Some societies, particularly Eastern societies, had clear, direct actions, often draconian and severe—that, at least based on publicly released data, provided the greatest protection for their population around deaths from Covid. Here in the United States, we came out worse than most other countries—with death rates far surpassing those in most European countries and much poorer countries without access to vaccines even. Yet, healthcare leaders learned we can change our systems in the blink of an eye—something that seemed impossible pre-Covid-19.
Within weeks of the epidemic, new tele-health tools were fired up across the United States and we were able to provide healthcare access to millions of people from the comfort of their homes. Home-based testing became normalized as the Federal government sent out free supplies of Covid-19 test-kits, often more accessible than they were in primary care offices event. People learned they can do their own home-based testing which now is rapidly growing in the United States with new “home test kits” spreading into women’s health, trauma-informed care, men’s health, longevity health, etc. We have seen an explosion of new telehealth opportunities, home-based test kits, and pro-active health websites emerging out of the storm.
Healthcare transformation was called for during many decades before Covid-19. Yet, in truth, the greatest disruptive innovation in modern healthcare history has been Covid-19. This deadly teacher taught us lessons we will continue to benefit from for decades into the future—at great cost of so many lives it is depressing to think of it. Dithering in the face of emergence is natural. Getting stuck at dithering, paralyzed by polarity of opportunities, is a leadership failure.
Taking stock of lessons learned requires self-reflection, accessing multiple lenses into the events and outcomes that unfolded, and learning from the experience through the double-loop as well as single-loop process. We begin that reflective process by looking at Turbulence and Contradiction as forces that disrupt our leadership lives and how we might better adapt in the future.
Turbulence: Leadership and Personal Balance
Peter Vaill (2008), the organizational theorist who first introduced the idea of a “white water” world, wrote about the need for balance in navigating this world. This is a matter not only of finding balance in the moment-to-moment shifts in the dynamics of the system one is navigating (the volatility in VUCA-Plus), but also of preparing for the radically different patterns of change (or non-change) that is operating in the white-water system. (uncertainty and contradiction in VUCA-Plus).
Many of today’s health care organizations must survive highly turbulent and unstable conditions. The white water is all around us at this point in the 21st Century. Some things in our life and work are moving rapidly, while other things are moving in a cyclical manner. We are also likely to find that some things are not moving at all—even if we would like them to move. Perhaps, most importantly, some things in our life and work are moving in a chaotic manner—they are swirling about in an absolutely unpredictable manner. We might be able to adjust temporarily to one of these four conditions, but soon find that we are facing a different set of conditions that require a quite different manner of planning and leadership.
