ABSTRACT
Leadership is the key to organizational performance and thus appropriately identified as Transformer 1 in Figure 11.1. Leaders can drive transformational change-that is, changes in values and patterns of behavior so that healthcare organizations can address long-standing performance and quality issues. Effective leadership is a foundational lever for dramatically improving the performance of an organization and cumulatively, the industry. The Baldrige National Quality Program, in its healthcare criteria for performance excellence, identifies leadership as its first criterion and states that leaders should set organizational vision and values, create a sustainable organization, and promote a culture of patient safety (NIST 2008).
