PODCAST #6. How to Create Products People Want: The Secret of Success
Our new episode features Lindsay Dornfeld, MBA, Sr. Manager Veradigm – Bachelor’s in Rehabilitation Psychology, Masters in Business Administration, and she’s also a certified health information technology specialist. It’s hard to find a more appropriate education for what she’s doing now. Lindsay began her journey in medicine, working with children with autism. Even though her work is no longer directly related to patients, their happiness with the product is always at the forefront of her mind.
Lindsay Dornfeld’s Journey in Healthcare Management
One of her first jobs as a manager rather than a therapist was involved in leading platform migration training for end users for the climate education process. Here Dornfeld not only taught but also learned how to listen to users and try to consider their wishes and further improve the results.
When you know what you’re doing or why or how you are doing it, but to be able to explain it to someone else is a really invaluable skill.
In her next position, Lindsay is already managing program KPIs, better performance, patient progress metrics, and client portals: “Driving greater transparency starts with everyone agreeing that it’s okay to have roadblocks, it’s okay to refine the data if you’re working on project management, but you’re stuck in thinking it has to be a certain way.”
To account for KPIs, Lindsay uses the colors of a traffic light, where green means all is well, yellow means you may be at risk and red means you are already at risk (of deadlines, budgets, etc.) And green all year round doesn’t mean that by the end of the year, red won’t suddenly show up somewhere, so it’s better to use yellow as a safety net, and you don’t end up in the red zone. After all, always being on your guard is justified for work and your personal life.
Breaking Barriers for Team Success
Lindsay stresses the importance of communicating with end users to clearly understand their work: “If I’m talking to someone in a nursing home, I might want to speak to a charge nurse. I wasn’t even aware of that detail that would impact her workflow, so looking for that strategic partner and getting the whole team’s buy-in and responsiveness will be beneficial for the whole team needed.”
If you say: “I need this signature by the end of the month because it is 2-5 million dollars,” and it’s critical to the success of our product, that’s a little bit easier to say: “I need this now, I need this right now” all the time.
If I can’t explain why it’s important and urgent, then it probably is something that can wait until tomorrow.
Lindsay shared how she selects people for her team, what a stopgap is, and why. She also shared her vision for her role: “My team is smarter than me. So I’m here as a manager and a leader to break down those barriers for them to get the roadblocks out of the way so that they can come through and do their job, and they do it the best.”
NPS and the User Experience
Our guest also explained why she considers NPS (not profit or margin) the main indicator of success. You can’t think you’re doing well if people don’t recommend your product to people they know.
I want to be able to make a doctor’s appointment in less than one minute, and that’s my measure of success.
This means paying attention to the critical errors that get in the way of making a doctor’s appointment in one minute. At the same time, don’t focus on the flaws that don’t affect the inconvenience of the appointment in any way. In this way, the 20 root causes eliminate 80 percent of errors. Involve people, talk, ask questions, and interrogate. So you end up with a car that can go from point A to point B, and whether it has heated seats and a sunroof is secondary.
I keep the business lens, and I see the dollars and the numbers, but I also see the people and the families. The joy, the pain, the reason you know why we do what we do.
WATCH ALSO:
PODCAST #3. HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP IMPROVE HEALTHCARE OUTCOMES
PODCAST #4. BOOST BUSINESS WITH ITERATION: QUICKER TIME TO MARKET, BETTER PRODUCT
PODCAST #5. EMPOWERING EXPERTISE: HOW TO THRIVE AS A SCARCE SPECIALIST IN B2B
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The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.
Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?
Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels –
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