Filling the gap between the frontline and the front office

What is your origin story as a leader and how does it compare to people working at the forefront of your team?

Have you started working on the sharp edges of the field and gone through your path through various roles until you joined the seniors leadership? Or did you enter the organization via a different path from the forefront, picking up skills and experiences from different disciplines and traditions before taking on the job leading your current group?

The Mission Critical Team Institute works with high-performance teams in medicine, fire, sports, aerospace and military. Recently, I have noticed that two different patterns of organizational structure in these elite teams have significantly different leadership pipelines.

In some organizations, the path to leadership always begins at the forefront. All the firefighters started out as firefighters, and all intensive care units medical directors spent time as practitioners before assuming leadership duties.

In other organizations, most leaders come from a variety of professional backgrounds. The CEO or COO of a hospital system can, for example, come from business, finance, or operations and step into the role without any direct experience at the bedside.

Both patterns can produce high-performance teams that will work well with complex problems, but there are significant differences in how these teams work.

In this post, we define the distance from the frontline to the front office (F2F) as a structural and experiential metric for the team, and explore several features that differ between organizations with high and low F2F distances.

Definition of F2F distance

F2F distance is defined as the difference in living experience between frontline individuals and front office individuals. Organizations where front office leaders have frontline experience have low F2F distances. Conversely, organizations where front office staff and frontline operators come from very different backgrounds have a higher distance with higher F2F distances.

Two important aspects of F2F distance are worth highlighting.

• First, team F2F distances do not explain the current environment and operational differences between the frontline and front office. Inevitably, almost every team has a huge difference here, and these differences are very important to the effectiveness of the team, but that is not our focus. Instead, we are specifically examining the differences in the paths an individual takes to reach the role he or she works for. In other words, F2F distance is a measure of team history, not today.
• Number 2, The F2F distance of the tissue may vary depending on the different parts. Within hospitals, F2F distances may vary by department (ER vs ICU) (nursing vs respiratory system) Treatment), or Shift (a series of doctors and administrators calling when the crisis strikes).

Therefore, it is useful to consider the aggregated F2F distance to check the average. Career And it is also important for the frontline life path and the organization’s front office to examine similarities and differences between the living experiences of a particular group with a particular problem.

Working with low F2F teams

In teams with low F2F distances, the majority or entire leadership was previously run at the forefront. There is a real strength in an experienced firefighter talking to junior firefighters through their first mistake. Both people felt a fever fearand energy.

These shared, living experiences can help build trust between parts of the organization. The frontline operators of these teams are more likely to buy front office decisions, even if they don’t understand them right away.

At the same time, front office leaders are more likely to make decisions that work across the organization. decision making It usually reflects operational reality on the ground. In a crisis, low F2F teams can operate quickly, and front office leadership quickly understands the needs of frontline operators.

However, since all levels of the organization have passed the same training pipeline, low F2F teams may lack the variety of thoughts that comes with the broad skill set that high F2F teams can call. The skill sets obtained outside the traditional pipeline can be seen with suspicion and are inappropriately discounted.

As the reality facing organizations drifts out of the problems senior leaders were working on, the similarity of their living experiences could be responsible rather than strength. Similarly, when new types of crisis arise, these organizations can struggle to pivot quickly in new directions.

Working on high F2F team

For teams with high F2F distances, frontline and front office individuals have very different professional backgrounds. This composition also has true strength. A skilled cardiac surgeon can concentrate on surgery, while a skilled CFO can open the hospital system and focus on OR operations.

The diverse set of experiences in these teams allows complex systems that require multiple high-level skill sets to work well and dynamically in a variety of situations. As individuals join an organization from different directions, it provides multiple ways to solve problems, organizations with high F2F are more adaptable and may be able to implement a wider range of problems than organizations with low F2F.

However, differences in the professional background of high F2F tissues can easily cause friction, distrust. Frontline operators may view front office staff as inconsistent or unreliable. Front office teams may view frontline workers as cogs of machines that only they understand.

In a crisis, the various mental models used by frontline and Seisha individuals may initially challenge efficient actions, even if they may ultimately provide more tools to solve complex problems.

Recommendations

Low and high F2F teams can achieve exceptional results across mission-critical environments. Both types of teams can fail spectacularly.

It is recommended that all teams openly and actively consider the advantages and disadvantages of the current structure regarding F2F distance. For teams with low F2F distances, it is recommended that you actively seek out the outside scenery, especially when facing a crisis. Teams with high F2F distances are encouraged to make a proactive effort to bridge the frontline and front office communities, especially before a crisis occurs.