Strange Attractors

Meg Wheatley introduced me to "strange attractors" last year when I read her book, Leadership and the New Sciences: Discovering Order in  a Chaotic World.   No, we're not referring to the infamous "do be do" lyrics of Frank Sinatra.  Rather, we're talking about a special force that emerges when a system undergoes transformation.  Here's the skinny.  

• Order exists in every system, even when the system is in absolute disorder and undergoing transformation.     
• You want "quantum" leaders on your team who can find the order within the disorder.  These are the leaders who can see the often invisible shapes, patterns and boundaries -- also known as "strange attractors" -- that will give meaning and hold the system together during these unstable and often turbulent times.
• These "quantum" leaders usually have a well-trained "eagle eye" that can see far and wide.  They are also wise enough to know that absolute disorder is necessary, from time to time, in order to create anything new or better.

Give Wheatley's book a read.  I read it in a single day, while sitting in two different airports, and I was a different person when I reached my destination.   

The "Eagle Eye"

My husband and I recently drove along the Mississippi River in southern Minnesota.  We ended up at the National Eagle Center where we learned all about our country's national emblem, the Bald Eagle.  

Did you know that eagles are known for their excellent eyesight?  Their eyes are almost as large as ours yet their visual acuity is at least four times better than our "perfect" 20/20 vision.  Eagles can see both forward and to the side at the same time. In open country, they can spot small prey over three square miles from a lofty perch. 

For someone who started wearing tiny, pink sparkling "cat eye" glasses at 4 years old, I'm not one to brag about vision but yes, I need my "Eagle Eye" more than ever these days.  For it is those hard questions that often cause me to narrow my focus, to lose both the long (and the side) view, perhaps to even forget that useful "10,000 foot" view that brings the "big picture" back into view.       

Yet again, nature kicks me "in the butt" with its life lessons.   How's your "Eagle Eye?"    

Mind the Gap ... Mind the Monkeys

The London Underground coined the phrase "Mind the Gap" to warn passengers of the risk of stepping into the unsafe gaps between trains and platforms.   Gaps can exist when a train stops at a curved platform.  Gaps can also exist when the height of the train floor and the platform are not the same.  

Beyond train stations, there are many gaps to heed in our daily lives.  In mine, the gaps abound when my "monkey mind" takes over.  

I recall the excellent quote from Elizabeth Gilbert's book, "Eat, Pray, Love" which made me aware of this phenomenon.  It goes something like this ...

"I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind.   The thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.   My mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined."  

Truly, I am what I think.   We all are.  Therefore, we must also mind these gaps ... these monkeys ... and know enough to step away from (or over) them on our journey, before they disrupt our good energy and our path.   

Indeed, here's to safe travels and enjoy the ride!   

Design Thinking

The term "design thinking" is still somewhat new to health care.       

Design thinking is a problem solving process that turns on three principles: (1) empathy, (2) invention and (3) iteration.  

In the case of empathy, design thinking asks us to "mind the gaps" and to put ourselves in the customers' shoes.  In terms of invention, we must act as creators who are all about possibilities.    Finally, iteration means we need to test, fail early and often, and to test again so to learn from our re-iterations (and our failures) along the way.  With a wide-eyed gaze, you question the value of learning from failure, particularly in health care.  For now, I ask that you hold that thought.         

In their book,  Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers, Jean Liedtka and Tim Oglivie identify four basic questions that drive the design thinking process.  

What Is?  

What If?  

What Wows? 

What Works?  

The question "What Is?" requires us to step away from the crystal ball, ever so briefly, and to collect meaningful information about our current customer (or other) reality.   This is often where we mine data or use observation,  surveys, interviews and focus groups to obtain information.    The use of "a mind mapping" tool is often used to assemble, organize and draw insights from all of the information before moving to the next stage of generating ideas,  which is referred to as "What If?" 

The "What If" stage is all about possibilities.  Here, we want to move from insights to ideas through the use of a brainstorming process that ensures useful output .  The next task is to "cluster" the ideas into one or more robust concepts or hypotheses through the use of a concept development tool.  

The "What Wows?" stage finds the sweet spot where one or more of the concepts or hypotheses at the top of the list are given a "run for their money", both in terms of customer value and profit potential, through the use of an assumption testing tool.   Rapid prototyping, a 3-D modeling process which often resembles a kindergarten arts and craft frenzy, is also used to clarify what a new product might look like or how it would work.  

The "What Works" stage is the time to "get real" and test (and re-test) those prototypes with prospective customers until they are ready for the marketplace as part of a learning launch tool.  Throughout this stage, a willingness to seek input and to fail early (and often) is essential in order to succeed sooner.  

So back to failures, a term that is definitely not new to health care.  Failures -- whether a medication error, a wrong site surgery or a HIPAA breach -- are all unfortunate events to be sure.  But they must also be reckoned with as an essential ingredient to organizational learning.  

In an article entitled "Why Hospitals Don't Learn From Failure," authors Anita Tucker and Amy Edmondson review the many different forces that often inhibit the ability of hospitals (and other health care organizations) to re-frame failure as a meaningful source of learning, not just for managers but also for personnel. 

So, are you curious about this "design thinking" process?  Give Liedka and Ogilvie's book a read.  It is filled with case studies and stories about moving through the four stages of design thinking in pursuit of new and/or improved customer services. If their "fail early (and often)" advice raises your team's collective heart rate, check out the Tucker/Edmondson article which re-purposes failure into feedback.  Feedback that will ultimately take you and your organization to a higher order of problem solving and change over the long run.