Unstick Your Stuck

When my daughter was little there was a scene in one of the Toy Story movies where the main character Woody is stuck in a roll of duct tape. For some reason, she loved that image and always watched the blooper reel at the end to see it. Whenever the word “stuck” would come up in conversation, we would joke saying, “stuck like Woody in the tape!,” and giggle.

In real life, being stuck is not so funny. Many of us can relate to being stuck in certain aspects of our leadership role. It is hard and can almost be paralyzing when you are not sure what the right decision will be. Before I worked in rural health, I owned a restaurant with my husband  for about 10 years. Owning any business is hard work and complex. We were running on a small margin and mounting expenses were cutting in to our profitability.  Here was our stuck issue: carpet! It was really such a simple silly issue because carpet in a restaurant gets extremely dirty and ours had to be cleaned every few months. One day, our carpet cleaner said he had done all he could do but that our carpet had come to the end of its useful life, and he would not clean it anymore. For several months we had the argument with ourselves, do we go into debt and buy new carpet and paint and spruce the place up or do we walk away from the business and all the emotions that go along with that. This debate and being stuck went on for months and became all-consuming. An outsider looking in would have made the decision easy. They would of said walk away; you don’t have the room for more debt. But we, with all of our emotions and dreams, were stuck. We limped around on life support for months debating the virtues of new carpet.

New Way of Thinking

Recently, ICAHN hosted a Board Governance Institute. Our presenter, Jamie Orlikoff, talked about the importance of boards and hospitals not getting stuck on old ways of thinking and doing business. One thing he said that really stood out to me was when he talked about trying new ideas and approaches. He said in this era of healthcare, a hospital cannot just implement one or two new ideas and see if they work. In today’s business environment, we need to be implementing 10-12 new ideas hoping 1-2 actually work and become part of our best practices. We are in a completely new world and have to change the narrative of our hospitals to the community. This leaves no time for being stuck. If we want to be successful, we have to move quickly and keep those ideas moving forward.

Unsticking the stuck is more important now then ever. You, your board, and your employees must put on your superhero cape and keep moving ideas forward as you continue to provide excellent healthcare to your community. Being stuck, whether on the virtues of carpet or on a big new idea, cannot be a way in which you operate and lead in 2023. That’s my view from where I sit today.   • Liz