Behavioral anchors: building a medical center on solid foundations

Construction of new facilities in the healthcare arena is an ongoing, almost daily, occurrence. The desire to build wisely and effectively is evidenced at the Anne Arundel Medical Center which has attracted healthcare executives from all over the country who come to view, analyze, and experience the beauty, utility and interdependencies of the buildings and facilities that constitute "the AAMC campus." However, too often these executive visitors and benchmarking experts tend to focus on the technical, architectural, engineering, concrete aspects of the hospital, while naively overlooking and/or giving short shrift to the more critical behavioral dynamics of the construction process. The ultimate success of any building project requires a clear understanding by the leadership of "where people are coming from," so that both the design and the development of the final product can be brought under the synthesizing umbrella of patient care, clinical excellence, individual safety, and community responsibility. Not only must the leadership determine and drive the strategic thrust toward the final outcome; in addition, they must make sure that they allow significant colleagues to be actively, operationally, and symbolically engaged in a process that ends up in a structural outcome that everyone is proud to own, to see, and to inhabit.