Sheri Walter

Clinical Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship

Physicians are often the first leaders to notice a problem or inefficiency in a healthcare setting. But they don’t always have the business acumen — let alone the bandwidth — to know how best to address the issue. Sheri Walter says that’s where training in organizational change can help.

“If you start to say, ‘I wish this could happen,’ that’s where a change management course steps in. We look at how to tackle a problem and what roadblocks we’ll need to manage to get there,” says Walter. “A lot of physicians are looking for a change. Maybe they don’t know how to manage that change, or they think someone else will make it. In my course, we talk about how you can lead change and what strategies bring your ideas to fruition.”

We talk about how you can lead change and what strategies bring your ideas to fruition.

Walter is teaching the “Leading Organizational Change” course in the Physician MBA. An engineer with an MBA focused in finance and accounting, Walter became fascinated by effective leadership while working at Eli Lilly and Company.

“The leaders were able to bring out the best in both individuals and teams,” she said.

Walter went on to earn a PhD in organizational behavior specifically related to leadership because she not only wanted to understand exceptional leadership, but she wanted to teach it, too. Her research focuses on leadership development — the thought process that goes into creating leaders and how leaders seek and use feedback to improve.

Walter recognizes that the soft skills of leadership don’t always come easily to people with logic-based professions.

“I have an engineering and finance background. Like physicians, we aren’t taught management skills; we’re taught technical skills: how to engineer a well, how to balance a budget or how to perform surgery. But when it comes to managing people and understanding their motivations, we aren’t trained on that,” she says. “Leading is understanding not only how you tick, but how other people operate — their strengths and weaknesses — and working within their capabilities.”

Recognizing when change is needed is only step one, says Walter. Change management involves preemptively considering all the steps needed to achieve transformation and any obstacles that may stand in your way. Many people have ideas for improving processes in healthcare, but not all of them are successful.

“Most people who haven’t been trained in change management don’t understand why their plans failed. It’s often due to unexpected roadblocks,” Walter explained. “One of the things this change management course does is train you to anticipate potential hurdles and create strategies for getting around them so they do not derail your plans.”

Change management allows you to anticipate potential hurdles and create strategies for getting around them so they do not derail your plans.

The complex American healthcare system is rife with opportunity for improvement and organizational change. Physicians are uniquely suited to lead this transformation due to their roles and deep understanding of the medical system. Equipping physicians to lead change means preparing them to gain buy-in from their colleagues rather than dictating top-down orders. By gaining skills in organizational change, Walter says physicians can get everyone on board with their ideas for change in a way that will be successful for the entire organization.

“Some people are good at implementing a plan. Others are better at articulating direction. A good leader meets both those groups where they are because we must have all types on the team. We need visionaries, we need some naysayers to ensure it’s done right, and we need in-the-weeds people following through on details,” says Walter. “Physician leaders need buy-in from all of these team members because you can’t do it alone. We empower physicians to successfully lead the change they know needs to happen.”