10 Ways to Defeat the Healthcare Status Quotidiens

There are several barriers to sick care innovation and there is no silver bullet.

A major obstacle are vested interests resisting changing a sick care system to a healthcare system. Status quotidiens are dedicated to the proposition that they will work tirelessly, every day, to keep things exactly like they are. They are like organizational Lord Granthams, digging in their heels when confronted with the forces of change that threaten Downton Abbey and the life it represents.

"Healthcare" represents almost 20% of the US economy and powerful incumbents are hard set on maintaining their profits and resisting change, including some highly paid doctors and administrators. The present sick care system has been very good to a lot of people, and they don’t want to kill the cash cow. It pays to be a status quotidien, at least in the short run.

How can we interrupt this relentless resistance march?

1. Recruit, develop, and promote for innovation.

2. Help employees find their innerpreneur.

3. Apply carrots and sticks that work. Abandon those that don't.

4. Give people the tools, time, and technology they need to bridge the new with the now.

5. Tell truth to authority.

6. Snuff out anti-innovative behavior.

7. Expose the snipers, snoopers, and snitches.

8. Hire leaderpreneurs.

9. Lead innovators, don't manage innovation.

10. Do an organzational IRA.

Those boots on the ground you hear are those of status quotidiens. Be careful when you confront their brigades.

“… there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

-Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 6