Considering honey bees have been on earth for between 40 to 150 million years, it pays to consider their hive strategy for success, especially because it maps perfectly onto medical groups.
Here it is.
The huge percentage, maybe 80%, of forging bees in the hive exploit nectar and pollen sources already known to them as communicated by the foragers’ “waggle dance”. Yet the remainder of the foragers ignore the existing information and seemingly wander outside the hive like delinquent teenagers.
And it’s exactly that seemingly inefficient behavior, a bit of blowing off of better exploitation for a bit of exploration, that results in finding new food sources, and, in the long run, the success of the hive.
Many medical groups, especially hospital-based groups such as anesthesiology or radiology groups, identify a place to locate their “hive”, a hospital or even a hospital system. Then they exploit it and exploit it until the food source is gone. Gone by way of the loss of a contract, gone by way of the death of the hospital, or gone by the gradual starvation of declining payments and increasing costs.
The key, even in difficult staffing times, is a weighted balance between exploiting existing business sources and exploring for new ones.
You need to be more like bees.
If you’re buzzing to learn multiple strategies to achieve that weighted balance, let’s talk.
Related Posts:
