Sacred cows might be difficult to address if they are framed as polarities. They become dilemmas that are frozen in place by two opposing positions. A Sacred mythology is created when any social system is faced with the challenge of staying in the same valley or entering a new valley, “do not tread here or you will die!!”Don’t even consider staying in the same valley (“we must innovate or die!”). Don’t even consider moving into the new valley (“we have no business making these big changes!”)  It was not long after successfully confronting and leading transformation around a Sacred Cow at his workplace that JF found he needed to leave from a place he had loved to work for over 2 decades to start fresh in a new role in a new place.   There is a price to be paid for melting frozen Sacred Cows.

A strong decisive leader enters to preclude any collective decision regarding next steps that take into account both sides of the polarity. The river gets rough when only one option is considered. Soon, the strong leader is cast out having failed to make the right decision in the midst of turbulence.  There is more change. The change curves multiply. New valleys are discovered, old valleys are rediscovered. Eventually, comes an appreciation of the complex (and hopefully adaptive) nature of the world through which we are travelling individually and collectively. In our next essay, we focus specifically on the turbulent, often bi-furcating and changing journey of contemporary health care leaders and entire health care systems.

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References

Bateson, Gregory. (2000) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bergquist, William (2014) Soliciting the Pre-mortem and Riding the Change Curve: Coaching tools, Strategies and Concepts for Effective Planning. Link:  https://libraryofprofessionalcoaching.com/tools/coaching-questions/soliciting-the-pre-mortem-and-riding-the-change-curve-coaching-tools-strategies-and-concepts-for-effective-planning/

Fish, Jeremy and William Bergquist (2022) The Complexity of 21st Century Health Care. Library of Professional Psychology. Link to essay: The Complexity of 21st Century Health Care | Library of Professional Psychology

Fish, Jeremy and William Bergquist (2023) Delivering Health Care in Complex Adaptive Systems I: The Nature of Dynamics Systems, Library of Professional Psychology. Link: https://library.psychology.edu/delivering-health-care-in-complex-adaptive-systems-i-the-nature-of-dynamic-systems/

Johnson, Barry (1996) Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems. HRD Press.

Kahneman, Daniel (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kaufman, Stuart (1998) At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press.