February 18, 2019

Hi Leaders —

It was wonderful to see all of you in late January at our eleventh LDI!  It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on the three- year anniversary of our leadership and organization development work. It’s fitting that our theme was Our Sacred Work – the work you do as leaders, every single day, is as sacred to our mission now as it was three years ago. Arguably, it’s more sacred than ever! 

Following nearly three years of intensive leadership development involving the introduction of the TriHealth Way practices, it was important for us to reflect upon the progress we’ve made and to revisit the basics to ensure we’ve truly mastered them. Our January LDI agenda was framed to highlight and demonstrate the vital connection between mastery of the TriHealth Way and excelling at our sacred work. Our work ahead will necessarily evolve from introducing new TriHealth Way practices to mastering and deeply embedding these practices into our culture – as second nature, how we lead and serve our patients – to improve our performance in quality, service and safety. This will result in a shift in focus from largely “on stage or classroom” training to one-on-one feedback and coaching aimed at closing “skill,” “will,” and performance gaps. This is the hard work of creating a disciplined, accountable and high performing culture that consistently delivers exceptional safety, quality and service to every patient, every time.

The one-on-one feedback and coaching agenda will include review and validation of the Monthly Meeting Model for leaders, specifically the use of stoplight reports and a focus on Engagement Action Plan drafts between leaders and their one-ups. This coincides with completion of our HSL work because it is crucial to address low performers to gain the consistency in outcomes we expect. Gail Donovan, Rob Cercek, Marla Silliman, Jenny Skinner and other senior leaders, alongside our OD and Studer coaches, will be spending significant time in our hospitals and business units in the coming weeks and months to observe and provide constructive feedback as part of our work to close gaps and hardwire all must-have behaviors and skills, with focus on AIDET+the Promise, Always Behaviors, Coaching in the Moment and use of Stoplight Reports and Communication Boards. We want leaders to create opportunities to engage with their teams in informal ways, such as short coffee breaks and brown bag lunches, where the leader can solicit input and gather feedback on what is on team members minds, asking them how we can better serve them as their leaders. And we must recognize and celebrate wins – everyday and no matter how small – to create the positive buzz and validate the work we are doing and the amazing progress we are making!

To support our continued growth and mastery, I am asking and expecting that you use the attached Talking Points to share what you learned with your teams. It’s important that all 12,000+ team members and physicians have mastered concepts such as AIDET +the Promise, huddles and safety practices such as SBAR, all to help us perfect and consistently demonstrate our evidence-based TriHealth Way practices.

The next steps related to TriHealth Way Mastery Certification are detailed in the attached Application Grid, and you can prepare for the one-on-one coaching sessions by reviewing and implementing the attached Best Practice Leadership Behaviors We Should ALL Adopt. Please be sure to also visit the TriHealth Way page on LinkNet for full access to all the LDI presentations and videos.

As always, thank you for your commitment to embracing a better way – The TriHealth Way!  Together, we are getting healthcare right for those we serve.

- Mark C. Clement, President and CEO