Management: When It’s Time to Change
Convincing staff to accept change of any kind can be a long and winding road.
By Barbara A. Gabriel Mickey Mouse knows a thing or two about running a business. After all, the immense media empire inspired by the cartoon rodent must be doing something right. So goes the thinking behind the Disney Institute, an Orlando-based professional development center that aims to meet the business needs of individuals across all professions.
When Kimberly Wishon-Powell, director of consultative and support services at the large, multispecialty Holston Medical Group in Bristol, Tenn., was tasked with enhancing patient satisfaction by changing staff attitudes at an OB/GYN practice, she brought back to the office the lessons she learned at the Disney Institute.
“I basically gave employees parameters of what was expected of them in order to communicate with customer/patients,” says Wishon-Powell. “They were simple things, like, ‘You will thank everyone when [they] leave.’ ‘You will greet everyone with a smile.’” Wishon-Powell got a lot of pushback. Given that their’s was the busiest OB/GYN practice in town, the staff resented being taught what they perceived as “silly things.” After all, why should they change when they were already doing so well?
Sound familiar? It’s a common challenge in every business — affecting positive change despite resistant staff who’ve grown comfortable with “the old way.” But Wishon-Powell won them over, in time. You can do the same with yours.
The key to Wishon-Powell’s success in managing change was simply doing what her Disney teachers taught her. She explained to the staff that these “silly things” were essential to helping their employer continue growing by providing service excellence. Soon the staff saw themselves as vital contributors toward a common goal. Wishon-Powell coached them along, providing small incentives for established benchmarks, and soon the group buy-in she sought drove patient satisfaction off the charts. Continued...
