What makes "Organization" GREAT

Here is a story of how one medical doctor discovers answers to the question "what makes a hospital great (i.e., excellent patient care)?"

Here is the link to the full article in the New York Times.

• She used to think that hospitals have great results because their surgeon are so good at their operations.
• She discovered from her own experience and from reading the latest study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that, in fact, investing in new technology and acquiring superstar surgeons may not be the top reason to why hospitals reap great results.
  
• Instead, improving patient care require investing in and focusing on cultivating the culture of the organization.
• What kind of culture? "A culture in which there is a cohesive organizational vision that focused on communication and support of all the efforts to improve care."
• Dr. Bradley, one of the the investigators said "We have to focus on the relationship inside the hospital and be committed to making the organization work. It isn't expensive and it isn't rocket science, but it requires a real commitment from everyone."

I can't help but wonder if this is true for other kinds of organizations as well.

Climate of silence

• Climate of silence is detrimental to organizations' ability to change and develop in the context of pluralism.

• Climate of silence also has destructive outcomes on employees:

1. Employees' feelings of not being valued
2. Employees' perceived lack of control
3. Employees' cognitive dissonance
   

• If you experience fear every day, it drags you down and you become cowardly.
• After my suggestions were ignored, the quality of my work was still there, but I wasn't.
• See the Figure from Morrison and Milliken's (2000) article below on the negative effects of organizational silence on organizational decision making, organizational change, employees' feelings, cognition, etc.

From Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World,
Morrison and Milliken, Academy of Management Review, 25( 4), pp. 706-725

Third story from Henrietta Lacks

The story of her cell, HeLa cell, is remarkable in science history. Her cell is a big part of several scientific discoveries and new drugs that cure diseases and save lives. Some of these discoveries include drugs for treating leukemia, influenza, and Parkinson's disease, among others.

However, these scientific triumphs come with tremendous personal cost to her family. It creates confusion, anger, and sadness among her children when the woman behind the cell has not received the honor that she deserves. More important, when pharmaceutical companies and labs make money off Hela cells, her family lives in poverty and cannot afford health insurance.

How can the medical field let this happen?

Two sides of a person: A case of John Nash

Recently, I took out the DVD of the movie "The Beautiful Mind" and watched half of the movie. I also watched the entire series of John Nash's life story in the PBS documentary entitled "A Brilliant Madness". Although both the film and the documentary celebrated Nash as a brilliant mathematician and a mental illness patient, there is still a part of Nash that was silent. That is, those who suffered through his behaviors, his mental illness, and his ill treatments throughout his life. And this is what I mean by "two sides of a person". My question is "why we glorify a person's intellectual genius and ignore, for the most part, those who suffer through the person's acts?"

Fortunately, I found a paper by Kim (2005) in the journal Pastoral Psychology. The paper title is "John Nash: The Sufferings of Those who Loved Him". The paper talked about many people in Nash's life that have tremendously suffered before, during, and after his mental illness. After all, there are always two sides of a person.

Making sense of life experiences

"I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of the Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet every failure was freeing, and today I'm as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good. So that's what I wish for all of you--the bad as well as the good. Fall down. Make a mess. Break something occasionally. Know that your mistakes are your own unique way of getting to where you need to be. And remember that the story is never over."
Conan O'Brien's Speech to the Harvard Class of 2000