To address the rapid growth in metro Atlanta's pediatric population, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta is building without and within. Construction is under way that will expand both of its primary hospitals: Egleston and Scottish Rite.

The $344 million expansion will add a two-floor tower that will house a 28-bed comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation unit (one of only five pediatric brain-injury programs in the Southeast) at Scottish Rite. The project will redesign and enlarge the Sibley Heart Center, the Aflac Cancer Center, the emergency department, surgical services and diagnostic imaging facilities at Egleston.

More than 1,000 new parking spaces will be created in underground levels.

Though visibly less dramatic, Children's also is building within. The number of employees in the system is expected to grow from 5,600 to 8,000 during the next three to four years, creating a need for strong leadership. Children's is growing its own leaders by creating theChildren's Center for Leadership.

"Things are getting very complex in health care, and people have discovered that they can't keep doing things the way they have always done them. It takes both good health care providers and good businesspeople to run today's hospitals, " said Larry Mohl, chief learning officer at Children's.

Experienced in corporate leadership development, Mohl was impressed that the Children's management-certificate program prepared first-time managers for their new roles and that the clinical staff development was ongoing.

"Children's was already growing leaders from the bottom up; now we're working from the top down to nurture the best leadership talent," Mohl said.

Companies often send managers and executives to generic leadership seminars, hoping they'll apply new skills when they return. It doesn't always work.

Mohl believes that the more effective model is customized training that fits an organization's needs, mission and culture.

Leadership and teamwork
Children's Center for Leadership is an integrative approach that brings together director- and vice-president-level managers from across the system's nursing, administrative and physician sectors. The CEO and his immediate reports helped create the concept. They went through the process themselves before selecting the first class of 25, including the chief nursing officer and chief medical officer.

Participants are charged with sharing best-case scenarios, ideas and methods within their disciplines. They also learn skills to drive change through the organization.

"What makes the center such a powerful tool is that everyone is taking what they are learning and applying it to real issues and deciding what is best for Children's as it moves into the future," Mohl said.

The program includes four major components that take a year to 18 months to complete. First, participants undergo an initial assessment to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Over the course of a year, they participate in a series of two-and-a-half-day workshops during which they create visions for themselves and their departments.

"By applying the tools and methods learned to their own worlds, they are finding new ways to delegate to their teams and new strategies that have shown a real return-on-investment in terms of revenue growth or cost-avoidance, " Mohl said.

During the action-learning component, the class divides into teams to work on projects and solve complex problems that are important to Children's.

They immediately apply what they have learned in ways that directly benefit the hospital system. Finally, they receive personal coaching on an ongoing basis from outsourced and internally based coaches.

"One of the things I really like about the culture here is that there is a healthy dissatisfaction with the way things are; people are always working to make continuous improvements to the system," Mohl said.

With positive response to the Center for Leadership, Mohl plans to launch two new classes.

"People report a significant increase in their own personal leadership effectiveness, " Mohl said. "They've formed new relationships with people from different areas of the organization, which gives them a broader context for devising new strategies.

"Seeing a hospital as a business is not counter to its mission of giving care. It's a part of how we deliver care by being responsible with all the resources given."