About This Course
Your quality team is credentialed, committed, and technically capable. They have Lean Six Sigma. PDSA cycles. Root cause analysis. Years in the field. And yet — projects stall before they reach the frontline. Improvement efforts lose leadership support. Hard-won data sits in reports no one acts on. Changes that should stick quietly dissolve back into old patterns.
The gap is not tool knowledge. The gap is translation.
Between the boardroom where you are accountable for CMS star ratings, Leapfrog grades, and accreditation — and the unit where nurses are managing eight patients in a system that keeps changing — there is a structural space that almost no one in your organization has been explicitly trained to navigate. We call it the Messy Middle: the zone where leadership intent and frontline reality run parallel without connecting, where improvement effort disappears not because people don't care, but because no one has been trained to serve as the translation strand between them.
The QI Operating System™ Course closes that gap. It teaches your team — and you — the operating system for doing the QI work that has always mattered most: noticing signals others miss, asking deeper questions, translating across professional languages, and connecting frontline stories with organizational strategy. This is what the field has spent 30 years not teaching. This is the QI operating system your team was never taught. This course exists to change that — and to measurably improve patient outcomes as a result.
Quality and safety departments across the country have been cut 40–70% in recent years. You are being asked to do more with significantly fewer people. The organizations that will protect patient safety through these cuts are the ones whose remaining QI professionals can do the translation work — not just the documentation work. This course builds exactly that capacity.
"We learned something really important — and kept it within our team. Not intentionally. We just didn't know how to spread it." The QI Operating System™ Course was built to end this cycle. The final phase — DISSEMINATE — converts local improvement into transferable organizational knowledge. It is the most under-developed failure mode in current QI training, and the one this course addresses directly.
This course teaches the operating system — not more tools. Participants work through three phases across five live sessions:
PHASE 1: PREPARE — Do the work before the work.
- COMMIT: Know your why before you step in. Identify the stakeholders, power dynamics, historical conflicts, and relationship structures that will determine whether your project gains traction or dies in committee.
- ALIGN: Build the organizational alignment that will let you stay in the Messy Middle when it gets hard. Map goals, surface the authority gradient, and prepare the room before you walk into it.
PHASE 2: PRIORITIZE — Turn observation into intelligence.
- LEARN: Apply critical thinking to every relevant data source. Conduct structured Gemba walks, frontline observations, focus groups, and case reviews. Learn from the frontline directly — not from dashboard abstractions. This is where your team builds the frontline credibility that earns them the right to speak — and the evidence base to back it up.
- ANALYZE: Quantify and prioritize what was learned. Turn frontline observation into decision-grade evidence — the kind leadership can actually act on, resource, and prioritize.
PHASE 3: PREVENT — Move forward, not just back.
- INNOVATE: Apply Safety-II principles — oriented to forward design, learning from what goes right, not only from what goes wrong. Move from reactive to proactive improvement.
- DISSEMINATE: Convert local improvement into transferable organizational knowledge — the most under-developed failure mode in current QI training. Build dissemination strategies that produce durable organizational wisdom and institutional memory that outlasts any single project.
The two behavioral assessments (DISC, Six Working Geniuses) are structural components — they prepare participants to enter each framework phase effectively, not supplementary add-ons.
Upon completion of the five-session program, participants will be able to:
- Identify the structural, relational, and communication failure modes that lead to stalls and stagnation in quality improvement work
- Name the specific points of disconnection between leadership intent and frontline reality prior to the onset of any project
- Apply bidirectional translation skills — converting frontline observation into evidence leadership will act on, and converting leadership intent into actions the frontline can implement — to align stakeholders around shared improvement priorities
- Use the PREPARE / PRIORITIZE / PREVENT framework to structure an improvement initiative from stakeholder commitment through knowledge dissemination
- Conduct structured stakeholder analysis and Gemba-based learning, convert observations into prioritized decision-grade evidence, and design dissemination strategies that produce durable organizational wisdom
- Account for individual communication style (DISC) and team Working Genius distribution (Lencioni, used under license) when composing and assigning QI teams
This course serves two distinct but equally important groups:
Quality Leaders Investing in Their Team
You are a Chief Quality Officer, Patient Safety Officer, VP of Quality/Safety/Risk, or Quality Director. Your team is technically strong but struggling to move projects through the organizational layers between them and leadership. You have watched talented QI professionals drown in administrative burden instead of doing the translation work that actually changes outcomes.
Quality Leaders Investing in Themselves
You have spent years in quality and patient safety work — and you know that the tools are not the limiting factor. The limiting factor is your ability to bridge the gap between what you know, what the frontline sees, and what leadership will act on. You are ready to build the operating system that makes everything you already know more effective.
Also a strong fit: Quality Managers, Patient Safety Coordinators, Risk Managers, Quality Improvement Nurses, Clinical Quality Specialists, healthcare consultants supporting QI teams, and non-clinical professionals (engineers, data analysts, lawyers) working inside quality and safety departments.
Participants in our inaugural QI Operating System™ course included risk directors, former CQOs, and quality leaders at the VP level. The consistent finding: seasoned quality professionals with decades of experience identified the translation skill — not tool knowledge — as the most significant gap in their professional training.
Dr. Huddleston is Mayo Clinic's founding hospitalist, a physician-industrial engineer, and a 30-year veteran of healthcare quality improvement and patient safety work. She spent more than a decade as the architect and sole trainer of the Mayo Clinic 100% Mortality Review System — training every reviewer herself, using a standardized seven-step case review process she originated.
Frustrated by the persistent gap between the quality of QI tools and the quality of QI outcomes, she returned to school in her forties to earn an MS in Industrial Engineering — which gave her the systems-design lens that became the foundation of the QI Operating System™ framework. The course is built from a systematic analysis of every QI initiative she led, participated in, or watched fail across three decades. The pattern: the tools were rarely the problem. Translation was always the problem.
She is past President of the Society of Hospital Medicine, a Harvard Macy Scholar (both Educator and Leadership programs), and alumna of the inaugural class of the Health Forum/NPSF Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship. She is also the founder of HB Healthcare Safety, SBC — an AHRQ-designated Patient Safety Organization with 103+ hospital relationships.
Format: Five consecutive Friday Master Classes, 2 PM – 3 PM ET, plus a weekly Tuesday Live Q&A for the full course period. All sessions are live and virtual via Zoom. Each Friday Master Class includes a facilitated cohort discussion, applied skill-building, and a worksheet or tool deliverable. Tuesday Q&A sessions are your open-floor opportunity to bring questions from your active QI projects and work through application challenges in real time with Dr. Huddleston.
One-to-one coaching: Every participant receives two personal 1:1 coaching sessions with Dr. Huddleston — scheduled within the course window to address your specific QI project and translation challenges.
Cohort size: Limited to 12 participants per cohort to preserve the quality of live discussion and individual application support.
Platform access: Login to the Membership.io portal is delivered within minutes of registration. All replays, worksheets, and tools are available there for lifetime access.
Prerequisite: No specific certification or prior training required. Participants should be actively working in or transitioning into a healthcare quality, patient safety, or risk management role.
Team enrollment: Organizations sending three or more participants may be eligible for group pricing. Contact us before registering to arrange team enrollment.
Try-before-you-commit option: Attend Session 1 (the DISC Workshop) as a standalone for $87. If you choose to enroll in the full course before the end of the first week of the quarter, your $87 is credited in full — you pay only the $410 balance.
Session Schedule
All live master classes meet on consecutive Fridays at 2 PM ET. A weekly Tuesday Live Q&A runs for the full course period — bring your active project questions and work through application challenges in real time. Between live master classes, participants apply framework concepts to their own active QI projects.
| Session | Topic | What You Do in This Session |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
DISC Workshop — Own Your Influence PREPARE: COMMIT |
Receive your personalized DISC communication profile. Learn how you are heard — and misheard — in high-stakes conversations. Build your Script Bank: ready-to-use clinical language for authority gradients, resistance, and leadership rooms. |
| 2 |
Stakeholder Intelligence & Organizational Alignment PREPARE: ALIGN |
Complete the Stakeholder Alignment Canvas for your current QI project. Map your organization's goals and identify where your project is — and is not — aligned to what leadership is already measuring. Leave with a Pre-Meeting Influence Checklist. |
| 3 |
Six Working Geniuses — Team Optimization PRIORITIZE: LEARN |
Complete the Six Working Geniuses assessment and apply it to your QI team. Identify which geniuses are missing and which team members are carrying roles that drain rather than energize them. Stop assigning people to the wrong seats by default. |
| 4 |
From Data to Direction — Prioritize What Moves Outcomes PRIORITIZE: ANALYZE |
Turn your reporting database into decision intelligence. Use the Data Analysis & Prioritization Framework to identify the one or two levers that will actually move your outcome metric. Build a Leadership-Ready Data Narrative that leadership can resource and act on. |
| 5 |
Turn Work Into Wisdom — Institutionalize What You Learned PREVENT: INNOVATE + DISSEMINATE |
Apply Safety-II principles to shift from reactive to proactive improvement. Build your Knowledge Dissemination Playbook and complete your Personal QI-OS™ Integration Portfolio — your fully integrated operating system for every QI project going forward. |
Dates coordinated with each enrolled cohort. Weekly Tuesday Live Q&A sessions are scheduled at a time coordinated with participants. Questions about scheduling: info@influenceignited.org
What Every Participant Takes Home
Each session produces a concrete deliverable — a tool your team uses in live QI work, not a slide deck to forget.
Session 1 · DISC
- Personalized DISC communication profile
- Script Bank for high-stakes QI conversations
- AI prompt set calibrated to your DISC style
- "Getting Heard in 90 Seconds" bonus module
Session 2 · PREPARE
- Stakeholder Alignment Canvas
- Organizational Goals Mapping Tool
- Pre-Meeting Influence Checklist
Session 3 · 6 Working Geniuses
- Six Working Geniuses assessment
- Team Genius-Mapping Worksheet
- Project Role Assignment Framework
Session 4 · PRIORITIZE
- Data Analysis & Prioritization Framework
- Leadership-Ready Data Narrative Template
Session 5 · PREVENT
- Knowledge Dissemination Playbook
- Organizational Wisdom Framework
- Personal QI-OS™ Integration Portfolio
Included with All Sessions
- Weekly Tuesday Live Q&A for the course period
- Two personal 1:1 coaching sessions with Dr. Huddleston
- Lifetime replay access to all sessions
- Certificate of completion
- Community membership portal access
- Session worksheets and tools library
Fees & Enrollment Options
Full QI-OS™ Course
- All 5 live Friday sessions (July 31 – August 28, 2026)
- Weekly Tuesday Live Q&A for the course period
- Two personal 1:1 coaching sessions with Dr. Huddleston
- DISC communication profile (Session 1)
- Six Working Geniuses assessment (Session 3)
- All session worksheets, canvases & frameworks
- Lifetime replay access to all sessions
- Personal QI-OS™ Integration Portfolio
- Certificate of completion
- Community membership portal access
Team Enrollment (3 or more)
- Everything in the full course for each participant
- Team genius-mapping across all participants
- Cohort-level DISC communication debrief available
- Coordinated team registration support
- Post-cohort organizational debrief session (by arrangement)
- Organizations sending 3+ participants: reduced per-person rate
Try It First — DISC Workshop Standalone
Attend Session 1 only (July 31, 2026, 2 PM ET). If you decide to enroll in the full course before the end of the first week of the quarter, your $87 is credited in full — you pay only the $410 balance.
Also available as a standalone team training workshop. Contact us for organizational pricing.
How the QI Operating System™ Course Is Different
Healthcare quality professionals already have access to tool training, certification programs, and methodology courses. This course is not competing with those programs — it completes them. If your team has the tools but improvement still stalls, the gap is not more tools.
| What Your Team Already Has | What the QI-OS™ Course Adds |
|---|---|
| QI methodology (PDSA, Lean, Six Sigma) | The operating system for deploying those tools across organizational layers without losing momentum |
| Data collection and measurement skills | The ability to translate data into the language of leadership — named mechanism, metric, location, and action |
| Clinical credibility and frontline access | The stakeholder intelligence and alignment preparation to convert that credibility into organizational action |
| Project completion experience | A knowledge dissemination system that converts local improvement into transferable organizational knowledge — so what was learned outlasts the initiative and the team that ran it |
| Commitment to patient safety | A structured operating system that protects that commitment from being swallowed by administrative burden |
QI-OS™ does not replace improvement science. It completes it. Improvement science gave us tools, measurement, and methodology. The QI Operating System™ adds what has always been missing: the bidirectional translation and alignment capability across system layers that turns good methodology into lasting change — and measurably improves patient outcomes.