hits your unit from the chief information officer, or one of the millions of people in healthcare worldwide who is asked to change when you simply want to care for your patients and want the change to help you help them. Or, are you interested in how Ben Franklin discovered that lightning was a source of electricity or Dr. Livingstone's (I presume you have heard of him) demonstration of how to improve have lessons for us in leading great changes?

I believe we learn best by doing. Leading by example, I want you to "do" one of our first process improvement tasks. I want you to Measure how well this book meets your expectations. To make Measure simpler for you, I include an easy-to-use template (Table P.0.1) for you to list your expectations from this book. Now is a great time to list your expectations. Go ahead; you will be glad you did. Please fill in the Table P.0.1 with at least one expectation from this book, Utilizing the 3Ms of Process Improvement in Healthcare.

Please consider referring to your expectations frequently as you explore Utilizing the 3Ms of Process Improvement in Healthcare. If you prefer simply to read and enjoy, that is fine, of course. Perhaps measuring your enjoyment of the stories of real change in healthcare for patient safety, the leaders who were involved, and how change leadership truly works is enough of a measure. Meeting your expectations is my measure. I hope I hear from you by your sharing your table of expectations and success with me at my Web site www.rpmexec.com.* You can download all of the templates I describe in this book, such as the Stakeholder Analysis, Charter, and charts from this site. Please feel free to upload your work to share with others on this site.

Best wishes and thank you for your time learning how to improve processes to achieve performance excellence utilizing the 3Ms. I hope you also enjoy reading this book and sharing your successes. The 3Ms worked for Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Livingstone, and my teams across the globe. I am sure the 3Ms will work for you. And, I know what surely does not work.