Aseat at the table gives them a right to be heard, but it comes with a responsibility. At the end of the day, they have to trust the process and trust their team. They have to commit.

A lot of organizations talk about provider wellness, but they often conceptualize it in problematic ways.

Culture isn’t a building project, it’s a growing project.

Sometimes we forget that not all chronic stresse injuries are physical.

Who knew that his handy little device to gather up all of our various tasks in one place would become the bane of our existence. And yet, here we are.

Knowing it all is a losing strategy as a leader. First of all, it’s impossible. Then, when you try to pretend you know it all, you look like an idiot, and you lose people’s trust. And finally, the whole doomed approach makes you miss out on a bunch of really valuable stuff.

We won’t get much better at improving our patients’ health until we pay as much attention to human motivation as we do to human physiology.

People will blame you for things that aren’t your fault, that you can’t control, that you can’t fix. You will find yourself in the middle of a dumpster fire with no way to put it out.

Leading medical providers is a tricky business. The whole relationship between employers and providers is in flux, and everyone is trying to adjust on the fly.

Centralized control creates the illusion of stability because there’s no visible dissent, but it’s precarious because there’s no base of support.

When only agreement is acceptable, you end up in an echo chamber, and you force people into a stance of passive resistance and unspoken dissent. If you can’t say no, there’s no real yes. If there’s no real yes, all you get is an unspoken no.

Sometimes, when we try to improve systems and processes, we put all our time into designing the future. Often, though, the hardest part of implementation is getting people to let go of the past.

When a predator attacks, a herd moves, but it splits and scatters. But when they migrate to their breeding or feeding grounds, they move together, as a steady, undeniable force.

You are the embodiment of the decisions you make and the policies you implement or defend. In their eyes, you are both more and less than a regular human being. 

You hear the word a lot. Usually, it’s at an administrative meeting where someone is lamenting that certain teams or employees don’t want to be “held accountable.” My question is: who does?

Humans use stories to extract meaning from our experiences. Inherent in the act of storytelling is the chain of cause and effect. “The king died and then the queen died” is a statement of fact. “The king died and then the queen died of grief” is a story.

Sometimes, when we first encounter a problem, its cause seems obvious. It’s only later, after a few failed attempts to solve it, that we realize the roots of the problem run much deeper than we thought. 

I took a photography class recently where I finally learned to take my camera out of “automatic” mode. It turns out, when you just use the default settings, you get mediocre results. It’s only when you understand your options and exercise some choices that you get exactly you were hoping for--especially in difficult conditions.

Hiring for fit does not mean hiring someone like you. It doesn’t mean just looking for someone you’re comfortable with, or someone you enjoy hanging out with during a 30-minute interview. Hiring for fit means hiring the person who fits the culture you’re trying to create.

These days, there’s a lot of talk in healthcare about caring for “the whole patient.” But what does that mean?