Lisa-isms: How Words of Wisdom Accelerate Improvement

I remember from my pharmacy school days how appreciative I was when a professor would share (amid seemingly unending volumes of information) a clinical pearl. These words of wisdom gained from medical science and human experience are short, concise, easy to remember and serve as practical advice through the course of working — in my case, as a pharmacist. These pearls can help in decision making and often prompt action. Examples include guidance to know when to direct a patient back to their provider for clarification or advice and how to monitor the risks of polypharmacy (when a patient is taking multiple medications of the same class or for the same purpose).

Wisdom, by definition, reflects the coalescence of knowledge, experience, and good judgement. I've come to value lessons that can be learned quickly and easily and have the potential to guide my behaviors.

What Clinical Pearls Taught Me About Improvement

Similarly, I have found over my career as an advisor in healthcare how words of wisdom can help people to navigate the science of improvement. Coaching guidelines or nuggets of information that cut right to the heart of a matter within the context of work or problem-solving may help another person to clearly see something they can learn now and apply in the future.

Some guiding principles discovered through study over time are based upon foundational truths. They are written in a way for us to learn and help us understand what we are seeing and experiencing, why it is occurring, and guide us to action. The guiding principles I use in my work every day to learn and help others to learn are the Shingo Principles and the Rules in Use.

The Shingo Principles: A Framework for Operational Excellence

The Shingo principles can be accessed through the Shingo Institute website. Value Capture serves as a Shingo affiliate in healthcare. These are the 10 Shingo principles organized into the three essential dimensions of Operational Excellence: Cultural Enablers, Continuous Improvement, and Enterprise Alignment.

You'll notice the wisdom in the description of each of the guiding principles. They are written simply — a verb and an object — and powerfully; they tell you how to act. It's easy to recognize if our behaviors are demonstrating the principles. Respect who? Every individual. Not just some. Not just those with similar beliefs and ideas. Every person.

How should an organization approach problems and improvement? Embrace scientific thinking. I love the verb embrace. When I hear it, I picture people from every level of the organization, collaborating, investigating, and working together to see and solve problems and design quick experiments to test their ideas to improve their work. Leaders create conditions that allow people to thrive through their improvement work.

From Mentee to Advisor: The Origin of the Lisa-isms

I have learned from several mentors over the years who have so generously shared their words of wisdom, gleaned from their own experiences, to help me to make meaning of the situation or problem I am facing and accelerate my own learning. Some of these lessons have been so impactful and remain with me.

Now, in my work as an advisor to others learning the art and science of process improvement, I try to incorporate what I have learned through experience as a healthcare leader and an advisor into my daily work. Recently, a leader I was working with fondly coined the phrase "Lisa-isms." I'd like to share a few of my favorites in my next post — brought to life through two principles that have shaped everything I do.

Simple nuggets of guidance that have extreme relevance in the current moment help us to learn and inform our future thinking. What are your favorite words of wisdom by which you continuously improve? Leave a note in the comments.