From our recent Art of Hosting on the banks of the Ottawa River, in Arnprior Ontario.
Lovely quote from David Kundtz:
Stopping is doing nothing, as much as possible, for a definite period of time.
Many more great quotes at Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going.
- The gales of November come lashing. #
- Lovely train ride down to Seattle, working with my friend Teresa and following the midterm election carnage. #
- #openspace today w/ top researchers and policy people on adverse childhood experiences with an eye to making big policy changes in WA state. #
- Working at Cederbrook Lodge near SeaTac airport. Lovely space, free wifi, all the tools for a good #openspace http://bit.ly/cSeIdZ #
- Did you see the moon this morning? A thin shaving, old month fading, dying into a brilliant autumn sunrise. #
- At a Casey Foundation conference in Seattle on applying science to early childhood development. Speeches this am, #WorldCafe this pm. #
- "People come to the USA for great medical treatment, but not 4 health promotion. They get less healthy when they come here." Dr. J Shonkoff #
- "Silos aren't breaking down. But if we all work in community from the same information sources we can change things." Dr. Rob Anda #
- The Still Face Experiment: http://youtu.be/apzXGEbZht0 "Our Society is 'the still face' responding to kids in need." – Jennifer Rodriguez #
- More about Jennifer Rodriguez: http://bit.ly/b3TW2N #
- Incredible video of this years Fraser River sockeye fishery: http://bit.ly/cOLM9m #
- Rainbows over Howe Sound http://yfrog.com/n3nu4rj #
- Cool air, wood smoke, still morning, eagle calling. http://yfrog.com/j49amrj #
In Seattle yesterday I was listening to a keynote by Dr. Jack Shonkoff who is a breain researcher at Harvard with an interest in early childhood development. He said an interesting thing about American health care which kind of answers the question for me about what the US is good at.
Many Americans who are opposed to public health care use the argument that people from other countries come to the United States for the world’s best treatment, surgery and acute care. No question that if you can afford it, the USA has the best. BUT – and this was a revelation to me, to hear from a leading doctor – no one moves to the USA permanently for their health. In the case of almost every industrialized country, and several developing countries as well , the USA trails in health promotion. So while people do come for treatment, they go back home to countries that support better overall health.
And insurance based system is to blame for this. Pouring money into insurance means that treaments, including surgery and drugs are developed and widely available because there is an incentive for private companies and public institutions to develop excellent treatment, activities and products that you can charge for. Health promotion is not a profit making venture, so if you choose to put public resources in private insurance, you get private, price based solutions. Building a system that prioritizes prevention, healthy communities, health promotion and safety is the way to reduce the need for acute treatments later in life, but no one can make a profit at it, so it requires a public, social response to build that infrastructure.
So that’s kind of interesting, especially as we hear the debate in Canada clamouring for more private involvement at the treatment end of things.
Silo busting is a very interesting thing. Everyone knows that systems atrophy when they divide their work into silos. Silos entrench difference and prevent learning across sectors whether we are talking about departments in an organization, or a social system like health care or child and family services.
Silos have limited usefulness. They divide work into manageable chunks. But in general they create reductionist responses to systemic problems and they pose a massive challenge to people working nfor change. If we first have to bust the silos, and only then can we address the problems, how do we know we’ll have energy left for the real work?
So let’s be real. Dr. Rob Anda, who I met this week in Seattle, had a great line when talking about reducing the effects of adverse childhood experiences. “I don’t see silos as disappearing anytime soon, but if we work together in community from common information sources we can make change.”
Great line. Forget about the silos. Bring people together in communities of practice to learn about the information they need and that serves their common purpose, and then engage in the conversations that build network and community around learning about change and enacting solutions that make sense at the community level. Bottom up silo busting. Forget about the structural reforms first. Do the work first and then institutionalize the solutions that work across sectors, disciplines and other silos. Follow the Theory U process: concretize solutions following social prototyping.
And when the silos – the funders, the government agencies, the power brokers and decision makers – come looking for evidence and evaluation, use Developmental Evaluation to tell the story of what is going on across the system.