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Giving Up Control and
Embracing Uncertainty Can Lead
to Surprising Creativity
As most health care leaders are well aware, they are steering their institutions through a time of rapid transition, and perhaps veering on the edge of chaos. Most will say they don't like it-that their natural instinct is to gain control and hold on for all they're worth.
This understandable human reaction goes against the central tenets of "complexity science," which suggest that systems in which people are far from certainty and agreement can, in fact, breed creativity and innovation; that order can emerge spontaneously from complex, adaptive systems if you nurture it and don't try to control it; and that complexity principles can guide us in creating a new future, even when we don't have a clear vision of what it should be.
But there is a catch. Venture too far and you're in complete and total chaos. Don't go far enough and you become stuck in monotony. The secret lies in operating on the edge.
"We've lived with linearity-with lines and boxes, barriers and labels. But in the nonlinear world, there aren't any," says consultant Leland Kaiser, of Brighton, Colo. "The greatest leadership challenge upon our shoulders today is to create a transition from the old to the new-to embrace chaos, and recognize it as a precondition to greater creativity."
Kaiser tells the fable of a caterpillar, sitting on a fence post, enjoying the day, when a butterfly flutters past. "`Huh,' says the caterpillar. `Would you look at that? You'd never get me up there: Like that caterpillar, health care is undergoing a process of transformation we can scarcely imagine. We will become something we cannot yet foresee."
If, that is, we're brave enough to allow it to emerge. Tom Irons, M.D., learned about chaos the hard way. For the past three years, as president of Health East-a regional health networking corporation and subsidiary of Pitt County Memorial Hospital and University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina-Irons has been "baptized, submerged, and nearly drowned in the business of health care." Until he decided to take a walk on the wild side.
"In chaos theory, you have to capitalize on trouble," says Irons. "It's when you walk on the edge of losing...