Transcript:

• You begin the dialogue at the interview process where you’re sharing ideas and what you think about healthcare, and you’re explaining that you’re in a management program.

And in that management program, you start to develop an opinion about what’s right or wrong, or good operational or bad operational processes, and getting their feedback into that loop.

And in the context of that relationship over a two year period, you’re kind of laying the foundation and framework to say you would like to apply the advance that you’ve learned in this educational program and process to have a larger degree of influence, to affect good outcomes within the organization.

And I think employers and leaders, for the most part, respect staff that are self-developing and want to have a larger scope on the efficiency of a healthcare operation, to really be in alignment and agreement with the organizational strategic values.

So, by the time you hit your capstone project, you’ve had an opportunity to establish a relationship with your employer, that they begin to kind of– you are redefining your role.

So, there’s this thought process in the human resource world called job crafting, where somebody comes into a job and they develop a skillset that expands beyond what they were initially hired for.

So what they trained you has leveraged into this expanded role, which, pretty soon, they’re out-working the current position that they’re in, which is a healthy thing in a management environment, where you want to be seen as a leader.

And so you’ve spent two years, hopefully, job crafting yourself, by showing that you’ve learned additional skillsets, that you have an increased capacity for emotional intelligence, that you now understand the systemic issues affecting healthcare, and you’d like to leverage that into a project for the organization.

At this point, you’re kind of building capital with that leader, you’re developing relationships, so that you can use that capital to benefit the organization.

You’re leveraging the trust you have with a leader, that you’ll do the professional job.

In some contexts at the organization, people are going to have limited thought processes, and you might need to ask to do this after working hours.

In some organizations, they might say: “You’ve built up enough social capital in the organization to allow you to do it, while you’re being paid to do it.” Being paid to do it is ideal.

So, I think you can’t really begin thinking about your capstone project in the capstone class.

You really have to begin thinking about your capstone project when you begin the MIJ program.

And the framework and the foundation that needs to be built, of trust, with your leadership team, in order to for you to matriculate successfully to this capstone project and finish the six-week project with the organization, and for them to be impressed with not only the quality of the product you deliver, but the outcome that the process creates.

So ultimately they want to say: “Wow, you had this vision, and you achieved this vision.

You executed on it.” And they’re gonna begin to see you in a different perspective.

That’s the time for you to being that career narrative with your employer, to ask for the higher level of responsibility.

Look for the leadership job to matriculate into that role that you’ve always wanted.