CASE STUDIES >

Community Hospital System creates serving leadership culture

The Challenge

A regional Community Hospital desired a leadership experience to provide clinical and support leaders with enhanced skills to guide the organization through system-wide productivity improvements and a consolidation/move to a larger facility.

The Solution

The client asked Third River Partners to design a custom experience for a cross-functional leadership cohort and to certify a group of leaders to facilitate future Serving Leader cohorts and training throughout the rest of the organization. Additionally, Third River provided individual coaching to a smaller group of leaders with significant responsibilities, and facilitated a Senior Leadership Team offsite to build core Serving Leadership understanding and foundational skills.

The Outcome

The power of the Serving Leader practices and tools was realized immediately.  After the initial cohort session, the client requested that a second cohort be added to begin shortly thereafter. Leaders began to use the thinking, practices and tools to lead several highly valued initiatives, creating a real-time benefit and achieving key objectives of the Hospital. Additionally, Serving Leadership was utilized individually and collectively as a part of an organization-wide productivity enhancement effort, which was core to the Hospital’s ability to deliver enhanced healthcare outcomes at decreased costs. Leaders also implemented the skills and tools as a part of their consolidation of two hospital campuses into one larger campus. The participants were determined to ensure that Serving Leader continues to grow throughout the organization. To that end, Third River facilitated acceleration of a “Creating a Culture of Serving Leadership” strategy. Finally, cohort participants reported a significantly enhanced level of cross-functional collaboration, best practice sharing and peer support due to the use of group “Application Clinics” and accountability pair structures designed into the process.