“So how’s it been going with your new boss?” I asked my friend. “Has he turned out to be the horror show you feared?”
“Not really,” she said. “He’s pretty much left me alone, except for one very annoying thing.”
“Do tell,” I said.
“Well, he wants us to arm him with an absolutely insane level of detail each time he’s got to present to the higher ups. It consumes our whole team for days to get this information that doesn’t really matter — I’m talking about drilling down on hundreds of dollars in relation to million dollar budgets and estimates.”
“Why does he want all this stuff?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it would be totally inappropriate for any of those higher ups to ask for that level of detail, and I’m sure none of them have done it. Also, I guarantee you he doesn’t remember half of the details we do provide — it’s just impossible.”
“Maybe he’s just scared of getting that one question he can’t answer.”
“I think so, but it’s dumb. It wastes our time, it wastes his time, and it doesn’t accomplish anything at all.”
Though this conversation happened a few months ago, I recalled it after I received an email from a health system CIO in response to my column last week, the point of which was you had better be strategic, or risk going extinct. The writer said she was stuck in a tactical box, and mused whether it was in reaction to all the industry initiatives/regulations or having “a CEO and leadership team that expects me to know the specifics of every project and issue involving any of my teams here (I’ve often thought to ask the clinical leadership if they know the outcome of every patient that walks through the door …”).
Upon receiving that email, I recalled a passage from “The General,” by Jonathan Fenby, a biography of Charles de Gaulle. I was interested in de Gaulle because of how he had insisted on being treated as head of the French nation when, essentially, there was no French nation. He demanded to be incorporated into military discussion when he had few troops. This made him prickly and very difficult to deal with in one of history’s great “fake it until you make it” examples.
“At Casablanca in 1943 (Churchill) said of de Gaulle: “’His country has given up fighting, he himself is a refugee, and if we turn him down he’s finished. Well just look at him! He might be Stalin, with 200 divisions behind his words … ’” — by Terry Reardon, Finest Hour 138, Spring 2008
Charles de Gaulle refused to be relegated to a tactical box, a trick that might be useful for today’s healthcare CIOs. And he did this simply by turning the tables on his interrogators — by, rather than scrambling to answer their questions, rather than squirming on the stake they’d thrust him upon, laying bare the foolishness of their requests.
“On an exercise in eastern France, in which he was put in charge of an army unit, a colonel enquired where its supporting forces were deployed. De Gaulle called on one of his junior officers to supply the answer.
“‘But it was you I asked, de Gaulle,’” the colonel interjected.
“‘Mon Colonel, you entrusted me with the responsibility of an army corps command,’” (de Gaulle) replied. “‘If, on top of that, I had to take on those of my subordinates, my mind would not be free enough to fulfil my mission.’”
This is exactly the point I was making the last week. If you are supposed to be strategic, your mind must be free enough to fulfill your mission. And if those to whom you report insist on cluttering it with tactical and operational minutiae, they are doing the organization a huge disservice.
What to do? First off, you can, in private, make de Gaulle’s point in a very diplomatic way. “I can get these answers for you,” you might say, “but please do not expect me to be armed with them in every meeting. I cannot focus on the big picture if you insist on me knowing all the operational details.”
If you go down this road, remember one of my other tenants, “You cannot beat the boss” — one I learned through personal experience. If you speak to the colonel, as de Gaulle did, remember what the colonel said about him after this exchange (note the irony):
“The colonel was enraged and later noted that, “’unfortunately, he spoils his undoubted qualities by excessive self-belief with his attitude of a king in exile.’”
On a high level, your path is quite simple. If you are operating under suboptimal conditions, take steps to get them changed, but know there will likely be a cost even if you win. If all else fails, consider moving on. When interviewing, ask scenario-based questions to ensure you don’t transition from the frying pan into the fire.
You deserve to work in an environment that lets you give your best, that above all else, gives you a fighting chance to fulfill the mission.
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