1 Habit of Leaders You Can Adopt to Guarantee You Hit Your Organizational Goals
In the journey towards achieving transformative goals, one habit stands out among successful leaders: setting and adjusting standards of performance.
Let me share with you the story of John, a healthcare executive at a large hospital. John had a bold goal: to drastically improve the hospital’s patient satisfaction scores, which were languishing below the national average. He knew that merely setting this goal wouldn’t be enough. To truly transform the hospital’s performance, he needed to overhaul the existing standards of care.
John started by understanding his “why.”
He realized that improving patient satisfaction was not just about scores; it was about ensuring every patient received the best possible care. This strong motivation drove him to dig deeper into the factors contributing to low satisfaction rates.
Next, John broke down his higher standards into detailed and actionable steps. He implemented new training programs for staff, emphasizing empathy and effective communication. He also introduced regular feedback loops, where patients could provide immediate input on their care experience.
These specific actions helped the staff understand exactly what was expected of them and how they could contribute to the overall goal.
John also had to be brutally honest with himself and his team. The hospital’s previous performance had been subpar, and significant changes were necessary. He set realistic, incremental targets to improve satisfaction scores, knowing that dramatic overnight changes were unlikely. By starting with achievable standards, he built a foundation of success that motivated his team to strive for higher goals continuously.
Over the next year, the hospital’s patient satisfaction scores improved significantly. John’s approach of setting and adjusting precise standards, driven by a clear understanding of his motivation, proved to be the catalyst for achieving his transformative goal.
Unlike goals, which are often visionary and aspirational, standards serve as the tangible benchmarks that leaders are willing to uphold to ensure progress.
Transformative leaders set standards of performance to reach their goals
Transformative leaders understand the difference between their goals and their standards. They set their goals but they set and adjust their standards.
Standards are the performance benchmarks that a leader is willing to tolerate. When they set a goal, they have decided that the standards that they currently set aren’t good enough to reach the goal that they want. In healthcare organizations, those standards can be everything from productivity standards to standards for how patients are treated. Your organization already has standards and they might not be pretty when you examine them.
Standards are the most valuable when they are precise. Get scores from all patients on their experience of 10/10. Reduce length of stay for cardiac patients by 0.5 days. These actions become your standards for reaching your goal.
Goals without standards are a bunch of meaningless thoughts and words. If you’ve created goals and fallen short, the likely culprit is that you haven’t changed your standards to be consistent with your goals. It’s a matching process. Here are 3 ways to set a higher standard:
- Understand your why: You have to be clear on your motivation to change your standards. It’s a lot different to say “I want to reduce length of stay because it might be a good idea” instead of “I want to reduce length of stay because I know every extra day I a patient is in the hospital their risk of infection increases”. The stronger and more specific your reasons are for doing something, the more likely you’ll stick to your standard.
- Break down your higher standard into detailed and achievable steps: Don’t just say, ”I’m going to improve length of stay in my department”. Be intentional, meticulous, and specific.
- Be honest with yourself: If you and your organization have results that are severely lacking, then you need to be real about how much work it’s going to take to increase your standards to get to exceptional performance. Don’t let your ego run your mind when it comes to setting realistic goals and stanards. Start at a place that makes sense for you. You can always upgrade your standards when you start making progress.