MANAGEMENT QUALITY APPLIED TO HEALTH BUSINESSES AND PROJECTS
During the month of July, the Second Module of the Sixth Edition of the CAHI Fellows Program was held at the INCAE Business School in Costa Rica, with an emphasis on all elements of organizational and project management.
The perspective from which the success of organizational processes and of any project depends largely on the people involved and the way they interact and communicate is clear.
Management processes include a wide variety of aspects, ranging from financial management to the management of human teams and the exercise of leadership. Hence, the development of management skills is so challenging, considering the complexities associated with it, even more so in the field of health.
In the CAHI Fellows program, through the vision and knowledge of INCAE faculty, important dimensions related to project management are addressed, especially including aspects associated with leadership, teamwork, strategic thinking, decision making and other aspects related to sustainability and financial management.
Andrea Prado, professor at INCAE in the areas of Organizational Change and Sustainability, puts it this way: “The emphasis on management has always been maintained. When a consultation with leaders in the region was held at the beginning of the program, she highlighted the need for people to be more innovative to think of solutions outside the box and to learn about project management. This is one of the contributions that INCAE makes to the region. With the CAHI Fellows we have always been reinforcing what is related to management: how work teams are managed, projects are developed, a budget is managed, or how strategic alliances are made.”
This is particularly evident during the Second Module of the Program, with an emphasis on Project Management. Combining the development of experiences, simulations and case studies, the group is led through experiential and reflection processes that allow them to learn about organizational change, leadership for innovation, strategic thinking in social projects, people management and coaching.
Participants are required to have a high degree of self-knowledge, an understanding of their own dynamics and the resources they have to handle challenging situations. Individual reflection occurs through various approaches, including the reading of Universal Theater classics, such as some of Shakespeare's great tragedies. Through iconic characters such as Hamlet and Macbeth, a dynamic of thought is produced about one's own ambiguities, the ability to manage intimate impulses and make decisions in moments of ethical duality.
When developing simulations for decision making and project management, you learn about the communication difficulties that can arise in a work team, the relevance of considering the ways of relating during the development of processes, as well as how difficult that can result in generating the organizational changes essential to innovate and increase social impact.
INCAE's Prof. in the Organizational Behavior area, Héctor Martínez, comments: “Performance is explained by the people, by the dynamics we have as a group and by our designs. We need designs and processes that fulfill desires and visions, and facilitate people's performance. From there it will be important to generate influential conversations that generate empathy, that lead us to build better relationships. All this will result in psychological security, which is one of the variables related to success in teams.”
Strategies and tactics for efficient project management, including financial and action planning processes, are also addressed during this module, which allows a precise conjugation of aspects related to the subjectivity and emotional dynamics of those involved, with the elements more related to the planning and execution of a project.
All this offers CAHI Fellows the possibility of having a more complete understanding of the human, material and financial processes involved in the development of their projects, as a set of elements that can be challenging for the implementation of their initiatives, or become in promoters of the transformations that they have visualized and are pushing in their contexts of influence.
These leaders are developing essential skills to be agents of social change and inspire others, in a process that seeks to improve access to quality health services in Central America.
