Rare Study of Legendary Healthcare Organization
In a book just published last month, CHD board member Leonard L. Berry and Kent D. Seltman have skillfully transformed Mayo Clinic’s elite-level performance into lessons that managers in any industry can use. Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the World’s Most Admired Service Organizations (McGraw-Hill, June 2008) is the first in-depth study of this notoriously “private” organization.
Len, a Distinguished Professor of Marketing Leadership in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, and Kent, director of marketing at Mayo Clinic from 1992-2006, spent many months studying Mayo intensively. The book is based on their numerous personal interviews with leaders, clinicians, staff, and patients, as well as observations of hundreds of clinician-patient interactions.
It was, in fact, Len’s experience studying Mayo that led him to CHD. Having spent most of his career studying, writing, and teaching about retail service organizations, he turned to healthcare as a new challenge — serving as a Visiting Scientist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester during the 2001-2002 academic term. Upon returning to College Station, he reached out to Roger Ulrich, a professor in the Texas A&M College of Architecture and long-time CHD board member. Shortly after that, we invited Len to one of our Pebble Project meetings, where he mesmerized us with stories from his Mayo experience. Since then, he has been actively involved in our organization.
And while this book is more about understanding the management culture and systems that produce Mayo Clinic’s signature service to patients and families, it does offer some interesting insights that can be applied to facility design. In Chapter 7, “Orchestrating the Clues of Quality,” the authors write about the three types of experience clues that customers process and organize into a “set of impressions that evoke feelings.” One of these types of clues — mechanics — come from inanimate objects, such as facilities, equipment, furniture, displays, lighting, and other sensory clues.
Len and Kent’s book is a gem — must reading for every healthcare executive and anyone else who is looking to achieve service excellence in their organization!