30 Books in 30 days – Remembering 15 years of the 1st Friday Book Synopsis – (Prescription for Excellence by Joseph Michelli)

{On April 5, 2013, we will celebrate the 15^th Anniversary of the First Friday Book Synopsis, and begin our 16^th year.  During March, I will post a blog post per day remembering key insights from some of the books I have presented over the 15 years of the First Friday Book Synopsis.  We have met every first Friday of every month since April, 1998 (except for a couple of weather –related cancellations).  These posts will focus only on books I have presented.  My colleague, Karl Krayer, also presented his synopses of business books at each of these gatherings.  I am going in chronological order, from April, 1998, forward.  The fastest way to check on these posts will be at Randy’s blog entries — though there will be some additional blog posts interspersed among these 30.}
Post #27 of 30

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Synopsis presented August, 2011
Prescription for Excellence: Leadership Lessons for Creating a World Class Customer Experience from UCLA Health System by Joseph Michelli.  (McGraw-Hill.  2011)

Imagine having to run a successful business that requires the innovation of Apple, the commitment to safety of NASA, and the customer service of Ritz-Carlton.  Furthermore, imagine that your mandate demands that you be a world-class educator, your work product holds life and death in the balance, and you are responsible for discoveries that shape the future of medicine.  But wait; there’s more!  You have to achieve your complex mission in a highly political, cost-competitive industry.  From imagination to reality, you are about to dive deeply into the challenges and leadership lessons of UCLA Health System! 

This is the way Joseph Michelli describes the challenge facing the professionals that make up the UCLA Health System team (from now on in this article – simply “UCLA”).  And he details the CICare approach to the customer experience that is the hallmark of all that UCLA offers:

• World Class Practices:  My Commitment to Care
(discussed in interview process; signed by all employees upon hiring)

• “CICARE” – (pronounced “See-I-Care”) — the “short version”:
Connect with the patient or family member using Mr./Ms., or their preferred name.
Introduce yourself and your role.
Communicate what you are going to do, how it will affect the patient, and other needed information.
Ask for and anticipate patient and or family needs, questions, or concerns.
Respond to patient and/or family questions and requests with immediacy.
Exit, courteously explaining what will come next or when you will return.

• the longer version, teaches…   elements of Courtesy; Professionalism; Respect

This philosophy grows out of the values that UCLA cares most deeply about (I’ve added some emphasis).

“Although we make it clear that you need to meet our caring expectations, our ultimate goal is to develop talent in the direction of maximum caring, not punitively respond to performance gaps.  We need to ensure that people don’t willfully disregard these expectations, but we are more interested in encouraging people to grow in their service professionalism.”  (Mark Speare, senior associate director, Patient Relations, Marketing and Human resources).

Here is what UCLA focuses on:

• Four areas that are true about this health system, that are critical to every business enterprise:

1)    Growing while maintaining quality.
2)    Inspiring innovation while generating cohesion.
3)    Balancing technological advances with humanity.
4)    Achieving recognition and respect for extraordinary accomplishments.

This commitment to genuine service permeates the entire organization, beginning with and flowing from the leaders…

All too often, “service strategies” are reduced to senior leaders giving middle managers the task of enhancing service levels without the senior leaders participating in the same service improvement process. 

And one critical tool they use at UCLA is good old-fashioned listening:

“To say that a person feels listened to means a lot more that just their ideas get heard.  It’s a sign of respect.  It makes people feel valued.”  (Deborah Tannen).
Listening is an essential and underutilized service behavior…  Every day you have the opportunity to strengthen your relationships with staff members and customers by listening to them and helping them see the power that comes from “knowing” their customer.  
(one way to do this is)
Create systems to engage customers in the innovation process.  

And, here is a telling question to ponder, from Michelli’s expertise as a world-class corporate observer…

When I go into a business, I am looking at culture on three levels:  (1) what the leadership claims the culture to be. (2) how things really get done at the employee level, and (3) what the end users (patients/customers) experience. 

If you are really good, get better.  And if you are the best, still keep getting better.  Because your position/reputation as the best is at risk every day…

Every competitive advantage you may enjoy has a limited timeline.  Unless you are improving your product and services, competitors will ultimately overtake you. 

And you accomplish this with a commitment to a genuine “Give it a try” environment:

A lot of great innovation results from simple trial and error…  This “let’s give it a try”: approach has led to some impressive programs at UCLA. 
Do you provide an environment in which your staff members feel comfortable in offering innovative ideas?..  What breakthrough programs can you use as examples to inspire similar program growth throughout your organization? 
(and you do that by focusing on this):
“No matter how good we are today, it isn’t good enough.  Everything we do must be of the highest quality, and we have to be in a relentless pursuit of constant quality assessment and enhancement.  I am pleased with where we are today…  However, each day I think about one thing:  what can I do as a leader to make sure that our quality of care is the best it can possibly be – you guessed it – for our next patient?”  (Dr. David Feinberg, CEO, UCLA Health System) .
Create the quality experience for your most important customer – the next one. 

The way you do this is to be committed to “future innovation” by being  “mission-centric” (as opposed to “past-centric” or “present-centric”):

If you look at the mission statements of most businesses, you’ll seldom find references to the future….  At UCLA, future innovation is mission-centric…  “We have a mission to improve the quality of care for the future through research and education.”  (Dr. Edward McCabe, former physician-in-chief, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA). 

But back to the customer experience itself.  With all of these concerns at the top of mind, the focus is still and always the actual customer.   It all boils down to this – treat each customer as a person first.

At the heart of a customer-focused company is the assumption that everyone will be treated as a very important person – so much so that care is individualized based on the recipient’s unique wants, needs, and desires. 

This is the only book in this 30 book/day series that is focused on the important question of:  how do we provide the best possible experience for customers?  That is a pretty good question to focus on, quite regularly, don’t you think?

I end this post with my takeaways from the book (a synopsis feature that I started including in my handouts at about this stage in my fifteen year business book journey).  Here they are:

• Some takeaways…
1)    Whatever your business, keep it human! – See, listen, “anticipate.”
2)    Innovate – on purpose! To do so, “Give it a try,” and “spread it around.”
3)    Always, always understand that each interaction (in person, through the web, however) is experienced personally.  Always!
4)    Collaborate!
5)    Your next customer is your most important customer!

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You can purchase many of our synopses, with our comprehensive handouts, and audio recordings of our presentations, at our companion site 15minutebusinessbooks.com.  The recordings may not be studio quality, but they are understandable, usable recordings, to help you learn.
(And though the handouts are simple Word documents, in the last couple of years we have “upgraded” the look of our handouts to a graphically designed format).
We have clients who play these recordings for small groups.  They distribute the handouts, listen to the recordings together, and then have a discussion that is always some form of a “what do we have to learn, what can we do with this?” conversation.  Give it a try.