Recently in Leadership Culture Category

The July 8, 2009 Wall Street Journal noted the passing of Robert S. McNamara (former Ford CEO, Secretary of Defense, and President of the World Bank) with From McNamara to Obama an opinion piece by Bret Stephens who comments on the dangers of too much rationalism - or more aptly - on the dangers of hubris. Not an insignificant pitfall for health care leaders to consider...

In health care, possibly more than other industries, we consider ourselves so expert that innovation is generally expected to come from within - and deep within at that. Can We Innovate Ourselves Out of Recession published July 1, 2009 in the Knowledge@Wharton column on Forbes. Com examines a different approach taken by industry. It describes the effective use of external innovation networks to generate solutions to technical problems in the non health care world. It occurred to me that health care leaders might want to consider how to harness fresh ideas from smart people outside our somewhat insular industry...

I was reading two issues of the Harvard Business Review simultaneously (a hazard of being overly busy), so I rapidly became aware of complementary articles that appeared in successive months addressing the related issues of candor (What's Needed Next: A Culture of Candor by James O'Toole and Warren Bennis a full article in the June HBR) and transparency (Heed the Calls for Transparency by Sam Wilkin in the Forethought section of the July-August issue). The latter was just received by subscribers so the online link is not yet available so if you don't subscribe watch the HBR web site in the coming week for it. Both are essential business reading for health care leaders...

Something rather remarkable apparently took place at the Harvard Business School just before graduation last week. According to Forswearing Greed: A Hippocratic Oath for Managers, which appeared in The Economist print edition of June 4, half the graduating class took an oath to advance integrity, moderate personal ambition, and seek to make choices that serve the greater - rather than the individual's - benefit. Having personally graduated from both trainings, I took the bait when The Economist connected the "MBA Oath" to the Hippocratic oath and figured there must be something worth connecting here. And there is. It has something to do with what sometimes happens when physicians become practice or organizational leaders with financial responsibility and accountability...

I may be slow. It took two hits about Sergio Marchionne before I got him on the blog. The impetus to take the leap came when Business Week published the April 2 article, How Fiat's Marchionne Can Help Chrysler by Carol Matlack. But I do take credit for noticing and not forgetting when I first thought there was something here for health care leaders -after reading the Harvard Business Review's Fiat's Extreme Makeover in December of 2008, which was authored by Mr. Marchionne himself. Read the HBR piece first, for its strong focus on leadership culture, to see why Marchionne may be able to teach Chrysler - and health care leaders - a few things...