Should Sally slowly build her case for evidence-based management or does she need to take a more aggressive approach?
This is a cross post from an earlier contribution to the Harvard Business Review blog in March 2010, in anticipation of a fictional case study on evidence-based management in health care, with expert commentaries.
Sally Randolph rose from her swivel chair and walked over to the Norman Rockwell print hanging on her wall. A remnant from the days when she and Mark Wiley worked together as resident physicians, it showed a concerned young girl holding up her doll to a white-haired doctor, who was kindly “listening” to its heart. She loved this image and what it stood for: medicine focused on people. Mark had caught a glimpse of the print in her locker, and back then he had liked it. She wondered what he’d think of it now. They both still worked at American Medical Center, a $2 billion institution with one thousand beds and a $2 billion budget, but Mark was now CEO and Sally chief medical officer. The image of the e-mail he’d just sent— marked urgent with a red exclamation point and the subject line “Evidence-Based-Management Seminar Canceled” — blurred her vision. Apparently the focus for Mark had shifted to profits.
Continue reading What more evidence do you need?
Change management is very much alive today! Despite the lack of success and reports about high percentages of failure (the infamous 70%), popularity is on the rise. This is the opening statement from the article “Op weg naar evidence based change management” by Eric Barends and Steven ten Have which was published in the Holland Management Review. These Dutch researchers disagree with the reported percentages of failure and have refuted this in another article. They are however optimistic about systematic research (in the spirit of Peter Drucker) in order to establish What, Why and How something works and what doesn’t regarding change management. Their article provides an overview of the developments in change management and investigates the practical barriers for evidence based change management. They make an analogy with psychology, where there was consensus amongst clinical psychologist that ‘debriefing’ after shocking events prevents psycho trauma. This ‘cultural belief’ was shattered, when it was recently discovered that ‘debriefings’ enhances the chance of a psycho trauma. Without any doubt there are similar misperceptions in change management and we should work extra hard to reach the next level toward evidence based change management and root these misperceptions out.
Continue reading Toward evidence based change management
Should Sally slowly build her case for evidence-based management or does she need to take a more aggressive approach?
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