Can you spare some change?

Over the holidays we ventured across the frozen tundra of Iowa and into Nebraska where we spent a week with family and old friends.  I have to admit that it did not go as expected.

My older children have changed quite a bit, each with new problems, new interests and even new hair styles. While I had fantasized of a week that was filled with traditions and family closeness, the first four days was spent re-introducing ourselves to each other, trying to see how we all fit again!

Change.  I don’t like it.

During the visit I had to go visit an old friend, which in itself was not unusual, but this time it was at her grave.  She passed away just days before I arrived.

Change. I don’t like it.

Over the course of the visit, we tried to rekindle traditions and rituals that had been a part of our family Christmas’ for over 20 years, but alas, there was little this trip that resembled the Christmas’ of old and I was left wondering if the trip would be made again next year.

Change. I don’t like it.

During the last 6 weeks, amidst the holiday bustle and travel and stress, I have met with Wayne Mueller who graciously agreed to take over leadership of our Chasing4Life Disaster Response Team just 6 months ago. The decision was made over the holiday period to shut down the team permanently and disband the team due to lack of involvement, internal issues and lack of real leadership.

Change. I don’t like it, but I am starting to understand it.

The journey of my life has not been an easy one, but I have to admit that despite the difficulties, I have made some positive and very noticeable changes in my life and within my organization.  The recent changes such as shutting down Chasing4Life and recreating the organization as C4L & Associates was emotionally and mentally breaking me, but the recent successes have begun to outweigh the pain and anguish.

I also know there is more to do. In business and in my personal life.

Change is not easy and when you allow it or work hard at making changes it can get depressing when the results do not present themselves as hoped for. It is hard to remember that change is not a single event but a process with no real stopping point so you have to commit or surrender yourself to the process to avoid insanity.

Change is about being resolved to the fact that you are no longer in control.  Ahhh… resolutions…Happy New Year. We say that quite a bit this season don’t we?  Do we ever really WANT it? Do we ever think of the implications of what would happen if it really was a NEW year and not just a copy of the last? A NEW year could bring different friends and the end of old relationships!  A truly NEW year could bring a different company model or new policies!  It could bring more stress or less! A real NEW year would be different!

Change. Maybe we need a NEW year.

We could learn quite a bit from country line dancing when we try to understand how change works.  There is a popular country line dance song that speaks of taking one step forward and two steps back. 

Mathematically this seems ludicrous and futile, but somehow, magically, if you just do the steps and hold onto your partner, you end up making it around the room…

Research has found that change rarely occurs in a straightforward, linear sequence, and when people falter, they usually don't fall all the way back to where they first began the journey. In fact, if viewed and used correctly, the missteps can serve as learning opportunities, helping you become better prepared for the next leg of the trip.

I guess that is where I have been. Learning.

According to Psychology Today, there are five stages of change.  Although several models of change have been developed and researched, one of the most referenced models is the transtheoretical model (TTM) developed by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente. The model presupposes that individuals who are trying to make changes are in one of the five stages of change at any given point in the process. The model proposes that each stage prepares the person for the following stage and that different strategies are needed at different stages to succeed.

Here are those stages of change:

Precontemplation.: In the precontemplation stage, individuals aren't yet consciously aware that change is necessary or desired. This may be because prior attempts to change failed or it may be due to lack of insight or awareness of a problem. In order to move past this stage, individuals must somehow become aware that there is a problem and that change is required to accomplish a goal or aspiration. I have learned a lot about this stage as I have spent time at Transformations Treatment Center this last year and with the folks at 1^st Responder Treatment.

Contemplation: In this stage, there is some awareness that change is needed or wanted, but there is no commitment yet to actually change. This is where the resolution comes in… REAL resolutions are hard to come by.

These individuals are "on the fence." They recognize that their unhealthy behavior or current situation is causing unwanted consequences, but they are weighing whether changing will be worth it. Aside from the personal things that I worked on this year, this stage was perhaps the biggest “hump” I had to get over with Chasing4Life and how the company was running. Shouldn’t I just let it all ride and hope next year would be different? Maybe the volunteers would actually volunteer next month and I could put off a decision! This was how I argued with myself for countless hours.

Some people remain in the contemplation stage forever, never actually making a commitment to do something differently. For others, the process takes a few days or a few weeks. But regardless of how long it takes, the positive aspect of being in this stage is that at least there is an openness to hearing and learning about the unhealthy or unwanted behavior, which over time may create the push needed to get to the next stage of change.  Thank God I had people that spoke to me about my personal life and my business life during this stage.

Preparation: This is the stage where individuals start making plans to change. They may start to do research on what they need to do to be successful in their attempt to change and they may take small steps toward action. 

For example, someone with an anger control problem may find a therapist to learn strategies to better control her emotions and actions; someone who wants to lose weight may join a gym.  In the case of the disaster response team, I began to research other teams and organizations that had been successful

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If you're a workaholic and your plan is to spend more time away from the office doing something you enjoy, don't make a plan that include spending ten hours a week on "me time." Start off with something more realistic, like 15 or 30 minutes a day. Once you see that you can accomplish this, you can then extend the time if you'd like.  If you think this cannot work for you, remember that just last week I took a week off from work… the first time in 11 years I have taken a week off from work.

Action: At this stage, you put your plan into action. You begin to make the changes you desire and you try to cope with the challenges that come with making those changes.  To stay successful, you'll need strategies to maintain the change.

Maintenance: When you reach the six month mark and your change or new behavior remains stable and consistent, you're into the Maintenance stage. The work now is focused on enjoying the new change so you can truly begin to enjoy the NEW year, the NEW you, your NEW business…

Here is what I have learned…

Change is not a bad thing and it can open up new possibilities. Eleanor Roosevelt once said you should do something each day that scares the hell out of you, so why not try to change something or try to accept a change you have been fighting?

This week, as everyone once again talks about resolutions, try to look at being in control of not being in control. Resolve to allow or make changes you know have been needed for some time.  Change is most effective when it is self-motivated.  For two years I was advised by others to shut down the disaster response team and I did not want to listen to that advice!  The moment I advised MYSELF, the change began…

Change will be successful when it is rooted in positive thinking, so as you make your resolutions, be positive and go into it knowing that it will be a ridiculous country line dance for a while but that eventually you will make it around the room.

Change cannot be effective without help, so hold onto your dance partner.

Change will be more effective when you are goal oriented so write it all down and share it with a supporter. This was a HUGE help for me as I spoke to Wayne.

Change is hard. But people tackle hard projects all the time. It can happen. You just need patience, persistence, and a strong commitment to improve your life by making changes for the better.

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. (Life Coach & Author, Alan Cohen)

Can you be a Christmas Angel?

The first week of December has come to an end and as we sit on a Saturday night watching what is only the beginning of the Christmas movies, mother nature is already beginning to create havoc around the country. 

As I sit and write this, much of the United States is already in the grip of a horrendous cold with ice and snow making headline news.  If Jack Frost has not yet showed up in your town, it appears that he will before the end of next week.

Ice and winter weather cover an area from Texas to the Rockies already and large snowflakes are falling in Nebraska as I await their arrival here in Iowa later this evening… at least 4 inches of them…

Of course we cannot forget that California and Oregon already had their share of snow this week, and winter storm warnings are in effect for parts of California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado with winter storm advisories were posted for  Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona. As well as the Midwest and Plains States region.

Record low temperatures are expected in many locations across California and into the Rockies and Plains this weekend, with North Dakota already hitting its record low of minus 24 degrees. Las Vegas was expecting temperatures near 27!

Early Sunday we will begin to see large amounts of snowfall which will continue to cancel early holiday events, shutting down schools and even church services that are already being cancelled in Missouri!

The entire country will see below average temperatures by next week, according to the Weather Channel. 

Baltimore and Philadelphia could also see a few inches of snow, followed by freezing rain and sleet beginning Sunday. By Monday, the wintry mess will extend as far as New York, parts of Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maine, forecasters said.

In Virginia, state Emergency Management spokeswoman Laura Southard said the storm had the potential to be a "historic ice event." 

And so the week ends with at least 12 dead, hundreds of thousands without power and towns in the Midwest still crawling out from under tornado debris that is now being frozen to the ground.

Yes, the first week of December has chosen to show us her hand… extreme as the new normal. Get used to it, the fun has only just begun, and so we throw out this challenge:

As you venture onto icy roads in the bitter cold to get that Christmas shopping done, would you consider changing that gift list?  Each year we ask and each year it seems like so many ignore the warnings…

Do you know someone without a weather radio? Perhaps a family that would have a disaster kit but cannot afford one? Maybe there is someone you know that travels a bit but has no car kit in their trunk?  Sometimes people need a little help, and we know our readers understand disaster readiness so we are asking you, our readers, to become Christmas Angels.

Help those that you know do what they won’t do for themselves before the weather catches them ill-prepared.

Give the gift of tomorrow by helping them get ready today.

Visit our partner, Emergency Supply Solutions at www.emergencysupplysolutions.com for gift ideas and when you order, use promo code “Saxby”

Comfortable vs Secure: Which would YOU choose?

Since September 11^th, security concerns for healthcare institutions have become a bigger and bigger challenge. Unlike an airport or nuclear facility, hospitals do not have the freedom to just increase security due to raised threat levels because marketing is more difficult for a hospital.   

What I mean is this: there needs to be a certain confidence in the hospital on the part of the patient and a high level of security can damage that confidence level.  After all, if you have two hospitals in your city, one in a bad section of town where police officers roam the E.R. driveway and the other is a pristine community hospital settled in a higher end community near the mall, which facility do YOU drive to at 3 am?

Another challenge on the part of hospitals is the socio-environmental change that established health care facilities face as the population landscape evolves.  Language barriers, neighborhood decline, increased crime rates in older communities, over-crowded emergency rooms due to population growth and even economics all pose new threat challenges that are almost too much for a hospital to address while trying to maintain a high level of care.

According to studies, the Emergency Room is the most vulnerable area of a hospital. Let’s face it: at 3 a.m. in Triage Room 1 we have a possible overdose patient with his fiancée who is higher than a kite. In the waiting room is a growing crowd of those who were at the same party. In Triage Room 2 we have the 12 year old boy with an appendix issue, but he is accompanied by his divorced parents who cannot keep from yelling threats at each other.  Of course in Triage Room 3 Grandpa just passed away and the 8 family members have now gone bezerk… you see the problem.

 Life in an E.R. can be crazy on a normal night so try to imagine a flu outbreak, one or two patients in police custody and perhaps some severe weather tossed in.

Priority one must be the patient care, but quickly following this must be the safety of the staff. 

 

In July 2009, the Emergency Nurses Association released some scary findings claiming that more than half of emergency nurses polled had been physically assaulted on the job and 25% had been victims of violence more than 20 times in the past 3 years!

A group of hospital administrators told pollsters in a recent survey by AlliedBarton Security Services that they feel their facilities are more vulnerable today than in past years, but still worry about security measures damaging their reputation and patient confidence.

According to these studies, hospital administrators are concerned about projecting a negative image, but I want to ask the question, AT WHAT COST?

I am the first to be irritated at the airport when I am running late and behind some idiot with three carry-ons loaded with nail clippers and large shampoo bottles, but as I sit on the plane itself and look over the barb-wired runways, I am reminded of the day that changed everything and I am glad TSA tore that man’s bags apart.

Touring public schools, I have to admit I feel better being in a building that has held my drivers license at the front desk. I feel safer at an elementary school than I do at WalMart, that’s for sure.

Would I mind increased and more visible security at a hospital? Absolutely not. Why? Because we live in a changing environment where climate change no longer refers to just meteorological phenomenon but to the change in our social structures, economics and politics one would be a fool to ignore that we are living in a new and dangerous time.

So, what has me on this subject?

Last night I drove my wife to the local hospital with labor pains apparently 20 minutes apart.  Arriving at the hospital, we noticed immediately that the emergency room had approximately 20 people milling about in it.  For a hospital this size, this was a decent crowd for 9:30 on a Saturday night. 

The hospital "closes" at 8:00 p.m.

As we entered, there did not seem to be any crucial  issues; most of those in the waiting room were sniffling, sneezing or holding their stomachs… a flu night.

As we approached the desk, the woman at the desk (the only employee visible in the room) quickly guessed why we had come.

“In labor?”

We informed her that we need to go to the Birthing Center and she quickly called upstairs to let them know their night was not going to be a quiet one. Once done notifying the folks upstairs, she proceeded to check us in. Drivers Licenses, emergency phone contacts, birth dates, the works.  She then instructed us to go to the Security Desk to be escorted upstairs, but the desk, which was 20 feet away, was empty.

The perplexed woman said she had no idea where the security guard was and, with a remote control, buzzed us through the glass double doors…

With no directions and new signage not completely installed due to the recent remodeling of the hospital, we were quickly lost in the maze of hallways. After 5 minutes we had encountered not one employee, custodian or nurse. It seemed the more we walked, the more lost we got. Soon, we were in a hallway with little lighting but we found an open door, a desk and a phone.

Picking up the receiver, I dialed “0”. The switchboard operator laughed when I told her I was lost and calling from inside the hospital. I asked for someone to come and get us, but the operator just instructed us to find and elevator and go the next floor.

I will make this story a lot shorter than it really is…

We ran into a nurse who spoke in broken English that gave us access to a back elevator but claimed she did not know how to get to the Birthing Center from our location.

We walked through the hospital after hours for another 20 minutes. We walked through the Nuclear Medicine Department, through the Outpatient Surgery wing, in and out of offices, explored two floors of hallways and rooms before we jumped on another elevator and took it to the parking lot.

All concern of labor pains and the impending birth had left us; we wanted to see just how bad this really was…

That was 9:30 last night. As of 4:00 p.m. today, nobody from the hospital has contacted us to find us. After 18 hours, that hospital’s records show us checked in and on our way upstairs.  The birthing center never called to see why we did not make it, the Emergency Room never called to see where we were, and we left though an unmarked door after passing through fire doors marked “Locked after Hours”.

In case you are wondering, we went to a different hospital.

How confident would you be in taking your child to that hospital in the future knowing that their security was so poorly managed?  With this as the option, wouldn’t you rather have a metal detector and RFID system in place when you entered a hospital?  At what point are we going to start looking at our present day world and start making changes across the board even if they make us uncomfortable?

In these studies I have read, hospital agreed that one of the most important characteristics of a good security program is that the security officers feel responsible for customer service and patient satisfaction. As it turns out, there are many hospitals that struggle with finding the balance between gently escorting patients and beating down a shooter in a security guard, so the choice is more often to find the gentle, low-key approach as the only option.

A great marketing choice…but what if last night my wife and I had actually been there for terroristic purposes?  What if we had been looking to kidnap a patient, steal equipment or leave an incendiary device?  We certainly would have had the time!  In fact, according to hospital records, we are still in there!

There is a lesson to be learned here, and I am afraid it goes much further than hospitals.  Perhaps we should look at the danger of exceptions…

Maybe we were allowed in only because the guard was in the restroom. Maybe we were buzzed in because the E.R. Admitting nurse was overwhelmed.  Maybe we gained access because we look like a “nice couple”.

Maybe none of those reasons would explain away a shooting or a bombing incident during an investigation nor would it return lost lives.

Maybe we should talk about the high school in Central Illinois that recently battled the heat wave and high temps in classrooms by propping their entry doors open throwing their security protocols out the window?  Maybe we should look at the increased number of church shootings and lack of trainings amongst faith-based entities…

Maybe we should just start re-thinking all of it, and then perhaps we should be a bit more willing to give up “comfortable” for “safer”.

Just something to start you all thinking… I’ll let you all know if the hospital ever starts looking for us.