THOUGHT LEADERSHIP / MEDIA
Highlighted thinking from and media about individuals in the JW Collaborative network
Change isn’t linear. But it is frequent. And it can either happen to you or you can make it happen - be chased or do the chasing. The more you can make the latter happen, the more you’ll enjoy the process and the outcome. At nearly 40 years old, I’ve experienced my fair share of both.
In my latest reflection piece, I write about the seven mindsets for making big life changes happen that I finally understood after a year of distance running.
1. Just start
2. Get lost
3. Avoid the grind
4. Find your consistency
5. It’s the journey AND the destination
6. I go as we go
7. Celebrate the wins - big and small
It’s not so much that distance running taught me these mindsets, but I saw them in a new way. Life prepared me for them, which made me ready to finally be a distance runner - and a better parent, partner, and professional - in a way that I just couldn’t be before.
If you’re in any of those roles yourself, then you’re also responsible for managing, if not catalyzing, change for others. And I don’t think any of us can do that for others if we can’t do it for ourselves - over and over and over.
“Recommit yourself to the things that matter to you”: Meet Member Joel Worthington
MEDIUM | 10.20.2020
ARTICLE BY Lydia chlpka (University of Pittsburgh, Organizational Innovation Lab)
“In this series, we are spotlighting our community members. In the Adaptive Space, we make room to receive the insights our community members have to offer. This series is where we will discover each other’s gifts! We will be spotlighting one story per week. Please engage with our star of the week by participating in the conversation below.
This week, we’re introducing new member Joel Worthington! Joel has a unique and diverse background in a number of person-centered fields, and we are so excited to learn from his experience. He is dedicated to facilitating change, especially for people who need it most. Joel is currently the owner of JW Collaborative, a human-centered design strategy studio that aims to help groups facilitate holistic and purposeful change.
How do you define success for yourself?
It’s changed over time for sure. Early on, I did the hospital administration fellowship, which is something you don’t do unless you think you want to be a CEO of a hospital someday or are very curious about it. At the time, that’s what I thought I wanted to do, and I thought that was how I would define success. Quickly, I learned that wasn’t the life that I wanted, which pushed me to look in different directions. Fast forward to now, I’m my own boss, and health care executives are often my main clients. At some point, I might add employees to the mix, but it’s currently important for me to control my own time, energy, and effort. I get to shape my vision, rather than have someone else shape it for me. It just feels healthier and more aligned with who I really am as a person. And I get to spend a lot of time with my family. That’s all a big part of how I would define success now.”
Some People Jump, I Was Pushed: Into a Year of Solopreneurship and Change
MEDIUM | 08.24.2020
ARTICLE BY Joel Worthington
“There are four key things I’ve learned about myself and being a solopreneur since then, which, if you’re considering or facing a bold move, I hope might help you.
Fostering personal resilience over many years and anchoring in values ensured that I always felt confident in where I was headed and that I would keep going toward my vision and goals.
Orthodoxies are always in the way of creating significant, desired change, so, when they were broken for me, I took advantage.
Replacing professionalism with authenticity is essential for facilitating change.
Freedom is controlling my own time, but time also controls me.
…In year one, I focused on building the foundation while enduring two major rounds of abrupt uncertainty: 1) transitioning from job change to new business, and 2) navigating the implications of the pandemic while also getting ready to move. This meant my focus was on setting off on my own to serve my needs within my constraints, connecting broadly with my network, accomplishing my immediate goals, growing personally and professionally, and ensuring that my family was secure, safe, and ready for the next transition.
For year two, I look forward to leveraging that foundation to serve clients’ needs within their constraints, helping them accomplish their goals, and positioning them to grow as organizations navigating how to best serve their customers safely, equitably, and resiliently.”
“Innovation Leadership” Business School Class Panel Discussion
University of Chicago, Booth School of Business | Chicago, IL | 03.09.20
Panelist | Joel Worthington
Highlighted question and answer:
What is the most crucial behavior to exhibit as a leader of innovation?
Engendering Trust. It all comes down to this. If you don’t have this with the people who matter, then you’ll never get your idea to work. Everything that follows this principle should engender trust. I do this through building relationships, doing my homework or “showing up” prepared for all key interactions, and following through to instill confidence.
Relinquishing Ownership and Including People. This is really important, but it’s also really hard. Ultimately, innovation is a social phenomenon. Ideally, human-centered design catalysts should do everything they can to not shut people out and instead invite them in. A diversity of co-created thoughts, experiences, and organizational perspectives are critical to generating insight and laying the foundation for support and alignment through a sense of ownership. I do this by sharing the stage with others and cheering them on. As much as I might like to “own” something, there’s something magical about letting someone else shine – in the moment and in the buy-in that happens down the line. It’s neither my idea nor your idea – it’s our idea. I also work to build advocacy from a broad base. I never know when seeing things in a new light will click for someone.
Activating Change in Healthcare with Human-centered Systems Design
The Clinic real estate of the next generation conference | frankfurt, germany | 06.26.2019
PRESENTATION BY Joel Worthington (HDR)
Abstract: Much is changing in the German health care system – with a surplus of inpatient facilities and beds across the country, opportunities exist for German health care providers to reconsider how they use space on campuses and in facilities as well as where and how they deploy resources in their communities. This is happening in large part because the purpose of today’s health care system was originally established when it was primarily intended for patients who were gravely ill or found themselves in emergent scenarios. Of course, many people now live longer but often with chronic conditions or social challenges that impact their quality of life at home and in the community. Still, the fundamental value proposition of much of the health care system is predicated on acute, episodic illness and what we call “come to us medicine”. It’s our view that focusing exclusively on enhancing the components of the system—facilities, staff, tools, etc.—will not be enough to meet the myriad challenges associated with fundamental service delivery shifts that the health system needs to address. If we truly want to catalyze a system to transform, then we need to focus on its other parts: purpose and relationships. As design strategists, we do this by leveraging human-centered design to better understand and build around human need. Borrowing methods from the social sciences, human-centered designers hunt for deep insights by focusing on the lives of the people whom it serves. Engaging end users – patients, families, physicians, nurses, staff, etc. – throughout a project not only generates more human-centered ideas but also ensures better alignment with the final solution. We’ll discuss how we’ve helped North American health care systems reimagine service distribution models and end-to-end patient and family experiences using this approach.
Presentation takeaways for the audience: 1) Start systems redesign with purpose - transformative change must start with purpose regardless of scale. 2) Connect experiential moments - user experience happens in key moments across an entire journey...and users expect those moments to matter and be connected. 3) Activate change with placemaking - thoughtfully using urban design principles to turn spaces into places can inspire us to act and interact in new, more meaningful ways.
Meeting Students Where They Are: Four Lessons from Teaching Human-centered Design
LinkedIn Blog Post | 04.27.2019
Blog BY Joel Worthington (HDR)
A few key lessons learned from teaching “Intro to Human-centered Design” to the first cohort to take the class in Rush University’s Health Systems Management graduate program:
Initial problem framing and constraints can make all the difference in how a new learner accesses thinking about the content.
Leaving it to the student’s discretion to choose a topic and problem to solve without exposure to the full content may limit their ability to think more expansively (as much as it may be rewarding to them to solve for a preferred problem).
We will keep the workshop-style to some degree, but we need to reduce the overall time for each in-person class (say 4-6 hours each) as well as add intentional in-between class connectivity (e.g., virtual class, office hours, assignment checkpoints, etc.) to ensure we help students stay engaged with their processing and encourage questions to further learning.
Transparency and candidness about navigating our own professional experiences proved incredibly valuable for early careerists trying to figure how to take their own next steps.
Introduction to Human-centered Design
Semester-long Course in Rush University’s Health Systems Management graduate program | Chicago, IL | Jan-April 2019
taught BY Joel Worthington (HDR) and Zack Altizer (HDR)
Syllabus Course Description: This course will explore Human-Centered Design (HCD) methodologies (i.e., understanding human values, beliefs, and motivations of those for whom we are designing while also embracing creativity, co-creation, and rapid iteration) to solve complex or ambiguous healthcare problems. In addition, the course will explore current practices in HCD while helping students develop a working knowledge of tools and frameworks within the field so that they can help approach problems differently and generate innovative ideas. Examples of these are methodologies such as Design Thinking, techniques such as patient interviewing/ethnographies, and tools such as product/idea prototyping and journey mapping. While this field shares a similar ideology to other problem-solving methodologies (e.g. Lean, Six-Sigma), it differentiates itself in terms of the specific tools used, its universal application to different contexts, and focusing on the development of a designer mindset that progresses through the general phases of understanding user needs, rapid idea generation, experimentation, and pitch/story development. In the course, individually and in small teams, students will frame problems, learn end user research methods, synthesize information to form insights, generate ideas, test possible solutions, and develop a concept pitch. Classroom activities will push students’ thinking and provide a new perspective on healthcare, analogous industries, and opportunities to tackle problems differently than they have been addressed historically.
Design Thinking for Healthcare Strategists
Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD) | Seattle, WA | 10.06.2018
Presentation and Workshop BY Joel Worthington (HDR), Roberto Seif (HDR), and Michael JOyce (Kaiser Permanente)
Workshop Overview: Design thinking is a creative problem solving methodology widely used in product development, experience design, and innovation. Learn how to incorporate design thinking and co-creation into your role in this fast-paced hands-on workshop. HDR’s Strategic Innovation team – the co-authors of Bridging Worlds – will take you through six phases of the design thinking process to address a real-world healthcare design challenge. Together with a team, you will frame the problem, generate insights, and create potential solutions. The facilitated activities will push your thinking and give you a new perspective on healthcare. With ample time for questions, you will walk away with building blocks for using co-creation techniques within your organization.
Article on workshop, “Design Thinking in Health Care: Valuable Tool Offers Growing Role for Marketers” in Strategic Health Care Marketing by Lisa Ellis on 12.05.19
The Case for Experience Design
Healthcare Design Magazine | 05.30.2018
ARTICLE BY Joel Worthington (HDR) and Roberto Seif (HDR)
“Designing unique patient—or customer —experiences has become a top strategic priority for many healthcare institutions and service-based organizations that operate in a vast sea of sameness.
While this need is broadly recognized with plenty of nodding heads in senior leadership meetings, it’s also true that securing necessary resources to achieve it is often an uphill battle. It’s quite common to run into savvy, results-minded leaders such as chief financial officers, facilities managers, or chief clinicians who challenge the financial soundness of investing in experience design…”
Design Thinking for Healthcare Strategists
Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD) | Orlando, FL | 09.22.2018-09.23.2018
2-day Workshop BY Joel Worthington (HDR), Michael JOyce (HDR), and Beth Zacherle (HDR)
Learning Objectives from Abstract:
At the end of this two day intensive course, participants:
• Learned the principles and process of design thinking by participating in facilitated activities
• Learned specific design thinking methods, activities, and tools
• Generated insights, potential solutions, and a concept pitch to solve a healthcare design challenge.
• Understood how co-creation can be applied to healthcare strategy roles and projects
• Could explain the process and benefits of design thinking and co-creation
• Felt prepared to plan and facilitate co-creation sessions
Holistic Healthcare Design and Why it Matters
European Healthcare Design Conference | London, UK | 06.12.2017
Presentation BY Joel Worthington (HDR), beth Zacherle (HDR), and Cliff Harvey (North York General Hospital)
Adapted Abstract: There are trends in population health and technology requiring new services, new operational protocols, and strategic planning. For healthcare, we must address all of these trends simultaneously if we want to satisfy human needs and economic sustainability.
Objectives and methodology: North York General Hospital (NYGH) in Toronto, Ontario, seeks to meet the needs of patients, families and staff while driving growth. In planning renovations for their outpatient chemotherapy and pediatric programs, NYGH and the design team first defined the ideal experience. Using a human-centered, co-design process, current challenges were turned into opportunities, resulting in ‘experience blueprints’ for each program, which align with NYGH’s strategic plan and culture while addressing users’ needs.
For the chemotherapy program, we found that patients and families need help redefining “normal”, personal choice, and a hospitable experience. Concurrently, staff need an environment that supports their workflow. Solutions include: a 24-hour urgent-care line for those experiencing debilitating symptoms; introductory videos to minimize anxiety-inducing unknowns; and re-imagined protocols for quickly assessing a patient’s readiness for treatment. Designing alongside staff also created a more efficient, safe workflow.
The pediatric program user needs are quite different. Patients and families seek a collaborative care team, a personalized experience, and an appropriate environment. Big ideas included: remote technologies to update families; giving weight to telehealth through outpatient care teams; and supplies for kids to “Build a Bedroom”, so they can personalize their space. Operationally, the program is prioritizing development of a short-stay unit, where patients can be monitored without being admitted.
Results and conclusions: The presentation discussed how to gather user insights and how they can inform the ideal experience. We explained the process’ implications and how results directly tied to NYGH’s strategic plan, creating a true patient- and family-centered experience.
Designing Experiences in Healthcare
Guest Lecturer in Rush University’s Health Systems Management graduate program | Chicago, IL | 10.16.2017
taught BY Joel Worthington (HDR)
Key Takeaways for students:
Always start with the user voice. Whether through personas or interviews, this grounding is essential.
Consider the entire experience – from before users enter and after they exit.
Designing the key components of experience at the same time prevents rework.
Leverage experience design for all users – patients, family, staff, providers.
Experience design is scalable and adaptable.
Know and Engage Your User: Empathy and Co-Design in Healthcare
European Healthcare Design Conference | London, UK | 06.12.2017
Workshop BY Joel Worthington (HDR), beth Zacherle (HDR), and Caroline Dewick (HDR)
Adapted Abstract: ‘People-centered health’ begins with people—the end users of the system, service, or product we are designing—including patients, families, and staff. We believe that true people-centered health begins with understanding and engaging users throughout the design process, long before active participation in the system is possible. While healthcare professionals and administrators are experts in the nuances of delivering great care, so too are those on the receiving end. Their perspectives can give us valuable insights about patient and family ambitions, desires, struggles, and delights—and they broaden our perspective of what contributes to a great health experience. To create people-centered health, we must leverage end user experiences and invite them to participate in creating the future, because without their perspective, we make assumptions and risk failure.
Building empathy and co-creating solutions requires discipline, curiosity, compassion, and patience. It is a rigorous and ambiguous process, but four key principles can ground our approach and ensure success: question curiously, listen actively, design openly, and iterate rigorously. During this fast-paced workshop, participants collaborated with HDR facilitators and fellow conference attendees to explore patient- and family-centered experience design. We leveraged a stepped framework to learn how to build empathy, ideate and iterate. Participants left with a new approach for designing people-centered health systems.
5 Insights for Designing a Human-centered Pediatric Experience
Becker’s Hospital Review | 02.17.2017
ARTICLE BY Joel Worthington (HDR) and Beth Zacherle (HDR)
“Pediatric healthcare experiences can be disruptive for the whole family, no matter the seriousness of the condition. And though every family copes differently, the ultimate goal is always to restore a sense of "normalcy."
Focusing on providing high quality healthcare should be a given. Patients and families expect this, but they also expect more from a healthcare experience. Pediatric experience design must evolve beyond the common mantra of "make it fun" or "make it look kid-friendly" — meaningful experience design must also address the uncertainties of having a child with a health condition while navigating a complicated healthcare system. Even more importantly, it must feel like an extension of normal life, from the way emotions are addressed to how quickly patients and families can get back to their daily lives…”
Making Innovation Happen (in Health Care)
Carolinas Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development | Asheville, NC | 10.20.2016
Presentation and workshop BY Joel Worthington (HDR) and Roberto Seif (HDR)
Presentation excerpt: “As health care leaders, we often think we know what is in the best interests of our patients and families because we may have clinical expertise where we DO know what’s clinically in their best interest OR we ourselves have been patients or loved ones of patients. The challenge is that our clinical expertise or personal experiences cannot necessarily speak for the unique challenges of others who are not like us – not as health care-savvy, not as financially well off, not of a similar cultural background, or not of a similar personality. The list could go on. While we as health care leaders have attempted to gather insights from our customers over the years, oftentimes, this happens in the form of survey, focus groups, or letters praising us or complaining about an unfortunate event. These are helpful methods for extracting high level feedback, but they don’t allow us to probe more deeply into underlying issues that may have caused these issues in the first place…and by doing this we can lay the foundation for human-centered innovation that addresses human needs and business needs…”
10 Tips for Conducting a Great User Interview
Building Design + Construction | 10.03.2016
Article BY Joel Worthington (HDR)
From BD+C: “Know what you're working toward, be empathetic, and listen actively are three tips HDR's Joel Worthington suggests for conducting a user interview.”
Excerpt: “Recently, an old healthcare administration colleague and friend inquired about how my colleagues, HDR’s Strategic Innovation team, approach engaging end users of services. Whether he knew it or not, he was setting me up to write this blog post (thanks Phil!)
User research can happen in a number of ways at various times throughout the design process. We often conduct interviews, observe spaces and behavior, distribute surveys, lead focus groups, and use remote tools. My friend, who has had trouble getting valuable information from interviews in the past, was particularly interested in how we conduct one-on-one interviews.
So, with that in mind, I have compiled my top 10 tips for interviewing users…”
Excerpt: “As many of us can attest, understanding ourselves and what we want from a career – let alone life – is one of the most arduous tasks out there. For many years, I tried to be what I thought others expected of me, rather than being true to myself. I tried health care management, management consulting, and strategic planning. I wasn’t too far off, but I was missing things – creativity, direct interaction with people using my services, and, above all else, the fulfillment of curiosity…
…I used to think that “perfect” meant being an expert – being supremely confident about one’s abilities and knowledge or having ‘spit and polish’ on everything that you do. Through design I now realize this isn’t necessarily true. Perfection is an evolution, a process, and an opportunity to prototype (sometimes messily) before you eventually get to a more polished end product. Having recently completed my own personal change process – a graduate degree in design methods alongside my experience with HDR’s Strategic Innovation team – I feel I have transformed into a more perfect version of myself; combining expertise with an openness to new perspectives and approaches that will fuel new paths to discovery and creation with teammates, colleagues, clients, partners, friends, and family.”
Designing Safe and Inclusive Spaces with Broadway Youth Center
IIT’S Institute of Design BarnRaise Conference - “Designing for Improved Access to Care” | 10.12-10.14.2015
co-facilitated BY Joel Worthington (HDR) and Amy Lussetto (HDR)
BarnRaise is a 2.5 day, student-run maker conference that harnesses design methods to tackle a social topic embedded in the Chicago community. In 2015, the BarnRaise theme was “Designing for Improved Access to Care.” In partnership with Chicago-based community partners and design facilitators, we uncovered barriers, discovered entry points, and leveraged socio-technical systems to prototype a more human-centered patient experience.
For our cross-disciplinary workshop team, we partnered with Broadway Youth Center (BYC), which is a youth-focused program of Howard Brown Health Center (HBHC) on the north side of Chicago, one of the largest health care organizations that support underserved LGBTQ people in the Midwest. Since its inception in 2004, BYC has provided specialized services to reach at-risk, homeless LGBTQ youth. Ultimately, we sought to address the following problem statement:
How might we create a safe community and sense of belonging for both LGBTQ adults and marginalized youth in a shared space? A challenge brought on by the limited and shared space provided to BYC by HBHC and their different populations served.
Through design sprint-style engagement, we interviewed key constituents, observed current environments, included our partners through participatory design methods, ideated, prototyped, developed a pitch deck, and set our team up to successfully deliver our final presentation to other conference attendees and guest.
We recognized the following insights as critical foundations to future success:
HBHC and BYC may have a shared mission, but they have distinctly DIFFERENT target audiences that are often in conflict with one another.
For BYC’s target audience, fostering relationships through informality leads to TRUST.
BYC’s space acts as a HAVEN for its audience both physically and emotionally.
RESPECT equals Understanding Identity + Accepting Identity + Embracing Identity.
This led to a breakthrough that BYC’s mission and target needed to move from sympathetic to empathetic to empowering. This lead to the following new mission statement: “From safety net to TRAMPOLINE…BYC will LIFT you(th) up” which was supported by sketches and 3D prototypes of spatial and experiential features.