Innovative Leadership in the Healthcare Industry

Recognizing Innovative Leader Attributes

Dynamic healthcare paradigms demand innovative leaders to empower their teams. Various belief and value systems exist around what makes an effective innovative leader; this is not a one size fits all and many attributes contribute to the achievement of a successful innovative leader. My value system holds empowerment as my foundational cornerstone. When we empower, we build confidence, decision making, and foster engagement among individuals. Empowerment also provides a space for individuals to make mistakes and learn from them. Innovative leaders actively listen; they take the stance of listening more and talking less. They welcome ideas and value inquisitiveness. I also lean into situational leadership by being flexible; one must identify when to direct, coach, participate, and/or delegate responsibilities to stakeholders. Innovative leaders should Innovative Leadership in the Healthcare Industry By Jennifer Agne, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, LMT, PCCN Alumnus | Director of Operations, Help at Home also lead by example, demonstrating accountability, integrity, and taking ownership of imperfections. We must be lifelong learners from many perspectives, individuals, and various channels.

Creating Functional Leaders and Teams

I believe decentralizing authoritative power and decision making to other competent leaders, enhances their growth, increases their productivity, and improves the individual’s and team’s unified function. Failure to decentralize decision making creates chaos, dysfunctional processes, and leaves employees feeling de-valued and discarded. Leaders who can deliver and provide simplistic, concise, and clear expectations will increase productivity, reduce complexity, and improve efficiency. Simply stated, inefficient technology design and complex process changes do not drive performance improvement, rather, if leaders guide by the principle of simplicity and clarity, they become the acting conduit to achieving this desired outcome. Technology should also empower end users and make their jobs easier.

Analyzing Operations and Creating Innovative Solutions

I have repeatedly witnessed Healthcare sectors become embedded with inherent complexities, convoluted processes, and unresolved impediments leaving room for unmitigated risks. When this occurs, it is the Leader’s responsibility to leverage past experiences and anticipatory planning to predict business needs and identify opportunities to reduce and hopefully eliminate some of the identified complexities. Many of us know there are various tactics and approaches that can be utilized to drive and measure operational effectiveness. I often lean into proven process methodologies such as: Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Continuous Improvement, Plan-Do-Check-Act, 5 Why’s Analysis, and Business Process Management. All of these methodologies have a time and a place; it is the leader’s responsibility to know when to use one or a combination thereof, to improve how Healthcare and technology can coincide effectively and efficiently. 

When leaders are familiar with process improvement opportunities, they acquire the ability to identify deficits and bottlenecks in throughput that could benefit from quality and process improvement, technology advancement, innovative solutions, and optimized outputs to improve client outcomes and many other facets of the healthcare industry.

Leaders can also benefit from honing in on skill development to envision and anticipate upstream and downstream impacts, and leverage ideation with differing viewpoints, advantages, and disadvantages. Possessing situational awareness up and down the chain of command can facilitate proactive anticipation. Innovative leaders possess self-awareness to surround themselves with individuals and stakeholders who possess differing strengths, perspectives, and innovative ideas. These collective and collaborative discussions often generate and yield creativity, innovative solutions, and opportunities to strengthen businesses, culture, and healthcare. Leaders who have the ability to operate in humility seek higher wisdom and accept acquisition of knowledge transfers and ideations from subject matter experts beyond themselves. This facilitates innovative ideas to position their teams to bridge gaps and silos in healthcare, technology, and overly complex healthcare models.

Equipping with Market Landscape Insights

With the vast healthcare landscape continuously evolving, I have found that leaders can benefit by familiarizing themselves with the market landscape, competitive intelligence, and the most current innovative solutions hitting the market. Awareness around the products, business and clinical models, and solutions that are being created, tested, and piloted, can inform leaders on the “how” to remain competitive and innovative and when to shift directions for business growth and technology advancements. Healthcare leaders are challenged with the ability to satisfy multiple stakeholders such as business, information technology, quality, compliance, state and federal regulations, finance, clinical, and most importantly, clientele. Market landscape agility and creativity is imperative to the advancement of providing and delivering new innovative, holistic care models to stakeholders.

To Conclude

From my perspective, innovation calls for rapid adoption of change, sustainability, and reduction in complexity. Leaders should strive to be agile, adapt, and remain innovative to meet the evolutionary demands of the healthcare industry. As leaders, we need to take responsibility to create diverse cultures that allow and promote creativity, ideation, and new patterns of thinking to support the advancement of our healthcare systems.