Bashing off to another VHMA Conference!
By Dash Halow

From the moment I stepped into the Legal Symposium at the start of this year’s VHMA conference, I knew I was in for an amazing experience.  Led by renowned, industry attorneys, America and Canada’s most eager managers sat for an entire day of learning about human resource law. For those of you that have never attended a symposium (this was my first), this is a day-long immersion in the finest details of law regarding hiring, firing and interviewing, but the best comes in the last half of the lecture.  After they pack your brain with all of the particulars on federal and state labor law, they present actual case studies that happened to practice owners and managers!  Everyone has a chance to work in groups with other attendees to figure out what you would do and then the instructors guide you through the correct way each case was ultimately handled.  In attendance were some of my very best VHMA friends, Ronald Sells, Marvin Roeder and long time friend Debbie Hall.  Thanks to VHMA executive director, Charlene Shupe for a knock-out-of-the-park day of learning.

As I mentioned above, the Program Committee tacked the Symposium onto the front end of the VHMA Conference as a way to lower costs for attendees and WHAT a conference!  Now I’m not privy to the survey that attendees turn in at the end of each lecture (those are collected by VHMA veterans Jason Cunnington and Martin Doyon), but the word I had from friends was that the technology, emergency referral, and owner-manager lectures that were presented on Saturday morning were a huge success.  I can endorse the reviews for John Nash’s lecture on the owner-manager relationship that included one of the most lucid explanations of the Mission/Vision explanation I have ever heard.

But the weekend was not all work.  The CVPM harbor cruise anchored the success of Saturday (anchored the success…oh I tell you…sometimes I just have to hug myself!) as one of the all-around best days of education and fun I have ever had at one of these events.  Basically the recipe they used for this event was this:  Place 40 + CVPM managers on a boat, add a heaping round of applause for those of our colleagues new to the CVPM ranks, a misty-eyed pinning ceremony, a lip smacking buffet and you have a winner!  Oh, I almost forgot.  Right after the pinning ceremony, stir in 6 cases of wine, a few cases of beer…that step, while not critical, gives the whole night a flavor you don’t want to forget.  Just ask my new friends I made that night Shelby Johnson, Janet Stewart and Sharon Savage (PS, Janet… as we agreed, mums the word on the details of the dancing and that unfortunate stumble overboard, but I wanted to let you know that I DID find your one shoe and your glasses!  I’m Fed-Exing them to you this AM. Kisses!).  Thanks too to my dear friend Andrew Pahl for taking such delightful shots of the entire event and graciously accepting my $150 dollar donation in lieu of the hassle of emailing them to my employer. Andy, you’re a peach.

But more than anything the VHMA delivered another wallop of camaraderie and professional support…or maybe a better way to put it: it was just friggin fun!  These conferences are filled with smart…I mean smart people; people that greet you and smile, that invite you to sit with them and chat, that introduce themselves over coffee or at a round table discussion, that ask you to come along with them for a walk around beautiful Vancouver, that pull you aside and ask for your advice, that reunite with you after another year of our crazy jobs and hectic schedules, and reaffirm their admiration and happiness to see you.  That’s worth taking time to think about as you look out the airport windows on the way home.  That’s worth putting on your facebook page or blog.  Just ask one of my closest friends in the group, Brian Tassava.  

For more on Dash's doings, click here.

Recognition

On a recent flight to Ohio for some consulting work, I passed an airline employee framed in balloons and wearing a paper Mache hat.  He was behind a desk helping a client.  A sign on the front of his generic workstation was scripted in highlighter and Sharpie.  It read, “Happy Birthday!”

Of the millions of dollars worth of installations they had at that terminal:  a moving sidewalk and lightshow, large hanging mobile sculptures, a choreographed water fountain; it was this ten cent investment in a fellow co-worker that stood out, grabbed the attention of those in line, and plastered a smile on everyone’s face.   When I approached him for a picture, I was told that it was the birthday of one of the customers in line as well.  So the two of them both crammed into the photo.  All the passengers in line were laughing, gawking and commenting.  An otherwise stressful, utilitarian experience was turned into something neighborly.

I think you know where I’m going with this.  Customers want a relationship with their vendors, not lip service of one.  A luxurious environment is lost without a spark of genuine co-admiration and concern not just for the client, but between team members as well.  The people in line weren't responding to the investment the airline had made in its facility, they were responding to a few worker's admiration for their fellow co-worker.  Great service is not just stepping and fetching or bowling the client over with 'things'; it’s an extension of help from people who have an excess of the very same respect and admiration they are reaching out to the client with.

Check out the AAHA recommendations for a hospital-wide communication policy as a starting point for a discussion how you can improve the way you and your team members interact.  You can also reach out to Brenda Tassava for her practice's Contract of Mutual Respect.  Getting any team to set the world on fire is impossible without kindling a little spark in each of them first.