Healthcare Leadership Lessons from the Presidents

Today is President’s Day here in the US and so I thought I’d do a little something to honor the past President’s of the United States. I’m not sure why, but I always immediately go to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on President’s Day. I think they were both extremely powerful leaders and healthcare could learn a lot from them.

Think about what both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln faced during their presidencies. They had to fight against tremendous opposition in order to do something great. I wonder how many in healthcare have the bravery and courage of Washington and Lincoln. How many are willing to go against really powerful opposing forces and implement something that’s the right thing to do? Unfortunately far too few are weak in the leadership and vision departments.

The most simple example I can think of is interoperability of healthcare records. I wrote previously about how it’s time to make healthcare records interoperable. We all know it’s the right thing to do, but it will take unique leaders willing to do something brave and courageous to make it happen. The forces against it are strong.

Chew on this quote from George Washington, “Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.” Could interoperability be considered a moral duty? I think so.

Now one from Abraham Lincoln, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” I’ve seen far too many healthcare leaders just counting their days as opposed to living their lives. Both Washington and Lincoln are memorable because they had life in their years. Far too many CIOs and healthcare leaders are going to be forgotten because they didn’t have life in their years.

I know when I first started working in healthcare I was touched by the impact that I could have for good. I was entranced by the idea that something I did (even if I’m a tech guy) could somehow help improve or save someone’s life. The amazing thing is that this isn’t just a casual hope. It’s the reality of the work we do. Working in healthcare means we can improve and even save lives. This President’s Day I hope we all work to be better leaders so we can live up to that ambitious potential.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • John, it is always nice to step back and review the past and history, put things in context – which we fail to do because we get too entrenched in the ‘now and today’. The society has become too self centered. We tend to look at what’s in it for me rather than the big picture. Of course, we would expect our leaders to do that kind of thinking, but unfortunately this generation of leaders does not seem to have the capacity to do that.

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