Business Change Management

Last month my wife, Andrea (Andi) Simon, was a keynote speaker at the Michigan Colleges Alliance (MCA) annual meeting. The Alliance is made up of 15 independent Michigan colleges, and if put together as a singular entity, these colleges would be the third largest post-secondary institution in Michigan, just behind the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Consequently, they have a significant impact on the students they serve!

Taking place over several days, the conference had representatives from approximately 100 corporations in attendance, including the large automotive companies. Andi was the keynote speaker at one of the dinner meetings, and her lecture included an in-depth introduction to Blue Ocean Strategy,® which is the focal point of her newly released book, “On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights.”

Two days later, Andi led a MCA roundtable on Blue Ocean Strategy, examining the need to make colleges more relevant in today’s economy. With that in mind, I would like to talk about this topic in this blog. We are often asked "How can Blue Ocean Strategies help colleges and universities quickly adapt to these fast changing times?" It can if academic insitutions stop saying "oh, we don't do that."

For those of us who are consumers of healthcare (which is pretty much everybody), we go to a doctor or hospital expecting to be attended to by caring staff who are satisfied with their work and dedicated to the medical field, right? Boy, are we ever wrong.

Physician burnout is quickly becoming a crisis

Here at Simon Associates Management Consultants, we've recently been studying research on burnout among medical professionals and what I’ve found is truly troubling.
Faced with diminished compensation, consolidation of practices (ACOs) and constantly-shifting insurance structures, physicians are questioning their choice of careers. Nurses are working 12-hour, or even double, shifts. Every day, medical staff care for patients who are sick, ungrateful and often depressed. No wonder they’re burned out!

Several important facts surfaced at a recent Blue Ocean Strategy® workshop which we at SAMC led with Michigan industry leaders and independent colleges, hosted by the Michigan College Alliance. There were 6 big ones that were most unsettling:

1. There is a HUGE problem in the U.S. — a MAJOR TALENT GAP.
   
   
2. As US. News and World Report states: “Employers are looking to hire people with more advanced skills, especially in STEM fields, but job seekers are often struggling to figure out which skills they need and where they can learn them.”
   
   
3. And 500,000 of those unfilled jobs are in IT.
   
   
4. What’s more, we need these people now. All across America, we are running out of skilled workers to fill the 5.8 million jobs that are waiting for them. Take a look:
   
   
   
   

At the Forum for Healthcare Strategists in May 2016, I had the pleasure of hearing Jeremy Gutsche speak about how you — literally everyone — could become a better “hunter” capable of seeing new possibilities right before you. This reminded me of the quote by John Seely Brown: “The way forward is all around you.” This kind of thinking is also at the core of the Blue Ocean Strategy® method that we work with. 

Are big ideas really right in front of you — in plain sight?

At Simon Associates Management Consultants (SAMC), so much of our work focuses on this same topic, that of "seeing with fresh eyes." Gutsche’s ideas were a powerful reminder that it is hard work shifting people from doing what they have always done to doing it better, smarter, different. "More of the same but cheaper" isn’t enough to sustain the growth of any business, yours included.

One story along these lines that is very much worth sharing is that of Trey Williams, an entrepreneur and restauranteur from Baton Rouge, who saw things that were right before him and then turned these "aha" moments into big ideas with huge results.

During the healthcare forum, I had a great dinner with Trey whom I had met the week before when I was in Louisiana. I wanted to learn more about how he went from being a successful commercial real estate broker to one of the most successful restaurant owners in his region — selling charcuterie (of all things) to folks in Louisiana, most of whom couldn’t even pronounce the word! They love pork but charcuterie?! And how and why did he switch careers?

Building a successful business doesn’t always go in a straight line. Even in failure, hopefully there are some positive outcomes. Perhaps the best of these are “lessons learned”!

Case in point: A couple of years ago, I wrote an article in Becker’s Hospital Review entitled, “Sometimes You are Ahead of the Curve: 4 lessons from a Failed Price Transparency Venture” that I’d like to expand upon here.