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Our Existing Assumptions Fail Us

What if the biggest barrier to better health in your community isn’t a lack of resources, but a set of assumptions you didn’t even know you were making?

In this conversation, hosts Ed O’Malley and Susan Kang are joined by returning guest Kenny Wilk of the University of Kansas Health System. Together, they unpack how hidden assumptions — about who should be involved, what needs to be done, and how fast progress can happen — quietly shape how people in authority think and act. Wilk shares candid stories from his time in the Kansas Legislature and offers a fresh lens on exercising leadership. This conversation will challenge you to surface the assumptions driving your own work before they become “premeditated resentments.”

Highlights

• The three most common assumptions the 30,000 make when tackling complex health challenges, and why each one can derail progress.
• The critical difference between adaptive and technical challenges. 
• Kenny Wilk’s hard-won insight from the Kansas Legislature: don’t ask people to change their minds; give them new information so they can make a new decision.
• How sharing information to ‘slow things down’ can help a group go farther, together. 
• The “sidewalk story” is a simple metaphor that reframes how we see ‘work’ being done. 
• The danger of bringing people together only to present a baked solution, and what to do instead.

Chapters

• 0:47 — Leading Health Review, Preview and Big Picture.
• 3:02 — Chapter Eight insight: “Closing the Health Gap Is a Leadership Challenge Because Our Existing Assumptions Fail Us”
• 4:55 — The three common assumptions the 30,000 make
• 6:28 — The quick fix trap
• 8:37 — Technical vs. adaptive: a broken bone example
• 11:14 — Kenny Wilk joins the conversation
• 12:18 — The water debate: a lesson from Kenny’s first year in the legislature
• 14:52 — Defining “assumption” — and why we’re all starting from different places
• 15:56 — You have to slow down to go far
• 16:22 — Getting up on the balcony to examine assumptions
• 17:52 — New decisions, not mind changes
• 19:13 — How authority can create space for assumption-surfacing
• 21:05 — Why leaders jump straight to solutions
• 22:59 — From kitchen table to campaign trail to governing — three different phases
• 24:27 — Technical vs. adaptive challenges in practice
• 27:13 — What authorities must do differently on adaptive challenges
• 30:46 — The sidewalk story: seeing the invisible work of adaptive leadership
• 33:50 — Takeaways and preview of the next episode

Resources

• Kansas Health Rankings
• University of Kansas Health System
• Kansas Leadership Center (KLC)

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.