Health or sick reform?

Someone Must Pay for Health Reform is the title of an article by Catherine Arnst in Business Week (June 1, 2009). She says that, "there are only three ways to pay for universal coverage: Raise taxes, cut payments to medical providers, or ration care." How can it be in this era of systems thinking that such a view can prevail? It assumes that the current US view of healthcare delivery is about health, when it is actually about sickness. The whole current argument rages around a sick syst...

Disservice is unsustainable service

Disservice is an act intended to help, that turns out badly. How often do you have a disservice experience? Frequently, I will wager. When disservice happens, I figure it results from an absence of  generosity. If the concept of service is purely one that seeks sales and lacks a genuine desire to serve, then it is unlikely to be sustainable. There is currently a major US TV advertising campaign for a 'service' called xoom.com, that offers to transfer money more economically than bank...

Sustainable Justice

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second. More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state and federal governments about $55 billion a year. Given the poor outcomes, is this expenditure worthwhile? American justice makes a poor job of considering the system of which we are all a...

Worldly Happiness – Transcendent Happiness

We all seek happiness. Most of us want worldly happiness: things, experiences, relationships. At work we want business success. Where does that lead us? In most cases to wanting more. That is why so much of business counts growth as the reward: growth in sales, market share, profits. It produces frustration, stress and suffering. What if we could get ourselves to move on from that repetitive cycle? Where would we be headed? Most probably towards transcendent happiness. In business that may so...

Being and Doing

You can read the graphic many ways. The vertical axis represents the 'given wisdom' about business performance encapsulated in the phrase, "what gets measured gets done". The horizontal axis represents a view of management based on emergence, arising from systems thinking. While in your business either style may predominate, they are not mutually exclusive. I would like to suggest that the successful entrepreneur is able to blend the two, with a slight leaning towards the horizontal axis. ...