What if the biggest obstacle to better operations isn't outdated technology, but a problem no one has fully defined? ClearTurn explores why healthcare leaders should look beyond the latest tools, challenge familiar workarounds, and rethink where meaningful improvement really begins.
Why healthcare leaders should define the problem before adding another tool
When an operation is struggling, new technology can feel like progress. There's a problem, leadership wants it fixed and a vendor walks in with a platform that promises to improve the work. Suddenly, there's a tangible answer on the table.
Glen McDonald sees that happen often. "The desire to throw new technology at an operation is probably the biggest impediment to success," he says.
His concern isn't with technology itself. It's what happens when leaders make the technology decision before they fully understand what's broken. As Glen puts it, they end up with "a solution in search of a problem."
When Glen enters an organization, he starts with a basic question: what are you supposed to deliver? That could be a customer service commitment, a clinical outcome, a turnaround time or another promise the organization has made.
From there, he wants to understand how the organization is performing against that promise. What are leaders measuring? Where is performance falling short? Do they have enough information to isolate the problem?
That work may point to a technology gap. It may also reveal unclear ownership, a broken process, inconsistent leadership or an existing system that isn't being used properly. Starting with the operating problem gives leaders a much better chance of choosing the right intervention.
Tom Amland sees another version of the same issue. A technology gets implemented, but the organization never fully worked through how the process should operate from end to end. The tool may not be used to its full capability, or the implementation may not account for how the work actually happens.
Frontline employees fill the gaps. They build spreadsheets, create extra steps and fall back on manual processes because the official workflow doesn't quite work. Over time, those workarounds can become so normal that nobody stops to ask why they're necessary.
That behavior is useful information. If employees constantly have to compensate for the system, leaders need to understand what is causing the workaround before deciding what to buy next.
The current AI market adds another layer. Glen says nearly every vendor meeting now includes some version of the company's latest AI capability. Some of those tools are useful. Some are too new to have much of a track record.
For an executive who isn't close to the operational details, a strong demo can make the solution feel further along than the organization's understanding of the problem. Glen calls it getting drawn into "the magic show."
The practical question for healthcare leaders is fairly simple: what problem are we trying to solve, and what evidence do we have that this technology will solve it?
There are plenty of good reasons to use AI. The issue is sequencing. If leaders don't know where the operation is failing today, they'll have a hard time knowing whether the new technology improved it tomorrow.
Organizations with mature operations have an advantage when they evaluate technology because they understand how the work happens today. They know where performance falls short and have some way to measure whether a change helped.
That gives the vendor conversation more substance. Leaders can ask whether a product solves a specific problem inside their operation rather than simply reacting to what the product can do in general.
It also helps clarify where technology belongs. Glen believes highly repeatable work should often be automated, while human roles matter most where judgment, emotion or situational understanding changes the right answer. That distinction is much easier to make once the process itself is clear.
Tom and Glen also pointed to a leadership challenge they see in struggling organizations. People often rise through the same organization where they learned the work. They may know that environment extremely well while having limited exposure to other ways of running the same function.
As Glen put it, someone who has seen "one of one" has a different perspective from someone who has seen "one of many."
Outside experience helps because it gives leaders more reference points. A process that feels unavoidable may simply be familiar. A workaround everyone has accepted may have disappeared years ago somewhere else. That perspective can keep an organization from solving the wrong problem with an expensive tool.
Healthcare organizations have good reasons to invest in new technology. Many also have systems they've never fully used, processes that grew organically and manual work that shouldn't still be manual.
Before another implementation begins, leaders need a clear view of the work itself: what they're trying to deliver, where performance is slipping, who owns the process and how they'll know whether the change worked.
Once those answers are clear, the technology decision gets easier and the organization has a much better chance of making the investment work.
If you're evaluating a new technology investment or struggling to get more from the systems you already have, ClearTurn can help diagnose the operational problem first and determine what actually needs to change. [Talk with our team.]
