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"Employee-reward programs can be so unrewarding. The plaques, tchotchkes with logos, goofy contests and ham-handed presentations tend to backfire. It’s not that they’re all bad, but too often they seem like empty gestures supported by upper management, administered by a less-than-enthused middle management and received by underwhelmed staffers. All when an honest thanks would have gone further.”

–Jared Sandberg, The Wall Street Journal

Many of the hospitals I work with believe recognition is important. ...

One of the biggest challenges for most organizations is how to improve performance over time. Of course that includes financial results, but it also includes customer and employee satisfaction, service quality, customer outcomes and operational performance. 

In reality, meaningful improvement depends on meeting a number of key challenges:

Focus. The organization needs to clearly identify the key priorities to bring about improvement, rather than getting lost in trying to do too many things at ...