Why Experience Counts

By Sanford M. (Sandy) Garfunkel, Associate

On April 7, the New York Times published an op-ed article entitled “When Blame Isn’t Enough,” by Olivia A. Golden, a child welfare advocate.  (You can read the article here.)  In her article, Ms. Golden discusses the difficulties child welfare agencies have in finding children who are receiving substandard care—and explains that when children are hurt or killed, members of an agency she once led reacted defensively, afraid of a public reaction that could stop the progress they were measurably making.

Ms. Golden suggested a solution to the problem that comes from airlines and hospitals that have reduced deaths or injuries.  “Through rigorous data analysis,” she wrote, “they have developed systematic approaches to safety, focusing on clear communication, minimum-staffing requirements and fail-safe strategies to reduce the consequences of inevitable human error.”  These strategies, she argues persuasively, “can (also) be applied to protecting children.”

One of the agencies she mentions approvingly in her article, for their adoption of outstanding patient safety standards, is the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  In 1999, VA established its National Center for Patient Safety to develop and nurture a culture of safety throughout the Veterans Health Administration.  The Center’s goal is the nationwide reduction and prevention of inadvertent harm to patients as a result of their care. 

VA knows that the key to patient safety is to reduce or eliminate harm to patients—and that efforts focusing exclusively on eliminating errors are doomed to failure, because individual errors will never be eliminated.  According to the center’s web site, the goal is to design systems that are “fault tolerant,” so that when individual errors occur, they don’t result in harm to the patient.

Several of Sinclair Advisory Group’s Associates come from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and were “present at the creation” of the Center for Patient Safety.  They know the ins and outs of this revolutionary approach to improving service and reducing harm to patients.  They also know the level of initial resistance such a system faces among employees and stakeholders, and how that resistance was overcome at VA. As Ms. Golden persuasively argues, that knowledge is useful in many areas other than health care, including her own area of specialization.

The great advantage of hiring experienced and successful executives to provide expert advisory services is that, over the course of long careers, they have seen and implemented many programs similar to VA’s Patient Safety program.  They know what has worked, and what doesn’t.  They know where pitfalls are and how to create a climate that will enable employees to accept major change.

Sinclair’s business model enables clients and potential clients to obtain the services of some of the most knowledgeable and effective leaders in government and private industry.  We believe strongly that when a client is deciding whether to hire expert advisory services, and which group to hire, they should not only consider whether they can find a “perfect fit” with thorough knowledge of the services their company or agency provides; they should also consider the past successes of the people they are considering.  Great leaders, with decades of innovation behind them, can often call on their experiences to find approaches that will work in new settings—and, many times, their fresh perspective will result in unique and successful solutions.   

In her article, Ms. Golden successfully explains how “out of the box” thinking can benefit her profession: if you’re a manager looking for advisory help, we’d welcome the opportunity to discuss how our Associates can benefit your agency or business as well.