Stay Advised by the Best - First Quarter, 2019
by adminHere in the United States we spend more on health care per citizen than almost any other country but don’t seem to be reaping the rewards we might expect.
Although life expectancy has been steadily climbing for decades that is now not true as for the past few years life expectancy is declining.
Certainly great progress has been made on three of the biggest killers – those being cancer, heart disease and stroke, however we’ve been losing ground on other fronts since 2014. So, you might ask why the change in direction? The three major problems are drug overdoses led of course by opioids, suicide and chronic liver diseases.
Currently U.S. life expectancy for males is 76.4 years and for females it is 81.2 years. Here are few comparisons of combined male and female by nation: Australia 82, Canada, 81, France 82, Netherlands 81, Switzerland 83, Russia 71, New Zealand 81, United States 79. As you probably would expect there are many worldwide nations with numbers far lower. In the United States by state Hawaii has the highest combined expectancy at 81.3 and Mississippi has the lowest combined expectancy at 74.7.
I’m on a one man crusade to move us from what I term as today’s social and certainly governmental “We vs. They” attitude to an “Us” attitude. I can remember when with few exceptions the prevailing attitude was “Us”. That was a few decades ago. Let’s bring it back! I give due credit to Roy Spence who unknowingly gave me this idea of his in a presentation about 1 ½ years ago.
In today’s world it seems that one of the few “Constants is Change”. Many years ago I attended an Executive Education Program at Harvard Business School and while there learned a method of managing change and when applied it works quite well. Here is the formula: C O C equals M X P X D. The formula stands for Cost of Change equals Model times Process times Dissatisfaction.
Often when leadership wishes to make a change of some or any kind in the organization it simply announces the change and expects it to happen. As an example it could be a change in a process or product. If the organization doesn’t embrace the change and get it fully in place within a reasonable time C O C (Cost of Change, the left side of the formula) is already being negatively affected. Examples of negative costs in this scenario could be excessive time in getting the change implemented, a lower level of coworker morale or even coworker turnover.
How well we manage the right side of the formula is the key: M X P X D (Model times Process times Dissatisfaction). Leadership knows what the fully completed change should be or look like but if the coworkers aren’t told it is simply a mystery to them so that is where you start – carefully paint a word picture of the completed Model. Incidentally, I describe the word Change as moving from a present state of affairs to a future state of affairs (the Model).
Now that the coworkers understand the Model we need to carefully explain the P portion of the formula, Process. The Process is how you will move from the present state of affairs to the future state of affairs (Model). When starting to explain the Process to our coworkers I have learned a method of getting better buy-in and participation from them. I simply ask if they have any other ideas of getting the change implemented and if any of them might want to facilitate a portion of the Process.
Now for the D (Dissatisfaction) portion of the formula. If we have done a good job of explaining the Model and the Process and the coworkers can now see that their jobs as a result of the change will be now more rewarding without us even mentioning the word Dissatisfaction have actually created a degree of it resulting in coworkers thinking “Why haven’t we already made this change? Let’s get it done and be more satisfied in our employment”.
Try the change formula, it works!
In each of my quarterly blogs I mention the books I’m reading and often recommend one or more of them. In this blog I must mention that I just could not get through more than approximately 40 % of Joseph Heller’s classic “Catch 22”. So I lightened up and read John Grisham latest release “The Reckoning” and a book on one of my favorite subjects “The Story of Baseball in 100 Photographs”
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If you did not receive any of my previous four quarterly blogs just email me at [email protected] and I’ll send them to you.
Ron Smith Consulting & Coaching
Author and publisher of the books:
HVAC Spells Wealth
“More & New” HVAC Spells Wealth
HVAC Light Commercial Service Agreements
and, 9 Disc Audio CD Set: HVAC Spells Wealth
Visit our website at www.ronsmithhvac.com
Office 470-253-8502
Cell 615-974-9589