Critics
Have you ever seen the animated film Ratatouille… it’s a clever film about humans, the restaurant industry and a little Rat. Debbie Basile in our AP department and I occasionally speak about the movie as being one of our favorites. In building up to the finale, there is a scene where the local ‘Critic’ comes to eat a meal and Demands to be impressed. He ASKs for “A little Perspective!” What follows is a great scene where the critic is impressed and ultimately reflects on his limitations in asking much of others yet not risking anything of himself in serving others…
I thought about this a bit this week. For some of us, the pressures of getting it “ALL” done right the first time seems so easy to consultants, facility leaders, and others who are afforded the time to criticize our work yet doing the work and doing it well and with passion is not always easy. Recently I was speaking to a consultant who was sharing with me some issues she found when visiting another Skilled Nursing Facility in the area… As a consultant, she and her team discovered some areas that could be improved. The message was here is a problem and it needs to be fixed. As a result, there was heightened pressure of the SNF owners, consultants down to direct pressures on the healthcare team… to correct X, Y, and Z issues and do it yesterday!
What caught my attention was during this process, speaking to the consultant it was revealed that other organizations are “much worse than the organization in question, in fact, “X” facility has some of the best we’ve seen” yet the message to the facilities, and filtered down to the team was here is a problem and fix it yesterday!
I believe too often we focus our energy on the 2% of issues and forget to appreciate the 98% of the efforts that we do daily to make a positive difference.