You likely have plenty of best practice insights already within your organization
Most leaders stay vigilant for best practices for everything from leadership skills to safety standards. And most turn outside when facing a challenge or opportunity, looking for best practices that they can adopt. They’re often convinced that the answers lie outside and that other organizations have found the best solutions.
Maybe they have. But maybe you have too!
You might not know it, but some best practices already exist within your organization. You just need to unearth them.
Hidden Best Practices
I was recently writing a case study for an organization who had just completed a mystery shopping assessment throughout its system with multiple locations. We were analyzing their data and taking a deep dive into their outcomes in order to make the most meaningful recommendations. What we found was interesting.
Overall, the system had all of the most important human elements in place. Patients felt they were well cared for and that staff was friendly, knowledgeable, and attentive. The human touch was definitely there. What wasn’t there, though, was consistently following these practices throughout the system. Things were falling through the cracks.
Except for in one clinic location that was performing at 100%. Same company. Same systems. Same resources. But different, and better, outcomes.
They didn’t need another new framework, or another training program, or another system overhaul. What they needed to do was take a closer look at what that one clinic was doing and then replicate that across the organization.
Find What’s Working and Scale It
We see this same pattern shows up constantly in mystery shopping. We’ll find one location that’s scoring high and another twenty that are scoring low. One department that’s doing things right and others that are struggling.
The difference isn’t the system, or the training, or the technology. The difference is in how thoroughly and consistently people are executing what they already know how to do.
Often, when an organization decides they need an outside solution to fix a broken culture, system or process, they’re making an implicit assumption: the answer isn’t here. We need to bring someone in. We need a new framework. We need to do something different.
Sometimes that’s true. They see the data but don’t know the why behind the numbers. Yet, as we dig, we find that the answer is already in your organization.
When you look outside instead of inside, you miss something critical: you undermine the people who are already doing it right. You send a message that says, “Your excellence isn’t as valuable as the real experts. We need someone from outside to tell us how to do this.” You miss the opportunity to celebrate what’s working and scale it. You miss the opportunity to put the spotlight on your internal rock stars.
When you look inside to find that clinic that’s performing at 100%, ask them how they’re doing it, and make them the model, something shifts. You show the rest of the organization that excellence is possible and that you see it and celebrate it.
Finding Your Pockets of Excellence
Mystery shopping can be a great way to identify your pockets of excellence. Mystery shopping reveals a detailed patient experience that include both the facts and the feelings. When the mystery patients tell their stories, you’ll learn how your patients actually experience your organization and where excellence already exists.
Of course, you’ll also find areas where you could be doing better. But here’s the good news. By documenting areas of best practices and putting those practices in the limelight, you’re not only finding opportunities to improve operations and the patient experience—you’re finding ways to recognize areas of excellence within.
The next step: telling the story of what excellence looks like in your organization. Bring in other departments and locations to hear that story. Not from an outside expert, but from their own colleagues. They’ll be able to explicitly see what’s possible because it’s already been done.
Of course there are well documented best practices in the literature, but you don’t always need to look outside your organization for excellence. Look inside. Find who’s doing it right. Seek to understand how they’re doing it, and give them permission to teach everyone else.
That’s how you build a culture of continuous improvement. Not by importing something from somewhere else. But by celebrating and scaling the excellence that’s already there.
Tags: best practices, change management, healthcare best practices, healthcare culture, healthcare leadership, internal excellence, leadership development, Organizational Culture, patient care, process improvement, return on investment, ROI
