chris lee

I hate air hand dryers. Can’t stand them. Never could.

Ran into this one in the restroom at Lululemon. While they bug me, this one was so powerful and did the job so well that I couldn’t help but like it. The stream of air was about 5 times as powerful as a typical one. It was also quite a bit warmer. Dried my hands lickety split. This was the best air hand dryer I’d ever seen other than one in the Melbourne, Australia airport.  I think that was called the Air Blade or something and it ruled as well.

Anyway, just goes to show you that if something is good enough, it will impress no matter what your preconceptions are. Good is good.

I also love the “Feel the Power” blurb near the jet. When you’re good enough, no problem giving people a little extra impetus to check you out.

Moral: if you hate air dryers like I do and you come across the XLERATOR, give it a shot!

I just watched the finale of Survivor Samoa. I’m not necessarily a big fan of Survivor (it’s interesting) but I wanted to catch at least a bit of it because one of my great friends is from Samoa. Didn’t really pan out though as the beach I saw didn’t look very different from many of the others I’ve visited.

So to the point… This guy Russell didn’t win. I guess he engineered everything and even Jeff Probst, the host, called him the best ever player of Survivor.

He’s a classic example of failing to follow one of my great rules of life: “At the very least, don’t F It Up”.

I’ve talked about this before but the basic message is:  don’t do anything stupid. I see people everywhere achieving financial and career success just by doing this. I have also seen so many people who have not been able to do this. They have not been able to stay out of their own way.

You don’t have to be great or do great things to be successful in corporate America. Just don’t F it up. Be a zero sum guy. Don’t do anything to shoot yourself in your own foot.

(Note: Of course you’re not going to do anything amazing or change the world with this. I’m definitely not advocating it as a life strategy. I’m just saying at the very, very least, don’t F it up.)

Well, this guy Russell did. He may have been a great player of the game but he was a total arrogant ass. He brought 2 yes-people along with him to the final 3 but he couldn’t stop talking about how brilliant he was and how he was going to win and he deserved it.  The only reason he lost was because people were so turned off by his arrogance that they gave it to the girl who did nothing but ride his coattails – primarily because she was less abhorrent (I’m not sure if that word exactly works but I’m going with it). If he’d just have faked a little more  nice along the way, he’d have been a million dollars richer.

So basically why did Russell have to be an arrogant jackass? What did he gain from it? I say nothing. Way to do all the work, have it in your hands and F it up yourself…

I also love that one he realized he didn’t win, he went out and started a site whining over it – http://www.russellgotscrewed.com/.

Take responsibility for it. Your behavior and game play brought about the end result. You F’ed it up.

image from flickr by zaser

What are the 4 P’s? Who cares.

I’ll tell you just so it doesn’t get in the way.

• Pain
• Potty
• Position
• Pause

Ok, someone’s slogan to break it down to the lowest common denominator. This is basically a motto the hospital is pushing to help patient satisfaction scores. I’m told this by multiple staff members throughout my stay.

This also makes perfect sense because I used to manage support services in hospitals for 10 years.

So basically I’m sure it goes like this.

• Patient satisfaction scores are huge in getting  hospitals rated & such.
• So let’s define a satisfaction survey we can ensure we rate great on. We’ll talk about the 4 P’s.
• Push information on these 4 Ps so we’ll rate great when the patients take the survey since everybody covered them.
• Whew hoo. All is wonderful.

First of all this is so lame. The staff even knows it’s lame and makes fun of it to the patients, building some rapport so the patients will score them well. This might have worked over the past 10 years but it ain’t going to work much longer.

With the new marketing/social media, things are changing, right? Everybody has a voice. Everybody can blog, tweet, Yelp, whatever… You find out what they really think. It’s transparent. Does your hospital suck or does it not suck? Do people care or do they not care. Make your hospital not suck. Hire people that care.

I had so many different experiences that really went into what I truly thought.

Some very cool staff. Some lame.

• Threw me into a dirty room. Just pulled the bed out.
• Rookie nurse trying to stick me over & over & over & giving up. Uh, maybe train folks a little better first.
• Some very personable nurses really made me feel at home.
• My own doc had great bedside manner. Shared information, showed concern.
• The ER doc seeemed vacant & to just so “ok whatever she said” regarding what my doc had said. So what good was he there?
• TV didn’t work.
• Gurney I sat on for hours killed my ass.
• Took me hours to get put in a room.
• Transport guy that took me to my room was super cool & engaging.
• Room was pretty ghetto regarding paint & such.
• Bed was quite comfortable.
• Temperature was artic.
• Every procedure, I would sit on my gurney in the hall forever (along with a host of other folks).
• Phlebotomist who did my last stick was a superstar – barely felt it.
• Food was terrible but not bad beyond expectation.

If you really want to achieve patient satisfaction, forget the damn 4 P’s. Satisfy the patient. Look at the experiences they have and affect those.

For instance, hire some additional transporters. For far less than you will spend on your programs, you’ll eliminate people sitting in your halls forever fuming. That would be huge. Then take your superstar phlebotomists and have them do some training regularly with the new nurses (and old nurses).

These are easy tangible things that they could do for a minimal expense. Others would be much harder (hiring the right people, painting all patient rooms). But if you do the main things right. People won’t care about alot of the other crap.

The 4 P’s does absolutely nothing to help my satisfaction.