Then you and your team members are experiencing what I call "Team Fatigue," and you need to reinvent, reconstitute and reconfigure what you are doing to move beyond the old ways of doing things.

I recently met with a CEO of a very large hospital who told me that he has a quality improvement team working on a specific project for two years with no tangible results. He also told me that he has 13 other active work teams (including value analysis) that weren’t doing much better. This CEO was so exasperated with his team’s inability to make change happen that he decided to immediately place a moratorium (what he called Zero-Based Teams) on all his hospital’s team meetings until each of his team leaders could justify their team’s existence and/or institute new and better ways of bringing about positive change at a faster pace. You might not want to go the Zero-Based Teams route to build a momentum for change, but this CEO sure did get his senior management’s attention with his ranting. And I can’t blame him!

After some discussion with this CEO about his challenges, I gave him five specific rules to move beyond his team’s old ways of doing things in order to build the momentum for change he was looking for. These same rules, which I have listed below, can be universally applied to any healthcare organization’s team structure, including value analysis, to dramatically improve any and all teams’ performance:

1. Set specific goals and milestones. All teams need specific goals and milestones (targets along the way) to keep them singly focused on the job at hand. You can’t just tell your teams to go save money or improve processes without giving them a target to shoot at. Otherwise, they will be just like blind archers, who will never hit a target.

2. Provide a blueprint for action and change. You absolutely need to provide your teams with a blueprint on how they are to achieve their goals. With our value analysis program the blueprint is called the six-step Value Analysis Funneling Process, Six Sigma calls their job plan the DMAIC system, and LEAN Management employs Toyota’s Five S’ to eliminate all waste and inefficiency. You get it! Nothing should be left to chance, accident or serendipity; you need a blueprint for action and change.

3. Limit the time for discussion and analysis. I’m sure you have heard of the term "analysis paralysis." Well, that’s what happens if you don’t set time limits on your teams’ discussions and analysis. It goes on forever! That’s why you need to have time limits! With our value analysis program we give a 90-day time limit for all projects. If a project manager needs a time extension for any reason they are required to receive approval from their hospital’s VA steering committee before moving forward.

4. Hold everyone mutually accountable for results. Now that you have goals, milestones and a blueprint for action and change you need to hold your team leaders and team members accountable for results. We have found the best way to do this is to have your team leaders meet at least monthly with their executive management team (or steering committee) to report their progress against their stated goals.

5. Establish a balanced scorecard to track results. The best way we have found to track and report progress against team goals is a balanced scorecard. This is a performance tool that blends financial results (savings, profit/loss, cost avoidance, etc.) along with non-financial results (attendance, number of projects completed on time, number of projects competed on budget, etc.) to give a vivid picture of how a team is performing. With a balanced scorecard it only takes a reviewer about three minutes to make a judgment about how their teams are performing. They then can take corrective action to right any deficiencies that surface from this scrutiny.

These five rules are the foundation for building high performing teams. You can add to these rules to enhance your teams’ performance, but without them you will find that your team(s) will lack the capacity to make substantial and repeatable change.

Building a momentum for change can only be achieved within a framework of rules, measurement and feedback. That’s the reason why the CEO whom I just talked to had teams who were failing to produce tangible results. His didn’t have these five critical success factors institutionalized into his team’s culture. Don’t make this same mistake when you are forming, restructuring or streamlining your own hospital’s value analysis teams. Make sure your teams are built to last and are artfully structured to make change happen.