Parents Stroke

Author’s Note: This was published in April 2020 in Home Depot’s Supply Chain organization’s team newsletter.

Two days after Christmas, I rushed into the ICU after a last-minute flight from Texas to Kansas, to face one of the scariest and most uncertain moments in my life. My dad had just had a stroke less than 24 hours ago.

The implications hadn’t hit me until I first saw him and questions began flooding my thoughts — would he be able to walk again? Fully speak? Drive? Even eat? How long will it take to “recover”?

The first two days, and the following weeks, were an eye-opening experience for me. Before this emergency, I had not experienced a life-threatening medical emergency for either myself or a close loved one.

Through my time with the nurses and doctors, I learned or renewed lessons in empathy that I now carry with me beyond the emergency room and into my life, both personal and work. The following are the more work-related lessons learned. Fortunately, my dad has made a full recovery thanks to the team of medical professionals who took care of him at the hospital, the rehabilitation center, and at home.

Doctors and nurses as product managers of people
As a product manager, I’m responsible for making sure a given system is working for its users. Listening and empathy are a required skill set, but these can often get muddied in a myriad of business initiatives, competing priorities and just inevitably being disconnected on a day-to-day basis from the customer as we work behind our laptops and not side-by-side our customers.

As I watched healthcare professionals work with my dad after his stroke, I saw listening and empathy working firsthand with immediate feedback. They listened to the patient’s data (the vitals) and my dad’s perspective as he began to gain back capability to express himself. It was incredible to witness the amount of care a team of people were devoting to one person through a warm scientific approach to get a baseline of his internal systems and to figure out how to improve them over time.

Takeaway: Listening is a leading domino for the outcomes you want. If you’re not listening, then you’re likely not solving the right problem. Or, you’re solving the right problem the wrong way.

The difference between empathy and sympathy
There’s a subtle but important difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is feeling sorrow for the hardships someone else endures, while empathy is actually putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

While the medical professionals had sympathy for my dad, they deployed empathy to understand how he was progressing each day. Empathy can be achieved through a set of tools in order to understand the other person’s perspective. For nurses and doctors this was done through questions like “How would you rate your pain on this chart?” and “What day of the week is it?”. They would also have him do exercises to understand his physical, speech, and occupational baselines.

Takeaway: Empathy is a set of tools. That’s why customer interviews and in-person observations, personas, and journey maps are so important. The more tools we have for understanding perspectives, the better we are at solving customer problems.

Asking the right questions matter
I was amazed at how many people were involved in taking care of him. There was a new nurse every 12 hours and usually different rotations each day. A similar approach was taken for the general physician and specialized roles like the neurologist and speech therapist, except their rotations were weekdays vs. weekends. Time was also unknown as the doctors couldn’t predict how their day would unfold — the only certainty was new health problems and new patients appearing each day.

I found out quickly that asking the right questions at the right time – and with the right person was crucial for me to also understand the medical professionals’ perspectives. I used interview tactics to cut to the core. Rather than “How’s he doing?” I asked, “On a scale from 1 to 10 what’s the severity we’re looking at?” or “What are some of the benchmarks you’re looking for to understand he’s improving? And how is he improving in each of those?”. In some cases, they were able to give me answers, and for others they weren’t — a reminder of the limitations we have for understanding of the human body system vs. a software system.

Takeaway: Ask more questions — including “How can I make this question better?”.

Collecting evidence to understand perspectives
It was interesting to see how the medical team used both qualitative data and quantitative data to understand more about his health. The data included a constant stream of vital signs to ensure blood pressure and heart rate stayed within a healthy range while daily CT scans provided snapshots to monitor the brain bleed. Other data points, such as temperature, wasn’t as useful for the current situation and thus not as heavily monitored.

Takeaway: As intuitive as it sounds, it’s worth noting. Look for the signals through the noise. Focus on the data points you need for the outcome you want and know the baselines.

Caring is an action and skill set
I was blown away by the everyday acts of care the nurses took to help my dad recover. From kneeling down to his level to assure him they’d help him to the bathroom, to getting his dessert when it wasn’t brought up with dinner, to lightening the mood by cracking jokes, or somehow going above and beyond in making his bed as comfortable as possible.

Takeaway: Small actions can the mean the world to others.

Walking in someone’s else’s shoes (even when they can’t)
In the days approaching his release from the rehabilitation center, it was my job to understand how he might live in his home and daily life. With a renewed sense of empathy, it was easier to identify things beyond the doctor’s orders like making sure his phone charger was in the optimal location to reduce walking, color-coding his house keys that looked similar, or adding an additional doorbell chimer in his bedroom to make sure he’d hear it when the in-home nurses arrived. Those little wins made a huge difference to get him settled back in.

Takeaway: Like anything, empathy gets easier the more you use it as problems or opportunities begin to naturally reveal themselves.

The Home Depot Way
Though empathy isn’t explicitly stated in Home Depot’s values it’s clearly a top priority. The inverted pyramid puts the customers at the top, while the majority of the values directly require empathy: doing the right thing, giving back, respect for all people, taking care of our people, excellent customer service, and building strong relationships. Even creating shareholder value and entrepreneurial spirit are served better through empathy.

In closing, I’d like to recognize the incredible and heroic work people at hospitals do — from the phone operators, front desk personnel, janitors, and cafeteria workers to the paramedics, nurses, doctors, and social workers. This is especially clear against the backdrop of the today’s pandemic.

On a related note, please consider donations to support those without jobs and need food through non-profits like Meals on Wheels or Feeding America.