The Human-Business Model© in Healthcare

June 1, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the release landmark Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band album by the Beatles (to this day my favorite musical group), considered by many to be the greatest music album of all time (Rolling Stone, May 31, 2012). I remember the first time I heard the album, and I knew I’d never forget it.

Thirty years ago this year, in 1987, I had recently started working for the training and consulting company Kaset International, when I was asked to tackle a small project that had a similar impact on my business life as Sgt. Pepper had in my personal life: I was asked to create a graphic representation of something called the “Human-Business Model,” which was the key concept in Kaset’s training curriculum. As soon as I learned the model, I knew I'd never forget it.

Back in the late 1980s, doing graphics on computers was still relatively new, and I had convinced Kaset to let me redesign their training materials using “desktop publishing” on Macintosh computers. Kaset co-founder Shannon Johnston asked me to design a graphic that would illustrate the Human-Business Model© for Kaset's training materials. Here’s what I came up with:

The idea of the Human-Business Model©, created by Shannon Johnston with her husband Ken, is brilliant in its simplicity: Enter every interaction on the human or emotional level, move to the business level to take care of the business at hand, and finish the interaction on the human level. (Often you may need to move back and forth between levels in more complex interactions, which is why the line zig-zags.)

Back then, the Quality movement (TQM) was at its height, with a focus on getting to “zero defects” on the business side of customer interactions. Kaset International did’t want businesses to lose sight of the fact that customers were still human beings, and was teaching that there had to be a balance between the “business” and the “human” parts of every interaction. We promoted the Human-Business model everywhere, even on promotional mugs, because we knew it was that important.

This concept was translated into the healthcare industry in the Kaset training program Achieving Extraordinary Customer Relations for Healthcare. It was a simple jump to equate the “business” level with the “clinical” aspects of healthcare.

Even an outstanding patient interaction model like the Studer Group’s AIDET®️ has its roots in Kaset’s Human-Business Model©: “acknowledge” and “introduce” are “human,” “duration” and “explanation” are “business” or “clinical,” and “thank you” is “human,” of course.

Using such a model, consistently, can have a profound impact on healthcare organizations. I recently interviewed the parents of a child with severe hydrocephalus. The child’s condition had a rarely seen impact on the child’s vision. The parents told me how a young doctor came into the room while they were sitting at their child’s bedside and immediately began examining the child’s eyes. No greeting. No permission requested. No “human.” Straight to the “business” or “clinical” level of the interaction. (If you were to graph that doctor’s behavior on the Human-Business Model©, it would be a “flat line” across the Business Level, and flat lines – especially in healthcare – are not good.) The parents were furious and invited the doctor to leave the room and never come back. That doctor failed to balance the “business” or “clinical” level with the “human” level.

Any new employee orientation in healthcare should ensure that every participant understands that every interaction must begin on the “human” level, then move to the “business” or “clinical” level, then finish on the “human” level. And that goes for more than just patient interactions… it’s every interaction. Emails. Phone calls. Exchanges between colleagues. Because in healthcare if you’re not taking care of a patient, you should be taking care of someone who is… but that’s another blog.

Human-Business Model© is copyright 1987 by Kaset International. Used with permission.