General Management lessons from Larry Weed in 1971 medicine records

One of the better videos I’ve watched this year. If you are a member of the workforce you should watch this video. It covers goals, communication, progress-tracking, problem-orientation, and so much more. Watch it.

At one point Larry literally writes out OKRs for a patient’s record — a clear, reproducible list of problems with action plans and ruled-out tactics.

Choice quotes:

This is not an idle discussion of little technical bookkeeping details. The practice is the way you handle data and think with it. And the way you handle data determines the way you think! The very structure of the data determines the quality of the output.

If you cannot audit a thing for quality, you do not have the means to produce quality.

We’re not gonna change the game just because you’re tired.

We used the word impression. That was a terrible thing to do in the first place. If you use the word impression, you then have to have the person who wrote the chart with you when you interpret the chart. Because what he was thinking is part of it. I’m not interested in what the impression is, I’m interested in what you know to be the problem.

The record is the basis of the system.

No one should ever be able to write an order without coupling it with a problem.

It’s like walking into a room of people throwing darts. And you ask, where’s the target? And they say “wherever the dart lands”.