Last week we talked about how inexperience impacts your organization. The next question becomes just as important: What are you doing to help those new…
A quiet truth sits beneath every workforce conversation in healthcare: Retention doesn’t begin when someone resigns, but in the everyday experience of work. I was…
Healthcare leaders are navigating unprecedented pressure: staffing shortages, burnout, rapid technological change, and rising expectations from patients and teams alike. In this environment, leadership…
In healthcare today, headlines often highlight workforce shortages, financial pressures, regulatory complexity, and the many stressors facing healthcare organizations—realities that are certainly present. When…
Healthcare doesn’t need a fresh start—it needs a thoughtful rewire. Rewiring Healthcare: Foundation to Future brings together senior leaders to step back…
In healthcare, our new reality is that we have so many new leaders—either new to the role they’re in or new to leadership itself. Many of them tend to be younger, and even more bring a lack of leadership background and experience. How we prepare them to do this important work really matters. In Genfluence: How to Lead a Multigenerational Workforce, the book I coauthored with Dr. Katherine A. Meese, we talk about how to…
Values are caught as well as taught. What a leader does is more often more impactful than what is said. This message came to mind as I read of an organization’s rolling out a development program for supervisors. I applaud them for doing so. I would encourage them to make sure all the leaders, including the C-suite, complete the program. Why? All people impact others by our actions and words, both in a personal capacity…
Healthcare leadership can be a high-wire act: visible, relentless, and stressful in a way that often feels personal. In a new episode of the Healthcare Plus Podcast, Dan Collard sits down with former hospital CEO Tom McDougal to discuss why Tom’s book, Karma Doesn’t Need My Help matters now: it gives leaders from the C-suite to early careerists a simple operating system to make better decisions under pressure—and keep their peace while they do it. From learning…
Valentine’s Day is almost here. (How can this year possibly be going by so quickly?!) As I was thinking about this column, it occurred to me that Valentine’s Day is a good reminder of something we don’t talk about in the workplace often enough: the longing people have to feel seen, understood, valued, and cared for. Loved, in other words. It also occurred to me that what makes one person feel loved doesn’t necessarily do…
“Prove them right.” This was how Greg Hughes, Executive Vice President, Communications, NBC Sports responded when I asked him about his career success. Greg is currently immersed in Olympic and Super Bowl coverage and the NBA season and is ready for MLB Sunday night baseball. During dinner with Greg and his wife Lisa, he shared that he had spent the day with Bob Costas regarding the upcoming baseball season for NBC. People ask me how…
Healthcare leaders need a path forward, and they need it now. Workforce churn, AI acceleration, payer pressure, policy shifts and other factors are converging in ways that make “wait and see” a liability. That’s why showing up in Houston this March matters. ACHE Congress 2026 (March 2–4, in Houston, TX) is about making smarter decisions in the middle of real constraints. On last week’s podcast Dan Collard holds a conversation with David Bartholomew, FACHE, ACHE’s senior vice president of…
She was a supervisor for a busy hospital unit. She came to my class not really wanting to be there. She sat up front, arms folded and scowling. I understood. I think it’s fair to say that as a nurse, she had sat through many training classes by “experts” who told her how to do some intricate part of her job. I hope I never forget the feeling this nurse expressed. I well remember feeling…
How much impact does leadership inexperience have on your organization? I feel the sleeping giant today in terms of operational excellence is the number of new people. By this, I mean those who are new to the organization as well as those who are new to the role in general. For example, a person might be experienced in leadership but new to the organization. Or, they might be part of the organization, but new to…
Healthcare feels different now—because it is. Workforces are smaller, demand is rising, and culture expectations have changed. In a recent episode of the Healthcare Plus Podcast, Dan Collard and Dr. Katherine Meese introduce Genfluence: How to Lead a Multigenerational Workforce, new from ACHE Learn. The authors describe Genfluence as a research-grounded guide to leading across generations, written without relying on cliches or doom narratives. They took all the research and myths and distilled the best…
Emergency department volumes are up. Patient complexity is rising. And care teams are often newer, stretched, and carrying more emotional load than ever before. Yet many EDs are still trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. That’s why I wrote Rewiring the Emergency Department: Innovative Solutions for Modern Emergency Care. This book is not about incremental fixes or quick wins. It’s about rewiring how the ED is designed, led, staffed, and supported so it…