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Is a durable and practical stakeholder approach in healthcare necessary?
Daniëlle van Uden • February 7, 2021
Good stakeholder management is crucial
Whether you are starting a new project or you are at the beginning of a reorganization, in any change you will have to deal with various stakeholders. Perhaps you are already actively involved with stakeholders, and perhaps you have drawn up a list of the most important stakeholders and you are informing these people about the progress of the project on a regular basis. Making a well-designed interactive stakeholder approach is often seen as complicated, it takes time and money and is often limited to drawing up a long list of stakeholders.
Especially in healthcare, your stakeholder approach is something that requires continuous attention. Why is that?
In the first place, healthcare entrepreneurs and organizations are social enterprises. They are active in a public playing field and contribute to our public health care interests. They therefore have a social "duty" to involve stakeholders in decision-making.
Secondly, stakeholders are nowhere as diverse as in healthcare. They include clients, employees, health insurers, municipalities, IGZ, patient associations, works councils, industry associations, politicians, local residents, partners (suppliers and referrers) and housing companies. The (proposed) change can yield something for them, but also pose a threat. It is important to know who and which parties are the key stakeholders for your healthcare organization.
In third place, good management and supervision are important conditions for excellent care. The Health Care Governance Code (2017) states that "the care organization creates preconditions and guarantees adequate influence of stakeholders". Internal and external stakeholders must therefore be able to influence care, services and direction of care organizations.
Therefore it is important to know who your most important stakeholders are, and how you involve these stakeholders with your project, in a sustainable way.
The often prevailing belief that actively involving stakeholders (listening to, integrating useful input into your project) requires far too much time and resources and is therefore a costly matter, is not surprising. If you are under the impression that there is a whole list of stakeholders that you have to manage, it can be overwhelming. The difficulty is in identifying and finding the right way to connect with your key stakeholders.
So how to start a sustainable, practical and feasible stakeholder approach?
First of all, you focus on the most important stakeholders, because not all stakeholders are equally relevant for every healthcare organization. The project team will initially map this out. Brainstorm with each other and ask yourself the following questions:
To what extent can the stakeholder impose his will, for example on the basis of legal powers, or by exerting influence on other stakeholders. Consider, for example, IGZ which can influence and / or stop processes within an institution.
What interest do stakeholders have in the project; do they benefit from or are they hindered by the change?
Are there perhaps opportunities to offer new services? Stakeholder management can also offer new opportunities for your organization and contribute to innovation.
What is the public opinion about your organization, your project or the intended change?
Which social issues does the organization face?
Now it is time to interact with your most important stakeholders; how do they view the project or change? Make sure that members of your project team are responsible for specific stakeholders, ask for feedback, know what is going on and inform. Also be specific about who does what and when, and follow up.
Then map out which requirements and expectations the most important stakeholders have and how you as a healthcare organization can, want and will respond to them.
An active stakeholder approach "forces" the project team to thoroughly delve into the relevant stakeholders, which contributes to a good result of the project and also provides new insights for your project but also for the rest of the organization.
© 2020, Daniëlle van Uden, stakeholder specialist
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The theme of the Project Management in Healthcare conference on May 18, 2021 is "Rock hard soft skills". Project management in healthcare requires extremely hard developed soft skills. In the run-up to the conference, we will therefore consider soft skills from the perspective of project management in healthcare in this series of blogs. In this issue we will discuss: cultural sensitivity. One of the most complex "soft skills" of project managers in healthcare is cultural sensitivity. The culture of a healthcare organization is in many areas comparable to that of a large (corporate) organization, but on a number of points quite the opposite; it is rather comparable to a medium-sized city, in which the different departments are independent shops and factories, each with their own doctors, nurses & managers and sometimes even professors, researchers and students. Each with their own specialty, but all with the same common goal, which is to combat diseases, care for clients and promote health. These departments all have their own dynamics and culture, but work for (and with) the same patients & clients. In order to guarantee cooperation within a care organization and to enable the exchange of information within and between care organizations, the same data standards are used as much as possible and preferably the same EPD or ECD. Many projects are aimed at linking the EPD / ECD to the specific modalities of the departments and to improve information gathering & information exchange. To be able to share and exchange information about patients / clients between different departments. To make patient / client information visible and comparable for multidisciplinary consultations. This means that as a project manager in healthcare, you will work in many different departments, and there for you have to deal with different cultures and you have to be able to cooperate with everyone. This requires project managers in healthcare, more than project managers in other sectors, to have a well-developed cultural sensitivity. To be successful as a project manager in healthcare, you must be able to adapt to the culture of the department for which you are realizing the project. Having a feeling for the relationships, an eye for the specific characteristics, listening to the nuances of the department. Connecting with the current culture, joining the ways-of-working and thinking along with the requirements and wishes of the project owner. But in the meantime you have to keep the objective and the intended result in mind. Because the project manager has been appointed precisely to achieve the goal, with as much support and involvement as possible from the department for which the project is intended. Cultural sensitivity helps the project manager in healthcare to be successful. But cultural sensitivity does not mean “to sway in the breeze” or “to lean too far in the sympathies”. Because for departments to optimally cooperate with each other and to exchange patient / client information adequately, certain standards and clear agreements are required. And implementing these in the various departments sometimes means gaining support for unpopular choices, which may go against the ingrained working methods of healthcare professionals. They may also require different ways-of-working; maybe protocols need to be adapted. And that is also part of the project manager's responsibilities in healthcare. In conclusion, it can be said that cultural sensitivity definitely belongs in the toolbox of the project manager in healthcare. Because it is an important tool, along with all those other skills, to be successful in the complex environment that healthcare organizations are. © 2020, Daniël Jolink, Manager Portfolio, Project & Program Management at the LUMC. He writes his contributions in the context of the Project Management in Healthcare Foundation in a personal capacity.
Whether you are starting a new project or you are at the beginning of a reorganization, in any change you will have to deal with various stakeholders. Perhaps you are already actively involved with stakeholders, and perhaps you have drawn up a list of the most important stakeholders and you are informing these people about the progress of the project on a regular basis. Making a well-designed interactive stakeholder approach is often seen as complicated, it takes time and money and is often limited to drawing up a long list of stakeholders. Especially in healthcare, your stakeholder approach is something that requires continuous attention. Why is that? In the first place, healthcare entrepreneurs and organizations are social enterprises. They are active in a public playing field and contribute to our public health care interests. They therefore have a social "duty" to involve stakeholders in decision-making. Secondly, stakeholders are nowhere as diverse as in healthcare. They include clients, employees, health insurers, municipalities, IGZ, patient associations, works councils, industry associations, politicians, local residents, partners (suppliers and referrers) and housing companies. The (proposed) change can yield something for them, but also pose a threat. It is important to know who and which parties are the key stakeholders for your healthcare organization. In third place, good management and supervision are important conditions for excellent care. The Health Care Governance Code (2017) states that "the care organization creates preconditions and guarantees adequate influence of stakeholders". Internal and external stakeholders must therefore be able to influence care, services and direction of care organizations. Therefore it is important to know who your most important stakeholders are, and how you involve these stakeholders with your project, in a sustainable way. The often prevailing belief that actively involving stakeholders (listening to, integrating useful input into your project) requires far too much time and resources and is therefore a costly matter, is not surprising. If you are under the impression that there is a whole list of stakeholders that you have to manage, it can be overwhelming. The difficulty is in identifying and finding the right way to connect with your key stakeholders. So how to start a sustainable, practical and feasible stakeholder approach? First of all, you focus on the most important stakeholders, because not all stakeholders are equally relevant for every healthcare organization. The project team will initially map this out. Brainstorm with each other and ask yourself the following questions: To what extent can the stakeholder impose his will, for example on the basis of legal powers, or by exerting influence on other stakeholders. Consider, for example, IGZ which can influence and / or stop processes within an institution. What interest do stakeholders have in the project; do they benefit from or are they hindered by the change? Are there perhaps opportunities to offer new services? Stakeholder management can also offer new opportunities for your organization and contribute to innovation. What is the public opinion about your organization, your project or the intended change? Which social issues does the organization face? Now it is time to interact with your most important stakeholders; how do they view the project or change? Make sure that members of your project team are responsible for specific stakeholders, ask for feedback, know what is going on and inform. Also be specific about who does what and when, and follow up. Then map out which requirements and expectations the most important stakeholders have and how you as a healthcare organization can, want and will respond to them. An active stakeholder approach "forces" the project team to thoroughly delve into the relevant stakeholders, which contributes to a good result of the project and also provides new insights for your project but also for the rest of the organization. © 2020, Daniëlle van Uden, stakeholder specialist