Healthcare organization leadership strategies for promoting innovation and empowerment

Explain how empowerment and shared leadership promote a culture of continuous innovation

Empowerment encompasses handling individual authority or power to undertake something. Shared leadership implies that leadership responsibilities are disseminated within a team and that members influence each other. Shared leadership takes into account making the most of all the human resources in an organization by enabling persons and giving them a chance to take leadership positions in their areas of expertise. It necessitates members of a team to be willing and prepared to extend their feedback to the team in a manner that purposes to influence and motivate the direction to be taken by the group. In addition, the team in general must be inclined to accept and depend on feedback from other members of the team (Goldsmith, 2010). These elements can promote a culture of continuous innovation within a healthcare organization. This is in the sense that shared leadership offers the chance for individuals not only to manage, but also develop within a team and is efficacious at augmenting the work setting and job satisfaction. Shared leadership superlatively gives rise to individual members of staff espousing leadership behavior, more level of autonomy and enhanced patient care results. In addition, shared leadership is a continuing and unsolidified process that necessitates continuous assessment to be receptive to incessantly changing healthcare challenges, and postulates a good working association between managers and staff (Al-Sawai, 2013).

Empowerment also promotes a culture of continuous innovation. This is owing to the fact that collaboration is key to innovation. Discovering new and smarter ways that information technology and clinical informatics can be utilized to advance healthcare necessitates the participation of all individuals within the organization. This implies that continuous innovation cannot be attained by the top most leaders but rather through giving authority to other individuals in the organization to partake in various activities. This makes it possible to develop a variety of solutions to enhance clinical care. The incessant search for ways to advance, do the right thing for patients, and removing out the waste in the systems of the healthcare organization benefits from the empowerment and all organizational members (Browning et al., 2011).

Explain the reason a culture of continuous innovation must include all stakeholders

Continuous innovation is a necessity for the survival of any organization. Devoid of it, the healthcare organization will ultimately cease to exist. It is imperative to note that the development of sustainable culture does not just imply instigating and steering continuous innovation, but also nurturing a culture of innovation that is entrenched in all of the stakeholders. It is necessary to assimilate all stakeholders for the reason that to effectively create a culture of continuous improvement, there is need to have engagement of all individuals within the organization and allow them to participate in the process. This is because through such engagement, all stakeholders are able to have a clear vision and direction of the strategy to be undertaken and how to attain it (Paulus et al., 2008).

A learning culture ought to be generated within the organization that permits continual improvement to come about as a regular and anticipated aspect of business activities for all members of staff. A fundamental objective is to institute a culture where all staff has the feeling that they have a significant role in continual improvement, and that they are supported and acknowledged by their senior management. Having the participation of all staff members gives rise to their motivation and enthusiasm, which enhances the capacity to develop and enhance the organization. The significance of attaining the proper attitude and participation of the staff of the organization cannot be undervalued. The healthcare organization necessitates the contribution of not only the doctors and physicians, but also the entire staff to render healthcare and advance its competency (Tonnessen, 2005).

Continuous improvement within the organization necessitates instigating structural changes to support innovation. Healthcare organizations are comprised of various departments, which render direct care and indirect care. For the organization to incessantly keep up with innovation and move forward, it implies that all individuals within the various departments ought to take part. This includes not only advancing innovative aspects in direct care with patient engagement, but also in other areas such as nursing informatics (Zuckerman, 2012). In addition, innovation is a largely collaborative function. This implies that for major initiative endeavors to come about, the convention of a diverse group of participants such as clinical, operational, and financial participants is necessary. Even though they are all members of one health system, each has his or her own viewpoint, inducements, and objectives. Their individual contribution and participation leads to the overall contribution to continuous innovation of the healthcare organization (Paulus et al., 2008). In addition, having strategic partnerships with primary care providers, specialist physicians, pharmacists and other health systems is fundamental to attaining continuous innovation. In particular, such providers operate across electronic platforms to develop care plans that consider and resolve problems, engage patients in their care and monitor effectiveness (Browning et al., 2011). Sharing knowledge and proficiencies with these other stakeholders makes it possible to advance knowledge.

Explain why it is important to develop a sustainable leadership culture with innovation

Sustainable leadership culture can be outlined as the system of time and again unspoken customs, standards and suppositions that act as guiding principles and direct the manner in which managers take leadership in a given organization towards a better future. Leadership culture significantly influences the organizational climate, which encompasses the mutual perspectives of organizational aspects such as decision making and customs and norms regarding work activities. Therefore, leaders, through the culture they instigate within the organization can generate a setting of continuous improvement in quality and safety (Tsai, 2011). Sustainable leadership generates and preserves sustainable learning (Hargreaves and Fink, 2004). This is necessary for healthcare organizations as it is fundamental to handling learning necessities in intricate interrelated dynamic systems where all stakeholders have to distinguish common background knowledge. This, together with mutual meta-knowledge of roles and responsibilities to implement their apportioned functions, convey and transmit the flow of relevant information and jointly provide safe patient care. Organizational learning in health care is not a solitary involvement, but an ongoing organizational occurrence that takes place through formal and informal learning, which has mutual relationship with organizational change. Per se, organizational changes bring about organizational learning and in turn organizational learning promotes new knowledge and practices to generate organizational changes (Ratnapalan and Uleryk, 2014).

It is imperative for health care organizations to have such leadership with innovation. In the contemporary, what is clear and certain is that change is coming hard and fast. Healthcare leaders must circumnavigate any difficulties and intricacies that come about. They must react to demographic alterations in the labor force and amongst patients, technological developments, and the boisterous nature of employee relations, indemnification and compensation practices, and up-to-date regulatory practices (Browning et al., 2011). Along with intricacy and change, healthcare organizations must also get to grips with innovation. It is imperative to note that challenges cannot be unraveled through daring individual determinations. Proper innovation emanates collaboration through departments and functions internal and external to the health care organization. To innovate, it is important for the healthcare leaders to adapt concepts from outside their area of proficiency, within the healthcare organization, in addition to outside the industry (Browning et al., 2011).

References

Al-Sawai, A. (2013). Leadership of healthcare professionals: where do we stand? Oman medical journal, 28(4), 285.

Browning, H. W., Torain, D. J., & Patterson, T. E. (2011). Collaborative healthcare leadership: A six-part model for adapting and thriving during a time of transformative change. Center for Creative Leadership White Papers.

Goldsmith, M. (2010). Sharing Leadership to Maximize Talent. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2010/05/sharing-leadership-to-maximize

Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2004). The seven principles of sustainable leadership. Educational leadership, 61(7), 8-13.

Paulus, R. A., Davis, K., & Steele, G. D. (2008). Continuous innovation in health care: implications of the Geisinger experience. Health Affairs, 27(5), 1235-1245.

Ratnapalan, S., & Uleryk, E. (2014). Organizational learning in health care organizations. Systems, 2(1), 24-33.

Tonnessen, T. (2005). Continuous innovation through companywide employee participation. The TQM Magazine, 17(2), 195-207.

Tsai, Y. (2011). Relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction. BMC health services research, 11(1), 98.

Zuckerman, A. M. (2012). Innovation in Healthcare Leadership: The Time is Now. Beckers Hospital Review.