A classic Jeff Bezos quotation:
I very frequently get the question: “What’s going to change in the next 10 years?” That’s a very interesting question.
I almost never get the question: “What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?” And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.
You can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, “Jeff I love Amazon, I just wish the prices were a little higher.” Or, “I love Amazon, I just wish you’d deliver a little slower.” Impossible.
So we know the energy we put into these things today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”
I recently attended a “leadership” seminar about (radiology) healthcare ecosystems and change. As with all virtual events since early 2020, discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic played an outsized role, and the nature of complexity and change were much pontificated about.
But no one over the course of two days–no one–mentioned the stability of the core mission. The strategic analyses–such as explicit or implicit utilization of SWOT–were happy to focus on anticipation and interception of perceived changes and threats, but no one spared a breath for what they thought wouldn’t change. We talked about trends in corporatization and productivity metrics, group consolidation, encroachment by midlevels and other specialties, downward reimbursement pressure, the push for 24/7 subspecialty staff coverage, lifestyle and burnout, and AI and data science.
To be sure, these and all other big changes are important, but you also can’t lose sight of the underlying purpose of the business in all the pivoting.
What can we say about medicine that is not going to change in 10 years? What is our stability north star?
(Yes this is a rhetorical question cop-out.)