A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives: a curated forum reserved for leaders nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the Construction Tech Review Advisory Board.

Nyu Langone Health

Elevating Information Sharing to a Whole New Level

Communication and information sharing has rapidly evolved over the years. Considering all the customers we serve, both internal and external of NYU Langone Health, one of the premier academic medical centers in the United States, the conventional way of accessing information is now replaced with texting, instant video chat, social media and many more. This holds true for our employees and support teams as well, as they implement these latest communication paths for the seamless functioning of the hospital, research, and education within the organization. Computers, iPads, smartphones, and other innovative technologies have now taken over from the traditional telephonic systems. Although this transformation promotes mobility unlike the telephonic system, it paves way for numerous challenges.

Circumventing Challenges

Today, with a rapid increase in its growth rate and productivity, our organization is spread out across New York. This geographical expansion allows our workforce to work in multiple locations rather than sticking to a single location, thereby giving way to numerous challenges alongside benefits.

Even though technology is considered as the centerpiece, I believe our customers and the end users are the primary factors who lead to the development of technology

To address these challenges, we encourage our end users to embrace various methods of communication, a combination of telephone, video, texting, instant chat, social media accessibility amongst others. Additionally, we also avail collaboration tools for our teams so that it is not a single channel anymore.

We are trying to introduce a collaboration tool, which combines numerous facilities like emailing, messaging and many more. The tool enables users to access multiple options from a single point such as emailing, singular chat, scheduling a meeting and so on, providing a unique and singular interface where they can access it to do various things based on their workflow requirement on a day-to-day basis. We also ensure that any application or interface that we provide to our end users is compatible across all devices including computers, tables, various operating systems, and smartphones.

Another challenge we face is the communication within the organization, across the leadership teams and the cross- functional teams. This has led us to provide and leverage virtual meeting spaces, which aids in saving a lot of time. We provide video conferencing, which is more interactive and immersive than ever before, giving primary importance to the physical presence that just the voice. The video calls comprehend the gestures of the person along with the emotional response to comments and ideas. This enables a better communication within our team.

Even though technology is considered as the centerpiece, I believe our customers and the end users are the primary factors who lead to the development of technology. The perspective of what the user requires and requests is the only consideration while implementing latest tools, unified communication, and collaboration mechanism. We empathize with our customers, observe their habits, and collect enough data and analyze it to finally derive at the right solution, which will help our end users to do their best. It should be noted that any decision of choosing a technology or an approach is purely based on the information received and we make sure to value the opinion of every member irrespective of the level or department considering them equal.

It has always been a priority for our organization to build a world-class system irrespective of the level the system has to function. This echoes in our developmental procedures and thought processes for innovation excellence. Furthermore, we have a strong team of leaders who encourage us to build a reliable and highly redundant tool or system that is excellent. Unlike other players in the industry we do not focus on cost-cutting, rather our primary motto has always been to provide the best class patient care, educational systems, and research elements.

Stepping Stones to Success

By imbibing the qualities of a coach rather than a leader, I make sure to provide my employees with the flexibility to come up with ideas and creativity rather than suggesting their plan of action. To inspire my colleagues on how to do things in a certain way, I would rather not impose ideas.

I would suggest upcoming leaders to follow the same root of inspiring co-workers to choose their own creative path. Additionally, consider ‘curiosity’ and ‘satisfaction’ as two major values throughout your career. Curiosity is essential to learn more and imbibe a culture of innovation for the future of the organization.

The articles from these contributors are based on their personal expertise and viewpoints, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their employers or affiliated organizations.

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