The Home Team

 “I have discovered in life that I can do anything, but I can’t do everything. No one can go it alone.”
- Robert Schuller -

August 2005.  I had just relocated to Austin Texas to run an inpatient rehab hospital for HealthSouth.  I hadn’t even unpacked, basically living out of my suitcase in an unfurnished one bedroom apartment downtown.  Alina had stayed behind in New Orleans because we had kids in school and other familial responsibilities that kept her there while I worked in Texas. Alina called and asked, “Have you been watching the weather?  There’s this hurricane in the Gulf that looks like it’s turning towards New Orleans.  It’s called ‘Katrina.’” 

Well, you know how that turned out.  What you don’t know is that Alina boarded up the house, packed up the kids & cats, important papers & photographs, loaded up the minivan and drove to Austin.  It took 21 hours (normally about 8) because the interstate was jammed with millions evacuating.  And the family was stuck in Austin for 6 weeks until the waters receded and she could take the kids back home.  I have hundreds of stories like that.

It’s Thanksgiving, a natural time to reflect on what we are each grateful for.  I am most thankful for my wife of 31 years who has made a home for our family, raised four terrific kids sometimes single-handedly, while I followed my consulting engagements across the country, often for years at a time.  Without Alina, we wouldn’t be a family, the kids wouldn’t have turned out as well as they have and I couldn’t have had the kind of exciting career I’ve enjoyed.  While I give her all the credit, she says we are a team, both of us and the kids,  each with our own responsibilities to the family and each other, each essential to the success of “Team Prehn”…I can do anything but I can’t do everything, no one can go it alone. A team.

And that’s what makes my hospital, The Bradley Center, a success:  Each one of us, acting in collaboration, toward the common goal of providing safe, compassionate, professional and efficient care for our patients.  So as you celebrate Thanksgiving with your friends and family, take a moment or two to reflect on your “Bradley family”:

•  Do you ask for help when needed from your team members? If so, why do you seek out those specific people?

• What are the values or beliefs you hold that allow you to help others when they are in need, professionally or personally?

• What can you do to create a strong team cohesiveness at your place of work? 

WHO FIXED THE DOOR?

George Degethoff was a talented mechanic and handyman.  One day, he took his 4-year old daughter, Denise, by the hand and walked her two doors down to the Lockwood house. 

After her husband’s death, it became a daily pleasure for “old Mrs. Lockwood” to come out the screen door onto the big house’s wraparound veranda and watch the neighborhood children play.  Only Denise and her friends hadn’t seen Mrs. Lockwood lately.  Instead, she stayed inside, looking wistfully out of the window.  Mr. Degethoff figured out her screen door hinges must have shifted, preventing the 90-year old from opening the door.

So he leapt into action.  He made the necessary repairs, then packed up his tools, grabbed his daughter’s hand and started down the porch steps.  “But Daddy,” Denise said, “you didn’t tell the lady!”  “That’s OK,” said George, “she’ll see its fixed.”  “But she won’t know you did it!”, replied Denise.

“Pumpkin,” her Daddy said, “I don’t need her to know that.  That’s between God and me…and you, too.  I didn’t do it for the praise, I did it because it needed to be done.” 

The Greek philosopher Epictetus (55 AD – 136 AD) wrote:   “Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?”  Mr. Degethoff understood that. 

And both Epictetus and George Degethoff understood what Walt Disney later articulated as the essence of the Disney “magic”:  Put yourself in people’s shoes…imagine what they’d like to happen…and then take action before being asked.  Walt Disney said the most important part of the formula was to take action before being asked, that was the most important ingredient in “making magic” and it was at the core of the “Disney Experience” that keeps thousands of people returning year after year to his parks.

But that’s Disneyland.  You couldn’t really “make magic” at YOUR hospital, could you? Of course you can! 

·         I saw a lady standing in the middle of our parking lot, looking bewildered.  An associate walked over to her and said “Can I help you find something?”  She was looking for the AA meeting.  The associate said, “It’s over this way” and walked her to the Multipurpose Room door.

·        Arriving for work around 7:30 am one morning, an associate ran into one of our patients waiting outside the locked lobby doors.  He had been discharged and was waiting for his ride.  The associate said, “Can I get you some water while you wait?  Do you need anything?”  The man said he needed to use the phone to call his ride and see where they were.  The associate let the man into the lobby.  And while he was on the phone, got him a bottled water from Admissions. 

I know these stories because I witnessed them.  I do not mention the associates’ names…it is enough that they know who they are.  They didn’t do it for the praise, they did it because it needed to be done.

Dream Big and Dare to Fail

“Dream big and dare to fail. “
(Norman Vaughan)

I saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show when I was 9 years old.  I decided then and there that I was going to be a professional musician.  I saved up some money cutting yards in the neighborhood and bought my first guitar from Sears.  I took lessons.  I learned songs. I was going to be a star.

When I was 11, I had my first paying gig playing a neighborhood girl’s birthday party.  My band was me and a drummer, “Bumps” Walsh.  We knew, I think, 5 songs.  The first song I ever played “professionally” was “Louie Louie.”  I was scared out of my wits, but we kept playing and I lived through it.  In junior high, my band at that time, The Rebels, had a chance to play the prom.  But we had to audition, competing against four other bands.  I was as nervous as if we going up against The Beatles themselves, but we played.  And won. 

In high school, I played in “The American Dream” and, later, “Valley,” my last band.  We thought we were hot stuff.  We played clubs around town, the Officer’s Club at the local Army base, the teen club on Friday night.  And one day we got invited to play in front of hundreds of fellow high schoolers at an outdoor assembly.  I’d never played for so many people.  But if I wanted to be The Beatles and play Shea Stadium, I figured this was a necessary step.  The gig came off without a hitch and we had a great time that I remember to this day. 

All the guys in the band grew up and went different directions, different careers, different states but we’re still close friends after all these years, remembering the fun times and excitement of performing.  None of which would have ever happened if we hadn’t been able to “dream big and dare to fail.”

What does that have to do with running The Bradley Center?  Just 3 years ago we struggled with a census in the twenties, drained money from our parent hospital system every year to keep the doors open and wondered if we’d be here tomorrow.  We “dreamed big and dared to fail,” launching an aggressive plan to eventually grow our business to 50 patients a day (how many remember my “To 50…and Beyond!” Buzz Lightyear mascot??) and return The Bradley Center to profitability.  Many thought it would never happen.  Many thought we’d fail.  But as William Arthur Ward said, “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.”  And so we have...census in the 70's on a daily basis, improved quality & patient satisfaction...and profitability for the first time in 7 years.   So…here’s to our next big dream!

Things to ponder: 

Where in your life are you dreaming big? 

How will you take your first steps toward those dreams? 

Who is important in helping you accomplish your dreams?   

What is the biggest dream you plan to aim for in the next year?

The Dream Goes On Forever

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. “
– Earl Nightingale -

I think if I had known then what I know now, I would have done it differently.  But the one consistent thing, the thing that kept me on the journey, was “the dream.”  

When I started graduate school at LSU in 1976, I my goal was to get my Ph.D. in experimental psychology and teach at the university level.  I had gone to LSU specifically to work with the great Dr Robert Thompson, a physiological psychologist who was a leader in brain mapping and learning theory.  We’d teach rats to run a maze or perform a specific task like hit a lever to get a treat, then we’d do stereotactic brain surgery on the rat and lesion a specific part of the brain.  If the rat could still perform the task, that brain structure was not involved in the learning chain;  If the rat couldn’t perform the task, that structure was involved in learning.  It was interesting work.  I paid for grad school by working as a research assistant to Dr Thompson and as a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses.  So I was getting a taste of teaching at the university level early on.  I finished my master’s in 1979 and went to work as a psychological assistant at Villa Feliciana Hospital, a 400-bed geropsychiatric and long term acute care hospital in Jackson Louisiana.

And that’s what did it.  At Villa, I was exposed not only to clinical operations but also to administration.  I had almost daily contact with Jack London, the hospital’s CEO.  I watched as he made decisions that impacted and improved the entire hospital.  I learned about the challenge of being in charge.  And I decided that I wanted to be a psychiatric hospital leader.  

But at this point, I was 25 years old with a master’s in experimental psychology, working on my Ph.D. and no healthcare or management training or experience.  But I had the dream, I could see myself doing this job.  So I went about the hundreds of little steps to realize the dream.  When I completed my training at Villa, I changed my focus from experimental psychology to organizational behavior/industrial psychology and I picked up a minor in Management, focusing on research on Leadership and Change Management.  I got a part-time job as a psychological associate at Baton Rouge Developmental Centers, a company that operated outpatient clinics and managed inpatient psychiatric programs, over the next 5 years I rose to Special Projects Director and eventually, Chief Operating Officer…always with an eye on “the dream.”   

When I completed my Ph.D., Baton Rouge Developmental Centers sent me to research a project in Wilmington NC, where I became the Administrator of The Oaks, my first psych hospital at the age of 31.  I never gave up on the dream just because of the time it took to accomplish it.  The dream provided the motivation to stay on course.  

Interestingly, my Assistant Administrator at The Oaks was a Recreation Therapist by training.  One day she told me she was thinking about getting her MHA (master’s in hospital administration) but was uncertain about it “because it’s going to take me four years to do it.”  I told her:  “In four years you will be 31 whether you get your MHA or not.  And you always regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you do.”  She got her MHA.  And replaced me as the Administrator when I moved on to be the CEO of Charter Cypress Behavioral Health System in 1997.  Follow your dream.

So, think about these questions…

How do you plan to work towards one of your dreams today?

How can you support your organization as it take steps towards accomplishing its dreams?

How can you support and encourage the dreams and aspirations of your patients?