SHELDR #27-2019: Say WHAAAT? Neuro Leadership to Develop Agility in a “BLIP-ZIP” World Strategic Health Leadership (SHELDR) Thought Leadership Series

Introduction

Health and healthcare delivery are complex issues driven at great expense to this nation. As health expenditures consume 20% of the GNP and nation's health status falters, national security issues will emerge. To deal with these complexities, strategic leaders need the ability to anticipate challenges, remove cognitive biases, and inspire others to alter the course of a runaway system. The Strategic Health Leadership (SHELDR) model provided 17 competencies for future leaders to deal with a turbulent, uncertain, and ambiguous or BLIP-ZIP environment. Agility is a critical competency, future leaders need. 

The Big Idea behind Becoming More Agile: Neuro Leadership

Neuro leadership provides a foundation for the development of agility. One thing is clear; health system leaders become paralyzed by the pace with change. The best drive change and thrive on it. In a world of active mergers, quantum transformation, new community partners, and dizzying technologies, leaders who can facilitate change across complex organizations are in high demand. Change is change. This activity is fueling demand for strategic-minded leaders with an agile "BLIP-ZIP" mindset. Moreover, it does not matter what level in the organization you are on.

Leaders can enhance their strategic health leadership skills such as AGILITY by becoming aware of the brain's thought pattern and as a result, make agile thinking habitual for positive effect. Neuro leadership as explained in the book, Your Brain at Work, by Dr. David Rock and Kanneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow has the potential to be help leaders adept at agile and adaptive thinking, creativity, and innovation.

According to neuroscientists, the brain has one central principle – to assess safety and threats. Brains are biased against negativity, affecting perceptions, thus affects thinking, mood, and ultimately relationships. Leaders process information in two ways: non-conscious and conscious, many do not recognize it. For example, brains scan the environment every one-fifth of one second for cues and responses. Then, the brain reacts with four thought processes: Emotion (non-conscious), feeling, thinking, and self-regulation (conscious). Unless regulated, the leader's brain may overreact or miss a cue to the point where concentration becomes dysfunctional thus leading to unintended consequences—toxic culture, patient harm, poor decision, derailment.

Application: Development of Agile “BLIP-ZIP” Leaders

Agile “BLIP-ZIP” leaders are those who understand how to embrace and lead change in fast moving environment—BLIP-ZIP--as well as managing laser light shows—multiple initiatives—by knowing how to gathering, fusing, consume, and share information. Principles of Neuro leadership are the foundation. They are in great demand. What is Agile “BLIP-ZIP” leadership?  First, it borrows from an emerging idea known as neuro leadership. It describes the ability to critically think and manage information being sent and received simultaneously across complex organizations needed by multiple individuals for a wide variety of purposes. It is the BLIP-ZIP nature of the environment.

Agile “BLIP-ZIP” leaders are needed more than ever. Think about it. The world is not going to slow down for you to catch up. The brain relies on synapses “BLIP-ZIP” activities to constantly seek new knowledge, fuse ideas by analyzing information, and then share it as an influen tial messenger. Fusion, such as the critical step in competitive or military intelligence gathering is at the heart of being agile and having the ability to lead change and adapt accordingly. Leaders who know how to engage themselves as life long learners, find and fuse information, and share it will foster greater transformation of the organization and themselves, ergo, the Agile “BLIP-ZIP” Leader.

How to Improve Agility Amidst the BLIP-ZIPPYness

Healthcare is too important and complex. The dynamics are perpetual. Being more agile in your thinking makes you a more effective leader. Here is how:

1.     Interconnectivity and Transparency:  Agility is going beyond organizational intelligence processes. Leaders who understand how to find information, engage themselves frequently at the synapse level, and manage the flow of information will fuel themselves and their organization. Agile leaders are those leaders who engage with their organizations in a non-linear, inclusive, and transparent fashion.

2.     Innovative Thinking: Innovation is recognized as a critical element of success. All leaders should challenge themselves to think in new ways, to adjust to change and to lead change while carving out new models of care. They must create new boxes and expand their horizons such as figuring out how to leverage the social determinants of health for positive effects. The terms “disruptive innovation” and “innovate or die” often gets a bad wrap or generates negative connotations. Agile “BLIP-ZIP” leaders know better. They approach these opportunities from many angles seeking diversity--confirming and opposable--information as a way to quickly punch through by chaos and blip-zippness. Doing so, ensure ideas are not automatically dead on arrival,  organizational morale increases, and better decision are made.  

3.     Strategic Communication: This is not a new skill, but it has new meaning when it is coupled with “interconnectivity, innovation, and opportunity” and the quest for information, ability to generate knowledge and convert a vision into common practice and culture. Employing better ways to communicate your vision with greater vigilance requires being agile enough to communicate your message in many modalities—one-on-one, group, and in the cyberspace.  

Summary

The successful combination of these skills represents the Agile “BLIP-ZIP” SHELDR capable of leader change and managing several laser light shows or initiatives at any level.  Agile “BLIP-ZIP” leadership is a term to describe the ability to manage, fuse, and share information received simultaneously both ways, and across organizational organizations often to and from multiple individuals to serve their tasks and interests. 

The principles of neuro leadership provide the foundation. In order to be more agile or ability to self-regulate, i.e., call timeout, consciously or subconsciously with accuracy, leaders must learn to slow down, prioritize and become adept at reading their environment from a systems perspective. SHELDRs need to understand how their thought processes interact with their behavioral choices to create unintended messages or reframe the queue to develop leaders to be more cognizant of their thinking and environment to find opportunity, become more innovative and resilient, and create net forward energy for the organization, thus, leading to positive outcomes. The goal is to adaptively manage emotion, feeling and thinking so that the prefrontal cortex can step in and effectively regulate actions while strategically communicating across boundaries.

Given today’s tumultuous times of transition, it is clear our nation’s security and patient’s health and wellbeing depend on the ability of health leaders to anticipate the future, inspire others, lead change, and develop future leaders. When done right, SHELDR is more agile in their thinking. Leading change in a BLIP-ZIP world requires more agility to think, act, and communicate consistently as a critical competency now and in the future.

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About the Author: Douglas “DrQD” Anderson, DHA, MSS, MBA, FACHE is a healthcare consultant, adjunct professor, strategist, executive coach and group facilitator. He has over 30 years’ healthcare experience in leadership, command, and corporate staff positions: military, international, academic, and commercial health sectors. He retired in the grade of Colonel in 2012. His last assignment in the military was as Director, Organizational Improvement and Strategic Communication in the U.S. Air Force Surgeon General’s Headquarters. He served on multiple deployments including Afghanistan as Medical Advisor to Afghanistan National Police Surgeon General. He is currently the Chairman of the U.S. Air Force Medical Service Corps Association. He specializes in health futuring, strategic leader development, strategy management, systems thinking, continuous quality improvement, and strategic communication. He is coauthor of Health Systems Thinking: A Primer and Systems Thinking for Health Organizations, Leadership, and Policy: Think Globally, Act Locally. Follow him on Twitter: @Doug_Anderson57. Contact him at [email protected] for information, comments, and opportunities.

Disclosure and Disclaimer:  Douglas E. Anderson have no relevant financial relationships with commercial interests to disclose. The author’s opinions are his own and do not represent an official position of any organization including those he consulted. Any publications, commercial products or services mentioned in his publications are for recommendations only and do not indicate an endorsement. All non-disclosure agreements (NDA) apply.

References: All references or citations will be provided upon request. Not responsible for broken or outdated links, however, report broken links to [email protected]

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