ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how healthcare supervisors can use symbolism encapsulated in their specific organization's mission, vision, and values statements to help them develop and maintain continuous improvement (CI)-supportive cultures. Staff who are a part of the cultures are motivated to find errors and fix them—as well as to do all of the other little things that make CI work. If staff members from different departments or units become overly competitive with each other, they might create hostile environments that threaten corporate unity and negatively impact worker morale. The chapter focuses almost entirely on organizational-level strategies. It discusses steps that leaders can take to abet the development of the traits within their particular organization's workplace. At most healthcare firms, office-level leaders play a large role in keeping employees happy. The healthcare firms need to get buy-in from a large percentage of their employees if they want to succeed in incorporating CI methods into their corporate infrastructures.
