TRUST

_______ happens.

What goes in the blank? 

You could have answered Life – Life happens. Or weather, or enjoyment, or all kinds of things. Lots of things happen.  But did you think of a negative term? If not sure do we fill in the blank with negative thoughts?

CHANGE happens. It is inevitable. UNCERTAINTY happens. With CHANGE we don’t know all the effects and collateral effects. Can we PREDICT it or will we be disappointed by a FLIP FLOP reversing what we hoped for?

We have a natural tendency to fear the unknown. In earlier times, when the unknown was associated with animals that would kill you, developing such an instinctive response had an evolutionary advantage. But in modern times we often seek the unknown (cave exploring, scuba diving, etc) and TRUST in people, processes and systems (buddy system, flashlights, oxygen delivery systems) to keep us safe while we do it.

TRUST (and its appropriate application) is one of our most critical needs in life, in relationships, in business, in healthcare decision-making.  TRUST is how we overcome the fear of UNCERTAINTY.

But you can’t “Just do it” – trusting blindly would be foolish. “I have a great deal for you. Just TRUST me.”

TRUST comes from predictability.  If you are dependent on another person’s decision-making how do you TRUST them? Can you PREDICT based on how they handled prior decisions? Have they been fair? Looked out for your interests? Considered enough perspectives to avoid negative consequences? Have they been transparent enough so you could answer those questions (or are you guessing at such things)? There are a lot of factors to consider when we determine how much we TRUST.

How much do you want to be trusted? Can others PREDICT what you will do? Have you been fair? Looked out for others’ interests? Considered enough perspectives to avoid negative consequences? Have you been transparent enough so others could answer those questions (or are would they be guessing at such things)? 

We have a lot of things we are going to accomplish and there is tremendous CHANGE coming to make a lot of things better – getting better at providing the most useful information to healthcare professionals at the point of care, getting better at raising the standards for clinical knowledge, getting better at making well-informed shared decision-making (WISDM) an expectation and reality in healthcare. It’s going to be YUGE (if you are a Trump fan or a Bernie fan, or HUGE if not born in New York in the 1940’s).  

We are fortunate that we have people, processes and systems we can TRUST to make this happen (but with attention to growth, development and continuous improvement -- we can't TRUST it will just happen without effort).