Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the World’s Most Admired Service Organizations

CHAPTER 7ORCHESTRATING THE CLUES OF QUALITY

Mary Ann Morris, who manages general services and Mayo Clinic volunteer programs at Mayo Rochester, likes to tell a story about her early days at the Clinic. She was working in a laboratory—a job that required her to wear a white uniform and white shoes. And after a frantic morning getting her two small children to school, she arrived at work to find her supervisor staring at her shoes. The supervisor had noticed that the laces were dirty where they threaded through the eyelets of the shoes and asked Morris to clean them. Offended, Morris said that she worked in a laboratory, not with patients, so why should it matter? Her supervisor replied that Morris had contact with patients in ways she didn’t recognize— ...