Robert T. Yokl, President/CEO, SVAH Solutions
“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success.” Henry Ford
All winning teams are a combination of attitudes, talents, and traits matched with the right leadership to give them the vision, values, goals, objectives, and “can do” attitude; a team that takes responsibility for its actions and pride in its accomplishments. Over the last 25 years, we have documented and observed the ideal competencies or what outstanding value analysis team leaders and team members do more often, in more situations, with better results. To identify the individuals in your healthcare organization who also exhibit these same competencies for your value analysis team(s), we would suggest that you employ a 360-degree feedback mechanism in assessing your value analysis team leaders and team member candidates’ qualifications prior to membership on your value analysis team(s). Have the candidate, his/her direct report, customers, and colleagues rate his/her value analysis competencies on a scale of 1-10 prior to final selection as a value analysis team leader or team member. The reason for doing so is that you only see one face of this individual, but by having them assessed by numerous individuals with whom they interact, in many different venues, you can truly identify who is the right candidate to be involved in your value analysis program. Here are more specifics on how to make your value analysis team member selection foolproof.
Identification of Value Analysis Team Candidates
The first step in your selection process for new or replacement team leaders and team members is to have your Value Analysis Steering Committee members identify a team leader, administrative representative, facilitator, recorder, and ten team members for each value analysis team that you will be implementing. In addition, you will need to identify alternates for your team leaders and five team member alternates if for any reason your primary candidate can’t fulfill their duties.
360-Degree Selection Process
The next step in the selection process is to send a questionnaire to these individuals’ direct report, one customer, and one colleague to rate them on the ideal competencies (see figures 1 and 2) they need to be an ideal candidate for your value analysis team(s). Give the rater one week for a response to these questionnaires. They should be prepared by and returned to your Value Analysis Coordinator or Manager. Naturally, your Value Analysis Steering Committee members can be one of your raters, if they have direct contact with any of these individuals on a day-to-day basis.
Team Member Evaluation System
We have shown below in figures 1 and 2 sample consolidated rating sheets for VA team leaders and team members that are to be completed by your Value Analysis Coordinator or Manager once he/she has received the questionnaire back from your three raters. These sheets need to be tallied to reflect three ratings (the minimum number of ratings for statistical relevance) for each candidate. Then have your Value Analysis Coordinator or Manager tally an average rating for each competency and a total overall rating for the candidate. The ideal VA team leader or team member candidate will have an overall rating of eight or higher. If for any reason your Value Analysis Coordinator or Manager doesn’t receive a response back from any or all the responders to your questionnaire, then they are required to call raters to try to have a phone rating if possible. If all else fails, send a new questionnaire out to new raters until you have three ratings for each candidate.
Figure 1: TEAM LEADERS (Rate Candidates 1-10 [10 being highest rating ])
Figure 2: TEAM MEMBERS (Rate Candidates 1-10 [10 being highest rating])
Final Selection Criteria
Based on the total overall scores that your raters have given the candidates (that you identified in step 1 as VA team leaders or team members), you will confirm your ideal candidates for your value analysis team that have total overall scores of eight or above. If any candidate has a total overall score below eight, then you need to start the selection process over again until you have identified four VA team leaders and ten team members that have ratings above eight.
In summary, the importance of this selection process can’t be overemphasized. From our experience, if the right people with the right competencies aren’t carefully selected up front, your value analysis team(s) will never have the leadership and skill level that is required to maintain and sustain your Value Analysis Program over the long term.
