Tuesday, December 7, 2010

A Glass Half Full

My 17 year old daughter recently wrote an essay that began "we cannot see our own eyes.  The perception of ourselves comes from the reflections of others - how we're perceived and treated by the world around us".

Later in the essay she laments that the modern world seems to embrace bad news, negativity, and criticism rather than joy, optimism and gratitude.

I agree with her.

2010 has been a particularly strange year filled with audits, new compliance requirements, and regulatory review.    Negative commentators have been granted more airtime than those trying to make the world a better place. We have become a nation that thrives on sensational news,  usually to someone's discredit.

There may come a time when we spend more time defending our work to consultants, regulators, and naysayers than doing it.

I wonder if it is possible to reverse this trend.

Imagine the following - instead of a statement with an accusatory overtone such as

"40% of clinicians in Massachusetts do not have an electronic health record.   Clearly the state has challenges."

How about

"60% of clinicians in the state have an electronic health record, making Massachusetts one of the most wired regions in the country.   For the remaining 40%, there is a step by step plan to achieve 100% adoption by 2015.   Massachusetts is the only state to mandate EHR adoption as a condition of licensure by 2015."

Instead of highlighting a small number of flaws in a person, a team, or an organization, I would rather celebrate their strengths.  Then in the context of a positive trajectory, discuss that ways they could be even better.

I rarely see this approach.   Instead there is a focus on what is not done, not planned, and not budgeted, sometimes declaring risk without providing a benchmark as to the real current state of the industry.

For example, what if an audit or consulting report declared

"IT has not implemented flying cars"

Senior management or Board members might think they should worry about IT management, IT planning, or Governance processes.

Of course, no one in the country has implementing flying cars and the first production vehicle is not expected until 2011.

Business owners facing their own operational challenges might say - we cannot move forward with our workflow redesign because IT has not deployed the flying cars needed to support our automation needs.

Thus, IT becomes the bottleneck, the area of scrutiny, and point of failure.

Consultants might even be hired to analyze why IT has not implemented flying cars and make recommendations for accelerating the flying car program.

Of course, there are numerous other projects that deserve time, attention and resources before flying cars are even considered.

So what's needed to make this better?

First, we need to eliminate our default tone of negativity.   The quality, safety and efficiency risks we have today were there last year. Somehow we still delivered appropriate care.   They is focusing on the trajectory, making each day better than the last.

I've recently rewritten several reports to take this more positive, optimistic approach.  Instead of a gap or failure mode analysis, I created a trajectory analysis and mitigation analysis.

If we persist with a negative approach in the way we interact with others and manage our organizations, our work lives will continue to change for the worse.   How so?

A recent NY Times column relates the modern world to life in a Zombie film in which we spend each day shooting Zombie after Zombie in a war of attrition until the Zombies are all gone or we become one of them.   Think of your email, your cell phone, and your meeting schedule as a daily battle against Zombies and you'll see the author's point.

As my daughter said, we define ourselves based on the reflections we see from others.   If others are negative, we become negative.  If others highlight the positive, the good, and the trajectory to become even better, we will do the same.

Thus, each one of us can make a difference.   Start tomorrow with a glass half full and soon, those around you will see the world for what it can be instead of of what it is not.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this post. I've been thinking about these issues a lot lately, and this bring things into focus for me.

-Alex

Btw, here in Wisconsin we had flying toasters some years ago, but IT took them away from us!

Bill Barr said...

We now have a culture of "stand back and blame" instead of "pitch in to help fix". The first step to repairing this is to re-focus the spotlight on the "blamers" and point out how they are perpetuating the problem.

Miguel Vilaplana said...

True, and it is a pity in many senses. I have been embedded with the same wrong attitude for a while and decided to change by myself. It has been difficult and some times still is, but is worth the fight, it is completely worth the fight.

As I usually mentioned to my friends, and I am mentioning again at the end of every mail as a mantra:

"Keep on moving, still keep on moving!"

Sounds weird, I know, but for me it means "fight back" in many things like bad attitudes, set backs, bad moments, as well as "I am not KO, I can make a come back!"

So, good entry (in the blog), see you all around and keep on moving, still keep on moving!

Miguel

Tamatha said...

Great post, love your daughters insight and your continued reminders to stay positive and focused. Healthcare IT is a challenge no doubt, but what an exceptional time to be a part of it!

Anonymous said...

Dred Zombies. Again with the zombies.

Have you noticed how big a problem they have been? In the news on every channel.

What we need is another small group of people (best get some people with no anti-zombie experience since they obviously are of no value, even if they have clearly defined the zombie antagonist and zombie inhibitor paradigm of control) and draw on the experience of Google, Switzerland, and XML.

Obviously the anti-zombie measures we have been working on the last 45 years are of no value, and we must immediately fall back on over simplification, analogies about ATMs and booking your plane ticket and propose some sort of nebulous "anti-zombie language".

I warned you three years ago about this.