By Kelly Brian Flannery
I am pleased to be writing the Director’s Article for the November CAHL Newsletter; as autumn has firmly arrived, we have gained an hour back on our clocks and have entered the time of year fondly referred to as the holiday season. Looking back to 2022, when I was CAHL President-Elect and reviewing the chapter’s performance and progress over the past three years, I am so proud of all we have accomplished for our members within the healthcare leadership community in Northern and Central California and our partners within and outside our area of operations. So, too, am I grateful for all the chapter and committee volunteers over my three-year term and commitment as CAHL’s President-Elect, President, and Immediate-Past President. This journey has been one of teamwork, passion, and dedication to CAHL’s Mission!
Something that is setting this final quarter of 2024 apart from previous years is that in addition to the regular chapter programming events held throughout the week by our committees, we hosted our first-ever in-person CAHL Congress in Sacramento on October 25th. The event sold out! The feedback we received during and immediately following the event was overwhelmingly positive and included everyone being thankful the chapter offered a closer-to-home option for earning six (6) in-person ACHE education credits. Additionally, on November 16th, we will host our inaugural CAHL Case Study Competition, which will have 32 student participants forming nine teams! Four of these nine teams will receive cash prizes for their case study work. The board is very optimistic that both events will be CAHL’s mainstay in the future.
Last month, in my own organization, we held our annual in-person VA Sierra Pacific Network Leadership Planning Summit in Reno, NV. I was instrumental in developing and organizing the event. Overall, the summit went well. However, we received some constructive criticism and negative feedback through evaluations. For many involved in planning and executing the summit, it was difficult and even painful to hear some of the comments. However, being a High-Reliability Organization (HRO), all the participant feedback needed to be heard, including the difficult and painful. I recently shared with a colleague that I felt it was a challenge to fully incorporate HRO into my program as seamlessly as other colleagues could into their programs; however, I plan to modify my opinion on this as the summit team, and I move forward with the 2025 plan and development. Currently, I am partnered with a colleague who is completing the VA Coach Development Program, and they are providing coaching services to me. I was able to utilize some of our time together after the summit to refocus my own HRO lenses in the context of the Chief Planning Officer role within our organization: the Chief Planning Officer is a highly collaborative, inclusive, and influential negotiator, analyst, and organizer who drives teamwork and must utilize HRO creatively and skillfully.
Committing to resilience is essential for everyone in healthcare, not just managers and leadership, so that we can bounce back from mistakes or setbacks. Leaders certainly have a responsibility to model resilience to gain buy-in from staff while also creating an environment of trust and continuous learning in our healthcare organizations. My summit planning team was in this mindset when we conducted a hot wash following the event: some things could have been done better, we will learn from this experience, commit to not repeating mistakes, and leverage a protracted summit development timeline to include additional stakeholders in the planning workgroup to capture greater diversity of perspectives and experiences present throughout our organization, thus empowering and valuing deference to expertise.
I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge a few HRO foundational values like clear communication, respect for people, and the duty to speak up. While I was confident that all aspects of the summit had been clearly communicated to everyone appropriately throughout the development process, I ultimately accepted the feedback that it was not. I support summit attendees exercising their duty to speak up to ensure their voices were heard and opportunities for improvement were recognized by all in attendance, including me and the network director. Demonstrating respect for people is so foundational to HRO and all that we do as leaders in healthcare, whether it’s communicating clearly with all stakeholders, deferring to subject matter expertise, expecting our staff to exercise their duty to speak up, fostering continuous process improvement, or creating a psychologically safe and just culture for our organizations.
In complete transparency, I believed my organization’s summit last month would be completed without significant issues. I was caught off guard by the frank verbal criticism at the end of the event; I should not have been. I am penning my last article as a CAHL Board Officer from the vantage point of an ACHE Fellow in the more mature years of his professional career and age (turning 59!). The summit feedback that my colleagues and I are responding to is a stark reminder to all healthcare leaders that so much of what we do supports our lifelong career and is not simply tasks during the early stages of our profession. We do not have the luxury of resting on our laurels and consciously or subconsciously becoming lax on responsibilities over time. While not the sage advice that I intended to share in my final message months ago when I was reminded of my assignment for this month, I do feel it is an apropos reminder coming from the senior officer on the CAHL Board’s Executive Committee who will be rolling off the board at midnight this December 31st.
The expiration of my term is bittersweet. Serving CAHL’s membership in this capacity for these three years has been the greatest honor. I have made wonderful professional and personal friends, especially with the Executive Committee Officers with whom I have worked the closest for my term. For the next few years, CAHL will be in the hands of exceptionally intelligent, talented, creative, and dedicated leaders on the board who will continue to lead our chapter’s path of success into the future. I could not be prouder of you all!
