Operationalization: A Big Word With Tiny Parts
Part 1

Operationalization. Sounds like a terrible word, doesn't it? It's hard to understand the meaning just by reading the word. It's long, clunky, and physically hard to say. I mean, it's eight syllables for heaven's sake!

In reality, though, this very cumbersome word has significant importance to many of us...even if we didn't realize it.

So what is it already, Shapiro?

The Oxford dictionary defines operationalization as the act of expressing or defining (something) in terms of the operations used to determine or prove it. In simplest terms, "operationalize" means to break something into its smallest parts.

Why is it so important that I'm wasting your time by making this the topic of today's editorial? My answer is simple: you need this to learn, to advance…to grow. Today, we'll look at operationalization in concept and examine one example of its use.

In the biblical story when God told Adam to "name creation", he wasn't simply asking humans to assign a designation to everything. He was asking Man (in the inclusive sense rather than the sexist one) to learn about the world, understand how it works, in order to grow and change. Inventing an actual name is simply a side effect of the process. And this is what Homo sapiens have been doing for millennia. The people who do this are called – you guessed it – scientists.

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What does a scientist do but examine a particular process and attempt to break that process down into its integral parts? S/he does this using the scientific method. The application of that new knowledge is technology.

Take computing as an example. The creation of the modern laptop computer is the end result of a long line of innovations, from understanding quantum mechanics and the function of the election through solid-state technologies and human psychology, among so many other thousands of advances. Each of those advances resulted from someone figuring out how something worked by breaking it down into its fundamental parts. Niels Bohr first had to figure out the atomic model before we could invent the Internet.

This all sounds very heady and philosophical I know, and you're wondering how this applies to you. It applies because everything you do consists of multiple important fundamental parts, without which you would fail.

To those of you being interviewed, I'd like to make a few suggestions. Since we're in the middle of the interviews now, this is obviously too late for this year, but you never know when you'll need this advice again.

Try baking chocolate chip cookies (yum, my favorite!). Making a successful cookie requires many smaller integral steps, including mixing specific ingredients in a precise way, and then baking them in an oven with a specific temperature for a specific amount of time. Omit any of these steps and your cookie fails (a most sad event). If you could break this down into the proper steps in the proper order with the proper ingredients, you would know just how to make the perfect cookie. Without a recipe, I don't know how much butter and flour to add, and my cookies usually taste more like something that came out of a horse's behind. My wife, on the other hand, has this down to a science and consistently makes cookies handed down from the Gods. There's a reason my belly is becoming larger by the minute

Let's take an example near and dear to my heart: residency training. When a resident does a surgical procedure, s/he walks into the OR, performs the procedure, and leaves. But there's so much more than that. Take a look at Figure 1. This is part of an assessment document that the attendings are asked to complete after a resident performs a surgical procedure in the operating room. The residents carry 5x7 inch cards, and the attendings are asked to complete the card in 2 minutes.

Don't worry about the assessment part for now. Look closely at the underlined sections. This evaluation form breaks down the major components of a surgical procedure. A resident surgeon walking into an OR must be prepared, perform the procedure itself, and complete that procedure, all the while demonstrating appropriate behaviors. This rubric essentially takes the multiple complex components of a surgical procedure and breaks it down into smaller parts. In effect, the procedure it has been operationalized.

It's possible to break this down into yet smaller details, to operationalize it further. The descriptions next to the underlined word actually do that for my attendings. Obviously, you could keep going ad infinitum, but we'll leave it there for now.

Next week we'll discuss an example or two of how we can use operationalization in our professional and personal lives to solve problems and improve efficiency.

Best wishes,

Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Practice Perfect Editor
[email protected]

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