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Biomedical subjects

C R McConnell

Publications and source records attributed to C R McConnell.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1997

The chairperson's guide to effective meetings.

Meetings are a costly, sometimes cumbersome and frequently inefficient, but often necessary way of doing business. Initial planning for a meeting should actually involve consideration of how to do without it if possible. Given that a meeting is necessary, there are specific steps for the chairperson to take to ensure that the proper kind of meeting is planned and that steps are taken to make it as efficient as possible. The chairperson is responsible for making all arrangements, preparing and distributing an agenda, and leading the meeting in a manner that facilitates maximum productivity. Whether any particular meeting is ineffective or not is largely dependent on the chairperson's meeting leadership skills.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMed1997

Employee recognition: a little oil on the troubled waters of change.

Employee recognition practices and programs have suffered during the recent years of reengineering and downsizing. Frequently seen as a frill or as a direct cost that does not generate a direct benefit, recognition is often among the first expenses to go in a budget-cutting exercise. However, simple recognition can be an extremely powerful employee motivation tool. Regardless of how recognition might be treated at the organizational level, there remains much the individual supervisor can do to recognize employee accomplishments and thus enhance motivation and performance.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗
PubMed1997

Effective employee counseling for the first-line supervisor.

Counseling is an important supervisory skill applied for a number of purposes. Although the need for counseling is as constant as any need facing the supervisor, a number of commonly encountered barriers often prevent effective counseling. In most instances counseling is a necessary step preceding disciplinary action, and it is always an important step in improving employee performance. Although the supervisor may not come to the job with expertise in counseling, counseling can nevertheless be learned through practice and the conscientious application of a few simple guidelines.

Behavior↗
PubMed1997

Formula management: in search of magic solutions.

Formula management is the unjustified reliance on a set of rules or prescribed behaviors--a management formula, fad, or "flavor-of-the-month"--as the answer to an organization's needs. It is the manifestation of a tendency to believe that the essence of management can be proceduralized, that the art of management can be replaced with an expanding science of management. This tendency has been repeatedly demonstrated in the application of concepts such as management by objectives (MBO) and the variants of total quality management (TQM). All of management's "formulas" have their place; however, none of them provide all of management's needed answers. To view any of the specifically delineated "kinds of management"--all of which are highly susceptible to misapplication and resistance to change both blatant and subtle--as a cure-all is fully as inappropriate as denying their value out of hand. Formula or not, organizational results will continue to depend on the practice of the art, as well as the science, of management.

Employment↗
PubMed1996

After reduction in force: reinvigorating the survivors.

In these days of reengineering health care and downsizing many health organizations, a great deal of attention is given to means of reducing the work force. Not nearly as much attention is paid to the survivors of a staff reduction and the problems that arise in the wake of a generally demotivating activity. However, it is the survivors--those who remain after downsizing--that will have the greatest influence on the organization's future performance. Therefore, the survivors must be remotivated and reinvigorated. Such is the task of surviving supervisors and middle managers, and their primary tools are communication, education, and people-centered management.

Employment↗
PubMed1996

The evolving role of the health care supervisor: shifting paradigms, changing perceptions, and other traps.

As health care comes under mounting pressure to reduce costs, organizations are restructuring. Delivery systems are changing. As layoffs occur and changes are made in numbers and responsibilities of managers, supervisors find themselves in dramatically changing roles. Job security has become as illusory in health care as elsewhere. Morale among health workers is sagging, and motivational concerns are increasing. The supervisor has been put in the position of having to do more with less and to do it in the face of demoralized forces. The paradigms that were once operational are shifting, and the evolving role of the health care supervisor suggests that a completely new set of paradigms is taking over that suggests the supervisor's future security lies in the ability to learn new things and to shift and change with the environment.

Employment↗
PubMed1996

Succeeding with succession planning.

Succession planning is the process of identifying people who could presently move into key positions or could do so after specifically targeted development occurs. The process identifies the better people in the organization and takes a consistent approach to assembling, analyzing, and retaining information about potential leaders and planning for their further development. At its simplest level, it is the development of a backup and potential successor to each manager; at is most formal, it is a documented plan for management succession at all levels in the organization. Strongly supportive of a policy of development and promotion from within the organization, succession planning also represents a proactive posture in respect to inevitable management turnover. In these days of rapid change in health care, no modern organization that expects to keep up with increasing competition can afford to drift--or even to let a single department drift--while replacements are recruited for managers who resign, retire, or otherwise leave.

Career Mobility↗
PubMed1995

Total quality and the shifting management paradigm.

The concepts at the heart of total quality management (TQM) have existed for several decades, resurfacing every few years with variations, each time under a new name. Most efforts at incorporating these concepts into the operation of a business organization have failed, but each time the concepts come back, they meet with incrementally greater success than the previous time. This increasing rate of success is due largely to the shifting management paradigm. What we think and believe about management is making the gradual transition from strict authoritarianism, far more of an influence than we readily recognize, toward a practiced belief in true participative management. The closer the shifting management paradigm moves to open participation, the more success will accrue to total quality implementations.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗
PubMed1995

Coping with default management.

Management by default occurs when a manager fails to act on a given situation, ignores a problem, or simply "lets things happen." It can be unconsciously following the path of least resistance; it can be consciously deciding not to decide. It is owing largely to displaced priorities. Whatever its form, it causes staff to lose time and it leads them into risky situations when they attempt to compensate for default. However, the risks and frustrations caused for staff by default management can be minimized by an assertive communications posture in dealing with one's manager. While almost always representing an undesirable working circumstance, default management can nevertheless be approached by the subordinate as a potential source of challenge and satisfaction.

Communication↗
PubMed1995

Delegation versus empowerment: what, how, and is there a difference?

Delegation--or empowerment--represents the essence of the supervisory task: getting things done through people. The terms are no different from each other; empowerment is simply delegation done properly. The process still fails for the same old reasons, and failure still causes the same kinds of problems. Delegation or empowerment involves authority; it is authority that is delegated, not responsibility, as commonly claimed. Under either name it is an imperfect process requiring subjective judgments and chronic risk. Although either label is acceptable--the few differences between delegation and empowerment are semantic only--the significant constant that must be present is a sense of task ownership on the part of the empowered employee.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMed1995

"We missed you": the absence that fails to make the heart grow fonder.

Absenteeism is a problem that costs business in general billions of dollars each year. No industry is immune from its impact, least of all health care. The control of absenteeism rests largely in the hands of the first-line supervisor who must demonstrate visible concern for absenteeism and who must faithfully apply the organization's policies in the correction and control of absenteeism. The keys to absence control are visible concern, reliable documentation, consistent policy application across the work group, and constant attention to employee needs and concerns.

Absenteeism↗
PubMed1994

The reality of perception in employee relations: "If it looks like a duck ...".

In employee relations, perception is as important as reality. What the employee perceives is generally what the employee believes and acts on. Employee perceptions are shaped by many factors, prominent among them organizational roles, supervisory styles, and communication styles. Employee perceptions cannot be ignored, even when they are known to be incorrect, because they are factual to the employees. Further, perceptions can be controlled to a considerable extent through effective supervision. The supervisor needs to become aware of the power of perception, learn what circumstances are likely to cause incorrect perceptions, learn how to manage employee perceptions to the extent possible, and always approach perception as the perceiver's reality.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1994

Getting maximum value from employee teams--and keeping them legal.

Today's increasing emphasis on participative management is tending to bring more employees into problem-solving processes and giving them more voice in how they do their work. As a natural consequence of such changes, more is being done with employee teams. However, in some areas of potential involvement, employee teams can be seen as intruding on the territory of labor unions, so there is a constant risk of a given employee team being ruled an illegal labor organization. This problem, actually existing as long as the National Labor Relations Act has been with us but only recently forced into prominence by the Electromation Decision of late 1992, can be solved through observance of sensible guidelines for team organization and operation.

Industry↗
PubMed1994

Supervising the health care professional.

Those employees called professionals are in some ways little different from any other employees but in a few ways can be anywhere from subtly to dramatically different. As others, professionals are motivated by a unique mix of needs that can be used to gain insight into the appropriate supervisory techniques to apply. Different approaches to supervision are sometimes called for in the face of professionals' advantages, specifically their generally greater education and their external mobility owing to the presence of specific expertise used in other organizations, and their resulting loyalty to an occupation that frequently outweighs loyalty to an organization. The professional in short supply enjoys unique advantages that provide additional challenges for supervision. The conclusion eventually reached concerning supervising professionals is that honest, people-centered management is the key to success.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1993

Behavior improvement: a two-track program for the correction of employee problems.

In the best of all possible working worlds no one would ever have to be involuntarily terminated from employment. Whether a punitive discharge for a severe violation of a word rule, or a gentle dismissal for failure to meet job standards, termination is one of the most difficult tasks a supervisor ever has to perform. However, it is the effect on the employee that should dominate the supervisor's thoughts and actions, not the personal uneasiness with which the supervisor greets the task. It is because of the impact on the employee that the supervisor has a responsibility to do everything reasonably possible to ensure the employee's success before resorting to dismissal or discharge. Adopting this sort of caring attitude toward employees is not easy; most of our management role models of past years were raised on authoritarianism. As a result there is in many supervisors a tendency to simply weed out the troublesome employee and start again with someone new. However, any supervisor can fire, but it is the exceptional supervisor who can salvage an employee and turn a source of problems into an effective producer.

Employee Discipline↗