Another aged Care CEO to step down after a few years at the helm – Research shows time a valuable asset for leaders seeking to make quality change

Columbia’s aged care CEO is set to step down from the private Sydney-based operator by year’s end. The leader is heading into the top role at not-for-profit Primary Health Tasmania after four years at Columbia. This year also saw IRT’s CEO, Patrick Reid, resign after 8 years in the top spot. While each of these need not be seen as individually indicative of concern, it is when abstracting to a trend seen in the industry that it is worthwhile to ask, does the sector perhaps need tenures of ten years or more? In a sector that is as complicated, interconnected and systemically challenging to change, researchers in both medical and business spaces highlight that in order to facilitate deep, lasting and trusted change, time is critical.

Quality over speed

Juniper’s CEO, Russell Bricknell shares that some of the most valuable advice he received from mentors when starting in the industry, is to take his predictions for how long change was going to take and times it by three. For an industry with deep structural mechanisms, and particularly at a time where the new Act is bringing in legislative change, there has never been a time more needed for leaders to leverage their earned and fought-for experience at a provider, so as to steer the ship through.

Researchers highlight that there is significant clinical significance in, “developing a reliable framework for self-change, or professionally-assisted-change [this] is beneficial for those seeking change and for those in the health care system who are assisting with change.”

For the change in an organisation, particularly those in the aged care space where multiple factors must be honoured in their adjustment, the research highlights that longer rather than shorter stints at the helm are required in order to conduct change safely, and with trust and respect.

Researchers note that change if done over time, after leaders have been able to sincerely prove their acumen, character and integrity in leadership, can use the model of time-based change to bring about results of quality and stability. Leadership that has had the time to listen to integral parts of the system, like front-line staff and residents, are able to lead from insight and nuance.

“When using this model of change, [leaders] “changers” are not coerced, but rather supported and accepted at the stage they present.”

Leaders need time to see change needs

An emerging field of implementation science has also found compelling evidence that suggests that, when it comes to change, and the sector at large agrees there is much that can be improved in aged care, it can surprisingly take “an average of 17 years” for key players to persuaded by the evidence that change needs to happen at all.

Psychologists and business analysts have been outspoken in advocating that even leaders have blinders on at times. Through time, proximity and exposure to the ins-and-outs of running an aged care operation, CEOs and leadership are likely unable to continue to miss key red-flags.

The building research from researchers points to the wisdom of leaders, particularly in aged care, seeking to be in positions for some time.

Time as an asset

A recent international study looked into deep organisational change. They found that there were layers of change, and not all were clearly visible. Between “deep structures” and “surface-level intervention approaches to change”, leadership needed to not only plan and navigate the blue-print for change but realise that there were dynamics of change happening in the organisation that they could not see and were not privy to.

Another complexity of change was that there would be multiple points of “failure” but that in being involved over the long run, leadership would be able to see these with an eye of “temporality”.

“Long-term successful change… includes multiple short-term failures.”

Leaders are encouraged to, “adopt a process-based, empirically grounded and reflective approach to understanding change and its often-failed outcomes”.

“Adopt methodologies that can capture deep structures and temporal dimensions and incorporate expanded conceptions of time as a multi-level, nested construct.”

The academics advise leaders to essentially, be in it for the long haul.

It is worthwhile for leadership teams at providers to re-assess their recruitment processes, ethos of work, expectations of longevity so as to systematise these changes to support longevity within the leadership team.

In a sector that has been through significant upheaval, that many see as relentless but nonetheless must be met with intelligence, conviction and pluck, a leadership team that is committed to the long-haul may yet be another competitive edge for a provider in an industry that does demand much of its personnel.