Leadership Function in Evaluating, Maintaining, and Sustaining Change, the Leadership Influence on these Aims and whether You Should Stop Measuring Change within an Organization

Leadership Function in Evaluating, Maintaining, and Sustaining Change, the Leadership Influence on these Aims and whether You Should Stop Measuring Change within an Organization

Leadership plays a major role in evaluating, maintaining, and sustaining change. Leaders are the driving force behind the vision for the proposed change, and also undertake the change process by identifying the area necessitating change/improvement, identifying the goal(s), and then outlining the plan to achieve the set goal(s). During the change process, it is the job of the leader to take the reigns and convey their vision, justify the project improvement investment to the proper stakeholders, secure resources, get the proper team members engaged to become active participants in the quality improvement team, develop a specific management plan, lead and motivate the team, execute the plan, monitor for change and progress, meet all due dates, and carry the project to completion (Sipes, 2020). An effective leader will continually monitor and evaluate the team and project progress, monitor that what is being measured is exactly what should be measured for change, to make sure that the project remains on track and that deadlines are being met. Sustaining change has all to do with the leader and whether they can achieve end-user and stakeholder buy-in. It is much easier to get people who agree with a change and/or see it’s potential for benefits and improvement to adhere to and sustain the desired changes than when individuals respond with opposition and resistance. Identifying the need for change/improvement is the very first step to initiating a change process, strategizing an action plan, including priorities, timeliness, tasks, structure, behaviors, and resources throughout the process, and then carrying out its execution (CCL, 2020). Leadership is a critical facilitator of sustained change.

With health care rapidly and continually changing with ever-increasing complexities, stopping the measurement of change with an organization seems not only counterintuitive but also counterproductive. Ceasing to measure change threatens sustainability and can lead organizations to revert back to the old and/or ineffective way of doing things. The National Health Service Sustainability Model helps to identify issues that affect the long-term success of quality improvement projects (Silver et al., 2016). Tools to help sustain improvement include process control boards, performance boards, standard work, and improvement huddles. Process control and performance boards are utilized to communicate improvement results to staff and leadership alike, while standard work is a written or visual outline of current best practices for a particular task and provides a framework to ascertain that changes that have improved patient care are continually, consistently, and reliably applied to each and every patient encounter (Silver et al., 2016). Improvement huddles are comprised of short, regular meetings amongst staff in an effort to anticipate and identify problems, review performance, and support an organizational culture of improvement. The overall health care goal aligns precisely with that of the U.S. National Quality Strategy, which is to improve the quality of care, improve the health of the population, and reduce the associated costs of care, and this is contingent upon the collection of and reporting of quality measures, more than 400 of which are currently endorsed by the U.S. National Quality Forum (Young et al., 2017). Improved health care can be achieved by following guidelines that align with the traditional strategies for process and quality improvement, such as Six Sigma and Lean thinking, which have both been powerful and efficacious tools in disease-specific care processes (Young et al., 2017). Change measurement, although oftentimes tedious, is absolutely necessary for health care process and outcome improvement.

References

Ali, H., Chuanmin, S., Ahmed, M., Mahmood, A., Khayyam, M., & Tikhomirova, A. (2021). Transformational leadership and project success: Serial mediation of team-building and teamwork. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(689311). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689311

American Hospital Association. (n.d.). Getting leadership support. http://www.sustainabilityroadmap.org/strategies/leadership.shtml#.YYw26mDMKUk