Where have all the good leaders gone?

My theme for this month has centered on our need for better leadership to guide us through the challenging times ahead in health care. To close out the month, I will add one more post on the topic before I get back to more Medicaid-specific items.

One nice - and eerily prescient - book from 2007 (pre-recession) was the one by Lee Iococca, "Where have all the good leaders gone?" The first paragraph below is by no means subtle: (more)

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the [bleep] is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads...

Now some may say that health care is different - that people are not widgets - but experience tells otherwise (see yesterday's post on Don Berwick). In fact, the more complex a system is, the greater there is a need for good leadership so that incentives are aligned toward the attainment of a common purpose...a purpose more than just money.

After my earlier post on Servant Leadership, a good friend (thanks CHL) sent me the link to an excellent article published in the Archives of Surgery way back in 2002. The article is titled "The Power of Servant Leadership to Transform Health Care Organizations for the 21st-Century Economy." It is an excellent read on what makes a good leader and the implications for health care delivery systems.

One of the "dirty little secrets" acknowledged in management programs but rarely admitted in public is that management is the most disposable layer of any organization while knowledge workers form the most valuable layer. That is why the executives at well-run organizations tend to follow the credo "the greater the leader, the greater the service." Whether it be a family, church, company, or government agency, it would be wise for all of us to remember and follow this credo.

So let's stop sitting around nodding our heads and start demanding better...starting with ourselves. ~BAA