Book Club Notes on Dan Heath’s Reset

Author Dan Heath has recently published a book titled Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working. This book is a guide for how to fix things that aren’t working in an organization and how to make positive change. Southcentral Foundation follows many of the principles outlined in the book for improvement efforts, and SCF’s President and CEO April Kyle, and Executive Vice President of Specialty Services Doug Eby were interviewed for the book. SCF was also cited as an example of an organization that follows principles outlined in the book.

SCF’s Organizational Development team recently read Reset and highlighted these valuable takeaways:

• Let People Drive. This is the idea that patients are the most underutilized resource in health care. At SCF, care is driven by customer-owners. They set their own health goals, and work in relationship with providers to achieve those goals. Customer-owners are always active partners in their own health at SCF. Let people drive is similar to the concept of co-design, a process of collective creation with stakeholders. For quality improvement and innovation this means we seek to incorporate customer-owner voice and the people closest to the work in the design of a new idea or initiative.
• Tap Motivation. This is the idea that organizations should use the motivation people have to do things in their lives as a way to drive healthy behavior. At SCF, providers and care team members form relationships with customer-owners so they can understand each customer-owner’s unique story and the things that are important to them. By relating health to the things customer-owners want to do (fishing, berry-picking, teaching children and grandchildren), providers are able to encourage customer-owners to make healthier choices in their lives. One example of applying this to quality improvement and innovation is spending time with stakeholders to understand what strengths each individual brings to the workgroup and sharing how they connect to the new idea or initiative.
• Study the Bright Spots. This is the idea that organizations should examine what is working well. Like most health care organizations, SCF regularly examines care team performance, but SCF pays just as much attention to high-performing teams as low-performing ones, to see if there are any lessons or innovations that may help other care teams. For improvement and innovation, to study what is working well or ‘bright spots’ we encourage people to go and see the work. This might look like shadowing an integrated care team, administrative support, or case management. We may conduct informal or formal interviews with the people closest to the work to really understand the process and identify the bright spots.

Reset describes and illustrates these principles, and many others related to improvement. SCF has found them very applicable to the work we do and our organization’s focus on continuous improvement. However, the principles detailed in the book are not limited to the health care industry; rather, they can be used at a wide variety of different organizations.

For more information on any of these items, or any other aspect of the Nuka System of Care, feel free to contact the SCF Learning Institute.