Best health includes improvisation in the relationship between health professionals and those in their care. One picture of improvisation is discretion to customize response and interaction and go off script and track with each individual’s or families journey. Yet the capacity of health professionals to remain up-to-date in their knowledge, compliant with practice and regulation, and productive while still able to be kind and improvise approaches possessing a superpower. As Kate commented yesterday, other knowledge workers – teachers – have the same challenges.
What conditions release the inner improviser? Let’s consider a few: clarity of purpose; trust and team dynamics; predictability and responsiveness of systems; and ability to learn from the improv: fix what seems broken.
Clarity of purpose can be mission, focus on the task at hand, or even clear boundaries. Every organization I’ve worked for had a mission statement. St. Peter’s Health Care Services (SPHCS) in Albany, NY, was committed to being a transforming healing presence in the communities we serve. Like the golden rule, easy to say, tough to do. Difficult decisions at SPHCS often included explicit consideration of the mission. Focusing on the task at hand is mindfulness. As in right now the task at hand is pain relief, teaching, mobility, whatever. Not my co-worker, not the next person who needs me, not Dancing with the Stars. Concentration. Zen. Finally, improvisation occurs within boundaries – knowing the tune. For health workers the tune is policies and procedures, regulations, standards of practice.
Trust and team dynamics. Sustaining kindness and improvisation without feeling trust in yourself and your team truly IS superpower. Good team dynamics are healthy relationships – role clarity, communication that greases the constant shifting and movement of the day’s flow, re-prioritization, and mutual helpfulness.
Predictability and responsiveness of systems used by your team – workflow, supply chain, information systems. Knowledge workers create work arounds when systems don’t work quite right. They ingeniously seek a state where they can accomplish their daily tasks productively. Disruption of these systems draws valuable energy away from kindness and improvisation.
If all the stars are in alignment and staff feels able and empowered to improvise, we are idiots if we don’t learn and fix. Some proportion of improv is kindness and some is in response to something that is broken. Often both. Lord, I feel another post coming on.
I contend that the most important job of leaders – the people who supervise those who touch the public – is to nurture the environment of kindness and improvisation. Nurture the environment and model the behavior.
