Implementing a leadership system to drive change in a community-based healthcare organisation

Healthcare organisations are people-intensive, complex systems. Traditionally, effective leadership required the leader to possess and develop skills and competencies; however, these alone are insufficient to generate aligned and sustained change. A standardised and systematic leadership approach, aligned with strategy, can help leaders move from reactive daily problem-solving to a culture of learning, improvement and innovation. Utilising the Baldrige Framework for Excellence, GBMC HealthCare developed and implemented a formalised Leadership System that is grounded in the organisation’s mission, vision and values. It considers stakeholder requirements and provides a stepwise standard approach for setting direction, building commitment, action planning, achieving results and developing people. Each step of the Leadership System has associated competencies that are used to foster development and growth. This approach was deployed across the GBMC HealthCare System, a community-based continuum of care organisation that includes an acute care hospital, a large hospice and elder care company and an ambulatory and specialty care provider group. Through case study, this paper details the framework and steps taken to develop and deploy a Leadership System that has led to sustained clinical and operational improvement. GBMC achieved the Baldrige Award in 2020, the nation’s highest presidential honour for performance excellence. In 2019, the Leadership System was recognised by Baldrige as a national best practice. Organisations can easily adopt this low-cost, high-impact method to create a standardised approach to help leaders achieve excellence both in their day-to-day activities and in guiding long-term strategic results. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/