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Innovation in Health Care and its Antagonists

By on August 27, 2012

Before we get to what spurs useful innovation in medicine, we might talk for a minute about what inhibits it. A number of things come to mind, all of which I have experienced in my career:

1. Conventional Wisdom  — this is the number one poison pill to innovation in medicine. Health Care Organizations of any size usually develop mantras about the way they work. They may chant one about how they value innovation, which is not the same as actually supporting it. They may have a ‘cultural conventional wisdom’, often unique to the organization, that actually keeps away troublesome, alternative thinking. The end result is a go-along-to-get-along culture, where everyone merely cites the conventional wisdom, justifying the status quo and thinking along a prescribed ‘track.’  Or rut.  Remember Conventional Wisdom is always more convention than wisdom. Is conventional thinking, that is safe thinking, the culprit in your organization?

2. Charismatic leadership  — charisma can get a lot of things done. but it can also kill innovation. It is too focused on what the dominant individuals of the moment think. It encourages those further down the corporate food-chain to align with them. Difficult questions may not get asked. Flattery may be rewarded. People eventually just salute whatever idea leadership runs up the flagpole that day and return to their desks. If a charismatic leader is truly open to fresh innovative thinking, this can be good. But human personalities (charismatic or not) usually have things they tolerate and things they don’t. An organization genuinely open to innovation is not dependent of the personalities at the top. Besides these people come and go. You want your organization to remain.

3. Fear of the failure — An organization open to innovation is one that is willing to make a few mistakes and learn from them. If fear of failure becomes too great, innovative ideas pile up in closets and file cabinets outside the CEO’s office. Next you are hearing: “We tried that once and it didn’t work,” whether they did or not. Trying can be lying. An innovative health care organization will take that statement and investigate honestly and without retribution why it didn’t seem to work, and forge ahead, perhaps approaching the innovation in a new way if the idea is sound. Learning from mistakes is what every valuable innovator does.

4. Administrative Sloth — Sometimes good ideas do appear but end up in purgatory somewhere because the resources to implement them are not there, or they get handed off to the wrong person or wrong department. Veterans tend to label these dust-gathering innovations  ‘flavor-of-the-month’ projects. If this phrase sounds familiar in your organization, you may be dealing with a leadership problem. It is one thing to put something aside because it is not feasible right now, another to let it languish because leadership got distracted and moved on to another interest or just lost sight of it. Making innovations reality takes a different, but related  skill-set from devising them in the first place. An organization with a truly innovative culture can do both. Holding on to these changes and embedding them in the culture is yet another skill set. Those companies who do all three usually lead an industry.

5. Administrative Mal-alignment — Alignment problems affect cars. I have to get mine realigned after I get new tires. I once recall riding over some old neglected railroad tracks that had the car limping along the highways until I got it realigned. Organizations are no different. You need all parts to be working well, and pointed in the right direction. If they are mal-aligned, the journey from A to B can be a slow and arduous one. Leaders committed to innovation need to check their tires and alignment periodically. They may need reminders. That can be tricky, but a truly innovative culture needs to be tended lovingly.

Have you got any examples of other toxic factors to organizational innovation?

 

Tom Godfrey

About Tom Godfrey

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