How to build an agile experience for the patient?

Glòria Galvez

Our environment is subject to constant changes that organizations try to adapt to by becoming agile institutions, capable of developing projects quickly and flexibly. According to the report by the McKinsey consultancy, agile organizations are recognized by five key elements:

1. They are committed to open innovation, co-creating with different actors, from their professionals to the clients of the organisation.
2. Foster networks of autonomous people, free to devise disruptive proposals; a model of red arch versus one of hierarchy. 
3. They prefer to be quick and take risks than fall into excessive planning. 
4. The style of leadership gives prominence to people and encourages development talent. 
5. Integrate technology as a resource that provides agility to formulate new proposals. 

Some organizations undertake small transformations related to innovation or patient experience, but few dare to make a global transformation adopting an agile methodology. 

The Agile methodology emerged in 2001 in the software industry, when the CEOs of the world's leading companies met to share the best practices of each company. From this meeting emerged the Agile Manifesto, whose values ​​and principles have been adopted by some health organizations, understood as liquid organizations that are changing their traditional way of working to adapt to the patient's needs.

 Following these principles and values, an agile patient experience requires: 

1. Replacing extensive and endless documents with direct communication to and within the team.
2. Encourage exchange forums where people can make changes, where advances or setbacks are evaluated by their partners and not their bosses.
3. Prioritize actions that add value to patients, minimizing specific technical adjustments. 
4. Have a roadmap with flexible initiatives, but within a plan that can respond to changes as they happen, balancing fast-impact initiatives with those that can be considered innovative.
5. Combine the different methodologies (Design Thinking, Lean and Agile), selecting the most appropriate one at each moment of the process. Jonny Schneider, in his Understanding Design Thinking, Lean, and Agile report, points out that the three methodologies can be distorted if they are used automatically, following the guidelines they set, but without really understanding the objective with which each of them is used. Thus, Design Thinking is a methodology that allows for knowing the needs of the user and design solutions taking into account their experience, so the ideal would be to apply it at the beginning and the end of each process, while Agile and Lean should be used in parallel, during the definition of the problem and construction of the solution.

European School of Management (2017)

It is interesting to consider the difference between becoming agile and being agile. Agile is made when teams can introduce changes autonomously, disruptively, without excessive planning, and with leadership led by people. It is agile when it comes to giving quick solutions to patients who claim, something that in the long term may not have the desired impact or value.

An Agile methodology sustained over the years will transform our institutions into high-performance organizations. Given that the key point is in the transformation of both organizational and people culture, an empowered team is needed, where traditional "bosses" start a new professional career to become agile leaders.