I also recall attending a leadership course on the Gettysburg battlefield. During the battle that made those killing fields famous, there were no means of communications other than shouting over the din of mayhem. From hill to hill, station to station, no one knew what was happening.

Today, a general might take out her cell phone or more secure, sophisticated device to call the front lines — and if no one answers, she could tune into CNN to get the latest on what’s happening. A GPS system might also trace the progress of troops. But a smart general knows that there is no substitute for directly seeing and sensing what’s really happening on the front — even with the advent of the most sophisticated information technology and communications. And a brief physical presence always inspires the troops.

Like many executives, I use advanced technologies to manage and do my job. But I keep asking whether I’m a Luddite because my leadership style has not changed over the years, even though I’m “wired”. Without question, technology today enables leaders to communicate more broadly and quickly and to hear from many points of contact at one time. I can also effectively teleconference with people I know — but, as we have learned, remote communications don’t work well with people you don’t know. I have no doubt that I am a better leader because I am more current and knowledgeable thanks to technology. But I worry more that the world of web 2.0 — and what comes after — will distract, not add, from the skill of leaders, make them more, rather than less, remote.

Last week, I had lunch with the young CEO of an emerging company. He had come to seek my advice. He spent the first five minutes of our meeting reading messages on his PDA. Fortunately, there was someone else at the table with whom to talk. That made the meeting less awkward. Technology, in the hands of unskilled leaders, can create distance, and even a false sense of security. A person may believe that they are “connected”, but that connection may be superficial.

Of course, a very skilled communicator can reach and inspire thousands of people through electronic medium. The great televangelists come to mind. Now their messages can be propelled by Twitter,YouTube, and Facebook.

But leadership is not proselytizing. Real leadership requires relationships and personal engagement. Nothing I see in technology has yet to replace these qualities. I believe that technology will enable new business models, but not “new leadership”.

http://blogs.hbr.org/imagining-the-future-of-leadership/2010/05/does-leadership-change-in-a-we.html

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook.)

Jim Champy is a consultant and author. His newest book, Reengineering Healthcare, A Manifesto for Radically Rethinking Healthcare Delivery, will be released in June.
(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook.)

Editor’s note: This post is part of a three-week series examining innovation in health care, published in partnership with the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University.

When I first suggested to a team of health care clinicians that their work needed to be radically redesigned, I was told that the word “radical” was reserved for only the most serious of medical procedures and I had no license to use the word — after all, I was not even a physician. Today, I believe more than ever that only the radical redesign of health care’s clinical and administrative processes will deliver lower costs and improved safety.

What we describe as a “health care system” is no system at all. It’s a collection of fragmented, non-communicating parts, implicitly dangerous in design. During an average four day hospital stay, a patient sees 24 different clinicians and administrators; when a physician places an order for medications in a hospital, there are seventeen steps between when that order is given and when the medication reaches the patient’s bedside – all opportunities for error. And this complexity happens within a single health care delivery organization. When multiple physicians, clinics, hospitals – and insurance companies – are involved in the care of a patient, the complexity can be overwhelming, both for the patient and clinicians.

Designing a real system of care will require a combination of technology, process, and people. Information technology will be the great enabler of change – connecting multiple care givers, providing a portable health care record, and eventually providing the information required to link treatments to outcomes. But technology alone will not deliver lower costs and safer care. Clinical work must also change, and that involves process. We have seen great advances in the diagnosis and treatment of illness, but many of the processes in care delivery haven’t changed very much in fifty years – the same patient questions get repeatedly asked, delays exist in getting test results back, real patient education is left up to the patient and the Internet. And when information technology has been introduced into the physician’s examining room without process change, the work of physicians has become more difficult, not less. When work does change for the better, it’s also because the behaviors of people have changed – both clinicians and patients.

The challenge may seem daunting, but I have seen some encouraging examples of redesigned delivery processes. They have been as simple as taking down the walls between warring orthopedic surgeons and radiologists in a group practice and requiring their administrative staffs to meet every morning to plan the day’s work. And they have been as ambitious as Novant Health’s Safe Med program.

The staff at Novant, a leading hospital in North Carolina, had noticed that 18% of its emergency room cases involved recently discharged elderly patients with Adverse Drug Events (ADE’s). These patients were not going home and purposely overdosing; they just weren’t paying attention to medication instructions when being discharged. They wanted to get home – where they were at risk of taking both old and new medications.

So Novant instituted a program in which hospital pharmacists telephone elderly patients a couple of days after they have been discharged and ask them to review the medications they are taking. The ADE cases showing up in the emergency room have been reduced from 18% to 4%. But the program required getting attending physicians to accept the new role for pharmacists, finding hospital pharmacists with patient skills (they normally never see a patient), and developing computer systems that keep physicians apprised of what’s going on. Safe Med is an example of how people, process, and technology can come together to improve safety and lower costs – an emergency room is an expensive place to be.

The case for action for radically rethinking health care delivery can easily be made alone on the basis of lowering costs and improving safety. But I also believe that many hospitals and physician practices will soon be at risk of financial collapse if they don’t take action. Federally enacted “health care reform” means that hospitals and clinicians will be paid less for their work as it’s currently performed.

You might think that hospitals will now earn more because they won’t have to provide free care to the previously uninsured. Think twice. Without radical change, the cost of care will continue to rise dramatically, driven in part by advances in science and technology – look at new drugs that can cost a patient or insurer thousands of dollars a month. With these increased costs and Medicare and Medicaid payments being reduced to help pay for “health care reform”, I don’t know the head of a single hospital who doesn’t fear red ink ahead. Most hospitals already operate on the edge of profitability.
It’s time for health care professionals to take on the redesign of their work. No angel of government can or should do it for them.

Jim Champy is a consultant and author. His latest book, co-authored with Dr. Harry Greenspun, isReengineering Health Care: A Manifesto for Radically Rethinking the Delivery of Care. He is currently a 2011 Advanced Leadership Research Fellow at Harvard.

http://blogs.hbr.org/innovations-in-health-care/2011/03/radically-rethinking-health-ca.html

Creating and sustaining a distinct market advantage from which profits and longevity flow is a worthy goal for most businesses.

The challenge to create this competitive advantage is formidable and not for the faint of heart. As the former chairman of Perot Systems, Jim Champy has spent most of his career helping businesses do just that. When Champy penned his bestseller “Reengineering the Corporation,” he was just beginning to get under the market-differentiation hood.

When Champy wrote “Outsmart!: How To Do What Your Competitors Can’t” (FT Press, 2008), he created the playbook for outplaying the competition. I recently caught up with Champy to explore the implications of “Outsmart” in the context of small business.

Q: What are some ways a small business can find business opportunities that others don’t see or are neglecting?

A: New opportunities often appear small at first. That’s why large companies don’t pursue them. New opportunities are perfect for small businesses that have the persistence to develop them. You can best find them by staying in the markets that you understand.

Look for the unmet needs of your customers. Talk to them and ask them what’s working in the service or product that you provide. What could you add to further satisfy their needs?

Look at your competitors and ask what they are not doing for their customers. Don’t just copy what they are doing unless you can do it dramatically better or dramatically cheaper. Look for products or services that are adjacent to what you now provide. What could you add to your portfolio to delight your customers?

Q: Explain the concept of a narrow-focus business and the advantages of such a business model.

A: The best decisions by small — and large — business owners are made intuitively. You can do a lot of analysis to decide what to do — whether to enter a new market, open a new store, offer a new product, or just stop doing something — but in the end, your informed judgment is what’s important.

That’s why staying focused in your business is critical; over time you develop a keen sense of what works and what doesn’t. When you get out of your knowledge territory, your intuition often doesn’t work. Lots of time, money, and effort can be wasted in businesses that you know nothing about.

In challenging economic times, customers are looking for options. They all want more — product, service, features — for less. It’s a great time for smaller businesses to innovate, solve complex customer problems and deliver on unmet customer needs. Keep your costs low and efficiency high. You can grow during these times by outsmarting your competitors.

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101222/BIZ/12220342/-1/SITEMAP

Published 12/2010

David Dirks of Port Jervis is a business strategy and marketing consultant. Visit his blog at growingmybusiness.wordpress.com and listen to his weekly radio show at wtbq.com. E-mail him atdirksmarketing@gmail.com

Jim Champy revolutionized business with Reengineering the Corporation. Now, in these three concise, fast-paced books, he’s done it again — revealing today’s most innovative strategies for breakthrough business success. Deliver!: How to Be Fast, Flawless, and Frugal shows how to leverage the rich treasure of potential competitive advantage hidden in your operations. Through five case studies, he presents organizations performing at “impossible” levels — thanks not to strategy, but to goals, discipline, details, and gritty, everyday execution. Next, in Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can’t, Champy reveals the winning strategies of “high velocity” companies, identifying eight powerful ways to compete in even the most brutal marketplace. You’ll discover how to find distinctive market positions and sustainable advantages in products, services, delivery methods, and niches nobody else ever considered. Finally, in Inspire!: Why Customers Come Back, Champy shows how to define a consistent value proposition your customers will be passionate about–and will stay passionate about. You’ll learn how to engage a new generation of customers who value transparency and authenticity above all, and transcend mere “marketing” to lead crusades customers want to join.

[From FT Press.com]

Michael Hammer and James Champy have updated and revised their milestone work for the New Economy they helped to create—promising to help corporations save hundreds of millions of dollars more, raise their customer satisfaction still higher, and grow ever more nimble in the years to come.

“… provides a simple, well-organized framework for even the uninitiated to pursue the process.” – – Hans W. Becherer, Chairman, Deere & Company

“An important book that describes the principles behind a new and systematic approach to structuring and managing work…” – – Peter F. Drucker

“This book is an outstanding and important piece of work and easily readable.” – – Robert E. Allen, CEO, AT&T

“An important book that describes the principles behind a new and systematic approach to structuring and managing work. . . Whether they are chief executives, functional executives, or professionals, decision makers need to read this book.” – – Peter F. Drucker

“This book is an outstanding and important piece of work and easily readable. The payoff is dramatic improvement in cost, quality, and customer satisfaction.” – – Robert E. Allen, CEO, AT&T

Now, Jim Champy and Dr. Harry Greenspun show how to apply the proven reengineering methodology in health care: throughout physician practices, hospitals, and even entire health systems. You’ll meet innovative and visionary leaders who’ve been successfully reengineering organizations across the entire delivery spectrum and learn powerful lessons for improving quality, reducing costs, and expanding access.

This book doesn’t just demonstrate the immense potential of health care reengineering to revolutionize health care delivery: it offers a clear roadmap for realizing that potential in your own organization.

Deliver Better Care to More People, at Lower Cost

• How reengineering can lead to more efficient, safer delivery–and sharply reduced costs
• How to focus on prevention and wellness, as well as chronic disease and hospital care
• How to earn the trust, contributions, and passion of skeptical physicians and health care professionals
• How to harness technology to create more seamless, accessible, valued, and sustainable health care systems–and avoid technology’s pitfalls
• How Zeev Neuwirth transformed the Lenox Hill Hospital ER and the 700-doctor Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates practice
• How Tom Knight is revolutionizing patient safety at Methodist Hospital System, one of America’s largest private, nonprofit medical complexes
• How to start today in your own organization!

Most recently, Mr. Champy was Chairman Emeritus, Consulting, for Dell Services. Prior to Dell, Mr. Champy was Chairman of Consulting and Head of Strategy for Perot Systems from 1996 to 2009. Perot was acquired by Dell in November of 2009.

Before joining Perot, Mr. Champy was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CSC Index, the management consulting arm of Computer Sciences Corporation. He was one of the original founders of Index, a consulting practice that was acquired by CSC in 1988.

Mr. Champy is co-author of Reengineering the Corporation, a best-seller which was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year and sold more than two million copies; it has been translated into 17 languages. Reengineering was recently recognized by INC Magazine as the most influential business book of our time.

His follow-up book, Reengineering Management, is also a best-seller and was recognized by Business Week as one of the best business books of 1995. His next book, co-authored with Harvard Business School Dean, Professor Nitin Nohria, was The Arc of Ambition. Mr. Champy also collaborated with Professor Nohria for the book Fast Forward, which is a compilation of significant Harvard Business Review articles on change; it was published in March 1996.
His next book, X-Engineering the Corporation, Reinventing Your Business in the Digital Age, was released in 2002. In this work, Mr. Champy takes up the opportunity and challenge for cross-organizational process design and collaboration.

In 2008, Mr. Champy launched a series of concise business books for The Financial Times Press, exploring new business models. The first book in that series, Outsmart! How To Do What Your Competitors Can’t, reveals many surprising and counterintuitive lessons learned by companies who have built new business models, or altered existing ones, to achieve super-high growth rates.

The second book, Inspire! Why Customers Come Back, includes eight concise case studies that look at how businesses become successful by “inspiring” their customers to be loyal for the long-term. The examples show creative thought and explore how a company’s vision and mission can directly impact their sales success.  His third book in the series, DELIVER!  How to Be Fast, Flawless, and Frugal, focuses on execution.

Mr. Champy’s latest book, Reengineering Health Care, A Manifesto for Radically Rethinking Health Care Delivery, co-authored with Dr. Harry Greenspun, applies reengineering thinking to the challenges of radically changing the delivery of care.

Champy earned his BS in 1963 and his MS in Civil Engineering in 1965 from M.I.T., and a JD degree from Boston College Law School in 1968.

Champy is a life member of the MIT Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Board of Trustees, where he serves on the Executive Committee, Chairs its Salary- Subcommittee, and Chairs the Visiting Committee for MIT’s Engineering Systems Division. He chairs the Dean’s Advisory Board of the Boston College Law School and is a member of the President’s Advisory Council for the Berklee College of Music. He is also a trustee of the Roxbury Latin School, the oldest secondary school in continuous existence in the United States.

Mr. Champy is a member and lead director of the Board of Directors of Analog Devices, Inc., a public company and global leader in high-performance semi conductors for signal processing applications. He also serves on the advisory boards of several privately held companies.