Question 1: Evaluate the key elements of Morath’s efforts to transform Children’s Hospital into a learning organization.
Answer: It was Morath’s leadership abilities and initiatives that helped Children’s Hospital (CH) transform from an organization to a learning organization. We elaborate on the following three building blocks of a learning organization that are evident at Children’s Hospital.
Building Block 1: “A supportive learning environment”
Learning in an organization is inhibited by factors such as tradition, outdated procedures, values, structures, and psychological barriers about getting the work done. At a learning organization, the environment encourages people to bring out the problems / errors in the system, to analyze the problems and to seek solutions to them. This enables an organization to constantly learn and grow. In such a learning environment, new ideas are appreciated, people feel safe in discussing failures, disagreeing with others, asking naive questions, owning up to mistakes and presenting minority viewpoints.
The first block of a Learning Organization encompasses the following features:
• Psychological Safety
• Appreciation of differences
• Openness to new ideas
• Time for reflection
In a healthcare organization, errors are bound to happen and CH was not an exception. In order to create awareness about patient safety, CEO Nelson hired Julie Morath as COO. At CH she faced following Key Challenges.
? Patient Safety ? Not an easy subject to broach: The primary challenge for Morath was to even suggest launch of a patient safety initiative at CH. The management at most of the hospitals gets defensive whenever the topic of safety is touched upon. It is believed that the Patient ...