While I was driving around New Year’s Eve day, the local National
Public Radio (NPR) station was having listeners call in and report on
the success or failure in keeping 2013 New Year’s resolutions. As
one can expect, the failure rate far exceeded the success rate. Certainly
not surprising. What is surprising is we now have volumes of research
both current and old on how to create successful behavioral change. In
1952, Norman Vincent Peale wrote: The Power of Positive Thinking. I received
my copy sometime in my early teens from my mother. It has become one of
the most widely read self-help books ever written. It launched my curiosity
about the power of our minds and individual performance improvement. My
journey was jump started in the mid-80’s during a leadership seminar
presented by the late Bob Moawad. Dr. Peale was a clergyman and Bob was
a former high school basketball coach. Neither was a scientist or clinician,
but both were promoting ideas regarding self-improvement through the power
of the mind. These concepts were anything but mainstream and primarily
the domain of clinical psychiatrists and psychologists working with patients
diagnosed with some type of mental disorder.
Fast forward to today and thanks to advancements in technology, brain science
information has routinely found its way on to the New York Times best
sellers list. Chris Argyris (late), Peter Senge, Daniel Pink, David Rock,
Alan Deutshman, Daniel Kahneman, Dan Ariely, Chip and Dan Heath, Margaret
Wheatley and John Kotter are just a few of the authors contributing to
the growing body of literature bridging the highly technical world of
neuroscience to understandable, layperson concepts.
So as I start the New Year, I’m wondering if this will be the year
for a sea change in healthcare. Some analysts believe the inflection point
for healthcare was in 2013. Frankly, it’s been surprising that healthcare
leaders have chosen to ignore the “medical science” available
to create large scale organizational change. Maybe this is just a real
life example of the saying, “the cobbler’s children have no
shoes.” But on the other hand, “the facts” indicate
how hard accomplishing organizational/behavioral change really is without
confronting our thinking.
But there’s good news and bad news. Bad news first. While healthcare
has an enormous number of caring and compassionate people working very
hard to deliver high quality, compassionate care, there exists an enormous
amount of hierarchical, command and control management/leadership oversight
to see that things are done right. It’s counterintuitive to me that
this situation exists. The question now becomes, can “carrot and
stick” leadership create a change paradigm necessary to move organizations
from where they are to where they need to be?” As we all know, lack
of change in a capitalistic economy can be very harsh. The 1990s were
a time of many hospital mergers or closures. People are displaced, lives
are disrupted and organizations can even disappear. Unfortunately, it
appears the old approaches are being used once again. Given the success
of change initiatives in other industries, I’m skeptical.
But the good news is very good! The very smart people mentioned at the
beginning of this blog have created numerous playbooks of tools, techniques,
stories, and examples of how to create sustainable, large-scale, organizational
change. We don’t need to recreate or even invent the wheel. The
examples range from saving cardiac patient lives to projects by Ford Motor
Company, The U.S. Army and Royal Dutch Shell to name just a few. You might
be thinking-'but I’m not CEO and can’t impact these changes'.
It doesn’t matter where you exist in an organization. We all know
leadership isn’t just a title. Understanding how our brains function
and process information is a critical component of any leader’s
tool kit. Understanding the implications that neuroscience is discovering
about human behavior isn’t just a passing management fad. It’s
fact and reality. These learnings show us how our brains work, for better
or worse. I don’t have the space to share even a few of the stories
written by these authors. We all have mental models from which we unconsciously
operate. We have filters that only let in information that confirms what
we already believe. I can only encourage you to start your own journey
through the information.
For those of you doubters, let me share a simple exercise. Take about 10-15
seconds and read the following sentence using eyesight only (no finger
pointing) and count the number of F’s in the words:
Finished files are the result of years of scientific study
combined with the experience of many years.
Have a very Happy and Prosperous New Year!!! I’m planning on continuing
this discussion in future blogs that will include an insight into how,
in only a decade, Texas high school football has gone from producing NFL
running backs to NFL quarterbacks and my own personal pilot project using
the concepts neuroscience is providing.
Oh, by-the-way, there are six F's.