I was recently invited to speak about leadership and culture related to performance improvement and innovation at the annual American Hospital Association’s Leadership Summit. Two physicians were sharing the stage with me, one of whom is also a researcher and a leader in performance improvement or PI (or, as we call it at Winona Health, continuous systems improvement or CSI). He was focused on performance improvement in safety net healthcare organizations and rural healthcare organizations, such as Winona Health. The other physician leads a lot of the PI/CSI training and development for healthcare providers and staff at a large urban healthcare system. We had an interested audience and an engaging topic. One of the advantages of being asked to present is that it provided access to the full conference, the theme of which centered around Innovation. Among the speakers were Captain James Lovell (age 91), the legendary NASA commander who guided the Apollo 13 mission to safety and Gene Kranz (age 85), who led the “Tiger Team” of flight directors who brought the Apollo 13 back to Earth safely. These two gentlemen shared their insights and reflections on what they called “a successful failure”–the Apollo 13 mission. The Apollo 13 mission occurred 50 years ago, and today we continue to learn about innovation and perseverance from this remarkable story and the people who lived it. Both Captain Lovell and Mr. Kranz recalled their experiences with great detail. There is no question that their careers at NASA and in aerospace were powerful influences on them and allowed them to literally reach for the stars and make that dream a reality. The moderator asked questions about how they approached challenging situations during the mission. They discussed the thousands of hours they spent (as teams) practicing for every possible variable to go wrong. They constructed simulations to test everything they knew, or could at least think of, that they needed to plan for. They had to isolate each issue, develop a plan, execute the plan and see if it worked. It was one thing to simulate issues and quite another to deal with them in real time when lives were at stake. The real challenges they faced on the Apollo 13 were not the ones they prepared for in their simulations. I found it fascinating that everything they did was based on mathematical models, and they had to have confidence in their equations, checking their math over and over–the power of computers then was nowhere near what it is today. The most compelling statement was Gene Kranz’s response to a question about facing the possibility of the Apollo 13 crew dying in space. He said, “I didn’t really worry about it because I knew the astronauts and the command team had not even begun to run out of options.” There are many lessons to be learned through the Apollo 13 experience, but the key takeaway for me was that human ingenuity is a bottomless font from which we can draw new ideas, approaches and solutions if we are willing to step into the work. One of the advantages of being a smaller independent organization is our ability to move quickly, pilot ideas, and make changes without a lot of bureaucracy. Healthcare finds itself in uncharted territory. The “stars” we are always reaching for include continuing to provide the highest quality care, meeting ever-changing needs, providing an outstanding patient experience – all while finding new ways to bring costs down. So, what do we chose to do? At Winona Health, we continue to innovate. We do this by creating the “space” for staff to innovate though our continuous systems improvement process–it’s in our Winona DNA. We are energized and excited to be part of the solution the healthcare industry desperately needs.
English 
Español 
Hmong