Bizarro Health Risk Thinking
Imagine you run admissions for a top academic institution like, say, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
(Coincidentally, my 10th reunion there was this month) ;-)
You are shooting the breeze with the Admissions Committee:
- “We want students who take chances, who will be self-confident leaders (and big donors!)”
- “Personally driven, but who thrive in team settings.”
- “Open to new ways of thinking and growing in an ever-smaller and more connected world.”
- “We need right and left brainers – all in the same person. Analytics are important, but we don’t need robots. We need some creativity. Some flow.”
- “People have to meet our basic criteria, but we need to find high-performance people who will keep us at the forefront.”
OK, dialog was never my specialty. Forgive me. But the sentiment seems realistic enough. OK, now imagine a discussion like this:
- “Let’s measure what’s wrong with our applicants. Then let’s let in folks with the fewest negative marks.”
- “Positive energy and self-leadership seem a little fluffy to me. Does the GMAT measure those?”
- “Let’s put big red ‘X’s by their shortcomings – that should motivate them to focus on sanding down their rough spots.”
Inspirational.
This Bizarro-Admissions meeting is, in many ways, like the Health-Risk focused approach many vendors and employers take to health and productivity management (AKA wellness). It works great if you want to single out the weak and costly. But it is not the way to create high-performance workforces.
Identifying health risks and costs is a business reality we all need to face. Avoiding cost is common sense, and with today’s screening, assessment, coaching and disease/care management innovations, represents a clear path to a very defensible ROI. But it also can be fundamentally negative and uninspiring “insurance-thinking” that misses all the upside potential for people and profits. It alienates people. And perhaps most importantly,
it’s also just not the way CEOs think – which makes it harder to sell, despite the ROI.Leadership, openness to change, positive relationships and sense of team – these separate the best schools – and companies – from imitators. They are the meat;
health risks are, respectfully, just the buns.Of course the admissions analogy is imperfect, because no company would ever admit to employing people or not based on health factors (unless they love alienating pretty much everyone and inviting federal prosecution). But schools and employers want to
improve the things that matter most about the workplaces they care most about.
Work factors, personal factors and healthy habits all matter, and they are hard to separate. Just ask yourself.
What would Superman do? Musings:
With the NBA Playoffs here, I chuckle to think of Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss assessing a player. “This guy has very few risks. His resume is well-balanced. He’s no Kobe, but he may well help us eke into the first round of the playoffs.”
I always preferred
Solomon Grundy (click the link!) to Bizarro.