Health Care Insights from “The Impact Wheel”

I was working with a team of high level managers a short time ago, and I was teaching them one of our “innovation techniques, “The Impact Wheel.” The exercise involves charting possible impacts that might occur if a certain event took place. It’s a great tool for scenario planning. The team plots first level impacts, and then studies the impacts that might arise, positively or negatively from those impacts. Stories are created to describe the insights that are gained. Vigorous debate usually ensues, particularly if the issues picked are directly related to that company’s Business Strategy.

The Managers wanted to use the Public Option in Health Care to see what impacts might happen to their business. Usually, I don’t make use of current political issues in my training, but in this case, it was a smaller company and they wanted to explore possible impacts to the “Public Option” in the Health Care Debate. I share this with you because of the surprising insights that occurred in the group. I can’t show you their wheel, because there is some proprietary information on it, but I can illustrate some powerful insights that arose in the discussion. Here goes.

If enacted, the Public Option offers a big and powerful choice. This choice has the potential of helping people feel safer in their organizations. One of the biggest fears people have is losing their health care if they should lose their job. So, if they have more protection in the form of the public option, where universal health care is available, they just might feel safer. Feeling safer might lead to a slight uptick in speaking up, more risk taking behavior, more experimentation, and more innovation.

Demmings famous 8th point is: DRIVE OUT FEAR. With less fear, people become more able to play with ideas, construct new possibilities, try out alternatives, challenge the old ways of doing things, and move from the status quo.

There’s more. With more safety people might also be more free to look for other jobs, if their current job were less than challenging etc. It just might help managers to tune into their people more, making for better leaders. One fact we know is that the employees job performance and satisfaction is directly related to the experience they have with their immediate supervisor.

If a Public Option were enacted, we just might see, more independent consultants, more innovation in our companies, more interesting and creative benefit packages, more competition for talent, improved leadership, and better organizations. Too optimistic? Too idealistic? Perhaps. Unintended consequences are very hard to see, and to admit. If you don’t believe me, ask Arthur Andersen. Remember them?

I understand that all of the above are just speculations. But they do lead to a most interesting dialogue. And, you can begin to see where more of the resistance to a Public Option on Heath Care can come from.

If you’d like a description of how to run, The Impact Wheel Design, enter a comment and ask for it. I will get right back to you.