The Myriad Ways of Strategy and Population Health for Governance Boards and Health Care Leaders

What's it take to be a "luminary?"

As healthcare organization leaders grapple with health reform's uncertainties, a common refrain is importance of "strategy".

It's no longer enough to maximize revenue, increase patient throughput, lower costs, manage debt, embrace financial risk, optimize FTEs, assure compliance or strengthen the balance sheet.

While those present management and fiduciary functions are still critical, governance boards and c-suite executives in both purchaser and provider organizations also have to make bets about the future.

For example, if healthcare inflation accelerates, how will your current customers react to their future costs-sharing? How and when will today's voters reconcile the burdens from growing public debt and government-sponsorship of the insurance programs you contract with? As "the internet of things" spreads, what is tomorrow's value proposition of your healthcare "things?"  Is reading this blog today going to lead to you being smarter in tomorrow's contentious meeting?

In other words, when leaders grapple with strategy, they're really futurists. They're making bets today on how to adapt current strengths and weaknesses to myriad downstream threats and opportunities.

Uncertainty has become a new watchword. Even if an organization doesn't change and sticks with old fashioned fee-for-service, they're still making a big wager on the future of individual billing versus risk-contracting for populations.

Which is why the Population Health Blog is interested in how leaders outside of healthcare deal with uncertainty. 

Being routinely unable to resist the materialistic allure of the WSJ. Magazine fashion ads, the PHB  happily stumbled into this Soapbox column on the single topic of strategy. Six "luminaries" were asked about it.

The recording industry executive emphasized visualizing the endgame. The professional sailor trusts her gut instincts. The computer gamer is all about capitalizing on lucky breaks. The presidential historian liked ongoing experimentation. The restaurateur is constantly shaping company culture. The matchmaker likes being open to change, even if it means being vulnerable.

Lesson? The PHB has read or heard all of this and more from leaders and in boardrooms. Examples include this (the end-game), this (intuition), this (luck), this (experimentation), this (culture) and this (change management).

"Strategy" remains a highly variable work in progress.  There is no best practice.

And then there's the huge health care opportunities and risks from contracting for the care of populations. Check out this interesting post by George Washington University's Miliken Institute of Public Health that describes a survey of 37 health care luminaries on the topic of population health. As the author points out, consensus on responsibility (and, as a side note, the assets and liabilities that accompany it) is lacking.  In addition, quoting the "Triple Aim" is turning out to be less than its admirers would like.

So it turns out that this is also very much a work in progress.

The PHB's takes?

 There are two:

1) Multiply the many approaches to strategy with the multiple takes on caring for populations and the possibilities are endless. Based on the variations, no one has cracked the code applying strategy to populations and risk-contracting.

For purchaser/provider board members and C-suite leaders, the good news is that your strategic bets on the future are - for now - as good as anyone's. The bad news is that the present day fiduciary work is not lessened and you're going to have to devote more effort (and time) on developing a still unsettled strategy approach to the uncertainties surrounding health reform.

2) Regrettably, despite describing itself as a "luminary" many times to the PHB Spouse, it was not included in the WSJ. column and the Miliken Blog.  This sadly suggests that her skepticism - for now - is warranted.

Image from Wikipedia

"Generative" Health Care Leadership, Governance and Boards of Directors

Time to get "generative!"

Thanks to bout of troublesome weather, the Population Health Blog has been stranded somewhere in the U.S. air-travel network. Undaunted by bitter loss of an upgrade and the prospect of a late arrival, it bravely used the down time to dig into the highly interesting book Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards by Richard P. Chait, William Ryan, and Barbara Taylor.

While written for "nonprofit board members," the PHB believes the insights are applicable to just about any board of directors or other leadership group of an organization that is grappling with uncertainty. And given the uncertainty in health care, Governance is "must" reading for the leadership as well as the board of any hospital, physician-group, health system or provider organization.

Pointing to years of academic research, consulting experience and common sense, the book describes three "modes" of governance:

1. Type I Fiduciary, which relies on process and uses standing committees to ask (for example) if assets are being effectively deployed.  Think "data."

2. Type II Strategic, which relies on content and uses ad hoc committees to ask (for example) how strengths align with future opportunities.  Think "information."

3. Type III Generative, which relies on "cues," "framing" and "narratives" to ask less about the solution and more about the problem.  Think "insight."  
  
Boards are naturally inclined toward Type I and II governance. According to the authors, that's a mistake that can foster zero-sum thinking and the triumph of personal influence over group meaning.

Instead, when all three types are used at the right time for the right issues, they become synergistic and can create a tangible competitive advantage for the organization.  The best time to turn to Type III governance is when there is an issue that is ambiguous, salient, high stakes, contentious and irreversible.  The authors compellingly describe how present "cues and clues," can be used to "reframe" facts into new patterns.  As a result, the past can be re-narrated to imagine a new future.

Governance uses the example of the compelling insight that broken windows isn't the result of, but can lead to high crime rates.  That, in turn, led to the creation of "community policing."  The PHB would offer the health industry insight that the "problem" wasn't getting physicians to better care for persons with diabetes, but getting persons with diabetes to be better engaged in self-care.

You get the idea.

 The authors readily admit that Type III Governance is a "wilderness" that is an "outside-the" or "black" box that is non-linear, vague and subjective.

It seeks "sense" or meaning and creates multiple choices, not a single fix.  It generates insight and creativity, not mission setting, strategy development or problem solving.  It gets you to the drawing board.  It frames the problem.  It generates the hypothesis. 

And when reality is recreated, it can ultimately achieve a far richer level of down-stream buy-in.

How can Type III Governance be leveraged?

First of all, governing boards and their management teams must collaborate in this.  Boards have a particular role to play because they have the three "P's" of power, a plurality of multiple perspectives and a position of a more distant ("10,000 foot") vantage point.  Boards can work with their management teams by either acting as 1) sounding boards that foster generative thinking by asking, probing and identifying the cues, framing the data and renarrating the past or by 2) initiating generative thinking by focusing on ambiguous or problematic issues among themselves and their colleagues.

Be prepared to tackle sensitive subjects and dealing with multiple perspectives that is less about fixed unanimity and more about the sense of a "collective mind". Resist succumbing to notions or fostering groupthink.

Use retrospective questioning (to discover unknown strengths, flaws and patterns in the past) and dominant narratives (that create a meaningful bridge from the past to a portray a desired future) to gain greater understanding.

Embrace the generative mode early on the "elephants in the room." A otherwise unaddressed "big issue" will evolve over time and default processes and solutions will recast the situation as a planning or strategic challenge.

Use mindful deliberation without formality or rank that focuses less on creating the solution than on defining the problem.

To increase the chance of success, boards need regular exposure to inside-facing culture of the organization as well its outward-facing environment. That means having unfiltered access to the cues/clues inside (the "factory floor") and outside (with customers or other stakeholders). While there is a risk of board members or senior leaders running amok over established lines of authority, the risk to any organization is ultimately greater if they're confined to the boardroom or the C-suite. 

Generative thinking will feel more like "play" or a "retreat" than a meeting.  That's good.

Use tools like

Counterfactuals: What is it about the budget or the assigned FTEs that explains our goals?
Hypotheticals: If the company ceased to exist, where would its customers go?
Intuition: Is there a hunch about the next five years?
Catalytic questioning: Is there a headline we'd like to see?

Governance makes for interesting as well as fun reading. The authors avoid complex jargon and sprinkle their text with some insightful examples. While readers may struggle with the details of installing "generative" thinking into their leadership "workflows," the idea of using this template to harness the creative juices of a leadership group or a board is exciting stuff.