It's back to school for system leaders: institute teaches leadership skills, cooperation - University of Michigan Health System

HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement, March, 2003

For example, he notes, his last session was devoted to developing a team culture and an optimal working environment.

"We've looked at how we communicate, the best ways to communicate, understanding stressful conditions, and we shared surveys on how other people see us and characterize our performance and our style," Campbell says. "We also had a daylong session on the basic principles of accounting."

"It has been terrific," says Lichter of his experience as a student. "We have had sessions on basic finance, which has really opened our eyes in terms of how we can use the financial data we have to make better decisions about potential investments. We spent a day talking about the concept of strategy, how one can take an organization, look down the road, and anticipate what will happen in the industry.

"This way, you can make sure you are not only prepared to face those problems, but to even shape how the industry's future will unfold. We spent our last session talking about organizational culture--what it is, how to measure it, why it's important, and how it can be changed," he says.

The full-day class sessions take place one day a month for 10 months. Between sessions, participants divide into work groups to take on the action-learning projects.

Essential to each project is the work group's cross-disciplinary composition, which creates a collaborative experience so that participants gain a clearer understanding of other disciplines and can build more effective relationships across these boundaries. Work groups will spend approximately six hours a month on their action project, which culminates in an oral presentation and a written report.

"We broke up into six teams to tackle six very interesting problems," says Lichter. "There were six members on each team, all from different parts of the organization. We are working on creating a center for spine care, but doing that inside this complex organization is not easy; we're looking at how we price products, at our interaction with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and asking what value we can demonstrate that we bring to this interaction."

Looking to the future

Lichter notes that the program will run on a yearly basis, "Until we bring large numbers of leaders through it." As each succeeding class graduates, the U-M Health System expects to see an overall improvement in the business management of health care, as well as in the ability to deliver quality products and outcomes to consumers, payers and other business partners in this 15,400-employee organization.

While the program, for the time being, is open only to internal candidates, future plans for the Institute involve opening up the nondegreed program to health care executives from outside the U-M sphere.

"To the extent that our business school and some of our leaders see value in this, and other health care leaders feel they could benefit, it's quite possible we could open courses like this for other institutions," says Lichter.

Beyond the obvious tangible benefits of the program, Campbell sees some intangible benefits as well. "One is the camaraderie between the 30 leaders currently participating," he says.