Lessons for health care leadership and management from … farming | Blogs | CMO Blog

Mark this is a great direction for Cooley Dickinson leadership.

Since Von Bertalanffy, a biologist(early 20th century theoretical botanist)developed systems theory that posited that among other things that there are open and closed systems and the laws of thermodynamics applied to closed but not to open systems, there has been considerable thinking and research about the application of the systems approach to social systems, including businesses and their relationships to their marketplaces.

The simple statement that the whole is more than the sum of its parts gets reformulated to underscore that the whole cannot be understood only through its parts. The notion of an organISM deriving resources from and contributing resources to its ecosystem has evolved to describe an organIZATION exchanging resources with its human and economic environment.

In this way, successful organizational strategies recognize the nature of the value they contribute to their ecosystems in exchange for the energy (generally money) which in turn sustains and strengthens the organization.

This is why 'simple rules', 'good enough vision' and adaptive effort (innovation)work: If every member of the organization (in our case the health care delivery system) shares a common vision and grasps the basic simple principles (the business strategy) by which to pursue that vision, then hundreds of times every day, each member will be tuning their actions in tiny adaptive improvements. Over time, the organizational system evolves, gets stronger and makes a better contribution and thus creates a healthier environment....a virtuous cycle

This underscores the immense and indispensable practicality of a clear vision and strategy....the next step as we move forward.

Many thanks

Kevin