Beliefs drive behaviour. Behaviour drives change. Improvement requires change.
So, improvement requires challenging beliefs; confirming some and disproving others.
And beliefs can only be confirmed or disproved rationally – with evidence and explanation. Rhetoric is too slippery. We can convince ourselves of anything with that!
So it comes as an emotional shock when one of our beliefs is disproved by experiencing reality from a new perspective.
Our natural reaction is surprise, perhaps delight, and then defense. We say “Yes, but ...”.
And that is healthy skepticism and it is a valuable and necessary part of the change and improvement process.
If there are not enough healthy skeptics on a design team it is unbalanced.
If there are too many healthy skeptics on a design team it is unbalanced.
This week I experienced this phenomenon first hand.
The context was a one day practical skills workshop and the topic was:
“How to improve the safety, timeliness, quality and affordability of unscheduled care“.
The workshop is designed to approach this challenge from a different perspective.
Instead of asking “What is the problem and how do we solve it?” we took the system engineering approach of asking “What is the purpose and how can we achieve it?”
We used a range of practical exercises to illustrate some core concepts and principles – reality was our teacher. Then we applied those newly acquired insights to the design challenge using a proven methodology that ensured we do not skip steps.
And the outcome was: the participants discovered that …
it is indeed possible to improve the safety, timeliness, quality and affordability of unscheduled health care …
using health care systems engineering concepts, principles, techniques and tools that, until the workshop, they had been unaware even existed.
Their reaction was “OMG” and was shortly followed by “Yes, but …” which is to be expected and is healthy.
The rest of the “Yes, but … ” sentence was “… how will I convince my colleagues?“
One way is for them to seek out the same experience …
… because reality is a much better teacher than rhetoric.
HCSE Practical Skills One Day Workshops