Back Talk

Finding the right fit
for your value team members

If you honestly looked at your value team’s performance you will find that 80 percent of your value team’s success depends on finding the right fit for your value team members. Then you need to have the leadership and discipline to stay the course. Why is the selection of your value team members with the right attributes, skills, talents and traits so critical to your value team’s success?

Over the years I have seen value teams fail due to the fact that they selected their members based on their titles (director of surgery, infection control manager, director of finance, director of material management, etc.), their influence in the organization (director of nursing, medical director, director of laboratory, etc.), or just because someone likes them.

Winning value teams select their members because they have a combination of attitudes, skills, talents and traits, matched with the right leadership which gives their value team the vision, goals, and objectives and "Can Do" attitude, a team that takes responsibility for its actions and pride in its accomplishments.

A natural fit

To this end, we have documented and observed the ideal competencies or what outstanding value team leaders and team members do more often, in more situations, with better results. Here are just a few of them:

Analytical thinker. It’s important that your members are logical so they can organize, separate, dissect and analyze a large amount of data into their constituent elements in order to study or examine them, draw conclusions, or solve problems.

Organized. Your members need to be organizers (careful, concentrated and correct) vs. disorganized (chaotic, confused and disorderly), so they can structure their value studies in a thorough and systematic manner.

Reliable. They also need to be highly dependable, responsible and trustworthy, so that you don’t need to worry about whether they come to meetings or finish their value studies on time and on target and or whether they are true to their word.

Enthusiastic. It’s critical that your members have great excitement and interest in saving money and improving the quality of the products, services and technologies that you purchase vs. pulling down your team with their negativism.

In addition to these examples, we have identified five additional ideal competencies for team leaders and six for team members that which when used as the criteria for the selection of value team members and leaders, have supercharged our clients’ value team performance.

360-degree feedback needed

Just knowing what your ideal characteristics are isn’t enough! Now you need to identify those individuals in your healthcare organization who exhibit these same competencies. We would suggest that the best system to search out these individuals is to employ a 360-degree feedback mechanism in assessing your team member’s qualifications prior to membership on your value team.

This can be accomplished by selecting candidates for your value team that you think have these ideal characteristics, then have their direct report, customers and colleagues rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest rating) against your ideal characteristics. The candidates with an average rating of 8 or above (using a list of 10 characteristics) would be your ideal value team members.

The reason for doing so is that you only see one face of these candidates, but by having them assessed by numerous individuals who know them and interact with them in many different venues, you can truly identify who is the right candidate to be on your value team.

The selection process for your value team members can’t be overemphasized. From my experience, if the right people with the right competencies aren’t carefully selected for your value team you will never have the leadership and skill level that is required to maintain and sustain your value analysis program over the long term.

So let’s get it right the first time! HPN

Robert T. Yokl is president and Chief Value
Strategist of Strategic Value Analysis In Healthcare, which is the leading healthcare authority in supply and process value analysis. Yokl has more than 30 years of experience as a healthcare materials manager and supply chain consultant.

For more information, visit: www.strategicvalueanalysis.com.

For questions or comments e-mail Yokl at bobpres@strategicvalueanalysis.com.