What’s Your “White Hot Why”?
Howdy! It’s me…
Hey everyone, it’s me. Chuck.
We typically post this blog in the third person and refer to ourselves as “we” in the content because this space is a collaboration and representation of everyone that’s part of our wonderful Enhanced Management Services team.
However, this week, with your permission; I have commandeered this space as a first-person account to share a personal experience that made me think about EMS and why we do this.
Off the Grid
Some of you may have tried to contact me and found that I wasn’t in the office yesterday (or today, depending on when you reached out to me.) Well, I took the day to move “off the grid” while attending an event hosted by my church called the Global Leadership Summit.
This annual event is a leadership seminar with faith-based roots that features several well-known business and faith leaders from around the world, beamed via satellite to hundreds of locations across the globe.
Start with the Why
The first presenter of the day was well-known faith-based author and pastor, Bill Hybels. Hybels has written more than 20 books including Simplify, Courageous Leadership and Leadership Axioms.
His talk focused on what he called the intangibles of leadership. He presented that his research of leaders across the globe has caused him to identify five intangibles that all leaders espouse.
One of them is an intangible he calls “A Sense of Meaning.”
When defining his observation, he asserts that every good leader and every great organization must begin by defining the “why” he/she/the organization exists in order to gain that sense of meaning. He instructed those in attendance that we should ask the question; What is my “White Hot Why”?
In other words; why does an organization, a company…I’ll extend here…an EMS agency exist? He actually recommended (tongue in cheek) that all organizations should have a position entitled the “Chief Meaning Officer” whose sole purpose is to define the “why” and clearly communicate that “why” to the other persons who comprise the organization.
In essence, defining the “why” gives the organization and the leadership as well as all others that are part of the organization a higher purpose and connects to those served by the organization emotionally as well as physically.
We talk a lot about billing stuff…
Now you know we talk about a lot of nuts and bolts of the EMS billing process in this space. We instruct on change, specifically industry-impacting change like the upcoming ICD-10 revolution, the rise of auditing and “Big Brother’s” micro-managing and the like… all in the name of assisting all of you in navigating the waters of this thing that we do both in the street and back in the billing office.
I, personally, tend to get so focused on the “what” that we do and the “how” we do it that I admit that I often lose sight of the “why” I got into EMS in the first place.
For me…that “why” is to help people.
To make the “why” go…
But to make the “why” go for you and me, we have to know what the “why” is. Is it the same for you…helping people? Is it something more? Something less?
Maybe for you it’s just a paycheck. Maybe for you it’s the sense of belonging and brotherhood/sisterhood that we gain from being part of this unique EMS provider community.
Whatever the “why” is, we can’t do what we do, how we do it unless we commit to the “why” or we’ll fail!
EMS can’t go unless you and I commit to making it go for a higher purpose.
Purpose
So when this space urges, cajoles, stresses, reinforces, educates, drags… you into becoming better at contributing to your organization’s EMS billing program’s success; we hope you’ll understand that we really care here in our billing office.
Your purpose ultimately- the “why”- ultimately boils down to having the ability assist in the healing of your community. To do so, however, it takes dollars and a sense of commitment that should drive us to do the nuts and bolts well.
So, when you get sick and tired of reading our missives in this space about the need for better and precise clinical documentation. When you get fed-up with our hounding you to collect insurance information and obtain a patient signature so we can collect more money. When you feel you can no longer comply with one more rule change… double-back and recall your “White Hot Why”. Define it and the rest will come easy because the rest will suddenly make sense!
