I had a true “aha” moment earlier this month when I was in Washington, D.C., for the AMA’s National Advocacy Conference. It was one of those moments of heightened awareness that comes from a fundamental realization that applies not to an isolated issue but to a broad spectrum of life.
For the AMA’s inaugural president’s lecture, speaker Jack Uldrich, a well-known “global futurist,” asked the audience to engage in a little exercise. He asked us all what the colors of a standard yield sign are—believe it or not, our answers weren’t all the same.
Yellow and black got a lot of votes, even though yield signs have been red and white since 1971. According to Uldrich, 80 percent of people over the age of 40 believe these traffic signs still have the pre-Nixon administration colors.
This fact illustrates that despite things changing around us all the time, we don’t always realize that they are. Here’s where another “AHA” comes into play. Uldrich used the acronym to spell out the three key aspects of a leader who is prepared for the future: Awareness, Humility and Action.
I think this concept is an especially important one for us physicians. We practice in one of the most rapidly changing fields, and these three qualities should be inextricable for us. No matter how intelligent, dedicated or hard-working we may be, we can never know everything. And we have to be willing to recognize that we don’t have all the answers.
We must be willing to learn from our colleagues and collaborate to reach the best possible results for our patients, our profession and our communities. This kind of partnership—in which we bring together our various strengths, knowledge and experience under a common goal—should take place alongside the physicians we practice with every day.
We can invigorate such venues as our practices, doctors’ lounges, medical associations and systems of integrated care to become centers for change. When we work together to find solutions to the problems in our health care system and improve how we deliver care, we no longer are observers to whom things happen but agents of positive change.
Uldrich said something that will stick with me: “The riskiest thing to do in the future is to play it safe.”
To put it another way, the riskiest part of change is letting it happen to us instead of because of us.
Change is going to happen, regardless of the role we play in it. Why not choose to be the leaders of that change so we can make the future a better one for those in our care and our communities.
