Book Club Webinar

This week we had a couple of “Book Club” webinars for the current Management Academy cohorts. Thank you so much to everyone who participated. One of the things we did was look at the quotations on the chapter pages of the web site and talk about them. The quotation for Chapter 1 is “A goal without a plan is just a wish” – here are some of the things that came up:

“Wishful thinking is like writing a Christmas list. It is definitely a first step, but to actually fill up under the Christmas tree, you’ve got to save some money, figure out where you’re going to get the stuff, plan when you’re going to go shopping, what you’ll do if they don’t have exactly what you want.”

“Our group has gone through three feasibility plans. The first two ideas were just wishes, and when we started to plan we realized they were not feasible. You need a plan, to ask the hard questions, look for barriers, etc.”

“You may know where you want to be in the end, but unless you have made your plan you might not recognize when you’ve begun making steps in that direction.”

“The people who have the big picture in mind are not necessarily the same people who can see the details to do the plan. It’s as if the “big picture” people are wishing, and the “little picture” people are planning, and sometimes there’s conflict. A way to get around this is to make sure you have good community partners on the team because they’re often able to help you get to where you want to go.”

For the Chapter 2 quotation, “A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds,” some comments included:

“This may be true, but you need to have a structure in place to make opportunities happen. Entrepreneurs go out and create opportunities, but they have a system in place to get them going.”

“I am personally risk averse. It’s hard for me to see myself as an entrepreneur because I’d rather just stay back in the office and make things happen.”

“Staying and making things happen is also entrepreneurial – you’re making sure people are served.”

We talked about the quote for Chapter 3, from Abraham Lincoln and decided that "commitment to success" can have many definitions -- and sometimes "success" looks different at different stages of the process. Finally, the last quotation, "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them and pretty soon, you have a dozen" drew many different takes:

"Too many ideas are like rabbits taking over the house! You get too many things going and you can't do any of them well. Brainstorming makes us aware of multiple options -- but you need to narrow down the big goals. Take one rabbit and put it in a cage (called "The Definition of Plan") and develop that rabbit."

"I see the rabbits as a good thing. You just need to send a message to the rabbit people -- save that idea for the next project. Keep thinking of ideas, but begin nurturing just one at a time. Learn to control the rabbits!"

Thanks to everyone who participated. For those of you who didn't, please share your thoughts about the Chapter Page quotations from the web site when you get a chance. Have a great Turkey Day everyone! Don't worry about rabbits for a few days at least.

-- Anne

More on Flu's Clues

I'd be interested in hearing more about the project Steve wrote about Monday. It’s called “Flu’s Clues,” and it provides flu vaccine clinics in local public schools. As of mid-October, Tazewell County, VA, nurses had given 596 flu vaccines in 9 school clinics, with two clinics left to go. That’s quite an achievement! This happened in the Cumberland Plateau Health District of Virginia. We write about the CPHD at length in Chapter 7 of the book (Competitors and Partners) as an example of great partnering activity over several years that has resulted in some amazing projects (pp. 67-69).

Some thoughts and questions about this program:

First, this program is a good example of strategic budgeting. You could never just take the annual costs of this project and divide them by 12 to get monthly costs. How does a program like this deal with the large fluctuations in costs over the course of a year? Have any of you come up against this problem in their program planning?

Also, does this team have a plan to expand the program at some point to offer other products or services to school children? Well-child tests or other immunizations, for example? Or is this an example of something well-focused that should stay that way?

Public schools can be problematic when it comes to private sponsorship. Did you come up against that here? What about the rest of you who have experience working with schools – several teams have attempted such programs over the years. One obvious lesson might be to make sure you include a representative from the local schools on your planning team. What are other lessons learned to share from the process of working with public schools?

Anne Menkens

Outcomes Story

Talked on the phone a couple of weeks ago with Kathy Hypes, a public health manager in southwest Virginia. She and a team of colleagues created a business plan back in 2004 to fund flu shots for kids in the school system of Tazewell County, a rural county in the mountains of Virginia.

Talk about unforeseen barriers: for two years the whole country had problems getting the right flu vaccine. Finally last year the group launched their pilot flu shot program in Russell and Tazewell county elementary schools. From that pilot year the team gathered positive stories and used their pilot success to expand the program to the middle schools this year.

If you have worked with the schools before you realize the challenges associated with permissions, space, and timing for a project like this-- not to mention the challenge of making sure that you can generate enough revenue to support the work. Through a combination of Medicaid billing, insurance, state money for uninsured children and a contract with Anthem Healthcare, they have made the finances work-- and made a well-targeted intervention to prevent flu and the spread of flu with one of the larger institutions in the area.