STEVEN GAFFNEY COMPANY
I ran this study because every decision a leadership team makes depends on what travels up to it. We surveyed 1,000 working Americans and asked employees, managers, and executives the same questions about the same situations. When we split out the people who work in healthcare, they looked different from everyone else, and not in the direction most leaders would guess.
"Steven worked with me to come up with custom solutions to my organization's needs and did not just apply a general cookie cutter method."
Each one compares the 112 healthcare workers in the study with all 1,000 working Americans.
45% of healthcare workers say they experience honest communication with senior leadership often or always. Nationally it is 55%. Executives put the same number at 70%.
For a leadership team that runs on KPIs: the numbers are only as accurate as what people are willing to report, and in healthcare the gap between what the top believes and what the floor reports is the widest we measured.
40% of healthcare workers rate their honesty high when expressing disagreement in a meeting; 51% nationally. 24% rate it low, against 15%, and that is significantly worse than most other industries. Questioning a leadership decision: 43% comfortable, 48% nationally.
For standardization: the decisions that set one standard across a system get made in rooms where disagreement is rarer than in any other industry we looked at.
47% of healthcare workers are comfortable raising a concern about a team member or a workflow with leadership; 56% nationally. 55% are comfortable asking leadership for resources; 63% nationally.
For reducing variation: variation only gets reduced if someone reports it. Fewer layers between the floor and the executive team only work if the people who remain bring the problem up instead of carrying it.
"Trust in leadership to listen and respond to concerns" is very important to 69% of healthcare workers, significantly more than most other industries. How their manager gives and receives feedback: 63%, against 52%.
For retention: 90% of healthcare workers say honest communication matters to whether they stay (81% nationally). The top personal cost they name for not having it is feeling unheard or undervalued, 46% against 36%.
69% of healthcare workers believe their leaders want good news more than the truth. 46% have lied at work to avoid conflict with a leader. And 85% say creating open, honest communication should be something leaders are measured on.
For measuring what matters: the people doing the work already expect this to be on the list.
Pick three managers who sit a level or two below your leadership team. Ask each one, one on one, the same question: “What’s a problem your team has stopped raising because nothing happened the last time it came up?” You will get an answer. Then ask your leadership team if they know about it. Usually they don’t. That is what isn’t reaching you.
"We've achieved the highest federal grading score and profit increase since 2011, with 50% less time spent in meetings. It used to be that 50% of customer complaints were about communication; since working with Steven we've had zero negative feedback."
All eight national findings and the questions we ask leadership teams about each one.
Steven Gaffney has worked with leadership teams in healthcare and beyond, including DePuy Synthes (a Johnson & Johnson company), Blue Care Network, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Oncology Nursing Society, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Johns Hopkins University, Amazon, and Marriott. He is the author of Unconditional Power. The study was conducted with The Center for Generational Kinetics.