Archive for the ‘Brown, Karen’ Category

By Karen Brown, Ph.D.

Assembling automobiles requires a different skillset than healing people, but many U.S. hospital executives are traveling to Japan to learn operational excellence from Toyota. The thought of health care administrators taking notes on an automobile assembly line might sound alarm bells to some. Medicine requires a human touch that does not apply to cars, and no two patients are the same. Yet Toyota has mastered many business behaviors that can be translated to service settings. Three of these involve putting quality first, preventing rework, managing handoffs.
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By Karen Brown, Ph.D.

Phoenix has cutting edge healthcare and bio-industry centers that attract interest from all over the world, but Navajo patients looking for cultural understanding often find better service at a local hospital three hours north in a remote corner of Arizona. The Tuba City Regional Health Care Center, which opened on the Navajo Nation in 1975, has made bold moves in recent years to integrate the traditional ways of tribal elders with the miracles of modern medicine. In addition to hiring Navajo nurses and doctors whenever possible, the center employs a traditional healer, Patrick Boone, who speaks the tribal language and possesses deep knowledge of the tribe’s spiritual history, handed down over centuries through storytelling. | Video: Navajo Healthcare (2:53)
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By Karen Brown, Ph.D.

U.S. health care delivery needs an overhaul regardless of what happens in Washington with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As a country we rank No. 1 in health care spending per capita, yet we rank No. 38 in life expectancy behind countries such as Cuba and Costa Rica. The United States has world-class hospitals with many of the top doctors in their fields, yet our system is full of inefficiencies and insensitivities that frustrate patients and drive up costs. The good news is that some U.S. health care providers have recognized the problems and are taking action. My students at Thunderbird School of Global Management saw many innovations during a recent weeklong tour of health care and biotechnology centers from Phoenix to Tuba City on the Navajo Nation. Some of the most promising innovations are taking place at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. | Video: Health Care Innovations (2:57)
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By Karen A. Brown, Richard Ettenson and Nancy Lea Hyer

Have you ever noticed that some projects benefit from high-profile status that draws participation and support while others seem to languish somewhere in the back row? If you have observed this phenomenon, you aren’t alone. Our interviews and observations over a 10-year period have uncovered a huge gap in the “common body of knowledge” associated with the project management profession. Too many project leaders get so caught up in the usual tools and metrics that they fail to consider their roles as marketers within their organizations. | Read the full article in Sloan Management Review (Summer 2011).
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By Thunderbird Professor Karen A. Brown and Nancy Lea Hyer

We recently participated in a strategic planning process with board members of a non-profit organization. The board had generated a long list of initiatives in support of the chosen strategy but was struggling with how to organize the work in a way that would bridge the gap between big picture ideas and implementation tactics. The Early-Middle-Late process provided the way out. The group took each initiative and determined whether it was something that should be undertaken right away, in the distant future, or somewhere in between these two ends of the chronological spectrum. As decisions were made, team members recorded initiatives on a white board under one of three headings: EARLY, MIDDLE and LATE. From here, the detailed scheduling of implementation tactics became manageable. Read more in the authors’ blog, Managing Projects: A Team-based Approach.

By Karen A. Brown, Ph.D., and Nancy Lea Hyer, Ph.D.

Many people begin their careers in functional areas such as engineering, accounting, marketing, finance, or information technology and are often taken by surprise when they find their work life consumed with activities related to projects. Many of the people we have interviewed and observed over a 25-year period have felt ill-prepared for the challenges they faced when they landed in positions requiring them to lead temporary, cross-functional teams. Our research has led us to appreciate that in addition to mastering the technical tools and processes of the project management trade, these new leaders must develop mindsets to appreciate opposing perspectives and feel comfortable with complexity and ambiguity. | Video: A Team-based Approach (2:06) | Video: Three Skills You Need (1:15) | Video: Questions You Need to Ask (2:23) | Video: Common Pitfalls (2:05) | Video: Be a Leader (1:38) | Video: Three Forces Driving Project Management (2:17) | Thunderbird Bookshelf: Managing Projects
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