Management Lessons

As CCHIPs assessed health centers for expansion, we visited nine of eleven health centers. Our visit to Murandi was eye opening. Murandi has no NGO support and yet it is THE model health center.

As the Titulaire of Murandi tells it, two years ago he sat the staff down and they set a goal: to be the best health center in Musanze District. They organized a PBF committee to implement improvements to get a higher score on the Performance Based Funding (PBF) evaluation. Other committees regularly meet to coordinate other improvements. The staff even decided to forego some of their personal PBF bonuses to use the money to improve the health center.

Essentially, Murandi has a functional management structure. The structure allows it to identify problems and implement improvements.

Zack and Jeanne d’Arc decided it would be a good idea to get the Shingiro staff together with the Murandi staff. We wanted to see if some of the spark at Murandi might rub off on Shingiro.

So on a Thursday afternoon we picked up ten members of the Shingiro staff. We brought key personnel – the Titulaire, the Adjunct Titulaire the Accountant, the Data Manager, the Cashier, the Mutuelle Accountant – all of the key management people that we needed to take more initiative.

The drive to Murandi is gorgeous, driving up and up through the hills.

On the ride, Zack talked a lot about how great it would be for the Shingiro staff to see the Murandi staff at work, “We need to implement improvements at Shingiro based on the Murandi model as quick as possible.”

After introductions, the staffs paired with their counterparts. I followed Marie Josee, the Shingiro Accountant, and Desiree, the Murandi Accountant. Desiree showed Marie Josee how he calculates the daily balance in his computer, how he checks it with the Mutuelle office, and how he manages the work of the Cashier. It was a really impressive system: efficient and accurate. The staff had clearly spent a lot of time and effort thinking about and implementing the best way to do the accounting.

I thought about the importance of the visit: If we could show the Shingiro staff the benefits of how Murandi functions, we might convince them to adopt the same management systems.

Instead of spending months making iterative improvements, we found a model that works now. If Shingiro could implement it quickly, it might save a lot of time: probably the most effective way to turn a weakness into a strength is to identify the strongest performer and copy what they do.

There is a strong counterargument to this position, which advocates fixing a recognized gap in performance by improving slowly in steps that lead to the ultimate goal.

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I wrote the rough version of the above right after the trip to Murandi, in early October. I didn’t post it or expand on it at the time. I tried. But I felt like there wasn’t enough to say. We didn’t know what the true result of the trip would be. I didn’t know which side of the debate to take: the radical or the iterative approach to developing management systems.

At the time, the choice seemed binary – either the management team could identify areas for improvement and take slow and steady steps toward improvement or it could implement radical improvements based on a successful outside model.

After working with the Shingiro management team for several months, I’ve come to realize that the choice is not binary. The choice is not even particularly important. What is important is the capacity to recognize and implement the appropriate approach depending on the needs of the moment.

Three months after the visit to Murandi, Shingiro does not have the Murandi-type management systems in place: the accounting is still a bit of a mess, there is no PBF review committee, the Pharmacy management isn’t as good as it should be. Zack’s goal to quickly put the Murandi systems in place before the Shingiro staff forgot them could not have been done under the circumstances. At the time of the Murandi visit, Shingiro did not have a management structure that was capable of implementing much of anything.

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The CCHIPs approach is to work closely with health center staff to help them develop their own solutions to problems. In this way, solutions will be thoroughly understood by those applying them and the staff will feel a sense of ownership and control over how the health center operates.

At the beginning of the project, both Zack and I made the mistake of trying to create ‘tools’ for the health center staff that are extremely user-friendly. For example, Zack developed an Excel accounting workbook. I developed a database for health data – just put the data in here and presto!, all set.

Both of these tools failed. Zack and I assumed that by locking formulas and making it very clear where to input the figures, the Shingiro staff couldn’t mess up our perfect workbooks.

But, of course, they could and they did.

Even more importantly, the Accountant didn’t understand how the income and expenses link together to create and follow a budget and the Data Manager couldn’t interpret the output of the health database. Without the understanding of why the tool was useful, neither tool had much value.

We decided we needed to give the staff a more comprehensive understanding of the logic underlying the tools, so that, if they chose to do so, they could create the tools themselves.

What we realized is that to impart real and lasting change, you need to help a manager develop the capacity to ask ‘why?’ Our managers must have a comprehensive understanding of the systems that they are managing. Without a comprehensive understanding of how processes fit into the wider scope of health center operations, the health center cannot respond to change and its managers cannot recognize areas for improvement.

There are mechanisms out there, like surveys of health centers that help managers to identify areas for improvement at the health center level. These tools can be useful. For example, we were excited to visit Murandi because they do extremely well on the surveys. But the surveys rely on outsiders to identify areas for improvement. Outside standards cannot be as effective as expert managers that are deeply engaged with their own health center operations.

As we continued to work at Shingiro, we came upon a vital insight:

Empowered managers ask questions. These questions lead to an understanding of why things are the way that they are. On the basis of that understanding, managers can proactively develop plans to optimize operations.

At the time of the Murandi visit, there was no structure to facilitate the process of questioning to understanding to action. Shingiro needed a management structure to facilitate the implementation of such a decision.

A strong management team can identify areas for improvement and address them through iterative solutions OR by importing a system from outside. The team can mix and match strategies because they have the capacity to understand problems and develop the right solution.

Murandi showed us that our efforts are possible. Murandi proves, beyond a doubt, that Rwandans can manage themselves, that our efforts are not in vain. Not that we doubted that. But it was powerful for the Shingiro staff to see it.

In response to this problem, Zack has worked very hard to develop and implement a new management structure at Shingiro.

Under the old system, every employee directly reported to the Titulaire. When CCHIPs arrived at Shingiro health center, there were only about 10 nurses. However, as the staff has grown to about 20 nurses, this arrangement has become completely ridiculous.

Additionally, no one was responsible for the management of any particular Specialty. Technically the Titulaire was responsible for ensuring the Pharmacy was fully stocked, that the vaccine cold-chain was maintained, that Wound Dressing had gauze, that HIV/AIDS had retroviral drugs, and so on. In reality, this meant that in some Specialties individual nurses took responsibility and in other Specialties there was chaos. There was no way to ensure that equipment was not missing, that the files were not out of order, and so on.

Inevitably, such as system only had enough capacity to ensure the health center was running OK. The Titulaire would have needed heroic personal strength and no need for sleep to implement and monitor any changes.

So it’s no surprise that the Titulaire is a huge fan of the new management structure.The new structure is not particularly innovative or complex. It doesn’t need to be – it just needs to work. There are two major components of the new system:

1. There is now a level of management between the Titulaire and each Specialty. Four nurses serve as Service Managers who report to the Titulaire. Each Service Manager is responsible for their Service – Curative, Preventative, Promotional, and Administrative.
2. Each Specialty has a Specialty Responsible - one nurse accountable for the operation and improvement of each Specialty. The Service Responsibles report to the Service Managers.

During the orientation of the new managers, Damascene, the new Curative Service Manager, said, “Woah, I’m responsible for so many people now – in Reception, Consultation, Wound Dressing, Pharmacy, and the Laboratory.”

To which Felicien, the Titulaire, replied, “Yeah, imagine how I felt directly managing all of those Specialties and all of the others.”

At the Specialty level, the Specialty Responsibles are now motivated to improve their Specialties. The Responsibles know that they have the support of the Service Managers to implement lasting improvements. And when the Service Manager needs feedback from the Specialty level, the Responsibles can provide upward perspective.

This structure gives the Titulaire and Service Managers the time and space needed to set direction. It increases the capacity of the management structure because the Titulaire is no longer solely responsible for identification, implementation, and monitoring.

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Over the last two months since the new structure was put in place, it has been amazing to see how quickly the health center has begun to do things for itself. The new management system created the institutional capacity to be proactive.

The Titulaire and the Service Managers meet regularly, without CCHIPs’ presence. They have been able to create

• Based on their experience as nurses, the Service Managers identified the problem of nurses sleeping on night guard duty. The Titulaire, Felicien, and the Curative Service Manager, Damascene, coordinated the staff to relocate the Child Consultation room and use the old Child Consultation room as a Night Guard room. This lets the night guard nurses sleep when there are no patients but they are close to where patients arrive for help.
• The Service Managers noticed that the hand-washing facilities were insufficient. Based on the system developed at Murandi, Felicien and the Service Managers designed and oversaw the construction of new hand-washing points at Shingiro.
• I have worked with the new Preventative Services Manager, Aggripine, to improve the filing and patient follow up systems in Preventative Services. We collaborated with her and the Family Planning Specialty Responsible to reorganize the filing system in Family Planning. Now Aggripine will be able to oversee the implementation of similar systems in Antenatal Counseling, Vaccination, and HIV/AIDS.

The new management structure allows the health center to identify problems, to understand why the problems exist, and to develop and implement solutions. Whether those solutions are big changes or small ones, developed at Shingiro or elsewhere, the important thing is that those solutions will be implemented successfully.