Service Line Management: Three Principles That Separate the Winners from the Losers

But most of the time the challenges of this role require a skillful, experienced executive with influence, communication skills, and inspirational qualities to lead an organization forward. These are positions for top flight executives whom others are naturally inclined to follow. These positions require executives who have led mega-change processes. And, most important, these are not part-time jobs, as they are sometimes structured in our field. Service line leadership requires the commitment of an impressive and skillful executive to be successful.

Clear Goals & Accountability

We would be surprised if we learned that our consumer products firm told its newly selected Brand X leadership to "grow the business, increase market share, strengthen financial performance, improve customer relationships" without real precision as to what those targets would be. We would expect that those goals would be crisp.

We would assume that the CEO had developed a culture that highlighted the importance of the product line and connected the results of Brand X and other product line efforts to those of the organization as a whole. It would seem intuitive to us that even though the organization is highly dependent on matrix structures, that goals throughout the organization would be aligned with product line targets to help ensure a cohesive and consistent direction.

We would assume that the product line manager for Brand X within the company would be accountable to a very senior executive—depending on the size of the organization this might even be the CEO.

There are lessons here for many of us in healthcare, who sometimes struggle to make service lines work "on the cheap." Leaders in successful service line delivery models are in high-profile positions operating with clear and well understood goals that pull in matrixed partners and align work products.

Successful service lines have clear goals and are accountable to the highest level of the organization.

Results Measurement

Back to our fictitious soap manufacturer. Now picture that after setting up the new Brand X manager, he is told that it won't be possible to measure results accurately. It seems our company's systems were set up to count results a bit differently. We won't be able to recognize certain kinds of revenue, but we will try to estimate the amounts. There will be double counting of certain expenses, but that shouldn't make too much of a difference. The reports will not be particularly timely, but we can maintain some manual reports that will help keep us on target.

Brand X would likely be the correct name for this product. And yet, too many healthcare service line providers operate in ways that mimic all or part of this story. Guesstimates are common place. Real results are not known. Financials are in dispute. So success or failure is not clear.

Successful service line programs invest in systems that track results to enable management decisions and provide timely and accurate reports on those results. Service lines are tough to lead. But as with most management practices, success often distills down to doing a few things really well. And in the case of service lines, it is skillful leadership, setting clear goals with accountability, and carefully measuring results.