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We Don’t Agree on What Caused the Problem, or the Solutions

What if the biggest barrier to improving the health of an entire state isn’t a lack of medicine, money, or expertise, but a failure of leadership? In Chapter 7 of Leading Health, we tackle one of the most provocative ideas in the book: Kansas can’t climb the health rankings without first confronting the reality that we don’t agree on what caused the problem or what the solution is. That makes it a leadership challenge before it’s a health challenge.

This episode features a special guest — Ben Hutton, President and CEO of Hutton Company — who brings a private-sector perspective to a conversation typically dominated by the public sector. We explore what it means to lead with both humility and bold experimentation, and why getting people focused on the right problems might be more important than having all the right answers.

Highlights

• Kansas has improved its health rankings for three consecutive years, a meaningful milestone that deserves more attention.
• Leadership is an activity, not a position and authority and leadership are two distinct things.
• The role of those in authority isn’t to proclaim solutions; it’s to center the problem and create alignment.
• Every person in the “30,000” has a part of the mess — defining your part is often the most actionable first step.
• Goals and strategies are not the same; confusing them is one of the most common traps when tackling adaptive challenges (Medicaid expansion is a strategy; ensuring Kansans have adequate health insurance is a goal).
• The Hutton Company implemented the Dream Manager program — helping employees name and pursue personal dreams, from climbing Machu Picchu to buying a first home.
• Discuss why businesses need to think about both  Capital “H” health (everything we need to thrive) vs. little “h” health (healthcare).
• The “$50,000 experiment” framework: big enough to matter if it works, small enough to survive if it doesn’t.
• Third-grade literacy as a leading indicator: solving upstream problems prevents a cascade of downstream challenges.
• Two people — and two ideas — can both be right at the same time. The tragedy of our era is that we’ve shifted from advocating for our ideas to advocating against our opponents’ ideas.
• Purpose-driven businesses that invest in capital H health tend to be more profitable in traditional measures too; the data bears this out.

Chapters

• 0:48 — Introduction & Chapter 7 Overview
• 4:49 — Leadership vs. Authority: Lessons from COVID
• 11:51 — Introducing Ben Hutton
• 13:27 — Capital “H” vs. Little “h” Health in the Workplace
• 15:24 — The Dream Manager Program
• 19:18 — Finite vs. Infinite Games & the Case for Experimentation
• 25:23 — Disrupting Entrenched Narratives
• 35:46 — Goals vs. Strategies: How to Create Alignment
• 37:09 — Closing Takeaways

Resources

• The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly
• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Hutton

Leading Health is an invitation to move the needle on Health in Kansas, and we invite you to join us in leading the way. Claim your copy of the book and learn more about the movement.

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