I'm working away from home at the moment which involves working long hours, sleeping in hotels, and eating in restaurants. I don't mind the long hours so much. but the hotels and the restaurants get very wearying very quickly. I'll open up here a little (a little too much?) and admit that I enjoy eating my breakfast in my underwear. That's something I can do any day I want when I'm at home, but do it once in a Hotel and ...
Anyway.
So Tuesday last week was my wedding anniversary and there I was working in a different country to my wife ... while staying in the honeymoon suite at my hotel. They'd bumped me into the Honeymoon suite because I'd very politely asked if they could move me because the mattress in my previous room was killing me and the Internet connection was dead. The room was so big that the TV remote didn't have enough strength to turn reach the TV and I had to hope out of my enormous bed to change the channel. Oh, and the Internet connection point was right next to the TV and there I was in the biggest bedroom in the hotel ... with the shortest network cable you can imagine.
How romantic.
So I went out for an equally romantic dinner with ... my laptop. I've been working on one chapter where Steve, the main character, discovers that the a big problem he has in software development also happens in Call Centres and in medical practices and hospitals. At Vision Consulting, where I work, we've been doing a lot of work teaching call centre's how to use concern and empathy to delight customers ... while significantly increasing productivity at the same time. I'm applying the same thinking to medical areas and software development. So, I'm sitting in a Chinese restaurant eating a feeble attempt at Malaysian curry, trying to write up two conversations between doctor and patient - one where the doctor is trying to be quick, the other where the doctor is being empathetic and genuinely concerned - but I find my focusing drifting ... so I play a game of solitaire instead (it seemed appropriate).
So the next night I ring my Mum to tell her that the reason I haven't called recently is because I've been staying away and working late. She tells me that (a) it is currently quicker for her to drive 10 miles to the local bank branch, than it is to call their call centre, and (b) that by swapping doctors she (maybe) added 10 years to her life. I should have called her the night before.
Here's the resulting DRAFT text:
Brett moved to the side of the stage and took hold of a chair which he then turned around and sat in the wrong way around. He continued his story.
‘I called my mother up one evening so that she could have a chat to the kids. My dad answered and he said that my dear old Mum was very upset and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. She came to the phone and said hello to the kids and after the phone was handed back to me, she burst into tears. I was instantly worried because this wasn’t like her – she’s normally a very strong, grounded person.
‘It didn’t take long to convince her to tell me what was upsetting her. You see, my Mum is diabetic and she has to inject insulin at the start and end of each day. She also takes a small blood sample from the tip of her finger each day, which is used to calculate the content of sugar in her blood. Lately her blood sugar readings had been very high and they were worrying her. She was still in tears, when she told me that she’d followed all the rules – just like she’d been told in the clinic’s - but despite this her sugars were very high and she’d been feeling very unwell. She’d gotten so ill that – unlike her - she’d booked an appointment to see a doctor.’
‘It wasn’t just her sugar readings that made her cry though, it was how the doctor treated her at the appointment.’
‘The doctor - a young whippersnapper according to my mum - had been very rushed and impatient with her. Mum said that he had treated her like a child, that he’d just picked up the report of her latest blood tests and immediately berated her for not following her diabetic regime properly and warning her that if she didn’t start to lose weight soon then she’d continue to get sicker and sicker. He ignored the concerns which she had expressed and immediately suggested that she book another appointment to talk to her dietician. My mum said she felt like she had been treated with all the care and attention a check out operator gives a head of celery.’
‘So my Mum was very upset at this. After a little more conversation, during which she kept reassuring me that she had been following her regime, I managed to persuade her to arrange an appointment with a different doctor. It wasn’t easy to persuade her: like a lot of people her age, she thought that it would be rude to do so. Especially to a doctor. Eventually she agreed’.
‘A few days later she called me at work. She said that she had good news. Not only had she gone to a new doctor – an older gentleman recommended by a friend – but that her blood sugars were, within one day of the visit, better than they had ever been since she’d started injecting insulin. I asked what the new doctor had done different and she said that to start with he’d listened to her. He hadn’t rushed her, but he’d just asked what was worrying her. He empathised with her about how frightening it must be to have such high readings and he asked her questions about how she followed her regime. After going through the most obvious questions he eventually asked her where she injected herself. She said that she injected herself in the stomach - which is what the diabetic nurses had taught to do. He reacted as if he was surprised at this and said that with such high blood sugar readings she should try injecting in her thigh instead. It wasn’t as easy as injecting in the stomach, but he thought it might be better. And it was. Within two days her blood sugar readings had dropped from 15 to 6, whatever that means, and she’d also reduced her insulin dosage significantly – which made my mum even happier because insulin causes people to put on weight’.
-oOo-
Brett spoke very quietly now. I looked around the auditorium and noticed that the new recruits were all leaning forward in their seats, taking in Brett’s every word.
‘As my mum told me this, a thought struck me: how was it that two different doctors, with presumably the same training and skill, could cause two completely different experiences for the exact same patient presenting with the exact same illness and symptoms?’.
‘Think about it. One doctor lost a customer; the other gained a customer. One upset and pissed off their customer; the other delighted their customer. To put this in perspective, my Mum may live 10 years longer – 10 much happier years too – because she changed doctor. Her healthcare costs are much lower too’.
‘Keep in mind that both doctors the same major concern. A concern that may even keep them awake at night.’.
He looked around the auditorium before asking the recruits, ‘Would anyone like to take a stab at what that concern might be?’
A man in the front row said, ‘What colour yacht to buy for Christmas?’
Brett laughed gently, ‘Maybe … anyone else?’.
Alice answered, ‘Is it waiting lists?’.
Brett, ‘Yes it is. If you ask any doctor how their performance is measured and assessed by their managers they’ll all tell you that it isn’t according to the quality of their work – that is, how good they are at their medical speciality – it’s on how long their waiting lists are. You ask any politician and they’ll tell you the same thing. Yet despite spending years learning medicine, doctors have virtually no training in how to manage waiting lists. It is a common problem experienced by people trained with technical skills who find themselves working as managers.’
‘The result of this is that many doctors figure out how to best manage their waiting lists on the job, by experience. What I saw in my Mum’s case was that the young doctor thought he could get more patients treated by rushing them quickly through each appointment, whereas the older doctor had learnt from many years experience that he could treat more patients by being empathetic and listening to his patients concerns.’
‘I took this discovery and with the help of some very clever people both within BigFinBank and some external consultants, we applied it to BigFinBank.’
‘You are going to hear a lot about what we learnt during the next week, but let’s take a 15 minute break before start on that.
