Lessons from the Emergency Room

Our  holiday weekend started out like most. The lawn was moved, cars washed, the deck washed for a family gathering in the afternoon. Then it hit. It sounded something akin to the primal roar of a wounded animal, followed by the telltale “splash” of someone’s innards being turned inside out. A rough experience for anyone, but particularly so for someone just a couple years short of his 90th birthday. My father in law – “The Hammer”.

This continued for close to an hour before we headed off to the hospital. Still retching as we sped down the hill, he apologized for convulsing in the car, to which I responded “don’t worry, my driving does that to lots of people”.

My wife had made the typical calls to family, gathering advise on the best course of action. Between hurls, my father in law inquired as to why she called her brother John. I explained that we were asking whether we should take him to the hospital, or just dig a hole in the back yard and dump in him. Without cracking a smile he said “what did he say?” This may seem cruel or crass, but knowing our patient as well as I do, I know how much he loves to laugh, and he just needed a little reminder that even in the throes of throw-up, that was possible.

We saw plenty of sick and injured people that day, along with their moans and groans and dour expressions. but there were two noticeable exceptions. The first was a woman in her seventies, with long white hair dressed in and athletic shoes, sporting a ragged gash in her knee and holding her left wrist near her chin. When she sat down next to me, I caught her eye and said it was a heck of a way to spend the holiday.

She explained that they were riding home from the annual parade when she saw a fence stained much like her own at home. Veering for a closer look, the result was the gashed knee and rapidly swelling wrist.

The next 30 minutes went by in a much shorter time for me as we talked about everything but her injuries. Her husband joined in after parking their car, and when the nurse called for them I found myself asking for their name and number so that I may visit with them again sometime.

My next waiting room acquaintance was a tall woman in her 40s with a round face, holding a wet compress around one finger. She seemed to know the emergency room well, so was either accident prone or worked somewhere in the building – which was later confirmed by a co-worker who visited her from the maternity ward. I had overheard the cause for her visit and said “no fun” while holding up my finger. She had slammed her own finger in the car door.

She said “The kids and I have already worked up a list of what is good about this. First, it was my left hand; second, it wasn’t my knuckle so nothing was broken. And the best part of all was that it happened AFTER buying fireworks.”

Your environments are perhaps businesses or organizations, and NOT an emergency room. Most of the people you deal with everyday are still sick and wounded. They are sick at heart, having watched their 401-k values dwindle, their spirits broken through losses of jobs or homes…They are bleeding enthusiasm, gouged by the insensitivity of others, evolutionarily pre-disposed to notice, remember, and relive every perceived threat.

Lessons:

Our perception of pain whether physical or mental is a reflection of the story we tell ourselves about it.  Patients who are given control of the “pain meds button” experience less pain and tend to use less medication simply because their story is different.  They no longer worry about being out of control.  The same thing is true with employees.  Job stress is not a result of workload but how much control the employee has over the work and how he does it.   This is especially important in the “what if” something goes wrong, or the dissatisfied customer category.  We need to have specific planned responses to the systemic challenges all organizations have.  There will be problems and it is our response to those opportunities that will not only create the stories for your customers to tell but even more importantly they will create the stories the employees tell themselves and each other.  If service recovery is a positive experience for everyone involved:

• Improve employee retention through increased job satisfaction and engagement.

• Lower sales costs: Attracting a new customer may cost as much as retaining an already existing one.

• Increase new sales through your most powerful advertising tool: word of mouth

• Create an ever increasing service standard by creating a fear free atmosphere for employee creativity.

This list could go on and on.  Reduced turnover lowers, hiring, training, and management costs while continually enhancing the organizational knowledge that drives performance.  Consider the example of Ritz Carlton who gives their employees the authority to spend $2,500 without asking the permission of a supervisor.  Highly successful leaders seek out and reduce pain wherever they find it while the average believes their position requires the administration of pain to improve performance.  Pain produces fear and fear reduces performance.  There are no exceptions.