War broke out at DoorDash apparently

San Francisco-based DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food — and they’re furious

DoorDash, the food delivery app based out of San Francisco, is requiring all its nondelivery employees, including CEO Tony Xu, to do a “dash” once a month — and some employees are seemingly furious.

It is notable that the CEO is leading the charge but despite that, still meeting firm resistance from engineers reportedly making $400,000 a year, they feel this is beneath them.

I strongly disagree

Healthcare App Design

Years ago I ran a product team of engineers who were designing software for use in a hospital. Not one of them had set foot in a hospital and none had ever seen the inner workings yet they were making decisions about the design and build of the application based on their experiences

In one case it required multiple clicks just to confirm an action.

I lifted heaven and earth to get these individuals onto a plane and into a hospital to watch their solution in use. It took everything to make this happen. The resistance was immense. A lot of it was economic. These were highly productive individuals on tight project deliverables. Taking them out for a day let alone 2 would set things back. I persisted and won the day and it was a proud day to walk into a hospital and head into a clinical area with them, make introductions and then sit back and watch

It did not take more than about 20 minutes of watching for them to come to a jarring sense of the failures in their designs. None of the clinicians said anything they just used the application. It might seem simple and perhaps standard but it made a big difference going forward to any new design ideas.

Healthcare System Design

If you are reading this and lucky enough to have not experienced the healthcare system in any significant way – congratulations. You are lucky.

For the rest of the world the prevailing evidence is that the experience is awful on multiple levels:

• It could be with the booking system that requires you to call a number that is never answered to find an appointment only to discover nothing matches your personal needs.
• Maybe it is struggling to find parking and then getting lost in the maze of corridors trying to find your next appointment
• Perhaps it is a reception room with a TV blasting some woeful game show interspersed with a constant stream of irrelevant adverts
• Perhaps it is a booking system that gives no feedback if your appointment is on time and as is often the cases is delayed but you sit waiting as minutes turn into hours of a lots day and stress worrying
• Perhaps the overall clinical experience is superficial and you spend more time with some electronic tablet than you do with your doctor
• Or the surprise bill that requires a loan to be taken out to make payment
• Or the insurance carriers website that does not work no matter how many different ways you try

Imagine if the receptionists you are seeing had been through that same experience. What about the nurse, clinical assistant, or doctor.

I can hear the resistance already – it is not viable, they are too busy, they know how bad the system is and don’t need to experience it

Unfortunately, the control and ability to fix these problems is vested with the individuals and institutions who are providing the service and for most they never really experience it. When they do they may be lucky since they work in the system or at the facility either know how to navigate more successfully or perhaps are given a different process to experience.

As I state at the end of every episode of the Podcast

Healthcare Upside/Down

Healthcare Upside Down

Until next week, keep solving the business of healthcare – as if your life depended on it, as one day soon, it will.

For so many of us, we live life not noticing what is going on in one of the most important areas of our society – the healthcare system. Only paying attention when we get sick or one of our family members does. And for most people it is a deer in the headlights experience.

The realization that not only is the system broken (although on this point I disagree – it is not broken but rather working as designed) and they are in for a very bumpy ride

So for the new year – consider reactivating an old technique we had in medical school or some variant of it. Every medical student had to be a patient for a day. There was nothing quite as humbling to be wheeled around on a gurney staring up at fluorescent lights and flashes of people as we got transported from one department to another. It changed your outlook entirely to realize the incredible vulnerability that came from just being in the hospital and that was before you layered on the disease or treatment they were there for.

Imagine every CEO of a hospital actually trying to book an appointment at his hospital.

Imagine every leader being asked to park in the public lot

Perhaps what is needed is the ‘Undercover Boss‘ experience for all these senior leaders

I’m willing to bet it would not take much to empower everyone to be part of the solution.

Remember – no one comes into work wishing to deliver poor service or healthcare experiences to their patients. Most people who enter the healthcare do so because of their compassion and desire to help. We just have to find ways to empower these individuals to deliver the great experience everyone wants