The Parking Garage Health Facility

Posted on by johnlwheaton1

The Cleveland Clinic turned a parking garage into a makeshift medical facility. It looks like a M.A.S.H. unit. This is a great example of “pivoting” (yes I know that’s a buzzword.) Let me back up and take you to the start.

A family member needed a Covid-19 test at the Clinic due to a required medical procedure. I was asked to drive them. The instructions said “go to the Walker parking garage lower level.” “What? Testing in a parking garage?” “This should be interesting,” I thought.

Fast forward to the parking garage. It was brilliant. It’s run with military precision. Specific cars allowed at specific times. Signage, work stations, medical professionals gowned and masked, directing traffic, helping guide, doing testing. No one got out of their car. It’s all done through an open car window. Fifteen minutes. In and out.

Why did this impress me? There’s multiple reasons. The Cleveland Clinic is BIG but they flexed. It was creative, it was clean, it was efficient and it was in a parking deck.

Here’s some of my impressions and takeaways:

1. Big business doesn’t have to be rigid.

2. I’ll bet the nurses didn’t learn traffic flow directing in school. We’ve got to be nimble and self educated in whatever we do.

3. The Clinic got creative and we can be creative in this environment as well.

4. The use of a parking deck; an ordinary, bland, concrete, parking deck. Brilliant. It’s out of the way, efficient for moving cars, isolated from the hospital.

5. Flexibility. People were working from the lower level garage. Its exterior air. There were propane heaters and chairs in strategic locations. It’s not the best space to work from. Professionals have to be flexible. One never knows what to expect next or how they can drive new value in new paradigms.

6. “Can do” attitude. The Clinic figured out a way to test quickly, safely, politely and with test results delivered between 8 hrs and 24 hrs.

Questions:

How nimble are we? How creative are we? How quickly can our business and minds pivot? Can we rally people to deliver around a cause; around a problem, and above and beyond? Are we willing to go there as leaders?

Excuses are easy. Solutions aren’t hard once we eliminate the excuse, we stop looking for others to show the way, and we take responsibility to act, lead, move.

Even parking decks can be a place associated with healing. What have you got that is being overlooked?

Shifting

Posted on by johnlwheaton1

Interesting how things change. Just six weeks ago the values in the world economy were things like lean manufacturing, just in time delivery, low inventory, large single source supply chains, high profit, international travel, high connectivity.

That doesn’t play well during a pandemic- an unseen enemy that disrupts without any real warning. It just more fully exposes the vulnerabilities that existed and still exist. The world, each nation, each locality, weren’t prepared fully. We don’t like to plan for the “what if’s.” The values have been shifted 180 degrees almost overnight.

Now it would appear that the values are things like margin, appropriate inventory, local micro-economies, multiple supply chain sources, balance, less international connectivity (or perhaps more thoughtful connectivity).

I think many people may just be hunkered down “waiting for things to get back to normal.” You’ll be waiting a long time. The truth is, there is no “normal.” It’s the anticipation of the future being the same that we describe as “normal.” But the future is abstract. Normal is now; the present.

How then shall we respond, construct, and move forward? We need to inform and work within our reality; connect the dots; new dots; new ways.