I’ve been reading the book A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink. The premise of the book is this: the Information Age of the 20th Century has relied on skills that are more or less considered left-brained (”L-directed,” as Pink calls it) traits like analysis, fact-finding, and deduction. But the emerging Conceptual Age that is set to dominate the 21st Century relies more on inventiveness, empathy, meaning, so-called “right-brained” (”R-directed”) traits.

Healthcare as a whole is very left-brained and analytic. If a patient exhibits certain symptoms, there is a high probability that the patient has a particular illness that can be successfully treated in a certain way. Because medicine relies so much on logic and facts, it stands to reason that medicine, or any other scientific field, is likely to be dominated by L-directed thinkers.

Interpersonal communication, on the other hand, tends to be a rather R-directed activity. The right hemisphere of the brain processes emotions, facial expressions, and tone of voice. R-directed people tend to be better at making emotional connections, finding patterns, intuitively synthesizing information gleaned from people’s stories, rather than solving problems solely by means of a list of hard facts.

Yet many doctors tend to disdain anecdotes. However, an empathic physician has the potential to save lives by going beyond just the facts and paying attention to patients’ stories.

Let’s look at the case of two mail workers who were infected in the 2001 anthrax scare, as described in A Whole New Mind:

…(t)wo postal workers went to different health care centers complaining of similar symptoms. One man told his doctor he felt achy and ill and he believed he’d been exposed to anthrax, which had recently been found at the postal facility where he worked. The doctor telephoned the relevant public health departments, which told him that anthrax was not a risk and that he needn’t prescribe antibiotics. So he followed the rules and sent his patient home with orders to take some Tylenol. A few days later, the patient died – of anthrax. Meanwhile, the other postal worker went to an emergency room at a different hospital, just a few miles away. His doctor — who didn’t know about the patient above — examined the worker and suspected that he’d contracted pneumonia. But then the man told her that he worked at the postal facility hit with an anthrax scare. So she ordered another test, and even though she didn’t think that he had anthrax, something still nagged at her. She gave the man a prescription for Cipro, the antibiotic prescribed for anthrax, just in case. And instead of sending him home, as she had initially planned, she kept him at the hospital and referred him to an infectious-disease specialist. As it turned out, the man did have anthrax. And as it also turned out, the doctor’s empathic listening, intuition, and willingness to deviate from the rules meant the difference between life and death. “I just listened to my patient,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “He said, ‘I know my body and something’s just not right.’” Empathy — his doctor’s ability to intuit what someone else is feeling — saved his life.

So there’s a compelling case for intuition and making emotional connections when administering healthcare, but what about healthcare marketing? Shouldn’t marketing actions be justified and measured by a series of metrics? In a day and age when just about every medical practice in a given field offers similar services at similar prices, the practices that make human connections will always win. If you can connect with your patients on an emotional level, you’ll give yourself that much more credibility. If your patients feel like you care, they’ll tell their friends and family about the experience they had under your care. That’s the best kind of marketing or advertising — word of mouth — and it can’t be bought.

As the swine flu scare has gripped the US, the CDC issued important information that will aid in stopping the spread of the disease. The preventative list is simple, practical and, frankly, common sense. To protect yourself against the swine flu the CDC suggests you:

1. Avoid close contact.
2. Stay home when you are sick.
3. Cover your mouth and nose.
4. Clean your hands.
5. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth.
6. Practice other good health habits.

To better drive home the point that this list should be adhered to, I found a great video from the South Australian government encouraging their citizens to get a flu shot. It shows people sneezing but the camera captured the sneezed at a 1000 frames per second. Here’s the video:

Sneezing In Ultra Slow Motion – Watch more Funny Videos

Now, if that video doesn’t get your attention then I don’t know what will. I’m guessing you have a complex now just thinking about how you look when you sneeze.

What the CDC and the South Australian government are trying to say is that citizens around the world have a responsibility to maintain their own health. In the US there is a big push for healthcare reform, but too many people are looking to the government for that reform. While the government has a responsibility to protect our health and make healthcare available to its citizens, there is an equal responsibility for the citizens to take on responsibility as well.

Using common sense with regards to your own health, such as covering your mouth when you sneeze, washing your hands, exercising, eating a sensible diet, and scheduling annual wellness check-ups, will help in lowering the overall cost of healthcare and reduce the strain on that sector. Healthcare reform can’t be solely realized by government policy making. There is a responsibility of the individual to take ownership of his or her health as well. The age of consumerism in healthcare should equally mean that consumers of healthcare make wise choices on a daily basis to improve their health. Regardless of if your concern is with the swine flu or the idea of universal healthcare, the first place to reform healthcare is staring you in the mirror each morning. Until next time – keep your pulse strong.

You hear a great deal of talk about customer service these days. Countless books, blogs, software, and seminars are available on the subject. But a lot of what is needed for good customer service is simply being aware of the “atmosphere” around you. So many managers get caught up in the minute details of running their organizations that they fail to stop and observe what’s going on around them. Their mentality is that if clients are being served well then their customer service is good enough. With it becoming more difficult to predict what motivates clients to close a deal, along with the fact that clients are now more willing to cast their votes with their feet, you need to determine if you will manage your customer relationship like a barometer or a thermostat.

Barometers
Barometers, by definition, only tell you the atmospheric conditions in a given location. They provide information regarding atmospheric pressure so you can determine, in the short-term, what may happen. They’re great for forecasting and predicting what the future will be weather wise but do nothing in and of themselves to affect change in the atmosphere.

Many organizations are managing their clients’ experience like a barometer. They check their indicators (usually the profit line of the organizations’ spreadsheets) and determine how they’re doing. If the profits are good, then there is no need to be alarmed about their customer’s experience. If the profits are bad, then there is usually a rush to find the problem. Just as a barometer can only tell how current conditions are and what the short-term future may hold, organizations that use a similar method to tweak their client relationships will find clients moving to a competitor if they aren’t careful.

Thermostats
Thermostats are used to adjust the temperature in a given space. If a particular room is too hot or cold, a modification can be made to the air unit and a change in the temperature can be had. The change can be made at any moment the user desires and set to whatever is fitting for the space.

Organizations need to become more like thermostats when it comes to client relations. They need to be able to tell that there are adjustments that need to be made and simply make them. Sometimes it may be small moves that make the difference while other changes require more significant changes. Like a thermostat, you have the ability to change things as needed and there is no good reason not to make the changes then. For instance, if your thermostat was set to a temperature more fitting for winter but it’s summer, you’re not going to enjoy your surroundings very much and you’ll make the needed changes right away. You should likewise be in tune with what experiences your clients are having in dealing with your organization. If you don’t, you won’t have a very comfortable experience with those clients.

If your organizations’ customer relations are set up using a method similar to a barometer you should consider making some adjustments. Simply knowing the good or bad doesn’t improve anything. However, if you’re set up to be a thermostat then you’ll quickly be able to recognize changes that need to be made to improve how your clients experience your brand. In so doing you will keep those warm client relationships bringing in the cool cash.

GiggleMed.com material comes mostly from a two doctors who choose to use pseudonyms and one graphic artist. Their aim is bring positive aspects of humor to an increasingly stressed healthcare workforce – a sort of morale healthcare reform initiative.

DJ: How would you describe your audience?

GiggleMed: Most are in healthcare, and nearly all have Glasgow Coma Scores greater than 10.

The audience is made up of nurses, physicians, techs, pharmacists, medics, social workers, therapists – basically everyone in healthcare – and we’re all pretty stressed. We are being hit from a whole host of angles and most of them are outside of our direct control.

You know, it’s stressful enough when you’re responsible for someone else’s life, someone else’s wellbeing. Now add time constraints, being inundated with forms, hyper-analysis of our documentation, the threat of litigation, administrative bean-counter metrics, hard economic times, etc. Oh, and we also have to know our profession – the medicine, the procedures, the processes, the protocols. Across the board we are spending more time with paper and computers than we are with people. And that wears on us. It wears us down. Mostly because it is not why most of us are here. We’re here to help people.

Now add to this environment the fact that healthcare is highly specialized. And like other professions (law, architecture, engineering, sales, internet marketing, drug cartels, prostitution, etc.), it has its own language. We don’t call it “itching,” we call it “pruritis.” Whenever a group has their own language, there can be a unique humor that surrounds that language.

So to finally answer your question, the GiggleMed audience includes anyone within the Global Healthcare-Industrial Complex who feels stressed, or just wants to smile, or both.

DJ: Where did the idea for GiggleMed come from?

GiggleMed: It all started when that bed pan fell on my head…

Actually, the idea for Chart Farts® came first. While preparing for an ultra-stressful, in-your-face, grill you kind of presentation, I came across a medical malapropism or charting blooper. Another resident wrote in the patient’s chart “non-verbal, non-communicative, and offers no complaints.” Of course, I thought that wording was hilarious. I pointed it out to a few nurses and another resident, but then I moved on, preparing for the stress of my presentation.

Well, I’m not sure what came over me, but I added it to the end of my slide presentation. I added it at the very, very end… after a blank slide, just in case I wimped out and decided not to use it. Picture this… there I was… a nervous medical resident, about to give my first presentation at a critical care morning report conference. All of my peers were there – interns, residents, and medical students – scary in its own right. But also, the Chief of Medicine, the residency Program Director, the Director of the CCU, the Chief of Pulmonary Medicine, and several other supervising medical physicians were there. You can imagine that it would take some cajones to actually go through with showing that slide.

Well, I gave my presentation. I waded through some rolling of the eyes. I fielded some tough questions that interrupted my presentation and, overall, I was handling myself pretty well. So as I fearfully approached the end of my talk, the part where residents get ripped new orifices, I decided, “I’m gonna get ripped if I don’t show the slide, so who cares if I get ripped apart showing it.” (No resident feels good while another resident is being completely humiliated, so I could at least lessen the blow for the onlookers with a little humor.)

So I showed it and I put it up there right before the questions would begin. And guess what? Not one question. Not one new orifice. Instead, a bunch of deep belly laughs. So I tried it with the next presentation a few weeks later and got the same thing. No questions, tons of compliments, and lots of smiles.

I was onto something and I actively looked for these things. I called that first slide “Medical Terminology 101.” Soon people all over the hospital were sending me these bloopers. I was amazed at the number of these things. I posted them on a Web site that I made for the department. At that time I continued to call it “Medical Terminology 101.” It was a big hit.

One night, right after passing 150 malapropisms on the list, it came to me – “chart farts.” I jumped out of bed at 2:47 a.m., and I mean jumped, and I bolted to my computer and registered ChartFarts.com. ChartFarts.com skyrocketed to the point where there are thousands of original medical malapropisms. I officially trademarked the phrase Chart Farts®, because the word “malapropism” doesn’t imply humor. In fact, I thought, “chart farts” should completely replace the term “malapropism.” No other phrase really captures the way these things interrupt and punctuate the reading of a professional document.

Well, when I decided to start making related products – medical humor-related shirts, mugs, books, stickers, etc. – I realized that “farts” is no name for a site that caters to health professionals, at least not the mature ones. So I came up with a list of about 40 possible names and emerged with GiggleMed. GiggleMed.com, LLC was formed in 2006.

DJ: On your Web site you tell the story of offending a representative of The Joint Commission with a T-shirt you were wearing. Have you had problems with anyone else?

GiggleMed: So far, no one else…

Now, I must say that one Joint Commissioner does not necessarily represent the feelings of everyone at the Joint Commission. Besides, the shirt only said, “Joint Commission Came & All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” If you’re offended by that, you should probably be scheduled for sphincter manometry and be given a prescription for Chill Pills BID.

Aside from that one Commissioner, no one else has been offended or upset enough to complain. I think we have a pretty good rule to curb the middle school instincts in our humor. Basically, anything more crude or offensive than “fart” is first passed through the “Wife test.” If our wives (also physicians, but with higher standards) get upset, we don’t post it. And if either of us ends up sleeping on the couch because of it, we remove it from our “idea folder.”

There has been a very rare naysayer or non-believer in the originality of the Chart Farts. In general, they don’t realize how ubiquitous these things are. One person accused me of regurgitating old malapropisms from other sources, but the fact is some of these things repeat. The more common repeats are “chicken pops,” “grand mama seizures,” “Eurosepsis,” “very close veins,” and “fireballs in the uterus.” These are common enough that I’ll probably hear or see at least two of these in the next week.

DJ: It has been said that laughter is the best medicine. Do you think that healthcare is afraid of humor?

GiggleMed: Afraid of humor? No. Afraid of lawsuits? Yes.

Just like there used to be good humors and bad humors, now there is appropriate humor and inappropriate humor. Everything has its place and its time. And everything has its function, too. It’s not enough to say that it should not be harmful. Actually, it should also be beneficial when it occurs in the workplace, especially a workplace where there are people who do not feel well or may have received some bad news.

Inappropriate humor should be feared. There are certain humor red flags that should be avoided in healthcare, for sure. Jokes and mockery that are directed at an individual is one such example. Others include humor that is perceived to be politically charged, sexist, racist, or culturally insensitive. Not only could it be offensive, but it could become a problem for the one using the “humor” and the institution that employs that person. There could be professional and legal implications. And it doesn’t matter what you think of it; what matters is how it is perceived.

Now, that being said, every group begins to develop a culture if they are exposed to each other over time. In the management and administrative world, a lot is made of culture, and we wholeheartedly agree. If you’ve worked in a high-stress, look-over-your-shoulder, or backstabbing atmosphere, you know the downside to a negative culture.

Instead of just trying to avoid a negative culture, you can actually create a positive culture at your workplace. Some of it is top-down, like encouraging feedback and constructive criticism, or rewards and acknowledgement for good contributions, etc. Some of it can be top-down or vice versa, and one component is using humor appropriately.

We use humor in our workplace in a very directed way to drive a positive culture. The patient satisfaction and staff satisfaction rates are through the roof at our workplace. And people come right out and describe it as “both professional and fun,” even patients. When is the last time you heard a patient describe their experience in a hospital as “fun”? Let me re-phrase that – when is the last time you heard a patient with a negative urine tox screen describe their hospital experience as “fun”?

DJ: Your Chart Farts are quite funny and beg the question, what were these
physicians thinking?

GiggleMed: Need… sleep… Must finish… dictation…

Actually, Chart Farts are not limited to doctors. Doctors, nurses, transcriptionists, and patients are by far the largest contributors. There are a few other groups that sporadically contribute – such as respiratory therapists, medical secretaries, techs, and EMTs. There are even some from news media.

Chart Farts have several contributing factors that bear mentioning. Accents, poor penmanship, lack of knowledge, lack of experience, interruptions, and being too busy or spread too thin are the biggies. An example might be when a doctor with a thick accent is dictating and a transcriptionist that is unfamiliar with the procedure or diagnosis is transcribing what was said. The doctor says, “patent foramen ovale,” and it is transcribed as “a plate, a frame, and a valley.”

Sometimes it is lack of knowledge or experience when a new nurse or intern has to document something they are unfamiliar with. Their supervisor says, go get a Foley catheter and they document that a “Folate catheter” was inserted.

Interruptions are huge, actually. Questions, pagers, phones, machine alarms, etc. You’re cruising along in one train of thought and up walks another healthcare worker to ask you a question. You answer the question, but try to get back to what you’re doing, and BAM! You write something related to the conversation you just had.

There are times, even, when a transcriptionist’s macros cause the problem. “Dr. Rao” becomes “Dr. Right Anterior Oblique.”

My favorites come from the triage person in the ER writing down the patient’s own words. Either one of them could screw it up – put them together and it’s exponential.

DJ: Do people ever accuse you of trivializing healthcare?

GiggleMed: So far, not that we’re aware of. If someone does, we’ll probably just trivialize their accusation.

DJ: Do you think using humor (such as in your post about the C.diff sticker),
can change people’s behavior?

GiggleMed: Absolutely. With Chart Farts, I get people coming up to me regularly saying, “Whoa! I almost put a chart fart down today,” or “Those things are hilarious, ever since you’ve been sending them through e-mail I’ve noticed 3 or 4 times a day where I almost write one. It’s amazing.”

One physician I know tells all of the new interns on orientation, “Write this down. This is important. Your single-most important goal on this rotation … Are you writing this down? Your single-most important goal is to avoid saying or writing anything so stupid that I will submit it to ChartFarts.com.” Of course, he chuckles and it’s a joke, but he agrees that there is value in exposure to malapropisms. They’re embarrassing if you write one, but it’s a good embarrassing, unlike the orifice-ripping I alluded to in Question #1.

Now in the example you’re talking about, with the C. diff sticker, I wrote a post on the GiggleMed.com blog after my friend and colleague (the other GiggleMed doc) took a picture of someone’s morning coffee on an isolation cart. I thought, we tell people day in and day out about food and drinks at the nurse’s station and there are Joint Commission recommendations and regulations regarding it, there are hospital policies, there’s even disciplinary action but, frankly, these things are not working.

Instead, what if we put a GiggleMed sticker on there saying, “What’s a Little C. Diff Shared Among Friends?” with a small, somewhat serious warning under it? What if we put one of those on that drink? I bet you’d see more of a change than you do with all of that other stuff. Plus, no one will attribute the reprimand to their supervisor being a jerk or the policy being stupid. Your drink on the isolation cart is the problem, not your supervisor, not the Joint Commission, and not the policy. But let’s say it in a good, funny way.

DJ: Do you believe more healthcare professionals should follow your lead and
interject humor when helping patients?

GiggleMed: Like I mentioned before, there is a time, a place, and a purpose for humor. Not everyone is skilled at recognizing those times, places, or purposes. And not everyone is skilled at delivery, either.

Should everyone do it? Probably not.

But if there are healthcare professionals out there that have a good sense of appropriateness for humor, then yes, they should. Doing so could make an uncomfortable patient a little more comfortable. It could take a scared family member and let them know that everything is going to be all right. It could make a stressed out nurse smile, or a busy secretary laugh, etc. It can make this complex healthcare web a little more bearable for everyone.

DJ: What do you hope to accomplish through GiggleMed?

GiggleMed: World domination, of course, but we’d both settle for early retirement.

Our goals are several. Our tagline or slogan says, medicine is fun again. Healthcare used to be an admirable profession. It used to be enjoyable and immensely rewarding. It used to be that having a patient say, “You know what? You saved my life,” or “If it weren’t for you, I don’t know if I could’ve made it through that,” or a family member says, “Even though we lost Mom, I think she couldn’t have had a better nurse or better care than the care you gave her.” It used to be that these things were our fuel.

Now, though, we are looking at Patient Satisfaction survey numbers and where our institution ranks nationally. Where’s the humanity in that? It’s a stat, a marketing ploy. The question becomes, “How can we get a 10 out of 10 in this metric?” instead of “How can we make this the best experience possible for Mrs. Jones?”

Well, we want to restore that. It’s not all about humor. Humor is one component of our humanity. We want to make medicine fun again so that the right people are entering these honored professions, so that the ones we have don’t burn out, and so that we can make the healthcare experience better for everyone. If we make medicine fun again for the broad spectrum of healthcare workers out there, a cultural transformation will occur in healthcare that must not be neglected with all of these plans for healthcare reform.

DJ: What does the future hold for Dun Tzu and GiggleMed?

GiggleMed: Well, as you know, we use pseudonyms, and “Dun Tzu” is one of them. Dun Tzu is our subliminal attempt at discouraging malpractice lawsuits (Don’t Sue). In addition to Dun Tzu, we also have “Tony Below-Knee” which is a puppet with a South Philly Rocky type voice. His name comes from a Chart Fart where someone wrote, “Baloney amputation” (below-knee amputation). Also, it helps that the South Philly voice is really the only one I have any talent for.

Be on the lookout for several new forms of media for our humor -iPhone apps, musical parody, videos, video games, and more books. We do offer themed Chart Farts in fortune cookies for large gatherings, but we haven’t really started advertising that yet.

We are also exploring the behavior issues we discussed in Question #7 with plans for supplementing healthcare educational materials with humor. And there’s possibly a contest coming up. More on that later.

Bonus Question:

DJ: If you could change one thing about healthcare what would you change?

GiggleMed: Here’s ONE thing… One list of things I would (or would not) change about healthcare:

1. Get the word “healthcare” recognized by spell checkers throughout the world.

2. Eliminate the middleman – that’s you, Insurance Boy.

3. Launch a return to eponyms. They just sound cool, plus, they make me look smart.

4. Make all physicians and nurses who order or administer a medication or procedure first try it – in a hospital gown.

5. Disassemble all hospitals’ Forms Committees.

6. Hire ugly drug reps.

7. Eliminate “just wanna let you know” from nursing vocabulary.

8. Mandate penmanship classes for all physicians.

9. Institute a smoking ban for all respiratory therapists.

10. Form a large oversight committee that could randomly show up and inspect the Joint Commission offices, protocols, and processes. And maybe another task force to provide oversight for that committee.

11. Put public service ads about prostate health on all public urinals.

12. Formally institute a Code Brown Rapid Response team for the comfort of our patients, their guests, and anyone else within nose-shot of the nurse’s station.

13. Start a nursing reality show about what exactly happens when nurses are “on break.”

14. Replace patient call bells with Twitter accounts.

15. Change the name of Go-Lytely to Go-Profusely.

DJ: I would like to offer a special thanks to GiggleMed for taking the time to answer our 10 questions. It has been an absolute pleasure getting to know Dun Tzu. I’m sure our readers will agree that healthcare can be fun again. If you would like to learn more about GiggleMed you may visit their sites which include:

http://GiggleMed.com (blog/home)
http://twitter.com/GiggleMed (Follow GiggleMed on Twitter)
http://ChartFarts.com (medical malapropisms)
http://JCAHOfun.com (Joint Commission humor)
http://cafepress.com/gigglemed (funny medical humor gift store)

If you or someone you know would like to be interviewed for The Pulses’ “10 Questions With…” please e-mail dj@talstone.com with a brief explanation as to why you or someone else should be interviewed along with contact information. You can also follow DJ at http://twitter.com/TalstoneDJ. Until next time – keep your pulse strong.

While directing a photo shoot in Saco, Maine, I saw a great little cross-stitched sign that hung in the men’s restroom. It read, “Ready, Aim, Fire.” I won’t go into the particular meaning given the environment in which the little sign hung, but it made me think about how many organizations market themselves. Many think that throwing their name around en masse gets the job done. Others don’t take into consideration as to how their message will resonate with their target. Still others don’t even know who they’re targeting. They simply get ready, fire, and then aim.

If you’re going to be successful in your marketing efforts you’re going to have to accept that marketing isn’t as easy as writing clever words and mingling them with clever images. That’s not marketing, that’s fine art, and unless you need some expensive artwork hanging in your hallways I suggest you change your approach. Marketing requires the following to be successful:

An Understanding of Yourself
What gets you up in the morning? What are your passions and your dislikes? Why are you in this business? What makes you different from your competition? These are just a few questions that you have to ask yourself before developing a marketing strategy. I can’t tell you how many times we have posed these questions to the heads of organizations only to be met with blank stares. However, when organizations stop and answer the questions they come to understand themselves more. Once you come to understand yourself then you will be able to clearly speak to your target.

An Understanding of Your Target
It’s not enough to just know yourself. You might know yourself well, but the rest of the outside world may not even know you exist (and all the world may not need to know you).

A key component in a great marketing strategy is to know who you need to target and why. Good market research is essential in building a good database of contacts. Finding a target that will be receptive to your message will create a greater ROI for your efforts. Developing a good database is time intensive and something that requires maintenance to ensure that your future messages hit their mark.

An Understanding of Your Goals
For any marketing strategy to be profitable you have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Your goals might be to build greater brand recognition, generate sales, build awareness, or promote a specific product or service. A clearly defined objective is the start of any great strategy. When you can convincingly state why you need to engage in a particular marketing activity you will have an easier time determining your overall strategy.

You can’t expect your marketing efforts to succeed if you use the ready, fire, aim approach. Knowing yourself, your target, and your goals are critical in building a solid marketing strategy. Failure to get ready, aim, and then fire in your marketing efforts could cause a backfire in hitting the right target with the right message.

A healthcare organization’s logo represents a critical first impression, since that is often the first aspect of that brand that a patient experiences. A logo is perhaps a brand’s most visible and memorable element, at least at first. After interacting with any business, healthcare or otherwise, all the attributes of that organization are then assigned to the logo, which may or may not reinforce what that visual mark says.

In short, a logo is a great opportunity to present what your healthcare organization is all about before people even engage with it, which is why so many organizations invest so much time and energy in creating a mark.

Appearance matters

A logo says a lot about how seriously you take yourself. If your personal appearance is sloppy, you will be perceived as a sloppy and disorganized person. The same goes for your logo. If you walked into a bank where the tellers were wearing clown suits and the sign out front looked like it was drawn by a child, you’d probably come to the conclusion that the bank was a joke, right? From the start, you want your organization to appear polished, professional, and appropriate to the brand it represents.

Some guiding principles

It’s easy to make fun of bad logos (like on the website Your Logo Makes Me Barf), but it is harder to create a logo that is heads and shoulders above the rest. Here are a few principles that can be applied to create a memorable logo:

• Be Unique
  This is probably one of the most difficult principles to achieve since there are so many logos in the world that it’s hard to not do something similar to something else out there. However, uniqueness is commonly reached simply by means of creative spelling and custom (or customized) typography/lettering.
• Avoid Clichés and Fads
  How many dental logos have you seen that show a giant molar? Or chiropractor logo with a picture of a spine? In the same city? Sure, familiarity and frequent use are what give a cliché its power, but once a certain metaphor is seen too many times, it loses its effectiveness. Consider this: how many logos from the ’90s have you seen that have incorporated an oval or a swoosh (or both)? Today, a lot of current logos tend toward bright colors, overlapping shapes, and rounded or futuristic forms. A logo needs to appear contemporary without dating itself too quickly.
• Be Appropriate
  So many healthcare logos look inappropriate to the brands they stand for, appearing too childish or casual compared with the service provided. If a logo is inconsistent with a given brand, or it appears trivial, inappropriate, or otherwise unprofessional, people will suspect and avoid it from the start.
• Keep It Simple
  For practical reasons, a logo needs to be simple so it can be easily reproduced in one color and at large and small sizes. While the web and improvements in printing technologies have somewhat obviated the need for one-color logos, if a logo doesn’t work in only one color, it’s probably not a very good logo. Furthermore, this is also important from an accessibility standpoint, as people with poor vision or colorblindness may not be able to make out what a logo is intended to show if the forms and colors are tricky.
• Be Clever, But Don’t Make Me Think Too Hard
  Expanding on the “keep it simple” principle, a logo shouldn’t try too hard to convey a complex image. If a GI clinic includes an intricate diagram of a colon in its logo, they’re asking too much of it. Furthermore, if a logo is complicated and can’t be “read” instantly, it’s not doing its job.

I’d say all of the following are guilty of violating at least one of the above principles, wouldn’t you?

Your brand

How well does your logo work with your brand? How many opportunities is it costing your business?

A while back I missed the first step of our stairs at work and gravity took over. I landed about eight steps down. I didn’t think anything was broken, but on the way home my whole body, particularly my thumb, which I had managed to twist under me when I landed, began to ache. By the time I pulled into my driveway it was swollen, immovable, and the pain was excruciating.

The rest of the evening was spent in the ER. X-rays revealed the thumb wasn’t broken, but the doctor thought I had torn a tendon and would need surgery. He referred me to a “hand doc,” whom I saw the next day. Fortunately, the surgery was never needed. I healed just fine. I saw the doctor for a follow-up visit and went on my way.

Here’s the thing – a full FIVE months later that doctor’s practice sent me an e-mail asking me to fill out a patient satisfaction survey. By then, I couldn’t remember his name let alone the number of particulars the survey wanted me to recall. I had had a positive experience, but they waited so long to ask me about it I could offer them no real information.  I never took the survey.

Timeliness is of the utmost important in gaining feedback. When was the best time to ask me about my experience? How about right after the experience? The next month I received a holiday greetings e-card from. After that, I heard no more. I’m still puzzled about their strategy.

We hear a lot in marketing strategy about messaging, tactics, and tools. But we also can’t forget the importance of timeliness in cultivating relationships with an audience. The iron cools very quickly; we need to strike while it’s still hot.

General George B. McClellan had been appointed by Abraham Lincoln to command the Union Army on November 1, 1861. McClellan knew the science of war and supposedly had a good sense of logistics due to his tenure with the Illinois Central Railroad. However, Lincoln and his advisors soon were at odds with the strategic intellect that McClellan demonstrated as chief commander. Due to McClellan’s trait of mistakenly inflating the numbers of his enemies while deflating the number of his own force, he failed to engage the enemy at critical opportunities. This failure to act on his advantages prompted Lincoln to write McClellan on April 9, 1862, saying “I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you, is with you by this time; and if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you — that is, he will gain faster, by fortifications and reinforcements, than you can by reinforcements alone.”

When McClellan’s false sense of being outnumbered led to his subsequent failure to deploy his overwhelming number of soldiers at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln relieved the general of his command. The lesson learned in McClellan’s strategy is that nothing always accomplishes nothing. When possessing the power to possibly end the American Civil War with a greater number of troops than his enemy, McClellan’s fear prompted him to either act slowly or not at all.

The economic times we find ourselves in have done their worst on many business sectors, including healthcare. Fear abounds with many sitting on their budgets just watching the economy stagger. At the time of this writing, the first quarter has passed and the second begun. While there has been some good news that has fostered something of a rebound in the economy, many still sit on fear and do nothing. As Lincoln tried to get across to McClellan, any delay in movement, especially in marketing your organization, will result in your competitors either entrenching themselves in the marketplace or gaining growth, eating away at what market share you control. Doing nothing isn’t a marketing strategy – it’s a plan to fail.

How long will you sit on your budgets? What exactly are you looking for before you act? I’ve heard it said that if you wait for the right time to get married or have kids you’ll never do either one. McClellan never felt the time was right to attack. He never had enough resources to properly conduct war. While he may have understood the science of war, he failed to understand when to go into action. As a result, history remembers him as a fearful commander more prone to defeat than victory. If history were being written about you, what would it say? Would you be remembered as the fearful executive or the champion leader of your organization? In the words of Abraham Lincoln to Gen. McClellan, “I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.”

Recently, my father had shoulder surgery to clean out some adhesions and repair a tear in his rotator cuff. The surgery went smoothly, and as we left the hospital with a phalanx of the sling, pain pump, cold therapy igloo with hoses, and a prescription for some pain meds, the nurse told us, “Doctor Riley will call you tonight to see how you’re doing.”

“Really?” Mom asked.
“Yes, he calls all his patients after surgery,” the nurse replied.

I was impressed but skeptical. After all, doctors are busy people. As the afternoon wore on, issues began popping up. The nurse gave us different directions than the physical therapist. The pharmacist gave different directions about the pain meds than the doctor. We were anxious about Dad’s shoulder exercises because everyone impressed upon us the need to do them religiously three times a day so his shoulder wouldn’t freeze up. But the nurse told us to keep the cold therapy on at all times, which made the exercises difficult. Confusion and worry reigned.

Then, just a little after 7 p.m., Dr. Riley called. He patiently listened to all of our questions, answered them to our satisfaction, and then said with a chuckle, “Now, I’d like to speak to the patient.” Dad’s face lit up as we handed him the phone.

Three days later we took Dad in to Dr. Riley’s practice to have the pain pump removed. While we were in the waiting room the doctor quietly walked in with a carton full of Starbucks drinks. We watched as he delivered one to each of his front office staff, and then asked us to come on back. Dad’s shoulder was healing nicely, and we were sent home with a good report.

It doesn’t take much to win a loyalty in a patient. In this case, a simple phone call from the doctor made a huge difference to my parents. And a gesture of kindness to his staff reinforced their opinion that this was someone who cared.

They still tell their friends about the phone call, and here I am blogging about it. Little things mean a lot.