Psychological Security and the Human Sensor Array

The Effective Action Approach

In the EA system, because they have the most contact with patients, the Team can and should be deployed as a sensor array: eyes and ears on the floor for every patient. This was practicable as soon as if gave them a communication structure for reporting their impressions.

By asking specific questions that trained their awareness and prompted constructive answers, we could get detailed information about the experiences our patients had in the practice which helped inform the insights we could get from standard metrics.

Some of these insights became a special kind of metric; certain behaviors and outcomes proved so indicative of success that we measured them. They would become outcome EAs. More on that later. 

 
Psychological security is what you have when you feel comfortable speaking up to ask a question, be questioned yourself, or point out a problem. Google spent millions of dollars and more than a year proving the necessity of this comfort in order for teams to work together effectively. Supplying sufficient trust and psychological security to get good information from the team was easy when we also allowed as part of their reporting an outlet for feedback. 

Like they found when they studied psychological security at Google, our Team delighted in having a voice and being able to contribute their unique insights to improving the group effort, and it motivated them to participate in the culture. This culture allowed us to steadily grow our practice, retain our best people, and develop the potential of 2nd-tier performers.