First, I hope you had a great Independence Day celebration when we are reminded of the struggles we as a nation endured to gain freedom and assert our individual rights. Among those is the right to do stupid stuff. Wait, really?  I was talking with a friend who works for a mass transit system near me and he was telling me about the latest great idea coming down from management.  I need to give you some background.  He is an electrician for a light rail system and he works the midnight shift.  All track maintenance is performed when the trains are not running and generating revenue (makes sense so far). His shift is officially 10 PM to 6:30 AM and the tracks become available for maintenance work between 2 AM and 5 AM.  The teams do their prep work, get staged and hit the tracks at 2, work till 5, then eat while documenting their work.  They clock out at 6, for an 8-hour day. Usually, they can’t get everything done in that 3-hour window.

 Management has decided that the light rail system is getting cheated out of thirty minutes’ worth of work (because the teams work through their “lunch” break) and has decreed that there will now be a mandatory meeting at 6:15 AM and no one can clock out before 6:30 AM.  I can understand that management frustration, after all, it seems the workers are trying to get paid for an unpaid lunch break.  The challenge is that the worker’s union specifies that their break be midway through the shift.  So now, the workers are staying at their post to eat their “lunch” at 2 AM, midway through their shift, which means they ultimately can’t get to the work site, set up and ready to work until 3 AM or later.  The work is getting more and more backlogged because management failed to understand the implications of their decisions.

 This happens in O&P too!  Sometimes we make decisions based on a limited understanding of the workflow.  We think we are improving profitability but in reality we are creating a bottleneck that slows down our cash flow.  The story comes to mind of the owner who wants maximum productivity from the clinicians.  They want the schedule tight and tell the clinicians to do their notes at the end of the day, or even after hours.  This results in delays getting critical documentation into your OPIE system and causes difficulties for the administrative staff to have to keep things moving for the patient.  This in turn can result in delayed care, delayed parts orders, delayed payments for services and will start a downward spiral for the business. 

Remember that the people who work for you probably don’t get up in the morning and ask themselves “What can I go to work and screw up today” (if they do, get rid of them). Most people want to do a good job.  So empower them, involve them, and respect their knowledge.  Sometimes the crazy things they do are actually making the workplace better.