Machiavelli"s The Prince reads like a job application.
Niccolo Machiavelli was at loose ends in 1513 after a (very) hostile takeover of his employer, the Florentine Republic. He wrote The Prince and dedicated it to Lorenzo II de Medici, at least partially in hopes of winning Lorenzo's favor. Scholars are not sure how accurately The Prince represented Machiavelli's actual views; some even suggest he meant it as a satire. But we can be very certain of one thing: Machiavelli believed that what he wrote in The Prince would resonate with Lorenzo's view of the world.
As it was with Machiavelli, so is it today with many business school professors: What they write is intended in large measure to win favor with the Princes of our times, the CEOs of enormous organizations.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Saturday, January 5, 2008
"Great leaders are great simplifiers"
Center Directors:
I could use your observations, strategies, images, phrases, or any other wisdom on the task below:
A group of 6 of us from same organization heard the quote (in the title of this post) from a keynoter (Bruce Bagley, MD) at a November '07 Family Medicine practice improvement conference, getting at the idea that people working in healthcare are buried in seemingly separate initiatives and projects that are experienced as an interminable sequence of burdens "in silos" that gradually burn up the available "change capital" that leaders have to work with. Something tells me this is not just an issue for healthcare organizations.
The message was to find a way to simplify the picture so that people can relate to it and feel energized rather than overwhelmed by it. I added the famous Einstein quote to the mix: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more so". So with these twin mottos in mind, we as leaders (and consultant) are beginning to "simplify" in a major medical school Department of Family Medicine.
So far we have two high-level strategies:
1) Put all the existing projects, initiatives, goals, paradoxes, etc in the middle of the table, each on one sticky note. Then organize them in organic form on the wall so that the few fundamental themes or components emerge, with subsidiary or equivalent ones beneath, e.g., "Stepped care algorithm" has two versions: "Stepped care for depression (DIAMOND initiative)" and "Staged Diabetes Care (SDM project)". We have now turned three free-floating things into basically one understandable pattern. And so forth for the rest of it. We tried this last week and I am now converting the contents of the digital photographs I took of that big wall onto paper.
2) Put in place an orienting mindset or metaphor from another industry--something that is obvious and non-threatening when applied to someone else's industry but when applied to your own brings clarity and makes you ask the questions differently. For this I am using the fact that healthcare delivery is full of interesting demonstrations and pilots and one-off transformations--but that a reformed way of doing care has yet to hit the mainstream of American healthcare--the innovation is yet to come. There is a parallel story in the development of air travel as a way of life with the 1935 McDonnel Douglas DC-3--which is credited as the aircraft that ushered in the era of commerical air travel. In this story called "From Idea to Invention to Innovation" (Peek & Heinrich,1995) I build on Senge's 1991 distinction between "invention" and "innovation" and how the DC-3 was the first plane to simultaneously combine 5 "component technologies" in one aircraft--and promptly blew away the competition (one partially successful plane after another) and quickly ushered in the era of commercial aviation that we enjoy today. So after telling this story in 2 pages (I can send you this if you like), we have posed the question: What is the minumum number of "component technologies" for ambulatory care that will be needed to usher in the era of truly successful care delivery?
Both these approaches seem to appeal to people. Now my question: What additional or alternative strategies, metaphors, or methods can you suggest to "make everything as simple as possible but not more so".
C J P
I could use your observations, strategies, images, phrases, or any other wisdom on the task below:
A group of 6 of us from same organization heard the quote (in the title of this post) from a keynoter (Bruce Bagley, MD) at a November '07 Family Medicine practice improvement conference, getting at the idea that people working in healthcare are buried in seemingly separate initiatives and projects that are experienced as an interminable sequence of burdens "in silos" that gradually burn up the available "change capital" that leaders have to work with. Something tells me this is not just an issue for healthcare organizations.
The message was to find a way to simplify the picture so that people can relate to it and feel energized rather than overwhelmed by it. I added the famous Einstein quote to the mix: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more so". So with these twin mottos in mind, we as leaders (and consultant) are beginning to "simplify" in a major medical school Department of Family Medicine.
So far we have two high-level strategies:
1) Put all the existing projects, initiatives, goals, paradoxes, etc in the middle of the table, each on one sticky note. Then organize them in organic form on the wall so that the few fundamental themes or components emerge, with subsidiary or equivalent ones beneath, e.g., "Stepped care algorithm" has two versions: "Stepped care for depression (DIAMOND initiative)" and "Staged Diabetes Care (SDM project)". We have now turned three free-floating things into basically one understandable pattern. And so forth for the rest of it. We tried this last week and I am now converting the contents of the digital photographs I took of that big wall onto paper.
2) Put in place an orienting mindset or metaphor from another industry--something that is obvious and non-threatening when applied to someone else's industry but when applied to your own brings clarity and makes you ask the questions differently. For this I am using the fact that healthcare delivery is full of interesting demonstrations and pilots and one-off transformations--but that a reformed way of doing care has yet to hit the mainstream of American healthcare--the innovation is yet to come. There is a parallel story in the development of air travel as a way of life with the 1935 McDonnel Douglas DC-3--which is credited as the aircraft that ushered in the era of commerical air travel. In this story called "From Idea to Invention to Innovation" (Peek & Heinrich,1995) I build on Senge's 1991 distinction between "invention" and "innovation" and how the DC-3 was the first plane to simultaneously combine 5 "component technologies" in one aircraft--and promptly blew away the competition (one partially successful plane after another) and quickly ushered in the era of commercial aviation that we enjoy today. So after telling this story in 2 pages (I can send you this if you like), we have posed the question: What is the minumum number of "component technologies" for ambulatory care that will be needed to usher in the era of truly successful care delivery?
Both these approaches seem to appeal to people. Now my question: What additional or alternative strategies, metaphors, or methods can you suggest to "make everything as simple as possible but not more so".
C J P
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