EP.037 The Hidden Beliefs That Keep Healthcare Stuck
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What is operational blindness and how does it affect healthcare?
Let me ask you something. How do you know the sky is blue? You don't think about it. You don't question it. You just know. You've always known. It's not an opinion. It's not a perspective. It's just reality. Now, what if I told you that some of the things that you know about your organization aren't facts at all? What if the beliefs that feel as certain as the color of the sky are actually assumptions? Assumptions that were never examined, never questioned, never tested. And what if those assumptions are the very thing keeping your organization stuck? Last episode, I introduced you to operational blindness, the condition where leaders can't see dysfunction because the measurement systems don't surface it.
Today, we're going deeper because operational blindness isn't just about metrics. feedback loops. It's about beliefs, invisible beliefs that feel like facts, that shape every decision that you make, that determine what you think is possible and what you've already decided is impossible. And here's the dangerous part. The more comfortable a belief feels, the less likely you are to question it. Welcome back to Bread to Lead.
I won't take the lead. What is going on, Bridge Builders?
Welcome back to Bred to Lead, the business of healthcare. I'm your host, Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs. Episode 37, season three, the read and teach series from my newest book, Operational Blindness. This is the hidden force that's destroying a lot of healthcare operations from the inside out. This is operational blindness. And this book here is really showing healthcare leaders that can't see the decisions that they're making or not making is costing them millions. If you're just now joining us, go back to episode 35. That's where this journey started. We laid the foundation with the IBM story. Hugh Lou, how Lou Gerstner discovered that The problems actually wasn't the people, it was the system. Episode 36, we brought that lesson into healthcare and gave the condition a name, operational blindness, after our book, of course.
Today, we're peeling back another layer because the system that creates operational blindness is built on something. It's held together by something. Beliefs, invisible beliefs that nobody talks about because nobody knows they're there. So let's get into it. I want to start with the confession. Early in my career, I had beliefs about what I had sworn were facts, no opinions, no perspectives, facts. And in this space of sterile processing, there are some facts that based on beliefs have become facts, such as sterile processing will always be reactive. That's just the nature of the work. Or my organization will never be satisfied no matter what we do. Or this portion of the business or the organization is a call center.
You contain costs and manage problems.
What are the invisible beliefs that keep healthcare organizations stuck?
That's just the job. I didn't question these beliefs. I didn't even recognize them as beliefs. They were just how things were. The water I swim in, the air I breathe. Because I didn't question them, I couldn't really change them. Here's what I've learned over a decade in operational reengineering, restructuring organizations to become more profitable or more efficient and producing a lot more cleanly. The beliefs you don't know you have are the ones that control you. When a belief is visible, when you know it's a belief, you can examine it, challenge it, test it, change it if the evidence says you should. But when a belief is invisible, when it feels like a fact, it becomes part of the architecture of your thinking.
Every decision you make, every strategy you pursue, every expectation you set, all of it gets filtered through beliefs you've never examined. And if those beliefs are wrong, you'll keep making decisions that feel rational, but produce the same disappointing results over and over again. And you won't understand why. This is exactly what happened to IBM. The belief that IBM was a hardware company wasn't written in strategy document. Nobody debated it in a meeting. It was just assumed, obvious, the way things were until Gerstner came and from the outside saw what it takes, what it was, a belief, not a fact, and challenged it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is operational blindness and how does it affect healthcare?
0:00–3:20
2
What are the invisible beliefs that keep healthcare organizations stuck?
3:20–5:55
3
How do limiting beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies?
5:55–10:54
4
What techniques can help surface invisible beliefs?
10:54–14:29
5
How does the comfort of invisible beliefs hinder change?
14:29–18:49
6
What are the four common invisible beliefs in healthcare?
18:49–22:50
7
How can organizations transform by challenging their beliefs?
22:50–27:04
8
What steps can leaders take to implement change in their organizations?
27:04–35:39
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Bred To Lead | With Dr. Jake Tayler Jacobs
Ep. 039 The Dance Begins: Curing Operational Blindness in Healthcare
Ep. 038 -The 10,000-Pound Elephant: Why Old Beliefs Keep Hospitals Chained
EP: 036 The Healthcare Parallel: Why Optimizing the OR Alone Never Works
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? IBM’s Comeback and the Healthcare Lesson
Ep.034 From Conformity to Innovation: Rebuild Leadership and Systems
SPD911 Episode 4 - Staying Compliant Even When It's Tough