QUALITY MATTERS
Saturday, November 19, 2022
The other night at dinner, I mentioned Liberace to a server at a restaurant. The reference doesn’t matter, but the reaction was, “Who is that?” which puts one into a mindset of what is important or lasting vis-à-vis what is important to young people today. There was no need to question her knowledge of Beethoven, Brahms, or the Beatles – it reminded me in that moment that what matters, what is popular and widely known, and what matters to a new generation is overestimated.
I’ve often wondered, as I’m sure many readers have, “Will this matter a year from now?” when we ponder what troubles us any particular day, or we question whether our aims/ambitions for the future make sense when we look at the current landscape to ask what is smoke and mirrors, and who has the best crystal balls …
So, of what is in the news and what is buzzing in social media, does it matter enough today that it will matter at all a year from now, or five, or ten?
On any given day, headlines reflect hot-button issues of the moment, but rarely are they hot-button issues of the decade. We twist and turn over the latest government repudiation of a well-credentialed board that was in the throws of hiring a new CEO to replace the CEO the previous Premier sacked.
The noise and purported real change is another week’s political campaign stop from a government and party in Alberta with a history of whining that on the one hand we spend more than other jurisdictions and get poorer results, less bang for the buck – and we continue to see enormous capital spend on projects, emergencies, studies, firings, settlement packages, and consultant reports, inquiries and political machinations, and we wonder, for what?
I’ve had my own experiences that I’ll write about in the coming days – which I believe illustrate what many people feel is that re-organization of anything by lopping off the bosses who were all revered as visionaries when put in place – supposedly well-vetted ones.
New leaders, it would seem, need to signal action and generate headlines – no doubt a need for political coverage Ms. Smith craves, but it conveniently avoids the complex difficulty of finding the stupid processes that waste time, money, capacity and effectiveness across the bottom of the pyramid which will never be solved by lopping off the top.
Fast forward to a year from now, or a decade.
I’ll wager with you –anyone who wants to; I’ll bet you a great cup of coffee that I am right, so take up this bet knowing you will lose.
Big issues like health care and education will be in the headlines every week, and political leaders and parties on both government and opposition sides will claim waste, excessive costs, and mismanagement. Also, not part of the bet, is that failure to do a deep system examination of any bureaucracy will fail to find solutions that are not connected to how the finders and solvers are rewarded. If they are paid to save money, money will be saved. If they are paid to be better at training and organization, then staff will be well-trained and incredibly organized. And so on …
The problem in solving problems as we do in our society is we listen to the most powerful and noisiest without consulting people in the trenches. That means patients. And patients’ families and low level staff; they won’t need much encouragement to point out was is stupid, what is wasteful, and what fails to provide improvement anyone’s condition, make anyone healthier, or improve anyone’s quality of life.
|