Lawrence Marsco, Director of Inpatient Nursing at Huntsman Cancer Hospital, shares this candid reflection about his tumultuous journey in health care. Today, he relies on shared governance, transparency and shared decision making to lead others through their journey.

In addition to his day job as Director of ENT Clinics, Kirk Hughs orients all new specialty clinic and endoscopy employees to the Exceptional Patient Experience. His goal is to engage new team members about how they can create exceptional experiences for their patients.

Not even the most gifted leader can lead change alone. No one person can come up with the strategy, communicate across the organization, eliminate all the barriers, and manage dozens of change initiatives. In order for transformation to succeed, you need a guiding coalition.

Real teams are the antidote to the chaos of modern medicine. “Real teams know each other, feel loyalty to one another, trust one another, and would not want to disappoint one another” (Tom Lee, NEJM Catalyst 2016). Practicing are conversations between real team members about why the work matters. Our goal is to preserve and share the stories of the teams at University of Utah Healthcare.

What makes an expert? Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell gave 10,000 hours as a threshold for expertise. While our University Hospital Customer Service Team isn’t at 10,000 hours, they addressed nearly 2,000 patient concerns this past year. When asked how they do it, Program Assistant Michael Bown offers these top five tools to successfully navigate a phone complaint.

Practicing are recorded conversations with a colleague that are shared with the organization. They are conversations between real team members about why the work matters.