Quality Manager’s Alert

Managing change: A hands-on approach that works

By Colin McGlinchey • December 12, 2012

What’s a proven path managers can take to make changes that last? Give employees a chance to get involved in the process early and often.

Studies show employees are more willing to stick with a change for the long term if they had a hand in creating it.

If they don’t participate, you could see workers falling back into old habits before long.

And that means you could end up getting stuck finding the time and the resources to retrain them.

Here’s an excellent example of managing a change process, courtesy of one of the world’s premiere hospitality organizations.

The Ritz-Carlton New Orleans was facing an uptick in customer complaints.

The problem was that customers weren’t getting everything they were promised when they checked in. Over-promise-and-under-deliver is always a recipe for failure.

The Ritz-Carlton team was able to improve performance and reduce customer complaints by 50% after only one year and by 70% after two years.

They made these changes stick by getting staffers involved in the improvement process.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Map it out

The Ritz-Carlton team wanted to get a feel for what was causing the problem of missing supplies.

So they mapped out the entire process of preparing a room.

After they had every step of the process detailed, the team turned to staffers for help.

They asked workers which step caused them the most problems.

This led them to the root cause: Supply closets weren’t organized, so workers had trouble finding what they needed for guest rooms.

Step 2: Show what it looks like

Once they had a grasp on what they were facing, the team started looking for solutions.

One idea was to create a sample closet that could be used to show workers the most effective way to organize and stock the supply closets.

Workers had the chance to tour the sample and make suggestions about ways to improve the set up.

This kept workers involved as the fixes were being made.

Step 3: Talk it over

The team’s next step was to hold “daily line-ups” with staffers and managers.

The goal of these 15 minute sessions was to generate open discussion about how the changes were working out.

Plus, it let staffers propose improvements, in case something wasn’t working.

Step 4: Post the numbers

The Ritz-Carlton team also used daily scorecards to keep workers in the know about the impact the changes had made.

The scorecards showed data about customer complaints, which encouraged workers to stick with the plan and keep moving forward.

Putting your best foot forward — every day

By Colin McGlinchey • September 7, 2012

Adapted from Quality Manager's Alert.

If there is an absolute truth in business, it's that first impressions are lasting ones.

A good first impression paves a path to a long and productive relationship.

A bad one is hard to ever overcome.

This is especially true for businesses that rely on a relatively high and steady stream of changing customers; think retail, hospitality & entertainment, and even healthcare.

Healthcare? Especially healthcare.

Healthcare is both the fastest-growing and fastest-changing segment of the economy. Those kinds of pressures mean that these are make-or-break times for hospitals and providers.

That's why it's worth stealing a page from the “First Impression Playbook” at City of Hope, a comprehensive cancer center in Duarte, CA, which is not only making tremendous inroads in life-saving treatments, but in patient/customer satisfaction as well.

City of Hope knew it needed to do a better job on first impressions. So here's what they did to turn things around:

1. Reduced waiting

City of Hope created and distributed easy to use patient surveys to help steer them toward the biggest and most frequent problem spots patients said they faced. For instances, areas with long wait times were identified and fixed right away. Nothing makes a bad impression more than waiting endlessly.

2. Faster connections

Another problem that jumped out of the survey was people weren't thrilled with how long it took to even make an appointment.

The solution required some internal communications fixes at the facility.

Things like boosting instant messaging among staff helped to save time by eliminating phone tag between very busy staffers. That alone made juggling different schedules and setting appointments much easier — and the customer benefited!

3. Multiple options

Another common complaint was long lines.

The hospital knew it couldn’t have sick patients standing in line, waiting to check in. So instead of having everyone register at one central location, they created multiple points where patients were able to register — and cut the length of those lines by almost 80%!

4. Staff flexibility

Managers were encouraged to be flexible to keep wait times in check — and customers happy — by moving staff where they were needed most. It required some cross-training and a lot team work. Yet each morning, City of Hope moved staffers around to different departments, depending on which ones would be the busiest.

The end result has been a much stronger first impression and a higher quality patient experience.