Don’t Fight the Wind—USE IT: Lessons from Sailing

But healthcare is so broken! Great news—we are all in the same boat.

I went sailing with my kids recently. We found ourselves on a particularly gusty day with very heavy winds and currents. The wind should have been strong enough to take us where we wanted to go, and quickly. Yet, despite our best efforts the undercurrent was so strong we couldn’t outrun it. We kept getting pulled off course.

The same thing can happen in healthcare. We know what we should be doing. We have lots of energy to move toward our goals. We keep aiming for good things, and sometimes it feels like the current of the industry keeps foiling our plans.

We encounter this in various forms:

The reimbursement landscape is too difficult

We’ve always done it this way

The regulatory burden is too heavy

“Healthcare will always be broken!” we lament. ?

When we push and push against these forces, we end up exhausted and sometimes developing a sense of learned helplessness. We end up feeling like Sisyphus on day infinity.

Learned helplessness means that when we try and try and something doesn’t work-- we give up. We have lost faith in our ability to make a change. Trying to strain against the current and giving up on one thing can often mean giving up the quest for change altogether.

Here’s some good news. Everybody is in the same boat, and we are all subject to similar currents. When we see that other organizations are doing better or are thriving, we are quick to imagine stories of how they must be operating in a better environment. While that may be true, they may also be working on the right problems.

To work with and not against the current of the industry, we need a clear understanding of gravity versus anchor problems. ?

Gravity Problems

A gravity problem is set and unchangeable like, well, gravity. It is and will be. Your only option is to work around it because it will never change. Trying to change a gravity problem is a quick road to exhaustion. Your organization is based in a city with an unfavorable payer mix. That is a gravity problem. Your only option is to work around it.

Anchor Problems

Anchor problems are solvable. Anchor problems occur when we’ve attached our anchor to a solution that limits our options. We’ve made one solution part of our problem statement. It limits our ability to explore a wide range of solutions.

“How can I make this program better?” suggests an anchor problem. You’ve already decided that the program is the solution to a problem. Removing the anchor might look more like this: “What is the underlying problem this program is trying to address? What options do we have for solving that problem?”

When we stop trying to change gravity and remove our anchor from the wrong problem, we conserve energy to tackle the right problems, and are more likely to be successful in doing so.

The challenging currents of the industry aren’t changing anytime soon, but we can still keep sailing in the right direction.

?Lead Well,

Katherine

Katherine A. Meese, PhD

To learn more, check out my new book with Quint Studer , The Human Margin: Building Foundations of Trust available now online.

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UAB Department of Health Services Administration