Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic

Citation

Enquist, B. (2009), "Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 246-248. https://doi.org/10.1108/09564230910952807

In the service literature, today, a great amount of attention has been given to value creation for customers. To large extent the research focus the economic value only. The notion of “customer value”, however, includes not only economic value, but also value that is linked to values (Edvardsson and Enquist, 2008). Scholars and practitioners have devoted relatively little attention to understanding the role values play for creating value to customers and other stakeholders. Berry (1999) gave us a lesson about “discovering the soul of service” with the help of nine drivers of sustainable business success. Values‐driven leadership is one of these success factors. Recently, Berry together with Seltman, as co‐author, (2008) has issued a new book – Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic. It is a book about cultivating a long term service culture in a values‐based service within not‐for‐profit organizations. From this new book, we can learn more about the roots of service: “to serve someone who needs your help”.

The book has ten chapters, which can be seen as a road map for deeper understanding of the Mayo Clinic. The clinic is a highly complex labour‐ and skills‐intensive service organization in health care sector. The book is talking about how the core values of the organization are deeply rooted in its history and how they become the foundation of the strong service culture of the Mayo Clinic today. Chapters 1‐9 are descriptive and explorative by its nature and the last chapter is more reflective.

The first chapter gives an introduction of the Mayo Clinic as a strong and independent service organization in the health care sector. The organization is more than 100 years old and over the decades it has built up a strong and reliable brand. “The book moves from the Clinic's core values to its core strategy to how it implements and sustains the values and strategy” (Berry, 1999, p. 16). The second chapter is about “preserving a patient‐first legacy”. Mayo Clinic has codified its values, culture, and expectation in a document called the “Mayo Clinic Model of Care”. The story told in this chapter express a dynamic view on how the authority to serve has changed over time and new service needs has been identified while the organization has sustained its original core values about “whole‐person care”, which today also include architectural and interior design. This is in order to address patient needs that medical science cannot fulfil. The third and fourth chapters gives the reader two lessons about the complexity of service operations with patient focus in “practicing team medicine” and “practicing destination medicine”. The whole organization is an integrated physician‐led organization. The lesson of the fifth chapter is about “partnering for leadership”. Command and control have been replaced by partnership management. The Mayo Clinic builds its culture and consensus through committees, where physician leadership is rooted in values about patient care and the administrative leadership is values about operations. The lesson of the sixth chapter concerns the “hiring for values – and talent”. Personal values are prioritized when recruiting new employees. “You identify the people whose core values resonate with our core value – the needs of the patient come first” (Berry, 1999, p.134). It is not only about hiring talented persons, but also to share the core values of the Mayo Clinic. The clinic is a relational employer. It hires people for careers, rather than for jobs. The lesson of the seventh chapter is about “orchestrating the clues of quality”. Services are performances and Mayo has invested a lot on skills and “know how” in the three clue categories: functional, mechanic, and humanic. “A service may be intangible, but its essence is communicated to customers” (Berry, 1999, p. 182). Eight chapter is about “creating, extending, and protecting the brand”. The lesson learned in this chapter relate to the performers – the brand can only be as good as the people that creates the experiences that forms the brand meaning. It is about playing defence, not just offense for a trusted brand like Mayo Clinic. And finally turning customers into marketers. The ninth chapter regards “investing in tomorrow's organization”. The chapter gives, in an explorative way, a view of Mayo Clinic's commitment to tomorrow: Improved quality and safety in the clinical practice; high‐value care based on clinical outcomes over time; innovation in healthcare delivery; advocacy on behalf of patient‐first interests in healthcare practice and policy reform; and leadership development. The last chapter is about “realizing human potential” and is more of a concluding reflection on the previous chapters. The author's own reflection is:

The […] Mayo Clinic's story is a story about people – people with skills, values, and vision – who committed and continue to commit themselves to creating and sustaining an organization in order to deliver an excellent service for the benefit of other people. […] But it is also a universal story because the underlying principles can inform other service enterprises. It is a story about consistently executing a vision (Berry, 1999, p. 263).

Mayo Clinic is an explorative case study, in a narrative style, based on “thick descriptions” about a complex values‐based service (Edvardsson and Enquist, 2008) organization. With the combination of one of the big pioneers in service research in North America, specialist in service culture and service strategy and a practitioner from the inside – this is an extraordinary book about service excellence that goes back to a deeper dimension of the meaning of service: to, based on a values‐based mission for the organization, serve someone. With the economic crisis that we are observing in the global economy at present, we can learn from good examples of enterprises with strong core values. I have together with Bo Edvardsson followed another company with strong core values, IKEA. It is time for service research to integrate the service logic debate (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008; Grönroos, 2008) with a need for an alternative business model for sustainable service business; not short term, and control & command based but more long term and values‐based.