by CHRC | Mar 25, 2020 | Leadership
As we close out Women’s History Month, and #healthcareheroes emerges as a new hashtag, how fitting that this piece in the New York Times reminds us that some of the country’s first heroes in health care were religious sisters. While this piece focuses on the sisters and nuns that poured out of their Philadelphia neighborhood convents to tend to those ravaged by the 1918 pandemic, religious sisters have been in the United States since 1727.
Too often the images of religious sisters are limited to stereotypes in the extreme: either unfeeling or angelic, and seldom someone in between. In truth, the sisters in the United States were pioneers: on the prairie, in the battlefield (Abraham Lincoln thanked them for their nursing during the Civil War), in the laboratory, and of course, the classroom. They were also pioneers in the boardroom; these women were CEOs of hospitals and universities, at a time when very few, if any, American women were allowed to run major institutions. So, as we confront Covid-19, and celebrate those who have dedicated their lives to healthcare, let’s remember some of the first career women, who built many of the country’s hospitals, including the first Mayo Clinic. Read More Here
by CHRC | Mar 11, 2020 | Data, Leadership
In doing our part to stop the spread of COVID-19, we’re all becoming experts at hand washing—and all of this handwashing during Women’s History Month shines a perfect light on Florence Nightingale.
Nightingale was a nurse serving soldiers in the Crimean Peninsula in the 1850s, when she insisted that her nursing staff stick to rigorous hygiene routines. Her hand washing practices laid the groundwork for today’s hygiene principles and nurse’s still attribute her as the foundational philosopher of modern nursing. While she was not the first to suggest that hand washing was important, she collected the data to prove it; which in turn persuaded others to pay attention and demand changes.
She presented her experiences and her data to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1856. This data was the reason they formed a Royal Commission to improve the health of the British Army. Nightingale was so skilled with data and numbers that in 1858 she was also elected as the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society. ⁱ
How ironic, that the Italian city where she was born, that also inspired her traveling English parents to name her Florence, is now under quarantine.
by CHRC | Mar 4, 2020 | Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Leadership, Work Place
As we begin Women’s History Month, we should acknowledge that long before Rosie started riveting in relatively clean and safe surroundings, her forebearers were working (mostly unpaid) for millennia.
Too often, people associate women’s history solely with the image of Rosie the Riveter or suffragettes winning the right to vote in 1920. But we tend to forget that long before that, women worked for centuries in cottage industries, producing gloves, lace, and woolen goods in their cottages or homes. A huge leap occurred when women took these “handy” skills and transferred them to large looms run by steam power in the north of England and then New England. Often, the women working in these roles were on the lowest end of the social spectrum, and thus had no voice.
The First World War was a major shift. Now women were patriotic to take on paid roles outside of the domestic work that they had always done outside the home. By the end of 1918, American women made up nearly 20% of the workforce. Like their British sisters, once the American women had a taste of autonomy and contribution, they were not content to return to the farm or the home and lose the voice, and perhaps the pay packet, that they had gained once the men returned home. The “average” American woman then realized that the best way to make her voice heard was the ballot box.
So this Women’s History Month, let’s reflect on the contributions of the women before us and continue to celebrate their impact in our world every day. Read More Here
by CHRC | Feb 5, 2020 | Leadership, Performance Reviews, Work Place
We are just finishing our holiday puzzle. You know that puzzle that you do as a family so that you have a legitimate excuse to sit around for hours at a time in your holiday pajamas? Well someone (me) had a brilliant idea this year of selecting a 1,000 piece puzzle of the Sistine Chapel. Pazzo!
I think most people have strategies for doing puzzles: find the four corners first, then segregate out the edge pieces, and once the structure is completed, then start looking for colors or patterns. Most of us are set in our way of solving puzzles. Our family has traditionally had its roles set. My husband and son have extraordinary spatial development skills—and we have overly relied on these. I might have been staring at a section forever, desperate for a piece in one area, and my husband would come, stand over my shoulder, nonchalantly pick up the one piece I’d been searching for, and silently snap it into a gaping hole. Infuriating—yet this skill completes the puzzle at a much faster pace.
This year the tables were turned. Once the perimeter was finished, our traditional go-to guy’s secret weapon was of no use. Why? Because Michelangelo’s genius required color recognition to solve this puzzle, and no spatial development skill was going to help. My spatial development genius husband is very challenged when it comes to nuances in color.
Our son returned to college, our daughter (quite smartly) refused to help, and every time my husband wandered back to try again, frustration took over. I think I must have changed tactics five different times and employed entirely new ones. There was no one way to solve this puzzle.
This really made me think about the way we approach problem-solving at work. How often do we have a project or problem and our first response is to ask the office go-to guy? How often would the go-to guy admit this is a problem he can’t solve? That he’s never done a 1,000 piece puzzle before or that he is terrible at color recognition? How often does a boss or colleague tell the go-to guy that he doesn’t have what it takes to solve THIS problem? It’s time to recognize that sometimes, someone who has traditionally never been the strongest player for the typical problems tackled, just might have the required skill set to lead the team in solving a new puzzle.
I think there’s a lot of food for thought that anyone in an organization or leading a team should ponder. Anyone in the midst of performance reviews should definitely be thinking about team members as a collection of all of their strengths and perceived weaknesses. You could be overvaluing one person’s spatial development while overlooking someone else’s color recognition—an ability that someday might be the key to solving the team’s biggest challenge.
by CHRC | Feb 3, 2020 | Human Capital, Leadership
Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a football fan. But this article about a football player caught my eye.
When my son was growing up, we often argued about specializing too early in just one sport. Isn’t it nice to know that sometimes, just sometimes, the parent might be right? I would often cite examples from my childhood, like my first and all-time favorite sports hero, Ernie Banks; he came to baseball fairly late. But this article about a 24-year-old sports phenom shows a similar pattern. He too, played many sports, and in doing so eventually became a better all-around athlete, star quarterback, and now 2020’s Super Bowl MVP!
Conveniently, Patrick Mahomes’ ascendency coincides with the re-recognition in management: the value of being a generalist. It seems that in both business and sports it can be of great value to not specialize too early. Perhaps we could all take a page from Mahomes’ playbook. Read More Here
by CHRC | Jan 20, 2020 | Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Leadership
I was four years old when Dr. King was killed, and I spent the ensuing days bombarding my poor parents with questions.
Three and a half decades later, when our son was four and our daughter was seven, we were sitting around the dinner table when my husband questioned them: “Do you know why you didn’t have school today?” They both knew it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “Who was Dr. King?” we asked, and our four-year-old responded, “He don’t want you to fight with people.“ We accepted that answer. We turned to the seven-year-old. Her answer started with Rosa Parks and a bus. She understood that the peace part had something to do with racial injustice.
My husband then looked at our children and told them that they needed to realize how very different their lives would be if it hadn’t been for Dr. King‘s dream and his work. They would not have Jewish friends who invited them to Hanukkah parties. Our daughter probably couldn’t have a best friend who was African-American, because what were the odds that she would even go to school with kids that look different than herself? So many things that our children took for granted were things that three and a half decades earlier were unfathomable for most Americans. The best part of the evening was when our seven-year-old got out of her chair and put her hands on her hips and said, “I’m sorry I just don’t understand. How could this be?!”
Today, as Americans pause and remember Dr. King‘s legacy, some of us will be doing exactly what Dr. King would expect of us—committing acts of service, or acts of peace, extending a hand to our neighbors, and taking steps to bring his dream a bit closer to reality. But for those of us who are not part of one of those activities today, could we pause and think of the classmate or neighbor, colleague, best friend, or person we love; who, because of Dr King’s dream, is now an integral part of our lives. Today, let’s think about the person we couldn’t dream of NOT having in our life. Let’s give thanks for an American with a bold desire for justice, a thirst for equality, and a conviction that all our lives would be richer working together rather than living apart.
