Recovering Leader

Status Quo Fetish? Why Good Leaders Make Bad Choices

How U.S. health reform efforts offer a new understanding of an age-old leadership problem: preservation of the status quo over and above innovation for the greater good. With today’s signing into law of Obama’s long-awaited “health reform,” I find myself wondering why people leading our largest corporations, and the elected officials who regulate them, are so prone to tinkering with... Read more →

Health Reform: Leadership in Sacrifice Still Needed

Someone commented today on a post I wrote last August regarding leadership in sacrifice and U.S. Healthcare Reform, Leadership in Sacrifice: U.S. Health Care Reform's Looming Lesson, which I just re-read and realized, much to my chagrin, that it's still true. Check it out (here's the beginning of it): (From August, 2009) The now-stalled U.S. Health Care reform effort shows... Read more →

10 Suggestions for Self-aware Leadership in 2010

1) Government leaders get back to the best, most ethical, positive spark of what drove them to want to lead in the first place. 2) Corporate leaders learn lessons from the current economic situation: for example, the business value of ethics, self-awareness, kindness, and the negative return on investment of greed and excess. They get back to "capitalism with care:"... Read more →

Health Care Reform Leadership: Rise

Yes, our elected officials have been paid for by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Yes, there's dis- and misinformation flooding the media. Yes, people are confused, overwhelmed, scared, and apathetic. Yes, there are going to be problems and unknowns with anything that passes. Yes, Olympia may vote against it. But now is the time. It's time we find the strength... Read more →

Health Reform's Latest Lesson in Dubious Leadership

Voting with Republicans to reject the so-called Public Option health insurance plan yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) revealed a fundamental flaw of leadership when he was quoted as saying, "I want a bill that can become law." This puts pragmatism ahead of necessity, rather than balancing the two, which leaders must do. Yet the stakes are SO... Read more →

How About a 12-Step Approach to Health Care Reform?

Given the drunken brawl that is the American conversation on health care reform, it's high time we "...place principles before personalities!" as is said in 12-step circles. Today, I'm sticking closer than usual to the context of my blog--applying principles of recovery to leadership. Why? Particularly after this week of insanity, I hope you’ll agree that something new is needed... Read more →

Leadership in Sacrifice: U.S. Health Care Reform's Looming Lesson

The now-stalled U.S. Health Care reform effort shows that our elected officials lack the will and skill to exercise leadership in sacrifice. To enact reform, politicians—people-pleasers and self-preservationists by trade, would, ironically, have to sacrifice themselves politically, and at the same time ask American voters to make sacrifices of their own. Supporting it means offending multiple constituencies and interests that... Read more →

Begin with the End in Mind: Leadership in U.S. Healthcare Reform

18 Factors for a United States leadership role in health care. When beginning an initiative, it’s important to design the end state first. Some call it vision. Others call it target environment. Why? If you jump to the details, the funding, or the “how” of it too soon, particularly when the issues are as complex as those related to health... Read more →