The Executive Meeting

The Quality Assurance Committee sat with the CEO a few weeks ago in an executive meeting where the Committee reported on its achievements and on-going projects, outlined its proposed activities. Actually, the report of the Improving Performance Group, which I co-chair with Freddie, made up for the bulk of the reports. (Applause, applause!)

LLB and I previously had a private meeting and agreed to oust Mega as a speaker from the quality policy orientation as he has this tendency to hold court as if there were no tomorrow. Besides, he was not a well-liked character, being arrogant and power-hungry, a true megalomaniac. Hence, the name. He is the proverbial fly on the carabao's back who thought he was the greatest just because he was atop a great beast of burden.

So, when the topic of the orientation came up, LLB introduced the suggestion that the seminar give a more general view of the quality assurance movement in the hospital instead of focusing on the details of government standards and regulations as these could be addressed in another seminar. The objective was to give the employees the big picture and spark enthusiasm for change toward quality service. Myles picked it up, citing the length of the presentations which could be significantly shortened to maintain the interest and attention of the participants.

I quickly seconded Myles and suggested that more time be given to the proposed group activity which unfortunately had to be dropped during the last batch who attended the seminar due to lack of time. I cited the documented finding that the previous batches responded well to Freddie's talk because he used a group activity as a pre-cursor to his topic.

And then, the death blow.

I suggested that Mega's topic be consolidated with that of LLB's, if that was alright with Mega. In front of the CEO and Dr. P, what else could he say? Of course, I suggested that other presentations be shortened as well, including that of the nurses who did a mere reading exercise of the government standards. But Mega was out and that was a big relief. At least, even if RDG and VG were boring, untalented speakers, the participants were assured that the speakers were people they did not hate.