Ready to pick up a business book that will challenge how you view your school? Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic by Leonard Berry & Kent Seltman is this type of book. How the Mayo Clinic has grown into the #1 hospital in America is worth examining.
We were all served a reminder last summer when Senator John McCain was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He went in for an annual physical and complained of a few unusual symptoms. After consulting with another specialist or two, the doctor recommended a CAT scan which was performed that same day. On McCain’s way home, he was called back to the hospital after a radiologist reviewed the CAT scan. Now, think about this for a minute. A CAT scan the same day? Analyzed the same day? He was sent for an MRI and was on the operating table the next morning. By the following day, an oncologist had biopsied the tumor and his cancer treatment had begun. In 48 hours! This kind of rapid treatment utilizing multiple specialists allows for quick treatment and puts the patient’s needs first.
Mayo Clinic is a 100-year brand based on values, service, and research. Take a look at the three conditions that Dr. William Mayo viewed as essential to the clinic’s success:
- Continuing pursuit of the ideal of service and not profit.
- Continuing primary and sincere concern for the care and welfare of each individual patient.
- Continuing interest by every member of the staff in the professional progress of every other member.
Don’t those values sound like the same kind of values for Catholic schools? In fact, one of the original Mayo Clinic hospitals was a Catholic hospital run by sisters. The entire organization is centered on the idea that “the needs of the patient come first.” Think about the implications for schools. If we really put students’ needs first (and not parents, teachers, School Board, etc) how would that change our processes? If all learning was personalized and student needs came first, how would that change our schedules? Teaching styles? Professional development? Hiring?
Putting students first is often interpreted as catering to every student’s whims. But how would that work in a hospital? The Mayo Clinic is set up to serve the needs of patients and the doctors are in the best position to judge what is best. This patient-centered culture drives medical research, collaborative decision-making, and a mission focus for all employees.
As the authors point out, the real values of an organization are the values which are lived. At Mayo, that means care for all patients, collaboration, and efficiency. What are the values of your school? Another value is “teach, don’t blame.” This means that mistakes are learning opportunities. In schools, there are plenty of mistakes. How are we learning?
The other concept which the authors explore is that marketing without meaning has no impact. At Mayo, the staff is focused on improving and serving patients. Marketing is an outgrowth of that effort, rather than marketing efforts which make false promises. Often in schools, people latch onto marketing as the panacea for enrollment ills.
I often think that hospitals have many lessons to teach us educators. After all, they attract community support, share a mission-driven purpose, supply a necessary function, and attract lots of fundraising dollars. This book provides a unique insight into one of the best hospital systems with lessons galore for your school.
Dr. Tim's Blog 
Fantastic, Tim. Of the many excellent, relevant and powerful Catholic School Matters’ posts I’ve read and enjoyed—this one about purpose and leadership at the Mayo Clinic aligns most with teachers, principals, students, parents, and especially resurrecting the age-old/new-age KEY to real educational success and personal and professional fulfillment at Catholic schools immediately and in the future.
You see, what has anchored and shackled Catholic schools in the past years is: 1) A rabid focus on enrollment; 2) Marketing of schools and the Catholic “product” without full conviction, self-respect, self-knowledge, self-critique, self-correction, and self-sufficiency— that when marketing brings in parents and students toschools–the “product” is not equal to the marketing; and 3) A literal and figurative philosophy that teachers are merely tools and only regarded as how well they function, but not respected as professionals and asked “How are you feeling personally and professionally?”
Yes, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is a leadership model for successful health, wellness and patientcare. At the same time, it was not always this way. There was a young brilliant physician, Dr. William Osler—gifted by God with not only clinical skills but interpersonal and organizational qualities—who fought against the STATUS QUO: How things have always been done—and especially NOT done. To Dr. Osler is attributed this universal saying: “What’s right for patient care is also right for the medical facility.” Anyone and everyone who served patients first was right—irrespective of hospital, medical or organizational protocol. He differentiated between serving the GOAL of the organization (patient care) vs. serving merely the organization per se. We fall short if we only serve the organization. Yet if we serve the GOAL (patients) of the organization, we also serve the organization as a natural byproduct.
Dr. Osler was also a “good” man—perhaps the highest accolade that can be bestowed on any of us, and everyone to him in healthcare and medicine was a professional—from physicians, respiratory therapists and clinical lab techs, to janitors and housekeeping personnel. Each had a role in patient care and wellness. Dr. Osler taught using critique vs. criticism—as critique is always constructive, instructive and uplifting, while criticism seems always to be destructive. For Dr. Osler one’s personal and professional life is enjoined: We bring our personal life to work and we take our professional life home. So, he would ask staff members at all levels: “How are you FEELING today?”
Dr. Osler understood that professionalism is when we ready ourselves to perform our best even when we “personally” do not feel our best. We can’t get much done in life if we only work on the days when we feel good. In fact, it was Dr. Osler who defined the height of professionalism as “when we do our work so well that the persons we serve don’t know if it’s our job…or our nature.”
So this Mayo Clinic article is not about continuing to do the “same things only different.” NO! It’s about SEEING old landscapes with NEW EYES. The STATUS QUO—how things have always been done–must be changed. It’s not about breaking down or breaking away from the Church, or Church teachings and all that is good and right about Catholic education, rather how best to serve the GOAL of Catholic schools: The opening not the filling of our students’ empty mind—and the civilization, domestication, or taming of their soul’s raw passions and informing them of both science (assessment) and art (judgment). That’s what education is and that’s what our teachers do. And to do this we must care for, care about, and be careful with–our Catholic school teachers.