UDC

“When you are dancing with a bear, remember, you can’t sit down until the bear gets tired.”

“I stopped opposing, and started proposing.”

“From despair to hope to change … Despair must be transformed into hope, but hope must transform into change; and when change becomes difficult, we mustn’t retreat to despair, but rather continue the struggle for change.”

“Change must be top-down, bottom-up and inside-out.”

At the 2011 Union Delegates Conference, LMP senior VP Barb Grimm caught up with Dawn Bading, Georgia’s vice president of Human Resources. The two talked about transformational leadership in Georgia and the innovative ways in which the region is improving service and growing membership.

The theme of this weekend’s Union Delegates Conference is transformational leadership--leadership that causes change in individuals or systems. LMP senior VP Barb Grimm says in her book, a transformative leader is someone who strengthens the capabilities, voices and visions of the people around him or her and helps create change. In this short video blog, Grimm reveals whom she sees as the leaders and transformers of Kaiser Permanente.

Remember those great toys called Transformers? Kids would sit for hours manipulating human forms into mechanical creations, all the while imagining the process of going from one form of life to another. Pretty amazing!

Our 2011 Union Delegates Conference has the same dynamic in mind. Our theme is transformational leadership.You can become a transformer! (Actually, many of you already are!)

Where are you going to get the likes of KP CEO George Halvorson, John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president emeritus, the LMP’s Barb Grimm, John August of the Union Coalition, Darth Vader, Spider Man and a small cast of cuckoos in one place? Hollywood, that’s where! The 2010 Union Delegate Conference was held at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel in the heart of La La Land.

Delegates at the “We’re With You” workshop engaged in a freewheeling discussion with four frontline leaders whose main message was summed up in the workshop name. 

Shawn Dufford, MD, director of peri-operative services in the Colorado region; Walter Allen, executive director of OPEIU Local 30;  Martha Gilmore, medical group administrator at the South San Francisco Medical Center, and Howard Fullman, MD, medical director of the West LA Medical Center, shared practical tips with participants—many of them UBT co-leads. 

Dr.

Delegates at the 210 UDC are thinking about the legacy of  change they will leave beind.

Hear from frontliners:

Do you remember where you were when the Challenger space shuttle exploded?

That horrible day in 1986, when seven crew members—including a beloved school teacher—perished in front of a stunned nation, is a prime example of a team decision that failed miserably, according to Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmonson.

On March 12, 2010, the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions will open its annual Union Delegate Conference in Los Angeles. We have an advance registration of more than 600 people, which will make this the largest gathering in the history of the Coalition.