Workplace Zombies: What’s Draining Facilities Teams?

Zombies are not science fiction. They are the projects, meetings, rules, and habits that quietly consume time and resources while delivering little real value.

In this episode, New York Times bestselling author Diana Kander joins Healthcare Facilities Network alongside industry leaders Michael Hatton and Dennis Ford to challenge how we define productivity in healthcare facilities management.

Together, the panel explores the concept of “zombie projects” — initiatives that feel productive but fail to move the organization forward. Diana also introduces the idea of “watermelon projects” — projects that appear green on the outside but are red on the inside — and puts our industry experts to the test.

From compliance requirements to standing meetings to legacy processes that “have always been done this way,” we unpack how zombies quietly drain team capacity, distract from strategic priorities, and create the illusion of progress.

In an environment where healthcare facilities leaders are already balancing accreditation demands, capital planning, and operational risk, identifying and eliminating zombies becomes a leadership imperative.

If you are responsible for facilities operations, compliance, or team performance, this conversation will challenge you to reassess what is truly adding value and what may be holding your organization back.

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Transcript

Setting The Stage: Why Zombies

SPEAKER_02 0:00

As an organization becomes larger and larger, and there's just more things to do, things just kind of build up. And so I think this is a natural pruning process that we need to take on a regular basis. And I actually think there are specifically three times that you should be zombie hunting. One, at least on an annual basis. Two, when you have a big new goal or challenge that you're facing as an organization, like when you've never done anything before like this, or something is happening that is outside of your control that you need to readjust as a result, that's the best time to go zombie hunting.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Why do they tend to, why do they zombies tend to last so long within or in or in an organization, even sometimes when people realize that the zombie's not helping?

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Because everybody wants to be a team player, and it takes so much impetus to go into somebody's office and be like, I don't think this meeting is a great idea. I mean, can you take can you imagine how much courage it would take to go into your manager's office? And what I try to do is encourage people to create the space for people to have these conversations.

Meet The Guests And Credentials

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Thanks for tuning in. Look at our videos, you will find that is a theme across our content. This is the Healthcare Facilities Network. I'm your host, Peter Martin. This is actually a first in a number of ways for the Healthcare Facilities Network. It's the first number one because it's the first time we're actually going to be talking about zombies. Not zombies at large, but zombies in healthcare facilities management. Very excited about that. Number two, it marks the first time that we will have a New York Times bestselling author join us, which I'm very excited about. And you know me, and you know the three faces of the men who are gathered around. So we're not the New York Times bestseller authors, so you can figure out who it is. And number three, Mr. Patrick Murphy. This is the first time that a guest, to my knowledge, has joined us from the ski slopes of Vermont, has literally left a mountain where there's pretty good skiing and is recording an episode of the Healthcare Facilities Now. So these three things are all firsts, and I am very excited, despite all the firsts, very excited to have this group join me today. I'm very thankful. I'm gonna do some brief intros and then we're gonna jump into it because Dennis and Mike and Patrick, I know you guys are chomping at the bit to talk about zombies and healthcare facilities management. Diana is the person to set the table to have that discussion. So, brief some brief introductions. I'm gonna start with Diana first. Diana Cander, our New York Times bestselling author. Diana is a keynote speaker on innovation and growth. She's written four books. Diana was actually the keynote speaker at the innovation conference in Columbus in 2025. And that's where the genesis of this came from. I would recommend her highly if you're looking for somebody who's got a great backstory. You know, Diana, I was thinking we could just jump into your story. Forget the zombies, how you came to America, how you're driven by goals. And I would recommend to anybody, you know, Diana has four books. I only have three of them here: Go Big or Go Home, The Curiosity Muscle, All In Startup. So she's written four books, but Diana, thanks. And and one of the things you talk about on your LinkedIn profile is the playful tools that you have and the playful tools that you work with with organizations. Triple Zoom, zombie hunting version 2.0. You talk about it in your books. We're gonna focus this particular conversation though on zombies. And thank you for your time and thanks for joining.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. You might be my biggest fan, Peter.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Yeah, well, you know what? Hopefully, someday Snoop will replace me as your biggest fan. That would be good. So, Diana, welcome. Dennis, we're gonna go up to you in the big control center, Dennis Ward, who you have seen on most recently, about two months ago now, corporate facilities management for Atrium Health organization that stretches from the Midwest to the Atlantic coast. Dennis is also your 2026 Ashie president. Dennis, welcome and thanks for joining again.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Thanks, Pete. Love being here. I can't wait to get started here. Thank you so much, Diana, for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Mr. Hatton down there, Memorial Herman in Houston, Texas. Mike, you mentioned zombies when we were recording our uh episode of the beginning of the year. You and when you mentioned it, I was like, well, let me throw a Hail Mary and see if Diana will join us to talk about zombies. And she did, and here we are. And Mike, you have now removed yourself as the Ashy 2025 president. You're obviously still VP at Memorial Herman, but how does it feel to no longer be the president?

SPEAKER_05 5:49

You know, it's kind of a little hole in your heart where you're as we talked before, you barely have time to learn the ropes, and your 12 months is up. But I think I handed that off to a very able uh president for 2026, Dennis. And it was it was so refreshing at the annual that I had the uh you know, I was so happy to introduce Diana last year, and her message was so topical and so timely. We all deal with the zombies every day. So it was nice to get her perspective on how to improve corporate America. Well, thank you for having me on this group, Pete.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

Dennis, I mean Dennis, Mike, I couldn't keep you off. You're the one who said zombies. How do I have a group and you're not the guy on it? So I appreciate it. I'm I'm glad you brought it up. So thank you as well. Aforementioned Patrick Murphy, president of Cref. How's the skiing up in Vermont?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

It's great. Thanks, Peter. And and it was funny, just before we started recording, Dennis was mentioning you know, this potential zero gravity scenario that could happen. I have twin nine-year-olds, uh Parker and Emma, and I'm up here skiing with them. I'm just happy you didn't say today at three o'clock because my kids would have loved it and I would have absolutely hated it. I'm I'm very happy to be planted in a chair here at the lodge, away from everybody, because it's a zoo. It's it's February vacation for us here in New England, and it is I'm gonna need a vacation from this, let me tell you. But I'm very happy to be here and very nice to meet you, Diana. And I'm very excited about this with this group.

Defining Work Zombies

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Well, thank you. No, I'm glad you answered that because I was gonna say, where did you go to get away? But you you found a place. So that's uh that's good. Thank you for joining. Gentlemen, you know, as we talk, and and Diana, as you know, as Diana is talking about zombies, feel free to jump in, feel free to interact. You guys have lots of experience. You don't need me to ask all the questions. So if Diana says something that resonates, go right ahead. It's the beauty of a podcast. Everybody can talk, everybody's got, you know, everybody's got background. But we've mentioned zombies a number of times. So why don't we just start there with Diana? You talk about it in your keynotes, you talk about it in your books. As I said, your uh your keynotes, the impetus for this conversation. But for those hearing you for the first time, what are zombies?

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Yeah, it's anything that you do during the workday that takes more time and resources to do than the value it creates. So it's not an idea that dies of its own natural causes. Is it alive enough to suck the life out of your organization? So a zombie could be a project that you had high hopes for, but just hasn't materialized into what it could be. Or a zombie could be a rule that was implemented in your organization by somebody who's not even there anymore and people still follow it. Or if you've never been zombie hunting, there's probably a meeting that has way too many people invited and no agenda, and could have been an email. And our days, you know, will fill up with zombies if we are not diligent about keeping them away. And so the last thing I'll say about thinking about it, think about everything you do on a scale of one to ten in terms of how much value it's creating, and just you know, come to an understanding that not every hour is created equal. Some returns are much higher than others. And to me, a zombie is anything that is good but not good enough for what you could be doing with that hour. So I I try to make sure that I'm getting the highest possible return on every hour that I invest in my business and not get distracted by things that feel productive but aren't creating the same amount of value.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

How did you how did this concept of the zombie, how did you arrive at it?

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Oh, it's a great question. You know, about 10 years ago, I worked with a movie theater organization and they had this phenomenon that they talked about, which was whenever they would move one theater manager to another theater, like somebody who was in the system but was just shifted to a new location, they would do nothing else to the location, but all of their scores, their bathroom cleanliness and customer service, like every score that they kept track of would go up. And it's not like that person was, you know, doing anything big. He was just they were looking at the operation with fresh eyes. And I think too often we get just used to seeing things a certain way or doing things a certain way, and that's how zombies creep up. It's their natural byproduct of being successful. And we need to look at our work with those fresh day one eyes. That's my goal, to be able to uncover them and be like, why are we doing these things? What could we be doing instead?

SPEAKER_03 10:52

That's interesting. A byproduct of being successful. Um, maybe you said that you know in the keynote, but I hadn't really thought of it that way that sometimes the zombies are a byproduct of doing things correctly. And is that because they're not challenged as they evolve?

Success Breeds Blind Spots

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Yeah, well, think about your organization as being successful. So I I was a serial entrepreneur before I became a speaker, and definitely the things that are going well, I noticed, hide the things that are not going well in your business. And so when uh in one particular company, we did a financial audit of every one of our customers, we realized that only 10% of our customers were actually profitable, and they were so profitable that they were hiding the fact that all the other customers were losing money. But when things are going well on the whole, you don't notice it because you don't have to notice it. And as an organization becomes larger and larger, and there's just more things to do, things just kind of build up. And so I think this is a natural pruning process that we need to take on a regular basis. And I actually think there are specifically three times that you should be zombie hunting. One, at least on an annual basis, two, when you have a big new goal or challenge that you're facing as an organization, like when you've never done anything before like this, or something is happening that is outside of your control that you need to readjust as a result, that's the best time to go zombie hunting.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

Why do they tend to, why do they zombies tend to last so long within or in or in an organization? Even sometimes when people realize that the zombie's not helping.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Because everybody wants to be a team player, and it takes so much impetus to go into somebody's office and be like, I don't think this meeting is a great idea. I mean, can you take can you imagine how much courage it would take to go into your manager's office? And what I try to do is encourage people to create the space for people to have these conversations. And I promise you, if you just have a meeting and say, What do we do that doesn't make sense or we should stop immediately? There will be no shortage of ideas. It just takes so much courage to bring those things up.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

We were talking about meetings and the effectiveness of meetings and how generationally as we bring different people into the workforce, uh do we notice that sometimes open debate and dialogue that meetings can create can be stifled because some folks may not uh like to be questioned. They may feel that they're being not necessarily threatened, but picked on. Have you noticed that kind of that is changing where where you have to be really careful in these meetings so as to not turn people? Because you talk about going into the office and saying, hey, this isn't working. Do are people receptive to that? And has that changed over the years?

SPEAKER_02 13:59

They're not gonna do it. What I'm saying is if you have a meeting and you say, What's not working, they will have all kinds of ideas because you're changing what it means to be a team player. In that situation, being a team player means coming up with creative things that aren't working and as a team working to improve how we work together, versus the other scenario where there is no space on the calendar or agenda to talk about these things, they would have to come up with their own gumption uh to address it with a senior leader, and that's just too much that we're asking of people.

SPEAKER_05 14:32

Interesting. Especially in today's world of virtual communications, I've noticed that as well. It's magnified that even more. We can hide behind our teams or our Zoom or whatever our software platform is.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Yeah, I always say to leaders, if you believe you have an open door policy, but nobody really comes through that door to tell you anything challenging, then you you it's not working. You need to proactively go and ask people.

Why Zombies Linger: Team Dynamics

SPEAKER_03 15:07

As we bring Dennis, Mike, Patrick into the conversation here, Diana, specific to maybe facilities leaders, and I know you work across all industries and you have great insight across all industries, but what should facility leaders from your perspective keep in mind as they examine their own systems through the lens of the zombie?

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Well, it's not just it's hard as a facilities leader to focus because you don't have a PL. You have a budget, but you as an organization aren't revenue generating. So quantifying what the return on our invested means is up to you as a leader. And that means what are your strategic priorities as an organization and making those as clear as possible so that everybody knows what an eight, nine, or ten looks like for them.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Mike, Dennis, when you guys and Patrick, I'm throwing it to them, but you certainly feel free to chime in. When Diana first introduced the concept of the zombie at the innovation conference when she was up there on the stage, did it resonate resonate with you gentlemen? And if so, why?

SPEAKER_05 16:18

I thought it was just so relevant to what we were talking about. And healthcare is infamous for hiding behind zombies. And I would say the zombie in the room is our regulatory environment. The measure of success is nothing but a giant check sheet that we've all used for the last 20 or 30 years. And as long as you check those boxes, you will be a hero. But that checklist in itself in the regulatory environment is, I guess, more of a family of zombies that keeps growing because zombies perpetuate, regulations perpetuate. There's so little time to step back and say, is this regulation really improving the bottom line or is it improving patient safety? Or are we just doing it to check the box? And we're graded on checking the boxes. So when uh Diana brought that up, and all of a sudden I thought it was going to be a touchy-feely keynote, and all of a sudden it's wow, this is so relevant to what we need in our industry.

Creating Space For Honest Feedback

SPEAKER_04 17:16

There's one example I I would love to unpack because I I did watch a couple of your uh YouTube videos there, Diana. And um and one, you're you were talking about um you were consulting for a company and you were asking them uh who were their greatest uh revenue generators, you know, who was bringing in the most money. And and for us, uh I've always been taught that it's the operating rooms, right? So, you know, you you have big surgeries, you have transplants, that's bringing in a lot of uh revenue into uh into your hospital. And to Mike's point, we're heavily regulated. And and I just I did a site visit this morning uh on a totally unrelated subject, but I love to ask the facility managers what's going on, right? And uh we got into a discussion about the temperature and humidity in the operating rooms. And so there's there's an engineering standard that says thou shalt operate within this range. And uh and these guys built a brand new operating room suite, multiple operating rooms, and I asked them, I said, Are the surgeons happy? And they said no, they complain all the time. It's either too hot or too cold, and we'll inch it up a half a degree or down a half a degree, but we can't go that far. And and I know this is uh a little bit of controversy, so it's another reason why I want to bring this up with Mr. Hatton on the phone, because uh we've come up with a new regulation uh called ASHRAY uh guideline 43, which gives us the ability to create basically our own policy, but it's a multidisciplinary uh group that you have to get together. Uh, you have to define what types of surgeries, what types of patients, what are the risks involved, uh, what would be the outcomes that that would uh trigger uh any kind of uh review, et cetera. But at the end of the day, even if we go through that process and and we implement something to where we feel comfortable, you know, raising the temperature for a burn victim and lowering the temperature for a heart transplant, which kind of makes sense to most surgeons. Uh still, if the regulatory body were to come in and see that, they would say, okay, you went out of range. What did you do about it? And we have to have documentation to show what we did. And ironically, I asked the facility manager, I said, What do you do? He says, I show up and I tell the surgeon I can do this or I can't do that. And I said, I bet that really, really hits home with the surgeon, right? Mr. Little Facility Manager just came into my operating room to tell me you can only go up a half a degree, sir.

SPEAKER_05 19:43

So our so our zombie repellent, i.e., another committee, just wrote more regulations, and it really wasn't effective versus getting to the root cause, which is the regulation itself, which lacks common sense and engineering judgment. So good point. That's that's a giant zombie that happens every day, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 20:02

So I I think uh Diane, what one of your questions would be back to us, you know, what what's what's the the true uh key performance indicator in its health, uh it's hospital-acquired infections. And and that's one area that I don't think we've made any progress in. I I think the statistics are basically the same uh today as they have been for the past 10 to 15 years as to how many infections the hospital gives our patients when they're under our care.

SPEAKER_05 20:33

Yes, and I think the common denominator still is hand washing, isn't it? Dennis, something as simple as that, and aseptic practices versus temperature, humidity, all those other types of zombies that we've invented in our industry.

SPEAKER_04 20:48

Well clean sterile environment.

Facility Leaders’ Metrics And Focus

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Diana, how would you so here's uh you know you guys bring up an example regulatory, it's a regulatory body that's imposing upon you. How do you in in the case of excuse me, in the case of individual hospitals, take Mike and Dennis and Patrick, how would they go about trying to slay a zombie that's imposed upon them from a body on high? Where where you guys can go to your C level leadership, I'm sure at times and and kind of advocate, but what about when it's that next step beyond what you have direct control over?

SPEAKER_02 21:29

I would say that usually my first step is curiosity and trying to understand where okay, I'm not saying this is the case in this situation, but oftentimes when people say we can't do this, it's like a rule that somebody else heard and has been passed down. I'm not saying that's what's happening, but I try to investigate the rule. And probably one of my most successful consulting engagements was I was with an organization, they had a software product and they wanted to generate more revenue from the Product and so I don't betray any confidence. I said, Why don't we do this really, really obvious thing? And they said, We've tried this, we've thought of this very obvious thing, but we've been told it's too like they're worried about risking upsetting the customers, and so we're not gonna do the really obvious thing to our hundreds of thousands of customers. And and they're like, We've been told to never bring it up again. So they wanted to end the conversation. I was like, Well, can we just sit in this problem for a little bit longer? So is the problem alienating hundreds of thousands of customers? They said yes. And I said, Well, could we do a test where we call some customers and say, would this be a problem for you? And then if that wasn't a problem, could we try it on like one percent of our customers? So they were thinking like all or nothing. And I just wanted to sit in the problem as long as possible to say like what was possible. So if there is a regulation that says the temperature in an operating room cannot be more or less than a specific degree, then I would want to like I currently want to call you up after this podcast and explore who made that regulation, why did they make that regulation? Can Ashie as an association ask, like who do they even talk to? But it's it's the difference between accepting like this doesn't make sense and saying, well, I want to be curious about where this is coming from and why, and what's even possible, you know, to to do in this space.

Regulation As A Systemic Zombie

SPEAKER_05 23:29

Yes, but instead of wasting three or four years of people hours and efforts on committees and more reports and more standards, go back to that root cause and challenge that. And most industries, I know the Kaizan principle and some of the TQM models, you know, they've got data and statistics that could help them fight their case and change those regulations as they evolve. You know, our industry is famous for hiding behind, you know, the term life safety. If you want to get anything done in healthcare, we just say it's a life safety issue and everybody drops everything. And it most of the times it really is not. And it so I think we've got to challenge those norms, I think, as you as you've spoken about so often to us to get to what the true issue is. Good points, Dennis. That's probably one of the hottest zombies we deal with currently, one of many.

SPEAKER_04 24:20

Well, and it's a good point that you made, Diana, that um ASHI is a um is a group of uh advocacy uh for regulatory um and and that is something that I'm hoping to to get out to all of our uh state affiliated chapters is you know, if these are issues that that you're facing, you know, you please bring those to ASHI. But another hurdle we have is the um centers for Medicaid and Medicare have adopted a 2012 edition of the code. And even though we advocate for changes to the code, you know, we we could be talking about changes to the 2025 or 2026 code, but until they adopt it, uh the hospitals don't uh are aren't bound by it, right? So they're still bound by the old code. So that that's part of the problem, too, and that's definitely bigger than than us at this point.

SPEAKER_05 25:14

Well, you know, on that same token though, to speak to Diana's options of the entire regulatory process. You know, our our infamous regulators just recently have finished updating the checklist boxes. I'll call those the KPIs that we deal with, in the effect to make our lives easier. But what it's really going to do is it takes you know 10 or 15 years of uh information. It's gonna reshuffle the deck. We'll have a lot of opportunities to spend expense dollars on consultings and rewriting software and things like that for the new standards and KPIs, which are really the same standards at the dentist's point, it's pointing back to the same codes, but it's some new window dressing and some new shades on on top of the same uh operating environment. So has that really helped our industry and will that really help us control cost? Or I guess more importantly, is that going to help patient care? I go back to the fact if if it's not really improving patient care or helping the bottom line, then we really should be asking ourselves why are we doing those things?

SPEAKER_03 26:20

If you like this video, please like and subscribe to the network. And more importantly, share it with your colleagues in the healthcare industry. Together, we can solve the aging crisis that's impacting all of us. What are some other zombies specific to HF uh to healthcare facilities management that we find in both facilities management and PDC at the risk of opening the floodgates? I I throw it out there. In the FM side, on the PDC side, you guys have seen the zombies, you've been around. What are what are our most pressing zombies that just seem to continue from project to project, year to year, director to director?

SPEAKER_04 26:58

Oh man, you you did.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

I mean, planning to list and I know you got we only have limited time.

Challenging Rules With Curiosity

SPEAKER_04 27:04

Yeah. Yeah. From a facility operations perspective, you know, we're we're um we're we're charged with maintaining the facility over the life of the facility, and and buildings have have huge lives. You know, you need to have at least a 50 year life cycle in mind for a building. But the the design and construction project is held to a budget, and so they they try to cut costs from the very beginning, and and that really hinders us from from being able to maintain that building over the life. We're we're replacing equipment a lot sooner. Uh one of my pet peeves is actually uh wastewater piping. Uh, you know, the the um the folks in the industry uh that that make the um the pipe will say it will last 30 years, but in healthcare it only lasts 10 years, you know. So here we are replacing pipe and we're having water leaks. And when you have water leaks, that's an infection control issue. So there's all sorts of regulatory requirements around it. I I tell everybody when I have a water leak, just by the virtue of you saying I got a water leak, that just costs me five grand because I got to go contain it. I haven't even fixed it yet, you know. And then heaven forbid I have to replace the uh the pipe. So planning design instruction is is tough. Uh, and and Diane talked about doing the same thing over and over and over. You know, we we we have these meetings, uh, we can't attend the meetings because we're busy. Uh the meetings aren't very valuable to us because they're they're talking about uh you know patient care and and uh you know, will the lighting be good for this patient and what color uh makes them uh feel better? Uh and we're like, well, what about the chiller or the boiler or the air handling unit? You know, and and that's 45% of your construction budget, but yet uh that's a healthy piece that you can cut from to put in the the the cool uh water fountain out front, uh the architectural feature that hangs from the ceiling that somebody has to clean uh all the time, uh the cool lights, you know, that they put in. And and we're just and then at the end of the project, we don't get all the information we need, like an asset inventory to build our maintenance program or uh the warranty information or up-to-date drawings, you know, and and unfortunately that's every day. And so we keep doing it the same way, and and that needs to change.

SPEAKER_05 29:19

Yeah, I think that Diana's counsel and some of her information, I would call that more of the sally. We've always done it that way. We're gonna continue to do it that way. The silos between the traditional PDC and facilities group. We've talked about that my entire career. I know I'm in charge of both of those for Memorial Herman, and I basically we broke it down because we forced those teams to get together. And getting the budgets right on the front end will solve that. But it takes a lot of effort and a lot of focus and continuing to keep your thumb on it to make sure you're doing that. But you know, just shifting gear today. One of the biggest uh I guess zombies I see for PDC are the turf wars about, you know, offices for everybody. Um, you know, that's a huge operating expense. And today, with the hoteling and the time sharing and the work from home culture that isn't going away, it has probably been very productive for some groups. You know, everybody still wants their own uh dedicated office. I've got that on a couple of giant projects we're working on now that were you know arguing how many doctor offices, how many private offices do they need. And I'm advocating for touchdown spaces and things like that. But that's one of those things that no one wants to give up. But just the$50 a square foot for you know real estate cost for leases or building that in, that's a huge operating expenses for for at least Memorial Herman and others in the industry. And as large as you know, the Atrium folks are an advocate, you've probably got giant costs like that. That would be so easy to drive out of our organization. And I know the Googles of the world and the software people have been doing those touchdown spaces, but I know in our industry we still have 120 square foot for every director and a hundred square foot for a manager, and that's thou shalt be built with every project.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Patrick, you want to jump in there?

PDC vs FM: Lifecycles And Waste

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Yeah, I mean, it's just funny because there's so many places we could focus on. You know, Dennis, you started with the regulatory side, you know, we probably have in in healthcare, you know, specifically the physical environment. It's challenging, right? It's one of the big reasons why we're about a decade behind manufacturing and technology. And, you know, there's just a lot we have to answer to at the end of the day. But I think it's also, you know, we're very technical, right? And we're in a very dynamic time, right? We're having a hard time absorbing the technical project progressions that are happening. You know, I even, you know, Dennis, I know we've been chatting a little bit about being able to do things, get gather data and be more efficient and leverage technology in a way that would maybe give us a leg up, right? To just at least try to get off of the status quo. You know, I mean, I come from the engineering side and you know, I think of things as static or dynamic, and I think of things as vectors or scalers. And, you know, we've been a status quo static type of business for a long time. Very hard to adopt new things. Right now, it's probably one of the unique opportunities where, like you just mentioned, Mike, I mean, we don't need the same physical environment to administer what we're doing in anymore. But it's so hard. It's like we're sitting on top of an elephant tugging on the ears, trying to get it through the you know, the Sahara, and it's just it's going to go the way it goes unless we advocate and unless, you know, like Ashie and and other organizations, the healthcare facilities network, is able to bring a little curiosity to the table because advocates I think advocacy is what it takes. Um, so that's a big piece of it for me. I think, you know, from the PDC side, it's for me tricky because I think we don't get enough, even I would say five years ago, before we started to see, you know, this aging workforce issue that we talk about in the healthcare facilities network so much start to occur. Um, it was hard enough to get the right people in the right room at the right time and spend the right amount of time figuring out what the purpose and the outcome is. Today it's so much more tricky. I mean, like you said, I think before we even came on, Dennis, it's just so hard, you know, to come up with a charter of a project, bring the right key stakeholders into it, and then actually develop that over the course of the project and and and not realize somewhere towards the end that there was some measure taken to try to bring a project under budget or on budget, and then ultimately, you know, you can't turn that elephant. You know, you're all of a sudden in a situation where you have a prefab situation that you can't handle, or they've done something that will, you know, marginalize the patient care quality that you're gonna have. And, you know, I think we really need to kind of look at it at the micro level. Like how can we just kind of come together a little bit more and leverage technologies to get the right people in the room? It's a huge, you know, that's a huge, huge challenge and a huge, it would just be a huge undertaking. But I think this is the time because we're no longer static, right? We're in a very dynamic age right now.

SPEAKER_05 34:16

You know, further supporting that, Patrick, on every project, we have a propensity to over-collaborate. We'll have a committee of 60 when we're designing a renovation or a new building versus sticking with corporate-wide standards, industry best practices. In the days of AI, we should be able to automate that even more. But I see that very often at some of my campuses, typically those, you know, the higher education associated ones, we have a committee for things and everybody has their own opinion. And then before the end of the job, that leadership is turned over. And so you're back to square one. And, you know, there's just not the dollars in reimbursements today. There's no margin in our business and getting worse. So why are we continuing to do those things where everyone else in the business world, uh, you know, whether it's a chain store or a Bucky's, you know, gas station and convenience store, or even probably the Starbucks, they all look the same, they're all built the same, they have the same standards. So we're light years behind in that. So good comment.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Diana, not to put you on the spot, but you're always on the spot when you're up on stage. So I'm sure you're very comfortable with being on the spot. You've heard a lot, Dennis, Patrick, Mike have thrown a lot on the table across a wide spectrum. Not to summarize what they've discussed, but from what they were talking about, does anything stand out to you or resonate where like there's a light bulb going off in your head, like, huh?

SPEAKER_02 35:39

So zombies usually come in two forms. And the ones that first naturally come to us are the ones mentioned so far, which is a lot of zombies that are mostly beyond our control. We have uh an ability to try to deal with them, they're clearly negatively impacting our situation. I would say I try to spend over 80% of my time on zombies that are 100% within my purview of control. So when I think about zombies, I think about how I spend and manage my time, the commitments that my team says yes or no to, the like obligations and opportunities that I decide to say yes or no to. And those things we we don't need to worry about anybody else because you control, you know, you're in control. And I think those zombies are the best way for us to get practice at the ones that we don't have control over.

SPEAKER_03 36:41

Gentlemen, what what what zombies do you have that direct control over? Any one, any one of three, yeah.

Office Space Turf Wars

SPEAKER_04 36:50

Well, it is difficult to unpack because we are so heavily uh regulated. And and when when I'm asked to kind of define a facility management program, that's absolutely where we start. Say, in order to meet regulatory needs, I have to be staffed at this level just just to maintain uh that. But we are a very uh unique um operating entity, meaning, uh, and I've seen this, if you've seen one hospital, you've seen one hospital. So we we all find unique ways to uh to maintain our facilities. We we implement uh different types of uh strategies uh for maintenance. Uh we also have different uh um responsibilities, you know. Um some folks uh have uh landscaping and some might even have housekeeping or security under their preview with facilities, and some of us are strictly uh maintenance or um uh engineering, uh, and that's where we get into our stovepipe. So yeah, I I see where we would have opportunities in in the areas that that we can uh control. But yes, Diane, we we get more upset about the areas that we don't.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Well, and it could be as simple as when you schedule meetings with the people that you work with, are you scheduling them for one hour or 30 minutes for like after this podcast? Somebody tried to schedule a 30-minute conversation with me, and I said, Can we do it in 15? And she was like, Yeah, no problem. The the conversations we have will fill the time the space that we give to them. And so how how do we think about and how many people we're inviting, you know, and when those conversations can take place. So for instance, you probably have strategic work that takes deep focus and requires, you know, a good couple hours for you to sit and think about how things can be better and different. And it's really hard to find that space on your calendar unless you say the way that I've been structuring my week is not giving me that space that I need to do my job. So, how can I put chunks of time on my calendar where I don't take meetings on Mondays or Fridays so that I can focus on strategic uh conversations? Like things as simple as that can have a huge impact on our ability to impact the organization.

SPEAKER_04 39:09

I'm gonna ask Catton to respond to that because I can never get on his calendar. So I'm I'm curious. But but I I did want to ask you a question since you brought it up about time increments. Uh, this is uh a question that we have within Ashie. So at our conferences, we tend to uh schedule one hour or one and a half hour sessions, but it has been suggested that maybe we should try to limit that to 30 minutes. And and I do see um uh relevancy there, but how how do we determine from an abstract if it's a 30-minute uh discussion or a 60-minute discussion?

Tech, Data, And Advocacy

SPEAKER_02 39:46

It all goes back to defining what an eight, nine, or ten is. So I start with what kind of experience do I want the people to have when they come? And then does this chunk of time or this place on the agenda provide that kind of an experience? For instance, one of the things that happened at my time at Ashie was an award ceremony, which was incredible. It recognized a lot of people. Sometimes there are even like board meetings that happen on stage. And my question is like, do we put that at the beginning of the kickoff of the conference? Is that the energy and environment that you want to create? Or is it better placed somewhere else or in the program? That's how I I think about everything on like what am I trying to accomplish? How do I want people to feel as a result? And then I put everything through that rubric on a scale of one to ten. Does it help me accomplish this goal? Not to disparage any parts of the awards area.

SPEAKER_05 40:46

No, that's a good point. We want to be everything to everybody, but are you really accomplishing anything without the focus, Dennis? And I think I saw that at a conference I was at last year. They tried to put too many uh sessions in at the same time just so they could let everybody check their box. And I'm not sure I got a lot out of it because they were all conflicting and overlapping. Hey, let me shift back to construction and project management, which has got so many opportunities in that. And even the the elephant in the room is saying on the critical path decisions, we often will, you know, we'll talk around the hard point of guys, we've got a budget, we've got a schedule, we've got a mandate of these things we have to do. And then we get on to the more esoteric things because I've noticed a lot in our industry we don't like conflicts. Everybody likes to sing kumbaya and and be feeling happy. And you know, most of what we do for a living really is almost a contact sports, a Super Bowl is just a week or two behind us. So, how do we take a look at the biggest thing?

SPEAKER_03 41:44

No reminder there, no reminder there, Mike. No reminder. Well, that's right.

SPEAKER_05 41:47

I don't want to bring out bad words for my New England friends, but hey, I'm from Houston, we don't know what that means to win anyhow here. So you know, how do you bring those difficult topics up in a polite but direct way and check the box and put those in your meeting minutes as these things evolve? Because if you get off those critical paths on a little rabbit trail, as I call, we'll never get to the end date and we'll never stay on budget or schedule. So that's such a problem in my at least in my aspect of the business.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

You know, uh we call we call these uh watermelon uh projects, which are green on the outside, red on the inside. Have you ever heard that term?

SPEAKER_05 42:25

No.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

So like everything is green and on track until it's not, however, the people internally know that it's not on track. It's just that they don't have a safe way to communicate that or how to get it back on track. So one, I like projects. I like to ask this question that most projects don't ask, which is like, how would we know if we were off track and when would we know it? Instead of waiting for people to come and be like, this is definitely not gonna happen. Because you know what I mean? It happens slowly and then it it happens, it happens gradually and then it happens very quickly where you were on track, on track, and then you're like, sorry, it's not gonna happen in in within six months or a year of what we said. And so one of the things about zombie projects is putting in these are what I call failure metrics or pivot indicators, which do not exist in most projects. How would we know if it's not gonna happen and when would we know?

SPEAKER_05 43:28

Almost a zombie bully emerges in some of these projects. People are afraid to bring up that bad that something is off track because someone is gonna overreact versus it's more of a problem solving tool. So you've really got to address that and make sure we do we all speak about allowing open communication, but there's not many people or groups that truly do allow it. So that's an excellent point. I hadn't heard watermelon before. That's so appropriate.

Over-Collaboration And Standards

SPEAKER_02 43:56

It's all shiny screen. Common term in software device. You know, it's the same thing happens. It's it's green until on the outside, right on the inside.

SPEAKER_04 44:06

That's funny. I was going to bring that up. I've I've managed software uh projects and I've managed construction projects, and I felt the rigor uh was was a lot better in software because we we did at least when I did it, we we had a safe place to go. Uh we had a weekly meeting and and it was less than 15 minutes to tell where your project is. And I actually had a situation where my project actually was green, uh, but I needed attention, so I made it red uh so I could get the attention I needed, and and and I got the decision I needed. But but I had a conversation, uh, and you made me think of this, Mike. Um, I had a VP of design and construction stop me in the hallway one time, and and he was telling me about how one of my hospitals that was under construction wasn't uh the the commissioning wasn't going to be completed uh on time. And I told him, I said, Well, I knew that um and I'm working with it, and and I prioritized, and and I think we're good with that. I said, but it's this other hospital, it's a smaller hospital project. I said, that's the one that's got me worried uh because they're so far behind that I pulled the commissioning team off of that project. And he was totally surprised. His project managers had been telling him that that project was green this whole time. He had no clue. And the result of it, after uh a month or so of investigation, he ended up firing the general contractor. So I I don't know why people decide to keep showing things green uh when they have issues like that. I mean, come on, people, let's let's be honest and let's be open.

SPEAKER_05 45:39

It's the bad news doesn't get better type syndrome, and that happens so often we've masked those items, we don't want any conflict, and then it gets it gets ahead of us.

Watermelon Projects And Truth-Telling

SPEAKER_00 45:49

And I think in healthcare, we're just such a unique business because everyone has strategic and then everyone has routine, right? Most people live in the two different silos and they can work pretty nicely in their own silos. But you know, Dennis and Mike and and you know, to some extent, my group, you know, we're we're really trying to integrate those two things, right? It's very hard to do this. And I think, you know, I guess with you know, this whole conversation, it's it's left me with a lot of things to think about. But Diane, Diana, you know, programs, like you, you, you, you used the term program just in terms of one of the ACE events, but you know, my mind, and I think a lot of the guys, you know, I'm sure even Dennis and Michael to some extent, we think of program in a very big way. And I think that where you're trying to go with this, you're trying to say, all right, you got to look at this on a more micro level on how you're managing things that you can handle very much within your own purview and within your own day. Because I have a tendency to look at the program. Like when we come in and evaluate a hospital, we're trying to level set everything because at least at that point, every needle is on every record at the same time, and we can think a little bit strategically and the operational things that we can't avoid. You know, have we we have to pay attention to them, you know, we we're able to at least have an opportunity to try to, I guess, balance those things. But and and I find myself oftentimes, you know, trying to think too big. And you I think we all have this internal problem of saying, well, we have a we have a hospital to run while we're trying to be strategic. And we've got groups that are very focused in those dialogues and they're running on their own paths. And, you know, I think if there's anything I'm taking out of this, and just let me know if I'm wrong, but I think we've really got to try to utilize our time on a day and and an hour and try to use that and try not to, you know, what do they say, boil the ocean. Um, because it's not gonna happen without a lot more investment. Uh, at least that's one of the things I'm pulling out of this today.

SPEAKER_05 47:56

Just think of the risk involved as well. You know, the the the least risky item to do is to check all those regulatory boxes, as Dennis said, with back to the operating room analogy there. But when you go out on a limb and try to think of the simplest way to maybe not defeat the zombie but minimize the zombie, you're actually putting yourself at risk when the regulators show up and start, you know, you don't want to be on the top of the list when they read off every morning to the CEO group, you know, where the compliance problems are at your hospital. So it's easy to do status quo, I think, but we're all trying to push. And Diana really challenged all of us last year, you know, is to try something different and get micro and find those individual time wasters and processes that really we're we're hiding behind, and whether we're calling it life safety or you know, temperature pressure, or all the what there's dozens and dozens of those checkboxes, aren't there, Dennis, that we deal with mechanically every single day?

SPEAKER_04 48:55

Yeah, there's a lot of those. Uh Diana, I I would love to get your advice on our uh healthcare uh facility innovation conference. Uh we we rebranded it uh a couple years ago uh because we wanted to focus on on innovation. And and I really uh love the fact that you uh preach curiosity, and and I still think we're kind of missing the mark uh as we're reviewing abstracts for the conference. I'm seeing the same stuff. It's it's the same, especially regulatory, right? We're we're gonna have our regulatory update, we're gonna have somebody talk about this and what's going on in the industry. But how do we really unpack that curiosity and how as an Ashley board do we kind of carry that forward? And I was telling Pete before we started, you know, about half the members are new this year, and and so you you've got some new eyes, you've got some curiosity there, but also one of the challenges we have is rehashing things that we've talked about before. And so we see that a lot too, right? That you know, we've already been there, done that, let's let's move on. So, how can we bring that curiosity to the innovation conference? And how do we handle the whole thing? We've tried that before, and let's move on.

Failure Metrics And Pivot Signals

SPEAKER_02 50:08

I would I would just say personally, for me, my innovation comes whenever there's some kind of idea that makes me think, you know, innovation is marrying two disparate ideas. And so before we started recording, I said, you know who should come to your conference is the head of facilities for Google and Apple who brought uh goats to mow the lawn at Google and um who had this really creative campaign to have people stop using water bottles inside of uh their large facilities. And I I'm not saying all of the sessions should be like this, but if you get people who are doing similar things but completely out of the industry, they're gonna have a unique perspective that makes the people in the room have ideas of how they could try something or implement something. But if you have everyone who's doing the same thing, it it's not, it doesn't give us an opportunity to really dream about what's possible. So all of my so I'm a professional speaker and I don't look to other professional speakers for inspiration of what's possible. I think about musicians who are, in a sense, creating a each song is like a three-minute piece of content. So, how do I create my information in a three-minute piece of content that is so sticky and so memorable that you know people are gonna take me all over the world to say this three-minute thing? And here we are on this podcast because of a three-minute thing. So I would just say I'm inspired by people outside of my industry who make me think and dream bigger, but that's true for all of us.

SPEAKER_04 51:45

You know, Diana, I still get extremely excited every time I hear Ice Ice Baby come on race. Not so excited about all the Snoop Dogg songs.

SPEAKER_05 51:57

Hey Dennis, but Dennis, on to your point there, just you know, piling on that. We call ourselves innovative, but if as to your point, if it's the same curriculum and if we're really not trying anything new and it's the same speakers, it gets stale in a hurry. So I think that's been pointed out by several people. So I really applaud your efforts to keep stirring that up and really try to change as Diana was nice enough to challenge us last year to keep this moving.

SPEAKER_03 52:24

So we are coming to the close of our discussion, and I want to thank our guest Diana Kander, Dennis Ford, Patrick Murphy, Mike Hatton. Diana, from an inspiration perspective, and I would encourage people if you haven't followed Diana on LinkedIn, go to our LinkedIn because and if you go to our posts, there is a ton of content there and DianaCander.com, ton of content there, and it's digestible. You're right. You know, you can take those two or three minutes. But who are some of the people that you go to to draw inspiration from?

SPEAKER_02 52:54

I mean, you're gonna laugh at me, but I think about for my work ethic, I think about Shohei Otani, who I'm a big Royals fan, but he's the greatest baseball player who ever was. And that's where I set my standard. Do you know what I mean? It's not like people who are a little bit better than me in the industry, it's like completely different industry. But the standard for excellence, he you can watch him during baseball games. He's looking at an iPad in between innings because he's constantly taking notes, refining. Every year he picks one thing that he's gonna be exceptional at. So one year he was the best at stealing bases, and one year he worked on his velocity out of the park. So he like picks one thing a year, and so that's how I model my career. I pick one thing and I'm gonna work on that one thing for an entire year and not get distracted by all the things I could do and become a like crazy dangerous at this one thing that I've picked. And so I I pick people who are I just pick the standard that I want to meet to push me of what's capable. And then the other one is Taylor Swift. There's a documentary about how Taylor Swift prepares for her um tours, and she'll do like a half marathon on a treadmill while singing all songs. You know, like she'll do, she'll run for three hours while singing every song on the tour to prepare, and it's like that level of preparation for your craft is the bar that I'm trying to reach.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

Very interesting.

Time Management As Zombie Hunting

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Does your brain ever shut off or is your brain always going to uh it's it I get very excited about what's possible, and I think I shared this in the talk, but my uh I don't judge myself by how well I'm doing. I think on a scale of one to ten, where am I today versus what I am capable of? And I think if we all asked ourselves that question, it would create the necessary space for us to invest in growth for ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 54:56

Excellent. Very well said. Gentlemen, any final thoughts? You've got about two minutes. Anything you want to throw in?

SPEAKER_05 55:02

So topical, we really need to expand this even more and talk about some of those other concepts. I know I personally, since I'm more of an operations and technical person, I read your your book on the sales approach. Since I know nothing about sales and I'm such an introvert, I would never do that. But I found that was quite interesting about especially the analogy of all the lawyers coming for an interview. They all looked the same, they had the same presentation, and they didn't differentiate themselves. So, how do you differentiate yourself? Which really we could do at Ashy as well, as we go to that true innovation versus the same old, same old. We're all clones, literally. So good stuff, good inspiration. Excellent.

SPEAKER_04 55:43

I think that's what we're looking for moving forward. Is just uh how do we uh get uh Ashy to uh advocate for the facilities folks, out of the facilities folks, uh share with us what their uh their issues and zombies are, and and then how can we take that to the regulators above to help uh help us out as an industry?

SPEAKER_03 56:05

Can I ask one quick question, Diana? Yes or no to you. And the big should um should leaders go to their frontline staff and ask what are the zombies that you're dealing with?

SPEAKER_02 56:14

At least happen never, is that never all right? Well, but they know they know I'm telling you, they're just sitting on it and they're just waiting for an opportunity for somebody to ask. And it is the highest like engagement thing you can do for your team to ask them what's not working.

SPEAKER_04 56:36

She said to fire yourself every two years. So if you had to fire yourself and and re-engage, you know what how how do you re-engage with the staff and and how do you have those conversations? I'm the new guy coming in, you know what what's working well, what's not working. I I thought that was great.

SPEAKER_05 56:53

How do we give them the safe space to bring up those zombies to create change? And how do we not overreact if it's not presented in a manner that's so corporate America-like? I think that's safe space to listening. If we could ever get over that, and so much of our day or check boxes, I'll go back to the the check boxes, the thou shalls, I think was Dennis's term.

unknown 57:15

All right.

SPEAKER_02 57:16

So if anybody wants a zombie hunting guide, uh you can email me. I'm Diana at DianaCandra.com, and I'll send you a full like five-page facilitation guide to run one of these sessions with your team.

SPEAKER_03 57:27

And people can get in touch with you at that same same address. Diana, Dennis, Patrick, Mike, thank you for your time. As always, thanks for watching the Healthcare Facilities Network. We'll be back with a future episode. Thanks for watching. If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Healthcare Facilities Network, go to healthcarefacilitiesnetwork.com and let us know who you are and what you want to talk about. Because together, we can solve this critical aging issue.