Student Blog - Medical Transport Leadership Institute 2005

Interesting Coincidence...

2005-05-01T20:02:00.000-05:00

I posted a couple of days ago about the book Denise Landis recommended, Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. Just got the Amazon confirmation that mine copy is on its way, but when browsing around about the book I noticed one of the authors, Karl E. Weick, is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Wonder if he and Denise are acquainted. Or even better, if Denise and/or Survival Flight factored into the research…

I’ll have to check that out… in any case, it would be very cool to have the guy that wrote a book applicable to your work right at your own sponsoring institution. For me, that would make for some very interesting lunch meetings…

Here’s a brief profile on Dr. Weick. I also think its interesting that Tom Peters, one of the business gurus/authors I track, read and respect, listed Weick’s book here on his “what I’m currently reading” list. If you’re interested, Tom Peters maintains a blog called “Dispatches from the New World of Work”, which I always find interesting (and ocassionally comment on, like here about Worthwhile Magazine (which besides print has has a website and a blog), or here on business topics).

I’ve started a blog scan on Weick courtesy of Technorati, one of the (free!) environmental scanning services I use extensively. If you click on or point your newsreader to http://www.technorati.com/watchlists/rss.html?wid=68685 you’ll get updates on entries on other blogs that reference Weick. From the little I’ve read, other blog writers are finding his work valuable… I’m looking forward to reading the book. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to meet Dr. Weick on a future trip to Survival Flight.

If you’re interested in or reading the book and want to hash it over, leave a comment or e-mail me at info [at] heligistix [dot] com. I’d love to know what you’re thinking…

I Lost My Shirt...

2005-05-01T18:10:00.000-05:00

No, not in Poker. I mean literally.

After we finished up at Graduation on Thursday night, everyone retired to The Library for libation and lively discussion, not to mention some crazy dancing (particularly on Tim Pickering’s part, but I’m not going to mention that).

I set a cigar and a beautiful XL navy [program not named] polo shirt I’d received as a gift on the bench in front of the Library entrance, which is where they disappeared from. I’m sure you figured they were either lonely, lost or abandoned, but they weren’t. I know where the cigar went, and when asked about the shirt, that culprit opined “its on its way to Texas with the blonde flight nurse”.

Unfortunately, “blonde flight nurse from Texas” is not definitive at MTLI. Nor would I know how to reach said nurse. I do, however, long for the return of the shirt to its rightful owner. Or, if you’re reading and need it worse than me, keep it. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone a piece of clothing they really needed.

In case I’ve guilted you into giving up the shirt, e-mail me at info [at] heligistix [dot] com, or ship it with return mailing info to:

Chris Church
8949 SE Bridge Road
PMB 281
Hobe Sound, Florida 33455

In appreciation, I’ll gladly reciprocate by sending two lovely program T-Shirts of your preferred size.

As an alternative, if you’re holding the shirt hostage (preferably not in Las Vegas), send some photos and I’ll post them here…

More Photos...

2005-05-01T17:28:00.000-05:00

I got a note asking about the photos from the golf outing. I posted on this before, but to go directly to the little photo gallery, go to http://www.heligistix.com and click the “MTLI Photos 2005” link. That will take you to a photo gallery you can browse. Click on any of the little pictures and it will expand into a bigger picture. If you see one you want the high-resolution (i.e. printable) version of, e-mail me at info [at] heligistix [dot] com.

Enjoy!

Home Sweet Home...

2005-04-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

Uneventful trip back to West Palm Beach (unlike the flight up, where one of the flight attendants nearly had to flatten some moron passenger who didn’t get what “the flight attendants are all sitting down because of the horrendous turbulence, so you have to sit down, too” meant). Taking the scenic route home so I can catch a glimpse of what Florida is to me, like the Jupiter Inlet on a bright, sunny day:

Jupiter Lighthouse and Inlet – Jupiter, Florida

The camera doesn’t really do it justice; bright blue sky, blue-green water and boats everywhere. Wish I was boating instead of driving, but hey – its hard to get to and from the airport that way!

Stopped in Jupiter at Little Mohr’s Food Shack for lunch. If you’re nearby, try it. Its a hole-in-the-wall but has the most incredible fresh seafood and a good price. Don’t go there for the atmosphere, unless early 1970s surf shack is what you’re looking for!

Hobe Sound, where I live, is a sleepy little beach town just about a 40 minute drive from PBI and only 10 minutes up the road from Jupiter. We’re two towns, really; one with about a 13,000 population on the mainland, and then one of the most expensive/exclusive communities in the US, Jupiter Island, just across the Intracoastal Waterway. It makes for an interesting mix.

Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge

If you’re driving north on US-1, Hobe Sound is easy to find; we’re the first green thing you’ll see north of the South Florida metroplex. We’ve got Jonathan Dickinson State Park, a 10,000 acre state park on the mainland side of the highway, and a the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, a US Fish and Wildlife/Department of Interior nature preserve on the Intracoastal Waterway side. Not to mention the 6 miles of preserved beaches at the north end of Jupiter Island, and our quaint little town and businesses.

Diamond Texaco at A-1–A and Bridge Road, Hobe Sound

OK, I’m officially rubbing it in now, so I’ll stop. Glad to be home. Not so glad to be going back to work, but I’m going to avoid the 400 or so e-mails in my inbox, leave the cell phone off and just relax until Monday morning hits.

Homeward Bound...

2005-04-30T07:43:00.000-05:00

However rewarding, its been a long week. Flew from West Palm to Pittsburgh on Saturday morning, rode down to Oglebay in Wheeling on Saturday afternoon, MTLI’d it up all week, then back to Pittsburgh for a meeting all day at CJ’s headquarters in West Mifflin, PA.

Its Saturday morning now, overcast and raining. The PERFECT time to fly south. US Airways is still in business this morning, so I’m headed onto the airplane.

All in all it was an awesome week. I have lots of great memories and loads of things learned – more on some of that later. If any of you have the same and want to post, either leave a comment (they’re below every posting), or e-mail me at info [at] heligistix [dot] com and I’ll send you a username and password and you can add posts like these.

Looks Like We Made It...

2005-04-28T22:28:00.000-05:00

Well, we made it.

Up at 6:15, in the room at 7:00, presented from 8:15 or so to 9:45 and WE’RE DONE!

The presentation was awesome – everyone participated in the presentation, everyone did a great job. We passed. We got great marks for presentation, preparation and research, both from the grading team (Freitas, Allenstein and Davenport) and from our peers.

Some constructive criticism from the peer evaluators related to the background of the PowerPoint slide deck (interesting – we got nearly even comments on liking or disliking the background), a few points a couple of folks didn’t understand, and one suggestion that I should have worn a tie because it was disrespectful to the board (Hey – I wore a jacket, and I actually HAD a tie on my chair, so that should count).

Its a great relief to have gone first, and to have the project over with. I certainly learned a variety of things; more on that later. Now off for a nap and to get ready to celebrate tonight!

More Prezzo Pics...

2005-04-28T10:44:00.000-05:00

Dixieland at 01:20?

2005-04-28T00:22:00.000-05:00

Dixieland Jazz at 1:20 am is JUST WRONG. Especially when the resort Muzak or whatever it is is stuck on the same song. For 40 minutes. And then you can’t get it out of your head.

Slinking off to Bed...

2005-04-28T00:13:00.000-05:00

Well, there it is… proof that our Project is about ready for presentation. Its O-Dark-Thirty and I just finished final touchup in PowerPoint. Not that I couldn’t have been done an hour ago if we were willing to put up with a bunch of little quirky display/formatting issues (I can now prove that PowerPoint has a mind of its own, if you ever need that done). But what fun would that be?

I’m disappointed its so late – after all, we’ve known for 4 days that the presentation is tomorrow morning, so why the late night? Poor time management, I suppose, and I guess that’s on me. Although our advisor told us at 11 pm that we’re about on track for the timeline (“I’ve never had a group finish before now” was the comment), not everyone was amused. Bad management of expectations, too, I suppose. It did lead to another brief round of Storming, so I guess we’ve got that going for us. We’ll see how folks are/feel in the AM – better than they did when they headed off tonight, I hope.

We had a good cross-section of people on our project – most disciplines from a critical care transport organization were represented, save Aviation, and a bunch of very talented folks. A 9 person group is a big group, in my mind, and the requirement for all participants to present live seems like a big stretch given our scenario (i.e. doing that is not at all real-life), but we’ll get it done. Good lessons all the way around, I hope, and of course plenty of insight gained into how other folks do lots of stuff. Those ideas are at least as important as the professional/personal development for me…

So, morning brings the completion of the work, and shortly thereafter the start of more fun. See you around sunrise…

Group Process Screwup...

2005-04-27T10:13:00.000-05:00

It was great to form our Project Team on Sunday night, and then take Craig Yale’s seminar on Group Dynamics on Monday morning. Very helpful as we’re preparing for forming, storming, norming and performing. Except we (I) fell on our faces last night.

We’ve broken our project down into functional areas, and have teams supporting/developing these aspects of the project. Not sure how we got there, but out of our three functional teams, we’ve managed to develop “boys” and “girls” teams. That’s kind of interesting to me after-the-fact – its not something we considered when we were forming the workgroups, but that’s a different topic.

So for the gap… we met at 7 pm to check in and plough through the next round of tasks. The “girls” (clinical realignment group) moved to a different room – great productivity tool. Our advisor, Ed Eroe, came in around 9 to check up on us, answer questions, etc. It started off pretty casual… “where are you guys… what’s the process…” and moved on to “everyone comfortable… what’s the presentation format”, all good stuff. Except we went through the whole exercise without the boys realizing what we were doing OR that the girls were out of the room.

Which was a mistake.

We’ve had little “storming” in our group, but this incident had the potential for throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire. Turned out not to be a big deal – Ed ran through the same material with the girls before we figured out what we’d done, but it definitely wouldn’t contribute to healthy group dynamics.

Its interesting how in real-life the small things on a project are often the things that can cause the big problems. Glad this didn’t turn into a bigger problem, but its definitely a sensitivity lesson learned to to be learned by our group.

Nails and Chalkboards - I mean "Finance"...

2005-04-27T09:49:00.000-05:00

Getting ready to start Cy Woodrome’s session on Advanced Financial Management. I don’t like finance – or I hate finance, depending on how you look at it. But Cy’s a good presenter on these topics – he did a great basic/overview session last year. And, paying attention to him will also help me not obsess over the workload remaining on our group project. A little, maybe…

Golf as Art...

2005-04-27T09:07:00.000-05:00

It was great to take a break yesterday afternoon… I don’t golf, but I’ve heard I’m great at riding around and harassing golfers, which I did yesterday while also taking a few photos. I’ve posted them in a little photo gallery at http://www.heligistix.com/mtli.htm if you’d like to look. The camera I use takes really big (8 megapixel) photos, which don’t download well, so I’ve resized them a bit… they’ll display fine, but if you’re interested in printing one or more you should probably let me know and I’ll mail you the raw file – they’re around 5 MB each that way. Just leave a comment to this posting with an e-mail address or hunt me down/call me…

Before I get flamed for playing favorites, my goal was to get one group shot of each golfing group (achieved), and then just play with the camera. Don’t cry if all you see is the one shot of your group – its not personal!

Finally, I’ve heard rumors that photos exist from (many?) previous MTLI golf outings… if you have photos and enough folks come forward, I’d be happy to host a place for those photos to be viewed, or make a little “Golfing over the Years” photo slideshow… just let me know.

Enjoy!

Landis Redux...

2005-04-26T13:52:00.000-05:00

I forgot to post earlier on a book Denise Landis recommended called Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. Authors Weick and Sutcliffe have written just over 200 pages on High Reliability Organizations (HROs). What’s an HRO? From one of the editorial reviews on Amazon – “aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants, fire-fighting crews, and others”. The premise seems to be organizations which have to run at a high level of detail to accomplish the missions, but who also have to manage an aspect of “disaster” as a component of business-as-usual.

All Flight Teams have high availability/high performance needs and characteristics – they NEED to be HROs, whether they are or not. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve done some similar work in another industry, so it will be interesting to see how concepts translate. I’ve not read Weick, but Denise recommends it so that’s enough for me – I’ll buy this and check it out…

Change it Up...

2005-04-26T09:53:00.000-05:00

I think everyone who returns to MTLI has a favorite instructor or two. One of mine has to be Connie Schneider-Eastlee. I love Connie’s lectures – very high energy, and very highly applicable to my work, but also very down-to-earth. Connie teaches on culture and change – two topics I think are poorly understood and/or poorly managed in most organizations – forget about healthcare or medical transport.

I wish Connie’s material was presented in a more broad format – maybe a half day, taught in conjunction with other instructors. Fascinating topic areas – drivers for change, change frameworks, the interaction and interface of change and culture (especially managing the culture, or even more complicated, managing a change in culture). I think this would be a great idea for a seminar or two, or maybe a graduate study topic.

I’ve written before on status quo being the antithesis of a learning or performing organization. Its clearly my bias, but I think these topics can be the most difficult but also more invigorating and liberating topics an organization can confront. We’ll see how that goes in my own work… the only constant is change itself, and with healthcare, aviation and high-performing organizations more like sharks – having to swim just to survive – this is an area I’m guessing many programs, including mine, could do a better job of.

Brand New day...

2005-04-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

Day Two of our classroom/lecture work started promptly at 8:15 with a lecture by Gina Blevins of MedFlight of Ohio on Human Resource law. Very interesting area – wondering how many organizations manage the complexities of employment law well, and how many do a better-than-average job of employee communication, which seems to be the root of much evil in this area.

Food for thought…

Do Not Eat Next to Aimee Brown...

2005-04-25T18:42:00.000-05:00

Aimee Brown

If you’re coming to MTLI next year, or just happen to run into her in Little Rock or elsewhere, please do not eat next to Aimee Brown. Oh, I know… she’s smart, savvy, nicely dressed and has that job with Arkansas Children’s Hospital’s Angel One, but you don’t want to eat next to her. Its not her manners – they’re impeccable. And its not the conversation – engaging.

Its that she’ll sit down right next to you and eat the damned ribs right off your plate.

With impunity.

With no remorse…

Sure, she’ll come up with some lame story about how her slave-driving Second Year group wouldn’t let her be late and she was hungry and blah, blah, blah… don’t believe it. This girl knows her way around a dining room and I’m telling you, I’ll bet she saw my rib-mountain a mile away. I was an easy mark, I guess.

Don’t make the mistake I made. If Aimee sits down next to you and there’s any food nearby, run away. Its the only safe thing to do.

p.s. she wrangled a free beer out of the poor waiter, AFTER she mooched off of me. I’m telling you, she’s a professional!

Casting Call...

2005-04-25T14:04:00.000-05:00

Open call for anyone interested in helping to contribute to the blog... either track me down somewhere, or leave a message for Room 104 Wilson Lodge and let me know how to find you. Posting is really easy - I just set up a username and password, give you a web address and then you type what's on your mind, click a button and Voila!

Hi Tom...

2005-04-25T13:05:00.000-05:00

Tom Allenstein wrestling with the technology before the Case Study presentation he and Kris Nelson team teach.

Stay Away from This Man...

2005-04-25T12:10:00.000-05:00

The honorable Kris Nelson

Kris Nelson from Survival Flight of Michigan and accomplished Librarian. Kris taught last year on Safety, and I’m trying to get him lined up to do a seminar for one or more of our programs in Florida. Of course, he’s dogging me since we started talking about the speaking gig at LAST YEAR’s MTLI. Soon, Kris – I promise. You’ll fit right in with whats going to become our in-house change and education efforts at LifeStar this year…

Kris works with (or against, depending who you ask) Ms. MTLI, Denise Landis. They make a great team here. Kris is a little disappointed he didn’t get the nod for the new Pope job, but he’ll get over it…

Say Hi to Maria...

2005-04-25T12:04:00.000-05:00

Maria Fernandez – LifeFlight Program Director

This is Maria Fernandez of Miami Children’s Hospital and the LifeFlight critical care transport program. Maria is a longtime MTLI attendee – I think she may have attended every year, or maybe every year but one. I guess the Graduate program must be pretty engaging…

We’re from the same neck of the woods – Miami’s only about a 25 minute flight from us. Funny coincidence – Maria and I met by phone last week on an ops issue, and then of all things bumped into each other in the Pittsburgh airport while waiting for the van to Oglebay. Small world!

Busy Morning...

2005-04-25T12:01:00.000-05:00

Its around 11 am and we’ve already had two (great) sessions this morning – Craig Yale on Group Dynamics and Denise Landis on Leadership. Great stuff – the kind of lectures that make you come to MTLI year after year. For me, its part pure learning, but a larger part of learning applied. Learning from and having access to the folks in our industry that have tackled the same kind of challenges I either have, have had or will have is golden.

Ms. MTLI – Denise Landis

If you haven’t seen it yet, Denise’s talk included some info from Colin Powell’s famous Leadership Primer. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. Very interesting, very applicable stuff if you’re in a leadership/management/change management position.

Ed Marasco is up next on Mergers, Acquisitions and Strategic Relationships. Gotta go…

MTLI 2005 - Winter Wonderland

2005-04-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

It snowed a bit for the Golf Outing last year (actually, it was called “Four Seasons Golf”, because each season showed up in force at some point during the day). But this year the MTLI theme is truly “Winter Wonderland”, as evidenced by this photo from midnight or so.

This morning, though, its all gone and the sun is shining. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will snow again… NOT! Glad all our folks seem to have arrived in one piece – no accidents that I know of.

After Hours Fun...

2005-04-25T11:59:00.000-05:00

Luckily, this only applies to small parts of the Oglebay campus.

Group Dynamics...

2005-04-25T08:40:00.000-05:00

Just got out of two solid hours of work on the group project. After hearing Craig Yale's excellent presentation on Group Dynamics this morning, my teammates and I are waiting for the other shoe to drop. As in the "storming" phase of the project. You know - where we all turn into animals and start clawing each other over a variety of aspects of the work.

Just kidding - we certainly have a long road ahead of us in narrowing the work, but we seem to have strong consensus around the project vision, our approach, and the areas where we think we can make the contributions necessary to a) get the grading points and b) have a great (even fun?) presentation.

Nine of us are grouped together for each of the Second Year projects this year. MTLI was a total sellout in 2005, as was (correctly) rumored at AMTC. If you're reading this and are on the fence about signing up for next year, I'd encourage you to do so early. With both First Year and Graduate programs turning folks away this year and the Second Year section breaking all attendance records, the school seems to be riding a very positive wave... I'll bet next year will be better, although I don't know if the school can get much bigger. I think for next year, the mantra might be "you snooze - you lose" when it comes to registration...

Who Is Chris Church?

2005-04-24T20:24:00.000-05:00

Chris Church

A brief introduction – I’m Chris Church, and I’m a Regional Program Director for CJ Systems Aviation Group, one of the world’s largest and oldest providers of medical aviation (thirty years or so, 120 aircraft, give or take…). My territory extends from Orlando, Florida to the North through the Florida Keys. I currently have responsibility for two helicopter EMS programs, both of which operate as private/public partnerships with established Fire Rescue systems.

Orange County FireStar – N601EH

FireStar, the northern of my programs, is a mature, highly successful program we operate in conjunction with Orange County Fire Rescue. An evolution of Orange County’s original Law Enforcement/EMS program, CHASE, CJ has been the Program’s air operator for the past 5 years. OCFRD is one of the State’s largest metropolitan Fire Departments – perhaps the second or third largest by combat personnel. The program operates a single BK-117 and does scene work throughout an approximate 400 square mile area centring on Orlando.

In Stuart, Florida – about 150 miles South and East of Orlando, we operate the LifeStar program in conjunction with Martin County Fire Rescue. LifeStar is a new program, just 5 years old, and was started at the same time as CJ became associated with FireStar. In fact, FireStar and LifeStar were CJ Systems’ first public safety partnerships, and the programs spooled up within a month of each other. LifeStar serves a 6 county area on Florida’s Treasure Coast, centered around Martin County and headquartered at Witham Field in Stuart, Florida.

Martin County LifeStar – N135WJ

As for me, I’m a former paramedic/medic-supervisor. I had a public safety career in New England and then in Martin County before leaving about 10 years ago to build a series of high-tech companies. After spending those years travelling extensively and serving mainly Fortune 500 companies in a variety of capacities, we sold our firm to a public company two years ago. About the same time I learned about LifeStar operating in our community (I live in southern Martin County), and called up the Fire Chief – an old partner of mine – to see how we swung a helicopter, because frankly we don’t spend that kind of money here. “Its a private/public partnership – you have to come out and see it to understand it”, Chief Billington said. The short version from there is I fell in love with the program, began doing (a bunch of) pro-bono work with the Program, and ultimately being approached by CJ to join the company as a business manager for South Florida.

That’s me in a nutshell. Being new to the aeromedical business, MTLI last year was invaluable in gaining a 360–degree view of program issues and operations. Well worth the money, time and effort – and I met a bunch of friends and colleagues who’ve helped me over the past year, and who I’ve helped a bit. I’m excited to move from the first-year classroom setting to second-year project team work, which will start in 30 minutes or so…

Wish me luck.