Enhancing Innovation Skills: VHA Nursing Leaders Use Creative Approaches to Inspire Future Thinking

The constantly changing healthcare environment is increasingly complex and rapidly evolving, forcing the development of new systems of care faster than ever before. Therefore, nursing leaders today need different behaviors to ensure both personal and organizational success tomorrow. The skills that characterize the traditional leadership model, such as planning, controlling, and managing, are no longer adequate to move a healthcare organization along a trajectory that leads to better patient, staff, and system outcomes.1 The traditional method may have worked in the past in a predictable, stable system, but the healthcare organization of today is emergent and unstable,2 requiring a new leadership model depicted by such skills as engaging, facilitating, and inquiring. Current expectations of leaders to address issues of quality, safety, errors, and resources are increasingly urgent, also driving the need for different leadership behaviors.1 Organizations can be drawn into traditional actions to address these challenges or chose to embrace them with the development of innovative leadership practices.