Bussiness Leadership

Situation

What is the task to be accomplished?

Mr. Jacobs was tasked with the job of turning around a failing hospital that had a number of serious problems plaguing it. If the problems were not able to be solved, the facility would be forced to close its doors. Among those problems were:

a. The decor of the hospital was outdated. Patients and family want to be in an environment that is comforting to them in a time of crisis.

b. The hospital was inefficient and unsafe. Snow was leaking in through windows in the conference room. This type of inefficiency causes heating and cooling costs to be drastically higher than they need to be.

c. The wages the hospital paid were 30% lower than the other facilities in the area. When you're paying wages that are not competitive, it's difficult to hire the best employees.

d. Employee turnover was high. In any organization, it is important to have employees that know their job well and to have stability among those employees. High employee turnover causes too much time to be spent on training new employees. By contrast, in a facility with low turnover, the experienced employees could be performing their job duties instead of training new hires.

Leader

Directive behaviors

Mr. Jacobs used a combination of the telling, selling, participating, and delegating leader behaviors to initiate the change throughout Windber Medical Center facility. He interviewed each of the employees and had them participate in finding a new vision for the future of the facility. By telling employees of his plans for change, along with selling them on the idea that change was a necessary component if the facility was to remain open, he was able to get many of the current employees to buy in to the changes he wanted to put into effect. After deciding upon what changes to make, he delegated the responsibilities to the people that could best get them done.

Followers

What is the followers' readiness?

For the most part, it seems like the follower readiness was good. Out of about 225 employees, 32 had to be let go. That means that about 14% of the employees had a difficult time dealing with the changes in policies and work environment. On the other hand, about 86% of the employees were willing and able to accomplished the tasks that they were delegated by Mr. Jacobs. Since his hiring, they have nearly double the amount of employees, so I would say that the follower readiness has only increased in that time.

Outcomes

The facility was remodeled into a state-of-the-art health care center. Jacobs added a wellness center that integrates