A "New Way" of Thinking About Change
Freshly returned from an excellent – and excellently attended – PMRG meeting in Orlando a few weeks ago, I am still awash in positivity about one of the keynote presentations. Dan Heath, author of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, kicked off the session with an impeccably well-reasoned and entertainingly presented offering that summarized in one hour the major takeaways from his book.
This summary, moreover, was a clear and cogent rendition of a theme I have been beating on for some time. That is, we have left behind the eras of invention and persuasion, and are entering the era of design. Hopefully I will do Dan’s important examples justice as I summarize them below, since I believe they provide us with important guidance as to how we should go about making some of the “massive changes,” to use designer Bruce Mau’s terminology, that the health care industry, health care itself, will need to make in years to come.
Throughout his presentation, Dan used the metaphor of a man sitting atop, and driving, an elephant. While the elephant was clearly of significantly greater mass, the human could, through appropriate guidance, both keep it under control and provide it with direction... |
