Untangling practice challenges: Rowing together

MEET THE PRESENTER

Zed Williamson founder and CEO of TrackableMed and Physician Growth Accelerator.

Check out the full video and materials of this session here.

INTRODUCTION

In today’s health care landscape, a practice’s ability to collaborate seamlessly across teams and functions isn’t just a strategic advantage — it’s critical to the practice’s success. As the industry faces increasing pressures from regulatory bodies, evolving patient expectations and rapidly advancing technologies, a lack of teamwork can hinder a practice’s culture and, as a result, its progress. Cohesive, cross-functional collaboration among all practice staff helps individual processes align with broader organizational goals. This ultimately creates a work culture that ensures physicians are proud of the care they provide and are excited to arrive at work every day.

A 2017 survey of 314 nurse practitioners and physicians in New York found that practices with higher teamwork scores reported significantly greater job satisfaction (81%), lower intent to leave (14%) and higher perceived quality of care (89%), according to “Medical Care Research and Review.” Although creating an engaging company culture is the clear goal for most practices, putting this plan into action can prove difficult. Zed Williamson, founder and CEO of TrackableMed and Physician Growth Accelerator, joined a recent Medical Economics Practice Academy session to discuss how rallying a team of physicians around shared core values can help achieve a practice’s broader goals.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand how collaboration across teams can improve a practice’s culture, especially when physicians are proactive in their work.
• Recognize structural barriers in a practice that can hinder collaboration and explore strategies to overcome them through trust-building and constructive feedback.
• Understand the importance of creating shared behavioral goals that are both actionable and measurable.

FOSTER AN ENGAGED AND COLLABORATIVE TEAM WITH SHARED CORE BEHAVIORS

In health care practices today, rallying team members around shared behavioral goals is imperative. When individuals across roles clearly understand and operate within expected behaviors, practices are better positioned to deliver consistent and high-quality care, reduce internal friction and foster a positive work environment that stresses teamwork. Achieving this alignment requires intention, repetition and, above all else, leadership that understands how humans are wired.

“[People] are going to pay more attention to negative information than positive information. Why? Because that’s how you survive,” Williamson said during his Practice Academy session. This biological default, referred to as negativity bias, is a valuable survival tool. Unfortunately, in the modern work environment, it can lead to friction, including gossip and bad attitude.

To offset this, leaders must acknowledge their predisposition toward the negative and take conscious control of the organizational mindset. “We are basically preset to look for the negative,” Williamson said, “but we are in control of what we believe. Then we can drive behavior within our organization.” The best approach is to create a practice-wide mindset that is proactive instead of reactive.

Teams must articulate shared goals and define the specific behaviors that support those goals; in other words, they should be actionable. Values on their own are abstract, but observable behaviors make goals and team alignment much easier to track. “We want to see core behavioral values because behavior is what we can control and witness,” Williamson said. The ambiguity effect — where individuals are less likely to engage in tasks without clear instruction — stresses the importance of clearly defining all behavioral goals at a practice.

For example, if a practice values patient-centric care, behavioral goals might include active listening, consistent follow-up and collaborative decision-making. When expectations are based on behavior, they become both actionable and measurable. “If we know anything in business, [it’s that] the way we get something done is [through] the ability to measure it,” Williamson said. Tracking adherence to behavioral expectations through feedback loops, performance metrics or culture assessments can reinforce accountability and keep individuals across the practice aligned.

However, measurement alone isn’t enough. Teams must also create a safe environment for behavioral norms to take root. That means modeling behaviors from the top down, acknowledging effort and progress and addressing misalignment in a constructive way. Essentially, leaders at the practice must confront their own negativity biases to create a culture of trust.

For example, if being proactive is a core behavioral goal within a practice, leaders should model accountability by acknowledging when they fall short. Doing so not only demonstrates integrity but also fosters a culture where constructive feedback is normalized. At the same time, it is important to recognize and reward positive behavior. Calling out team members who exemplify the practice’s core values helps solidify those behaviors as the standard.

Ultimately, alignment on behavioral goals allows health care practices to function more like cohesive teams and less like collections of individuals. It creates a culture where expectations are clear, trust is stronger and feedback is easier to give and receive. Furthermore, it empowers each member of the organization to move in the same direction with a shared purpose.

When teams collectively believe in shared behavioral goals — and have the systems and support in place to exemplify them — that belief becomes the basis of lasting organizational success. “Every practice has a culture,” Williamson said, “and if you don’t purposefully create it, it is going to be one that is not very effective.”

SOLUTIONS AND TAKEAWAYS

• All physicians in a practice should acknowledge negativity bias by creating a culture that consistently reinforces positive behaviors and outcomes.
• Behavioral expectations at a practice should be clearly defined by linking core values to specific, observable goals that all team members can adopt.
• Behavioral alignment can be regularly measured by using feedback tools, peer observations or performance metrics to track consistency and growth.
• Those at the leadership level should model desired behaviors to set an example and create a culture of safety for the rest of the team.
• Practices that proactively foster a collaborative environment are better positioned to improve staff retention and perceived quality of care.