The Manager's View

It doesn’t appear that government intervention will solve the issue of providing affordable health care. Indeed, Medicare coverage is likely to diminish at a time health care cost is increasing. Further, it appears the efforts to cover the uninsured will only increase the overall health care costs. Nor does it appear that advances in technology and medicine are providing health care that is more affordable. The medical community continues to march forward in its ability to cure the most deadly diseases and rebuild the most broken human bodies. For individuals to benefit from the advances in drugs, surgical techniques and other medical advances requires a good deal of money or the very best insurance (also a good deal of money).   There is a chance that new entrants in the health care market space will find ways to reduce costs and provide quality health care. These entrants will likely be disruptive innovators and enter the market by serving...

One of my earlier blog posts discussed the steps in setting up a new business. The first step was to identify the job to be done for the customer. The steps following were very straightforward and methodical. You can read this post at http://gwrresearch.blogspot.com/2013/01/six-steps-for-starting-new-business.html . I have recently been involved in two start-ups that may prove as useful examples for a less structured, more evolutionary approach. The first is a collaboration between Rice University, MD Anderson Cancer Center and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. The job to be done is to create and commercialize devices for delivery of health care at a distance. The focus is on cancer prevention and care. The organization is known as the eHealth Research Institute. As it turns out, the steps following the identification of the job to be done and the development of a vision statement may be more evolutionary than taking clearly identified metho...

Often there is such a focus on running a business, closing a deal or reaching an objective that attention is given to immediate outcomes. The result of this sort of intense focus may cause a manager to miss important cues that affect the bigger picture. I have a friend that has been very successful in the business world. He and I have started several businesses together and enjoyed some success. I have learned however to not only listen to his words but to try to understand the true nature of his intentions.   I have learned for example that when he is asked to participate in a business venture and he acts very interested and responds to the request for participation by saying “Let me study this” or “We’ll see”, he means “No”. This may be a desire to be pleasant and courteous rather than giving a clear answer. I find this to be true in many business encounters. I have been in countless sales calls where the potential client gave what could be considered buy...

I was invited to help with this project about a year ago. Dr. Robert Satcher a surgeon at MD Anderson and former astronaut spearheaded the project along with Jan Odegard of Rice University and Sharon Pepper of MD Anderson. After a year this project has come together. This is an opportunity for the creation of new devices to deliver healthcare and provide healthcare for populations that are currently underserved. Houston, we have an opportunity. The electronic Health Research Institute (eHRI) was created by formal agreement on April 11, 2013 as a research collaborative between the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University, and the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The aim of the eHRI is to be a  catalyst for the advancement, integration, translation and acceleration of research and technology to support and enable distance delivery of healthcare , with ...

Last week I pointed out that business success requires more than a good plan. I said that the end-to-beginning planning process, if done well, would identify all of the challenges that would need to be dealt with to be successful. Once identified, decisions must be made on how to address these obstacles to a plan’s successful implementation. There are some that will tell you that what will make the difference in these situations are managers that are critical thinkers. Theoretically a critical thinker is someone who is presented with an argument and can determine if it is true, sometimes true, partially true or false. Other definitions can be more detailed but this is essentially the gist of critical thinking. This simple definition assumes that the thinker sets aside emotional issues and any form of bias. This is where the real difficulty lies. To be successful in assessing potential challenges a manager must be completely objective. Let’s take...

In my last post I talked about envisioning the outcome of a business plan and working back to the beginning activities to help in planning. I have used this end-to-beginning process in several business situations and it resulted in some tremendous successes. Unfortunately excellent planning does not offset an entrepreneur’s dogged desire to pursue a business idea regardless of the hurdles that must be overcome. In one instance I started a daily newspaper in a small town that already had a daily newspaper that was owned by a large communications corporation.   The corporate daily had alienated the community and its advertisers so I felt the timing was right for a competing newspaper. I attracted investors based on this premise and told them that only one newspaper would survive. The end-to-beginning planning process was used and all of its elements were incorporated into a Critical Path/PERT planning process. The result was the creation of a newspaper from the ...

I can remember early in my career when I was asked to manage a department that was disorganized and not meeting its organizational objectives. While somewhat flattered, I was also afraid that I wouldn’t be successful. I didn’t have experience in defining organizational problems or developing their solutions. In this particular case I just decided to take an action and see where it led. As luck would have it the early actions raised questions that would require that I do some research into how others had dealt with similar problems. In most cases the research gave good pointers on how to move forward and what next steps might produce results. The next steps usually led to more questions that required further research which led to still more steps to be taken. While this approach moved the project forward, it didn’t provide a list of activities that would focus on improving the department’s ability to function effectively. This approach almost required that I dis...

Having performance indicators can help improve virtually any facet of your business. Determining the business area to be monitored and the type of indicator will vary by business type. For example in retailing, customer satisfaction may be gauged by repeat visits by customers, frequency that merchandise is returned and customer complaints. For airlines, customer satisfaction indicators might include lost luggage and on time departure and arrival statistics. Key performance indicators should provide a gauge of success in achieving internal goals as well as comparing performance with industry averages or industry leaders. Having a comparison to the industry prevents managers from becoming myopic when measuring results.  Some companies produce key performance indicator reports monthly and distribute them with financial reports to managers and senior staff. By combining key performance indicators with financial outcomes a manager is able to get a clearer picture of what...