In Simon Sinek’s ground breaking book on leadership, “Leaders Eat Last”, which I have previously spoken about, he explores a concept that I have never properly understood before which he calls abstraction. To explain this concept Sinek returns to the 1980’s in the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the dispute with the air traffic controllers which he contends paved the way for multi national companies to make huge amounts of people redundant based on balance sheets. A trend which continues to this day. Sinek describes the political situation well, which reminded me of a not too similar situation with Margaret Thatcher and the minors. During the situation in America with Reagan and the air traffic controllers the president decided to sack every air traffic controller in the USA for breaking the law and striking for better conditions. After stroke he confind thousands of people to poverty and unemployment as a view of authority. The concept of abstraction (as described by Sinek) is the ability to detach ones self from human individuals and therefore treat them as non human. Its very easy for a SEO for a multi national company to write off 10,000 jobs for people that he has never met, much harder for him to sack his PA that he has worked with for five years. Its very easy for dental corporates owned by American investment banks to make large decisions about there organisations which will affect the quality of care of patients, understanding that there patients will never be treated by such dentists who affected. Its very easy for government ministers to make cuts in health care affecting individual patients as they will never meet the individual patient and will always hide behind the phrase “we never comment on individual cases”.
But of course the world is made up of individual cases, we are all an individual case. In truth though, abstraction is essential to some degree for survival, particularly in the position that I hold in my practice and organisation. I do not have the ability to treat and see every patient in the practice in fact now I do not have the ability treat and see every patient who has a problem in the practice let alone the others. I have had to develop the ability to walk through the waiting room and not intervene into conversations because generally now I make things worse. I cannot promise patients appointments to see me in my meet in the waiting room because I’m not sure I have those appointments to give. This must be delegated (retaining full responsibility) to talented, trained, gifted members of the team who understand my philosophy. And that in its self is a form of abstraction. So while Sinek describes abstraction as a negative thing which has lead to a break down in society and to some extent I fully agree there is a controlled aspect to abstraction which must be upheld for individuals who care about patients not to be consumed and burn out, therefore not being any use to anyone. This is the essence of culture setting. If you strive to run an organisation were people are cared for and looked after properly then you must set that example and ask others to follow that example. Sinek describes organisations which now have a no redundancy policy, therefore ensuring that people will never be cast adrift on the basis of pure financial figures. (This is something which BT had up to a point recently) If you say to your staff, “we will look after you even if the numbers aren’t great” that allows a piece of mind and freedom to your team to know that they can continue to work well without the fear that if the next quarters figures down people will have to go. This is the concept of Leaders Eat Last. In essence then, for independent organisations in any sector who wish not to be a faceless corporates who indulge in abstraction as a means of protecting the bottom line, its essential that we know our teams and no our customers. We must know our people. That is not to say that we cannot give responsibility and decision making to others to act in our stead. Otherwise our organisations would be too small to make any impact or difference. So the concept of abstraction in my mind mirrors life. It is a balancing act, which perhaps will never quite be struck. But that is not the point. The point is that we are happy day by day to try and strike the balance.
Blog Post Number - 1279