These Are The Consequences Of A Bad Organizational Culture

Have you watched the Take Care Of Maya trial??

If you have, take a? moment and make notes of the three errors you see before continuing to read this newsletter.?

…Loading

…Loading

…Loading

Are you ready? OK, let’s go.

First of all a bit of background if you are not familiar with the Take Care Of Maya case:?

Maya Kowalski suffers from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) and was diagnosed by multiple doctors who treated her with Ketamine. During her hospitalization at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital things turned bad when doctors accused her mother of Munchausen-by-proxy but were never able to prove it. Due to the child abuse allegations, Maya was isolated from her family which led to the mother’s suicide who couldn’t cope with being isolated from her daughter and not being able to care for her.??

Let’s move forward a bit:

The Kowalski family sued the hospital for $220m for the mother’s suicide. The hospital was found liable on all counts last week and the jury awarded damages of? $211m + $50m punitive damages - in total $261m.

Dear executives, if you ever thought that investing in organizational culture was kind of a fluffy thing, these numbers should teach you a lesson as to why it matters to care about your organizational culture.?

Let’s break down what mistakes leadership made:

1. Everyone was responsible which means, no one was. Working, thinking, and acting as a collective means no one will take charge when issues and risks arise.?
2. No line of report: Risks didn’t get the attention of senior leadership (I guess now it does and the price is $261m)
3. Risk management and employees (doctors, social workers, nurses) were fully out of control and had maximum power that went unsupervised which is the magic essence of disaster

One of the core learning the hospital’s leaders hopefully had this time:?

Power without oversight gets easily abused!?

The hospital’s leaders relied on a push system to get information about issues and risks. This passive approach is highly risky. As leaders, it is our job to manage and mitigate risks, ideally prevent them.?

Doctors and nurses failed to focus on their core responsibility. Their job is to care for patients but they act more like detectives who want to prove child abuse and convince Maya that she doesn’t feel the pain she feels. This is clearly a leadership issue. Leadership failed to keep the team focused on their duties. At times during the trial testimonies, I asked myself if these pediatricians even like children. They came across as unfriendly, scary, and arrogant as hell.?

When we talk about the concept of corporate governance, we don’t mean to only draw fancy processes in PowerPoint. We need to actually implement and live the norms and guidance defined to have it reflected in the organization’s culture.

If you are a leader and continue to neglect your culture, I’d suggest you put multiple million $$$ aside for legal consequences.

Now, in this case, the damages are real and affect the lives, health, and future of patients. I get that this might not be the case for other organizations. However, this case should help you to build an awareness of why proper organizational culture matters.

We help CEOs transform their organization through their most precious asset: the people! We help you implement a system that works!

Whenever you are ready, we can help you transform your organization faster with a system that works.

Schedule your next consult call?HERE!

Sesen Tesfay Executive Advisory