Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing: Critical For Best Solutions

Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing is a model of group development, first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results.

Awarepoint is as committed to the importance of team dynamics as it is to client satisfaction and technology. In applying the management principles of Good to Great by Jim Collins, the Awarepoint executive team recognizes that “under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation and change largely melt away. Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” Awarepoint is committed to avoiding the pitfalls that happen when people fail to understand issues completely and form opinions before doing so, then plunge ahead acting on incomplete information. Our conscious choice is to understand that, as we grow both in employee size and client base, we need to go through the form, storm, norm and perform process and plan for it.

Case in point - This is an example on a national scale of people storming before they can norm.

The Heartland Institute's Consumer Power Report #216 from 4/9/10 includes a section titled Where is My Free Obamacare? Here is the concise overview:

WHERE IS MY FREE OBAMACARE? It seems everyone is confused by the health care overhaul. Americans do not really understand the effect this will have on them and when. This is evidenced by the boatload of questions engulfing doctor's offices, insurance companies, businesses and human resources departments across the country. "They're saying. 'Where do we get the free Obamacare, and how do I sign up for that?'" One call center at eHealthInsurance.com, a California-based company, has been flooded by calls from uninsured consumers looking for instant, affordable coverage under the Obama plan. "We tell them it's not free, that there are going to be things in place that help people who are low-income, but that ultimately most of that is not going to be taking place until 2014," said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. SOURCE: McClatchy

For more granularity, click on Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public from McClatchy.

Some might think this Where is My Free Obamacare? is just political rhetoric from those opposed to health care financing reform, but it is more than that. It is a great example of how difficult it is to get people on the same page so they can communicate and norm. Forget performing on something like this, that is decades away. Medicare has been around over four decades and we are still storming about that – witness the problems congress is having with the in limbo scheduled 21% reduction in provider reimbursements.

Ignore any political bent of this and understand the message.

~ Dr. Harold Koenig

New Office For Awarepoint!

Shiney, Happy People!

Welcome to the new Awarepoint digs! As of this Monday 4/12/10 morning, we’re here at our new office:

600 Broadway, Suite 250, San Diego, CA 92101

Check out the pics on our Facebook page. We’re planning an open house in April (date to be determined). So, if you’re in San Diego, please stop by. If not, watch this space for more photos to come.

We arrived Monday morning to a wonderful inspirational message from our CEO, Jason Howe, to welcome us all to our new space:

“Obviously we are growing, achieving, accomplishing and truly moving from “Good to Great”. And our new office is a physical representation of this transformation. Keep in mind of course, “Great” is not a destination – it’s a mindset! So, clearly the talent, dedication and hard work is paying off and will continue to do so as long as we remember it. That being said however, it never hurts to take a step back and appreciate what we have and how far we have come. We are truly as lucky as we are great. So enjoy the moment.☺

In addition, I wanted to extend a very personal thanks to the team that helped us get this place ready for prime time. Patrick, Aaron, Mohamed and Ron deserve our gratitude and appreciation. I have never see a team work harder, smarter or as many hours to get things set up for the rest of us. Selfless! These guys epitomize the “T” in APOINT!

All the best,”

Jason Howe
Chief Executive Officer

And … from our Board Member, Brandon Hull of Cardinal Partners:

“Many congrats on getting the move done. I know what a Herculean task that can be and appreciate all the hard work and planning. Obviously emails are going through which is a positive indicator and, while it seems like a low bar, not something I take for granted in a facilities upgrade!”

We couldn’t be more excited to be here and see all of our hard work and success manifest itself in this new office space – purpose built just for Awarepoint and designed to accommodate our growing team, now nearly 70 people!

The Current State of Hospital Asset Tracking

The Current State of Hospital Asset Tracking: “Delegating Up” to Clinicians

Today I was forwarded an email which had been sent out to all the hospital’s clinical staff. It had been written by a supply clerk. Here it is:

"BIOMED is constantly going through inventory of all equipment in the hospital. If equipment is missing they will put equipment as inactive and the equipment should not be used on any patients if this happens. Lately, there has been equipment going to BIOMED without notifying me. Please give me the courtesy to let me know if there is equipment in BIOMED so that I may follow it up. Once taken down to BIOMED please provide me the documentation that BIOMED provides when checking in equipment. Unfortunately, there is nothing much I can do to speed up their work but I hope that we can get our equipment in as soon as possible with me knowing about it."

That’s the status of asset tracking at this hospital – a really big one. A clerk is “delegating-up” the responsibility of reporting asset status to staff nurses and physicians, as if nurses and physicians aren’t already overworked. The clerk is just doing what he or she can to try and keep track of equipment. And, the problem is widespread as confirmed by our conversations with other hospitals:

"It's extremely important to be able to locate equipment. Hospitals are resource restricted. It does impact nurse productivity.”

“It's a huge issue; hugely impacting nurse productivity! In fact we just built a new hospital and part of our premise is to use an RFID process to make it easier on the nurses.”

"It is ABSOLUTELY affecting nurse job satisfaction and productivity! It's so frustrating for clinicians and our physicians! One of our physicians wants a guaranteed location for wheelchairs for the unit cause he's seen more than once where a patient is ready to go home and a staff member is busy trying to locate a wheelchair to take them to the front! "

“Yes, hunting for equipment has really negatively impacted nurse productivity and nurse job satisfaction!”

The electronic age has provided us near instant communication. At this facility a clerk is able to task over a thousand clinical staff to do administrative work - to track assets in the hospital - in addition to their already overwhelming clinical responsibilities. Is it no wonder why so many clinicians become discouraged and retire early?

Is this a problem at your hospital too? How do you address it? I’d love to hear your comments or similar stories.

~ Dr. Harold Koenig

Meet Matt Perkins, Awarepoint CTO

World: Meet Matt Perkins, Awarepoint CTO

“Uncle, uncle ... Ok Val, I promise I’ll post an introductory blog post.” :)

Hello readers! I have procrastinated for 3 weeks now about contributing to the Awarepoint blog, but it’s clearly time to introduce myself.

As the CTO of Awarepoint I can confidently say that I have the best job in the world. Not only do I get to work with technologies that are changing the reach of the information super highway (http://www.zigbee.org/), I’m lucky enough to work along side some of the best and brightest business men and women in the world — I’ve always been lucky in that regard.

I spent the first 11 years of my career in Motorola Labs in Plantation, Florida where innovation was king and execution was queen. IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee were spawned from that group in addition to a handful of other inventions that make you love your cell phone ... Except when calls are dropped (Motorola didn’t work on that!). From my time in the labs I learned invaluable lessons about innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that drove ideas into products, and products to market.

That spirit is alive and well at Awarepoint and is reflected in our enterprise-wide real-time awareness solution. Every aspect of the Awarepoint solution embodies the desire to be the best -- be it from our innovative network deployment method where we plug-in tiny devices in standard outlets and walk away to let the network form, or to our lease-to-own business model that allows customers to drive before they buy.

In the upcoming weeks I will introduce the Awarepoint product line and discuss the features of our product that make it the best in class.

Stay connected...

- Matt

Effective Health Systems Are Real-time Entreprises Says Gartner

Gartner just released a Research Note entitled: The Top 9 Actions for the Healthcare Delivery Organization CIO, 2010 (25 March 2010ID:G00174771). It’s a great look into top recommendations for an effective healthcare IT organization.

Gartner analysts specifically note: “In 2010, the effective healthcare IT organization, led by the competent, confident CIO, is a significant enabler of care quality, operational efficiency and business agility.” The Research Note goes on to further challenge healthcare CIOs to “continuously monitor and very rapidly adjust core medical and care delivery processes to better balance demand and delivery, going beyond stripping latencies from enterprise business and clinical workflows. This paradigm is compelling for the health system of the future — enterprises already steeped in the terminology of time and urgency, such as "stat," "triage" and "rapid response" — to meet the combined challenges of increased demand for services, continued pressure on cost and a focus on consistently high quality.”

To remain competitive, Gartner believes health systems must evolve to “Real-time Enterprises (RTEs)”. “They must redesign and transform their critical clinical and business processes, and this requires enhancing IT and communications infrastructure, systems, and technologies to operate more collaboratively. To successfully operate as RTEs, health systems will expand their use of automation, instrumentation, location and condition-sensing technologies; event-driven and service-oriented approaches; messaging and interoperability; and wireless and mobility, and integrate a host of other technologies and process changes that enable the RTE.”

There is some powerful insight here, and for us at Awarepoint, a real validation of our market segment and its place in the overall Real-time Enterprise. If you’re a healthcare CIO and Gartner client, you can access Gartner’s research at gartner.com.