Lance Secretan's
Blog

Dear Friends,

When I was working in the Czech Republic last year, I met a young team of application developers who loved our Spirit@Work® Cards so much they offered to develop an app for the iPhone and the iPad. It has just been released and is available in the iTunes store for just $2.99.

There are many kinds of cards available, but these are the first cards ever developed specifically for a business setting. People are using them to start a meeting, enhance the tone of a meeting or add inspiration to one. Spirit@Work® Cards help people all over the world to build teams, inspire colleagues, boost creativity and innovation, raise performance, suggest solutions to difficult problems, and communicate ideas. They are based on our work known as “Higher Ground Leadership®”�, which has been developed over 40 years of  advising corporations, healthcare and academic institutions and governments around the world. There are 77 cards, each with a specific theme that will guide you in planning, decision-making, or simply help to spark a fresh way of looking at things. Each card has unique and gorgeous artwork by renowned artist David Rankine (http://www.davidrankineart.com), and a message to accompany the artwork.

With the Spirit@Work Cards App you can:

1. Shake to shuffle the cards and obtain daily wisdom
2. Flip cards over to read the full meaning of each card and message
3. Share your card and its message (Facebook, Twitter, E-mail)
4. Save your favorite cards
5. Browse useful related links

People are using them to start conversations, generate inspiration and ideas, spark creativity or shift energy.

Would you help us to make a big splash with this ? I would love your support in making this launch a big success. We are trying to create “buzz”� around this so your help in spreading the word would be greatly appreciated. You can buy the app in the iTunes store – and PLEASE - do share it with all your friends. Thanks so much for helping us to spread the word.

This week I was a surgeon’s patient in the hospital (great job, mending well, nothing serious). Usually, I am advising hospital CEOs and leaders how to transform their cultures, create inspiring systems, identify and realize strategies and build efficient organizations. So this was quite a different perspective - and one that generated fresh insights.

If we want to reinvent healthcare, here are three easy tips I learned while wearing one of those ridiculous hats, goofy slippers and backwards-facing gowns:

1. Intact Teams: Between being admitted and discharged I encountered a dozen nurses - a pre-op nurse, a registration nurse (and five more talking to each other behind the counter), an admitting nurse, the waiting room nurse, a nurse who put me on the gurney, several nurses in the OR, nurses in the post-op recovery room and, finally, more than one nurse in the recovery room prior to discharge. This is how it used to be in the auto industry years ago too. A car (like the patient) would be touched separately by specialists – designers, engineers, marketers, salespeople, manufacturing, legal, operations, quality control, distribution, warehousing, logistics, and so on. This was one of the many inefficiencies that brought the auto industry to its knees and bankruptcy. The solution was to create much smaller, cross-functional teams that stayed with the car from beginning to end. This gave the small teams a much more efficient overview of the entire process, better communication with each other, a product the customer actually wanted, less waste and surplus activity, lower costs and the opportunity for continuous improvements along the way. Why don’t we do this in hospitals? When we hand off the patient from nurse A to nurse B, besides what’s written on the charts, neither one has any sense of the patient’s history while in the hands of the other. We can simplify this process by assigning a small, dedicated nursing team that stays with the patient from beginning to end, who monitors progress and efficacy along the way, understands the entire process and thus delivers a higher-quality service at lower cost – in other words we could learn from the auto industry.
2. Inventory Control: As I was leaving the recovery room prior to discharge, the nurse very helpfully offered me some dressings to take home. I noticed that every patient birth had a supply of assorted dressings, as well as boxes of rubber gloves, Kleenex and numerous other supplies. It isn’t really necessary to have so much inventory in every location. Why not centralize this locally so that unnecessary stocks of inventory are not liberally distributed throughout the system?
3.  Inspiring the Patient. And lastly, let’s talk about customer service. Great organizations get that way through consistency.  Most healthcare systems lack consistency – especially in customer service. Some staff are dragons and bears and others are delightful charmers. Clearly, this is directly correlated with the quality of leadership. Visiting a hospital can be dangerous (one can die), risky (one can catch something), frightening (often we do not know what is going to happen or what’s going on), and wretched (some of the staff can be downright nasty). It doesn’t have to be this way.  A culture that is committed to inspiring the patient through every stage of their journey could be just as exciting, interesting and rewarding as going to the movies or a fine restaurant or a theme park. It’s just a matter of commitment and attitude –we can make it happen if we choose to.

Let’s choose to make healthcare more inspiring, more efficient, less of a hassle and more effective.

…and if you want to laugh so hard you might need a nurse – read David Barry’s account of his colonoscopy.

America has become the world’s largest steward of felons with 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s jailed prisoners – some 6 million people under “correctional supervision”.  According to Fareed Zakaria in his article in Time Magazine, ”In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons vs. $5.7 billion on the UC system and state colleges. Since 1980, California has built one college campus and 21 prisons. A college student costs the state $8,667 per year; a prisoner costs it $45,006 a year.”

There are many paths to correcting this deplorable situation, and one of them is to help prisoners learn how to support themselves and their families so they can rejoin society equiped with valuable skills that provide them with an inspiring alternative to returning to the prison system.

I have been working with my friend Ellen Rohr who has been helping one prisoner to achieve this goal.  Here is her story, in her own words:

“A few years ago, I received a book order from Corrections Corporation of America (CCA.)  Hmm.  I write business and accounting books so I wondered why someone at a prison would be interested.   I followed my curiosity and called the phone number on the order form.

That’s how I met Randy MacKenzie.  Randy teaches technical cleaning skills to inmates at CCA.  He also engages them in business planning.  He uses my books to teach business basics:  How to read financial reports, how to come up with a selling price and how to put a business plan together.

Randy told me, “Knowing how to use a power washer or a floor buffer isn’t going to do a fellow that much good once he is released.  He can’t support a family on a minimum wage job.  And who would hire him, anyway?  Poverty, abuse and drug addiction are big problems to overcome.  Some of the guys are in for crimes of passion, or as a result of anger issues.  We decided we would work on life skills, communication skills and business planning during our class time, alongside the technical training.  You should hear the ideas they have for their own businesses!”

I decided to do that…and took a trip down to CCA in Holdenville, Oklahoma, USA.  Up until this point, the only awareness I had about convicts is that you want to protect yourself from them.  Never hire someone with a felony record.  Avoid them at all costs.  I was humbled to discover that the fellows in prison look a lot like people outside of prison.   A few of them look a lot like my son.  Hearing their stories, I realized how easily one can slip (or freefall) from outside to inside.

I’ve been visiting the Bare Bones Business Planning Class for three years now, going to the facility every few months.  Each time, I bring an armful of books with me, mine and lots of others written by teachers who have had a powerful impact on my life.  As I hand out the books, I try and find a good match based on the business plan presenter and the author of the book.

During one or our business planning classes, Eric Phan shared his business plan.

It was cool to see Eric engaged in the class.  He was incarcerated because he had made a series of bad, passion-fueled decisions that led to a serious, fatal crime.  Prior to that, he was a kid who had a clear path of success in front of him.  Smart, handsome, good family.  It can all change in a heartbeat.  For Eric, it did.

Eric came to prison ready to end his life.  He got involved in a positive, faith-based program and started to experience love and acceptance.  He joined the Bare Bones Business Planning class.  He began to rise up from his crippling guilt and depression.  Perhaps he could help others.  Perhaps he could keep someone else from taking a devastating wrong turn.

In class, he shared his idea for a business that would provide temporary employee services.  I visited with Eric after his presentation and gave him a copy of The Spark, the Flame and the Torch.  I told him that Dr. Secretan had experience in the staffing business and – more importantly – he elevated his work into a process for fostering and developing inspired leadership.

Apparently, Eric absorbed the book.  I was at CCA recently.  I took a couple of business mentors with me and we created a Shark Tank ™ inspired class.  The students presented their business plans and we all shared enthusiastic support and tough-love critique.  We filmed the event.  Take a look at this video clip of Eric sharing the plan for his business, Youth on a Mission, inspired by The Spark, The Flame and The Torch…

Eric’s Business Plan

Thanks, Randy, Eric and the Bare Bones Biz Plan Challengers at CCA.  You are impacting so many in powerful, positive ways.

Thank you, Lance.  Your spark has ignited massive possibility.  You’ve certainly gotten me and the team at CCA all fired up.”

During a conversation today with senior leaders of one of America’s once great companies, I learned of their plans to cut costs during the next fiscal year. After several years of budget cuts, sales declines, sinking employee morale, stress and burnout, and the theft of personal passion and inspiration, the solution for these leaders is to cut more.

It has often been said that we can’t shrink our way to greatness. Yet it is stunning to see the lack of imagination among many of America’s corporate leaders who can only see things in terms of numbers and fail to grasp the concept that until we inspire the hearts and minds of all the souls who get everything done in our organizations – employees, customers, suppliers and everyone else who connects them, we have no hope of growing and restoring recently lost greatness.

The New York Times today published a remarkable piece by Greg Smith titled, “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs”.  It is remarkable for the courage of the author to write it, for the Grey Lady to publish it, and because it describes one of the fundamental misconceptions that is hurting America’s corporations.  I strongly urge you to read it and reap.

Now, more than ever, we need courage not cowardice.  Investing in people, inspiring them, inviting them to contribute and serve, and trusting them to do their best, live and work with integrity and set examples for the rest of us – these are the needed steps now to rev up our engines. Employees are tired and burned out (our free Job Burnout Survey receives some of the highest traffic on our website) and the last thing they need to hear is that they are going to be asked to do even more with less.  Instead, they need to be asked, “What can you contribute that will put us back on the road to greatness?” and, “As your leader, how can I serve you best to make that happen?”

Failing to grasp this essential wisdom will result in many familiar names dropping off Fortune’s recently published Most Admired Companies list next year.

UPDATE: This article appeared in the New York Times the day after this blog was posted and a subsequent Op-Ed piece in the NYT by Joe Nocera is an excellent addition to the conversation.

Here is a simple idea: If each of us commits to being more inspiring, and we invite all our friends to do the same, and millions do it, we will change the world.  Simple, right?

Will you make a commitment today to be more inspiring in your meetings, your e-mails and phone conversations, your communications with others—especially the little day-to-day decisions and actions in your personal and work life?

It will be infectious—others will notice the difference in you, and they in turn, will become more inspiring too. In this way, it will catch on.

We can restore inspiration at work and in our personal lives through this one simple action.

Please take action by enrolling your friends and colleagues in this simple endeavor.

With your help, support, encouragement, and passion, we can create a movement. And by doing so, we can change the world. Please pass it on!

PS. If you are having a hard day today—pause before venting your frustration or anger and ask yourself this question (quoting Robert Greenleaf), “In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?”