Reducing Negativism

In today's healthcare organizations there is the opportunity to be solution oriented, focused and move toward positive new outcomes. It is also possible to wallow in chronic paralysis, analysis, finger pointing, blame, problem finding and conflict enhancement. An organization must choose the way it will focus on a daily basis. They must decide to be a problem solving, learning culture that continues to deal with issues as they arrive. That they will look for opportunities to produce successful outcomes with team based involvement. The organization will value differing points of view, opinions and even disagreements in our efforts toward accomplishing results as mentioned previously, or the organization can also choose to believe that it is everyone's right to moan, complain, gripe, whine, snivel, snitch and bring up constant conflictual attitudes in the workplace. The problem with the second approach is that it leads to morale problems, staff turnover, customer service delivery issues, compliance problems, regulatory hassles and missed reimbursement opportunities.

The process for a negative environment to foster includes allowing people to believe it is OK to bring up problems at any time they wish. If we don't posses the skills to deal with these individuals we end up making excuses for them. A small group of individuals can set the tone for the day. In fact, the first 10-15 minutes of the start of each day or shift could be miserable. They'll ensure we can't accomplish our work, which will fuel negativism and people will feel like there is no sense of accomplishment or purpose. These individuals form an effective process that grows a group of negative peoples along side them. They help run off good people. They make sure no one is happy or content.

We have found chronic BMG's (Bellyachers, Moaners and Groaners) can effectively shut down positive experiences in the organization. In fact, we've even seen where they've been able to take something as positive as an employee get together and turn it negative by saying, "I'm not going to eat that person's food, or I'm not coming to that event if they're going, or you set that up at a time that's not good for me," thus we end up closing down something as simple as an employee get together. These Bellyachers, Moaners and Groaners exist for one of two reasons.

One, they have horrible self-respect problems, do not feel good within their own skin and two, must make sure they have some way to feel better through power, attention or authority. The other reason is that they have terrible personal accountability problems. Those individuals never want to see anything that could shed a bad light on them. They always blame or finger point other people. The individuals, who are doing it for personal accountability problems, have many errors and mistakes and are masking those errors and mistakes by blaming other people. The chronic BMG'ers are people who have both problems; self respect and personal accountability problems.

An organization must choose its course of action. It needs a team to do this. You should not have individuals taking on other individuals on bellyaching, moaning and groaning. We believe it is much like an intervention with a person who is out of bounds in their personal life with certain unacceptable behaviors or actions. The organization or team must decide that they're going to deal with this individual, confront them, and it may be necessary to confront a group of individuals. It is important to decide that for the organization to move ahead, it might have to decide these people must "put up or shut up". If they are not willing to do that, we might have to move on beyond those individuals to gain the new team that would be necessary to be a successful organization.

This process of reducing negativism also includes the possibility of a very drastic step of eliminating the negative individuals from the organization. We don't normally encourage this but we find that half the time the confrontation with those individuals and their problem-seeking behavior will change their behavior to some extent. Then, we can recognize the behavior change we desired. There is a chance half of them will go to higher levels to bellyache, moan & groan or will go to undercover levels. They'll become more aggressive in their tactics because they don't want to face the true problems associated with their behavior. The organization has to be prepared to understand action toward individuals who do not want to make changes in their behavior.

In choosing the course of action for an organization, the facility must decide it has to implement a new policy. This policy should be as tough as any other policy in the organization. This policy is P=S. What P=S means, is if you've got a problem suggest options. From now on, the new methodology of human connectivity in the organization is to be "you have the right to bring up any problem you want to as long as you're also willing to be involved in discussions about the solution." You do not have any right to bring up the problem only and expect someone else to solve the problem. We are eliminating bellyaching, moaning, groaning, whining, sniveling, snitching or finger pointing as a methodology of daily human contact.

If you used to bring up a problem and put it on a note and stick it under the door, from now on you're not allowed to do that. You can bring up the problem if you also write a possible solution. We will give you great accolades and recognition for being involved in the solution whether we used your solution or not. What we're not going to tolerate is people simply leaving notes or leaving messages or finger pointing to other people, specifically higher level people, and expect them to solve all the problems.

Now some of these BMG individuals will say that is what management or top level people are for. We're supposed to find the problems and they're supposed to solve all the problems. That might have been true in the past, in simpler times for healthcare organizations. It is certainly not true today and we have to change that methodology or belief system in the organization. Management can't be part of the bellyaching, moaning and groaning. Management can't bring up problems to staff without also being willing to talk to them about solutions. Management can't walk down the hall and simply finger point or blame people without stopping to have conversations about solutions to that particular problem. Approach is everything.

If a note comes to management with the problem on it, they must also be willing to go back to the individuals and talk to them about the solutions. They must be willing to tear up the note sometimes and not respond to it just because somebody decides they want to leave a message, particularly one where it's snitching on somebody else. People say to us, won't they be avoiding big problems? Never have we seen a big problem being put on a sticky note. People simply don't do it that way. They bring up concerns about other individuals, finger pointing, whining, sniveling when they leave notes, voicemails or come and hit up a manager about a problem. We are simply asking that they be not stopped from bringing up a problem but rather be involved in what it takes to solve that problem.

The chance to have a small "huddle" and discuss that particular issue with solutions coming from the crowd has amazing morale inflation for the organization. It allows people to see we're willing to take on concerns, bring up problems and constructively work on solutions. It also means we have to be willing to understand the first time you involve individuals in this problem solving process that they will bring up problems and solutions that are unacceptable. In fact, many times two of the most common solutions they bring up are hire somebody or buy something.

Naturally these are the last two solutions that ought to be used in many cases, but you have to be willing to stick in there and talk with them about why we can't hire somebody and why buying something won't work and what else should we do or what's plan B.

We find that using these small group huddles when problems arise is exactly what the organization needs. We can't sit there and say, "I'll look into it, thanks for bringing it up, I'll take care of that, I'll see what I can do about it". Those only promote the fact that individuals are supposed to find problems and not find solutions.

In return, management can't go around the building looking for problems and pointing them out to individuals without being involved in solution oriented discussions and ideas. If we agree to work on each opportunity where we have a meeting with a solution oriented attitude, we can put in place the P=S philosophy. We can also install the "WWW" philosophy we've promoted for years. This sets in motion that we're going to have a conversation about "What it is we're going to do by When and Who is going to do it." This promotes the P=S policy.

Once this begins, there will be a steamroller affect in the organization. We are now having connectivity experiences that are positive solution oriented and this will not be what the bellyachers, moaners and groaners want to have happen. We have to understand that they potentially won't like this because this destroys their power base or points out problems we've been avoiding.

Now some of these individuals at all levels of the organization can be particularly threatening or persuasive about wanting to keep the old environment in place. It's important to look at these individuals and determine specific courses of action and who is going to hook up together in a "pinky square" to have interventions with them to ensure constant negativism will not continue.

We're going to reduce negativism and experience conflict management opportunities, not necessarily conflict enhancement opportunities. By setting in motion this simple policy and choosing the course of action you can have a weekly summary of effective results on the implementation of this policy.

We can have a solution-oriented conversation to determine how much gain we've made in this process, how much reduction of BMG behavior there is in the organization and in fact how much the new policy is having an effect on real world situations that happen on a daily basis.