Our hospital’s a lot like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? You may remember that Alice comes to a crossroads with two paths before her, each stretching onward but in opposite directions. She is confronted by the Cheshire cat, of whom Alice asks, “Which path shall I follow?”
The cat answers: “That depends where you want to go. If you do not know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.”
I’m afraid that many hospital IT organizations are very much like Alice. They’re so distracted by the operational challenges they face that they don’t really have a good understanding of where they’re going. This is a tremendous problem because it starts to compound itself.
An organization without a steep sense of direction will waffle and go any direction. This will lead to your best employees leaving for greener pastures. No direction and loss of your best people is a recipe for disaster for any organization.
I recently heard that Marc Andreessen’s (created first widely used web browser) personal mantra is “Often wrong but never in doubt.” I’m still chewing on whether I agree with this approach to leadership, but at least there’s no doubt about where a leader like Marc wants to go. There’s power in all team members rowing in the same direction. Even if you have to change course along the way, you’re still getting somewhere. Everyone rowing in different directions just makes you go in circles.
Does your hospital IT organization have a good vision of where they want to go?