Turn your medical staff into a learning organization

Dear Medical Staff Leader:

Is your medical staff a "learning organization?" A recent article in "The Chicago Tribune" suggests that the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) is not, which prompted me to conduct some Internet research to uncover the definition of a learning organization.

According to many business experts, a learning organization is one that successfully facilitates the learning of all members of the group and continually evolves. These organizations have implemented processes that continually enhance the group's ability to achieve organizational and individual goals.

Most individual physicians are "learning organisms," constantly attempting to acquire new knowledge while mentally cataloging practices that led to successful outcomes for their patients in the past. However, the medical staff as an organization has not yet adopted these principles. Its very structure and process is one that discards past knowledge and seems to eschew both shared vision and team learning. New leaders are elected or appointed after short terms; and just as they have achieved personal mastery of the skills needed, they are replaced by another physician who must then repeat the "learning" process.

To measure your medical staff's progress toward becoming a learning organization, consider the following characteristics of such organizations as outlined by David Skyrme Associates, consultants specializing in advising senior executives and policymakers, in Newbury, England. A learning organization is

• Adaptive to its external environment
• Continually enhances its ability to change and adapt
• Promotes collective and individual learning
• Uses the results of learning to achieve better results

Is your medical staff a learning organization? Could it become one? Today's complex health care environment requires your organization to develop a culture that enables physicians and hospital leaders to quickly learn and share information. Work with other leaders at your hospital to further the medical staff's evolution into a learning organization.

That's all for this week.

All the best,

Hugh Greeley