{"id":290,"date":"2020-01-11T13:43:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-11T13:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/?p=290"},"modified":"2020-01-11T13:43:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-11T13:43:54","slug":"7-practices-of-successful-organizations-by-jeff-pfeffer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/?p=290","title":{"rendered":"7 Practices of Successful Organizations by Jeff Pfeffer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the 1990s, Jeff Pfeffer (Stanford Business School) suggested these 7 \u201cpractices\u201d as common themes seen in successful organizations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Employment security<\/li>\n<li>Selective hiring of new personnel<\/li>\n<li>Self-managed teams and decentralization of decision making as the basic principle of organizational design<\/li>\n<li>Comparatively high compensation contingent on organizational performance<\/li>\n<li>Extensive training<\/li>\n<li>Reduced status distinctions and barriers, including dress, language, office arrangements, and wage differences across levels<\/li>\n<li>Extensive sharing of financial and performance information throughout the organization<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The first sentence of the conclusion in his 1998 California Business Review article read, \u201cFirms often attempt to implement organizational innovations, such as those described here, piecemeal.\u201d\u00a0 He went on to say, \u201cImplementing practices in isolation may not have as much effect, however, and, under some circumstances, it could actually be counterproductive.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s suggesting bundled approaches are better.\u00a0 Sounds complex, and like a lot of work.\u00a0 Yet, it makes sense: you can hire the right people, provide them with secure employment, pay them well with bonuses tied to organizational performance, be transparent with financial and performance information, and even provide extensive training, but it won\u2019t work unless the work environment and culture fosters self-managed teams and reduces status distinctions.<\/p>\n<p>Within each of these there is a mini-bundle as well.\u00a0 The implication being, if you don\u2019t execute on the details of these practices, you won\u2019t get the desired effect.\u00a0 For example here is the bundle for selective hiring of new personnel:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Screen for attitude and fit, not for skills that can be readily trained<\/li>\n<li>Be clear about the most critical skills, behaviors, attitudes \u2013 be as specific as possible<\/li>\n<li>Use several rounds of interviews<\/li>\n<li>When possible involve senior people<\/li>\n<li>Continuously evaluate and improve the recruiting process<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what is the bundle for self-managed teams and decentralization of decision making as the basic principle of organizational design?\u00a0 First <strong>the structure must lend itself to teams<\/strong>.\u00a0 In health care, this is often the case given the complex differences across populations of patients, diseases and care settings.\u00a0 The challenge for larger organizations becomes maintaining that local control while ensuring sharing and implementation of best practices in order to reduce counterproductive variation.\u00a0 Second, <strong>problem solving is encouraged at the local level<\/strong> from idea generating to ideas testing to hardwiring of the best solution(s).\u00a0 Given the drive for standardization, this local team problem solving can be impeded if standardization is done just for the sake of standardizing.\u00a0 Larger organizations achieve balance by <strong>driving accountability at the level of results, and less at the level of process<\/strong>.\u00a0 Third, <strong>hierarchical control must be minimized<\/strong> and middle management, especially when not part of a team, reduced.\u00a0 This is hard for many organizations, especially large ones.<\/p>\n<p>Healthcare is at risk because of the significant control IT and finance now have over how teams function.\u00a0 IT through its tight control of information systems, which are now integral to daily work, and finance by controlling costs and FTEs without local knowledge of the daily work, are forcing teams into boxes that don\u2019t deliver the performance ultimately needed.\u00a0 Giving too much control to parts of the organization that don\u2019t have expertise in the core product or service of the organization drives short term and self-serving thinking and action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the 1990s, Jeff Pfeffer (Stanford Business School) suggested these 7 \u201cpractices\u201d as common themes seen in successful organizations: Employment security Selective hiring of new personnel Self-managed teams and decentralization of decision making as the basic principle of organizational design Comparatively high compensation contingent on organizational performance Extensive training Reduced status distinctions and barriers, including [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}