Raised Beds

April 12, 2023

Who really knows why this stuff happens? One minute I’m building raised beds as part of expanding this year’s dahlia harvest and the next I’m reflecting on one of my favorite Harvard Business Review articles: (HBR June 2014: Engaging Doctors in the Health Care Revolution by Thomas H. Lee and Toby Cosgrove ). I’m just trying to enjoy spring at The3Fours Retreat but the article is stuck in my head.

We are excited here at The3fours this year. Ski season has just ended and the snow blower is in its summer location having exchanged its place with the BBQ grills. The outdoor chairs are on the patio and we have daffodils in bloom and tulips beginning to poke through. The sunshine has been creating amazing sunrises and sunsets on the snow covered mountain peaks.

We have some very special guests coming this summer and several large remodeling projects that are finally begining to gain momentum. A couple of contractors came by today interupting the raised bed project and giving us good news that we are moving forward. It is probably the multiple projects in various phases that brought the HBR article to the forefront.

Each of the projects has multiple phases:

1. Visioning - where are we going, what will it look like?
2. Planning - what is it going to take?
3. Preparation/engagement-?getting everyone and everything lined up at the right time.
4. Implementation
5. Review/revise

We can use the dahlia project as an example:

1. Visioning - this began late last summer. Did we want to reproduce 2022? expand the beds? add other plants? etc. etc.
2. Planning - faced with the reality that there is only some much square footage to work with we needed to wrestle with our vision versus reality. For instance, what plants can we safely plant given the deer traveling through the yard twice a day? (so far the daffodils remain untouched) What plants have to go behind the fence to avoid becoming deer food? How would we add another raised bed? etc. etc. etc.
3. Preparation/enagement - This is where the HBR article comes in. You need to build the raised beds before planting. It doesn’t do much good to put a bunch of plants in the ground and then try and put 15 inches of soil over the top of the plants. On the other hand when there is 12 inches of snow on the ground and it is 18 degrees it is much better to be snowboarding than trying to get a head start. Either seems shall we say perverse.

Drs. Lee and Cosgrove in their HBR-article on physician engagement stress the importance of finding a “shared purpose” if we want to get physician engagement. They stress that the importance of shared purpose is key because without it our other forms of motivation may “… seem perverse and may prove ineffective.” While physicians certainly may be unique it is not a stretch that the importance of “shared purpose” is beneficial to any group where engagement is vital to success. (every project?)

Preparation/engagement is a critical step in our sucess, much like building the raised beds is to our dahlia harvest. Sidestepping may not only be perverse but ineffective. During the planning stages it is imperative that we give ourselves the opportunity and the right timing of these crucial conversations. Much like the raised beds too early or too late may lead to wasted resources, poor outcomes or worse. How we prepare the beds this year may have a roll to play in next years harvest. Said another way, a negative impact on engagement this year may have a negative impact on our future projects. Was it Gomer Pyle who said “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”?

4. Implementation - have a plan, work the plan. Don’t underestimate the importance of the basics. See previous blogs.

5. Review/revise - plans rarely go off without a hitch. This planting season we are moving fences, tearing out patios, expanding the backyard and adding new flower beds. We do have a plan to allow our dahlias to be mobile (planting in geopots - so we can move as needed). We have modified our plans to make sure we can adapt based on what new findings we unearth with our contractors. We know we will need to adapt, we just don’t know when or how at this point.

6. Continuous Planning - as we prepare our raised beds for this season we are already planning 2024’s flower beds. Keeping notes, learning new things, going the next step. Balancing with all the other projects that are happening simultaneously. As leaders we are usually planning the next changes while we are in the early phases of this initiative.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four?sharpening the axe.” Abraham Lincoln.

“Give me six months for a change management project and I will invest heavily in making sure we have a shared purpose” Patrick Rankin, MD, MMM

Again I want to put a plug in for reading this article: HBR June 2014: Engaging Doctors in the Health Care Revolution by Thomas H. Lee and Toby Cosgrove.

Tomorrow we finish up the raised beds and continue our spring preparation. We will soon be past our last freeze and can begin getting into the garden beds. (implementation)

Here’s to hoping you are working on your garden beds/shared purpose.

Pat

Patrick Rankin, MD, MMM

www.The3fours.com