Cartoon – The Vortex of Failure
Tag Archives: Complexity
Cartoon – They’ll be as Useful as this Meeting
The future of healthcare: Finding the opportunities that lie beneath the uncertainty
Healthcare is a dynamic industry with significant opportunity, but cost concerns, uncertainty, and complexity can also make it an unnerving one. Substantial upside exists for players that can deliver value-creating solutions and thrive under uncertainty.
The intrinsic demand for healthcare services continues to rise in the United States, given population aging, the increasing prevalence of chronic disease, and the search for a higher quality of life. In addition to increasing demand, three other major factors make healthcare a dynamic industry with significant opportunity:
- Consumers, employers, and the government continue to see the financial burden of healthcare grow faster than their incomes or revenues—a long-standing gap unlikely to change soon. Furthermore, new challenges, such as the ongoing opioid crisis, continue to emerge. The result has been a continuing search for fresh solutions and reforms, which has kept—and will keep—the industry in a state of flux.
- Major tectonic shifts are occurring, not only in regulations but also in three other areas: technology (both medical science and technology and the onward march of big data, advanced analytics, machine learning, and digital), industry orientation (the move toward B2C and rapidly rising consumer expectations), and reallocation of risk across the value chain. These forces are fundamentally altering the structure of the industry and basis of competition.
- The available headroom for improvement in healthcare (by most estimates, over $500 billion within the $3 trillion US healthcare economy) provides significant opportunity for value creation.1
Industry growth, major changes, and strong value-creation potential make healthcare an exciting industry. At the same time, cost concerns, uncertainty, and complexity make it an unnerving one. Substantial upside exists for players that can deliver value-creating solutions and thrive under uncertainty. Indeed, our recent research into industry profit pools indicates that, on average, the industry is delivering value-creating solutions and consequently showing attractive profit growth. Between 2012 and 2016, total over-all healthcare industry profit pools (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or EBITDA) grew at a faster rate than the combined EBITDA of the top 1,000 US companies.
NEARLY 50% OF UPPER-LEVEL MANAGERS AVOID HOLDING PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE
Nearly 50% of Upper-Level Managers Avoid Holding People Accountable
46% of upper-level managers are rated “too little” on the item, “Holds people accountable … .” (HBR)
You missed the point if accountability is:
- Coercing reluctance to do things it isn’t committed to do.
- Expecting performance from weakness. Accountability won’t help squirrels lay eggs.
- Punishment.
Accountability:
- Says we are responsible to each other.
- Expresses commitment. Those who aren’t willing to be accountable haven’t committed.
- Defines dependability. What’s more insulting than one unprepared person on a team filled with talent?
- Demonstrates confidence and self-respect.
- Sets the ground rules for respect and trust.
Accountability recognizes strength and honors performance.
Mutual accountability:
I’ve never been asked to lead a workshop on how to hold ourselves accountable. It’s always about others. That is the heart of the problem.
Accountability is something to work on together, not mandate from on high.
One-sided accountability:
- Leverages fear.
- Depends on carrots and sticks.
- Promotes disconnection and arrogance. Relationships disintegrate when leaders stand aloof.
- Invites resentment and disengagement.
- Dis-empowers those who need to feel powerful.
Mutual accountability:
- Requires leaders to go first.
- Demands respect-based interactions.
- Strengthens connection and relationship. We are responsible to help the people around us succeed.
- Honors integrity and courage.
- Gives opportunity for humility.
Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, said, “Go into every interaction with those who work for you believing that you are as accountable to them for your performance as they are to you for their performance.”, and author of, “The Open Organization.”
Practice accountability:
Blurry responsibility leads to vague accountability. Vague accountability is no accountability.
- Who owns the project or initiative?
- Who makes decisions? The group. A project leader. Someone who isn’t in the room.
- What are the deliverables?
- What are the milestones and deadlines?
- What happens when deadlines are missed?
Complexity is like fog to accountability.
What might mutual accountability look like in your organization?
How might leaders lift accountability out of the category of punishment?
Cartoon – How Long will the Project Take if
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Cartoon – The Vortex of Failure
6 things keeping supply chain leaders up at night
East Lansing-based Michigan State University partnered with the APICS Supply Chain Council to identify critical issues on the minds of supply chain leaders.
To compile the report, the groups interviewed leaders from more than 50 firms across the globe and asked them: “What keeps you awake at night?”
Here are the six most common issues on supply chain leaders’ minds, as identified in the report.
1. Capacity or resource availability. Many companies expecting market growth cited managing capacity issues as a main priority. They often wanted to avoid outsourcing and identified challenges to maximize their facilities’ capacity by replacing old equipment, among other activities.
“We’ve implemented a supply chain for a point in time,” one leader said, according to the report. “However, a supply chain is a living, breathing thing, and one needs to think about it as dynamic and impermanent. Is there a point where the supply chain becomes inappropriate for where we’re going, and we need to build a different kind of supply chain?”
2. Talent. Participating companies also described the struggle to find and keep good supply chain talent.
“The competition for talent is much higher [than it’s ever been],” said another participant in the report. “You go out to the market, and it’s one of those ironies. Right now, you put a job description out there, and you hear about 8 percent unemployment. However, I can’t find an industrial engineer worth his salt — you know, someone who can really think about strategy and think about [profit and loss statements] and drive change.”
3. Complexity. Some firms faced issues with their products becoming more complex and found it difficult to manage the increasing amount of stock keeping units.
“We’ve started building different types of products, completely new types of products. Whether it’s low or high volume, it creates another level of complexity,” said one leader in an interview.
4. Threats or challenges. A lot of supply chain leaders are worried about managing supply chain risk, and many mentioned the importance of continuity planning.
“I worry about supply risks in general, whether it’s from natural disasters or things like … a troubled supplier or a variety of issues with the whole supply chain risk piece,” one participant told researchers. “Partly that’s because that stuff is hard to control. You can try to proactively mitigate the downsides, but that’s just hard to control.”
5. Compliance. Participants cited numerous compliance issues like product regulation, trade controls and continually changing regulations, according to the report. Many leaders said they were struggling to keep up with both the high volume of regulations and how much they constantly changed.
“[The changes] are really causing us to spend a lot of money and a lot of our time. It is sucking up a huge amount of our information technology dollars and resources to be able to be compliant with those regulations,” said one study participant.
6. Cost or purchasing issues. While pressure to rein in costs is a focus for companies in every industry, it’s a top priority for healthcare and drug companies amid the shift toward value-based care, according to the report.
“Everything in healthcare is submitted through insurance for reimbursement,” one leader said. “The government won’t pay you any more to treat your patients, so you better get [the payout from] your suppliers. Well, we’re the supplier they’re coming after.”
To view the complete report, click here.
Cartoon – Project Expedite Considerations
Cartoon – ACA Repeal?
HENRY KOTULA 