Integer Leadership Consulting

On the front cover of the NYT today, August 16, 2005, there is a lead article on the deterioration of patient care, meaning, caring for patients as feeling human beings undergoing excruciating experiences of dehumanization at the hands of indifferent medical personal as well as the uncontrollable failure of their bodies. Benedict Carey quotes, “the point is that, when they talk about quality of health care, patients mean something entirely different than experts do,” said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Foundation. “They’re not talking about numbers or outcomes but about their own human experience (italics mine), which is a combination of cost, paperwork and what I’ll call the hassle factor, the impersonal nature of the care.”

You could take this quote and, in many respects, apply it to many organizational contexts today. Every organization has do deal with its own internal limitations that act as road blocks to quality care for internal staff and external clients. Yet, all too often, organizational leaders forget that the “impersonal nature of the care” is the chief nemeses to any aggregate performance of a business. How leaders care for (train, develop, and value) the people who provide the services to others will always be the “sine qua non”(the essential, crucial, or indispensable ingredient without which something would be impossible) of best organizational practices. As long as this vacuum exits in organizations and as long as organizational leaders are unwilling to invest the money, staff and time into closing this dehumanizing gap, the problem will certainly contribute to perpetuating the sense of hopelessness, loneliness and insignificance in people.