i had a conference in Chicago this week* and one of the sessions I went to yesterday was a guy who challenged us to look to the future and decide on “what is our one word legacy by 2022?” Essentially, how do we want to be known? Since this was a leadership conference I thought in the context of the Iowa Specialty Hospitals & Clinics 1 word legacy. The overall tone of his talk was on disruption and re-imagining life as we know it. (Basically, I thought “this is all about us because we are all about imagine and disruption is our middle name. So Yay!) One word though … that’s hard, I think looking at our mission and vision statements, the word benchmark stands out. I want other hospitals around the country (in 2022) to say “look at Iowa Specialty Hospitals & Clinics, they got it going, we want to be like them.” It’s not sexy or exciting but it is strong.
When I am forced to run a 5K, besides almost passing out and dying, the next worst thing for me is to be a lower bar benchmark. This is when someone (usually a kid between 9 and 12) runs past me and then walks until I jog up to them … then they turn around look at me in the eye and sprint off until I catch up with them again, then they sprint and do it all over again. I usually yell “don’t benchmark me” and they typically have no clue what I am yelling about. However, in my wildest dreams of running races I would rather be benchmarked at the front of the pack rather than the back of pack - the race to first place. This is what I want for Iowa Specialty Hospitals & Clinics. I want people to push us and try and be better and use us as the standard of greatness.
This is a tall order. This is something that I’ve said for a very long time. It was recently announced that Belmond’s HCAHPS scores are the best in the nation. This is front of the pack stuff. Thinking outside the box and strategically re-imagining and disrupting how we do things should be our norm because it is the only thing in the past that has worked and pushed us to the front.
*I got back last night at midnight. I took the flight out of Mason City to Chicago. Cheap ($75 one way, no charge for parking and into O’Hare). I was the only passenger on the flight back last night. That was very strange. I had a long coat and my tie was still on - I pretended it was my plane. What the heck, I looked the part.
