Strategy #18: Minimize status consciousness

When I work with hospital audiences, I’ll often draw a blank organizational chart on the board. I ask who goes in the box at the top, and everybody knows: the CEO. Then I ask who goes in the boxes at the bottom, and again everyone knows: housekeepers and foodservice aides. Then I’ll point out that if the CEO takes a week off, hardly anyone notices his or her absence. But if the housekeeping and foodservice staff don’t show up in the morning, the hospital will have ground to a dead halt by noon.

Unfortunately, this reality is not often reflected in the way people treat each other. In my previous life, I was the chief operating officer for a large community teaching hospital. Every several months, I would don a housekeeper’s uniform and do that job for half a day. Although I was the same human being, because I was wearing a different work costume, people treated me and a totally different way than when I was wearing my executive suit. I felt very fortunate that when I came in the next day, I would be back in that costume.

If you want to create an organization that is characterized I loyalty from top to bottom, it is important that you do everything possible to minimize this sort of status consciousness. We are accustomed to seeing periodic shortages of skilled professionals such as nurses and computer technicians. In the years to come, if current demographic projections are anywhere close to being accurate (and they are), we will see similar shortages across the board. Including “bottom of the chart” positions such as housekeeping and foodservice workers. So anything you can do now to enhance the status of people in these positions.

Several pages ago I mentioned Thom Greenlaw, who was Director of Environmental Services at Baystate Medical Center, and how he boosted quality in that department. Something else he did was give his people sharp new uniforms. You could feel the change in their pride and self-esteem from the time they turned in their old costumes.

Try it yourself. Put on the costume of a lower status job and do that work for a day – see how other people make you feel. Then take immediate and sustained action to make sure that the people who do those jobs day-in and day-out are treated the way that you would want to be treated were you in their shoes.

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