It’s easier to recognize a problem than it is to find a solution. I’m sure you’ve noticed this. In practically everything we do we can see the need for improvement, but we often find that nothing happens to make things better. Even when a crisis happens,we often see lots of people discussing the problem – and some talk about potential solutions – but not much progress is made.
Take for example the U.S. health care situation. We now have a country where 20% to 40% of the population has no health care coverage with between 30% and 50% are significantly under-insured (ranges are offered because it depends on what study you read.) Virtually everyone agrees that this is a big problem, because the U.S. health care system is not designed to deal with the uninsured. We hear stories of people waiting for hours in hospitals for basic care that is often poorly administered. We hear about total health care costs rising because the uninsured drive up costs that are then born by insured patients. And the medicare and medicaid system we are told is nearly bankrupt, unable to meet many basic needs and not providing necessary life-sustaining assistance. Increasingly, doctors, clinics and even some hospitals refuse to take uninsured patients.
The problem has been easy to see. In America, the system has been based upon employer-provided health care. But, as employees have changed jobs they have lost insurance due to "pre-existing condition" clauses that deny coverage. And people who lost jobs to downsizings lost all coverage completely. Employment has shifted dramatically from manufacturing to services in the U.S., yet a far higher percentage of service employers offer very limited insurance, or no insurance at all. And the vast army of those who work part-time (under 40 hours per week), have no access to insurance as employers limit their hours and limit access to coverage as a cost saving measure. Employer-provided health insurance worked in the far more stable employment practices of the 1940s to 1970s, but the program simply isn’t sufficient to meet the needs of nearly half of Americans today.
Yesterday, Wal-Mart agreed with the largest service union in the USA (their bitter enemy, the Service Employees International Union) that dramatic changes were needed in health care coverage (see article here.) Obviously, Wal-Mart does not believe it can provide universal coverage to its 1.3 million employees and compete. But interestingly, the unions which have fought hard to get employees health benefits agree that far too many employers cannot be expected to offer health care and compete in a global economy. Democrats have easily joined the ranks of those asking for a different system, but interestingly now noteworthy Republicans agree – including Howard Baker former Chief of Staff to Ronald Reagan.
So, what is to be done? There is no shortage of opinions about the solution (see article here). Many people want universal coverage from the federal government – but that has many detractors as well. Some states say a universal program should be implemented state-by-state, and Massachusetts has taken this direction. The President has offered to push for universal coverage with a series of changes to taxation of health care benefits. Lots of ideas – but most of these have existed for well over a decade. So it hasn’t been a lack of ideas that has stopped progress toward a different solution.
What we have with Wal-Mart’s announcement is a Disruption inside the business community. A Disruption saying "stop, we have to do something different here. The old way won’t work. We’re Locked-in to an outdated health care solution that must change." Having the country’s largest employer, in tandem with one of the largest unions, make this admission serves as a Disruption.
But this will make no difference if we don’t find White Space to actually create, test, pilot, learn, and define a new Success Formula for health care. Politicians often say "we need a debate on the options." Debates we’ve had. What we need is to try new solutions, and see if they work. We need to begin variations of the multiple scenarios so we can see what works, and what doesn’t. Massachusetts, for example, is a great experiment in a state-implemented program. But we also need to experiment with changes to the federal systems (Medicare and Medicaid) to see what they can actually do. And we need to experiment with subsidies and tax changes in the workplace to see what private programs can be developed. In the end, only in White Space do we actually test possible answers and thereby develop a new solution to which people migrate. The best solution is not the one debated to success, but instead the solution which is proven to work – and that is the solution to which people migrate. Anyone will change when they can see a better result, and that can only happen in White Space.
This is exactly what businesses have to do as well. The Phoenix Principle has demonstrated that whether a problem needs to be solved at the macro level (like national health care coverage) at an industry level (like national access to broadband telecommunications) or at a company, or function, work team or even an individual level Disruptions must be supplemented with White Space if a solution is actually to be developed and implemented. New solutions don’t come out of the universities or other "brain trusts". They come out of White Space where new Success Formulas that include strategies and tactics are actually tested and demonstrated to work. Then these new Success Formulas don’t have to be foisted upon people, because the better results attract people to them. Of course there are laggards, but we see that migration to a better result works far better than trying to debate, design, declare and then demand change – a model that almost never gets implemented nor works well.
So, we need White Space for experiments in health care coverage. And the state programs fit as one example. Let’s hope this Disruption will lead to more experiments. And we need more White Space in our companies, our departments and our lives so that we can experiment and find ways to produce better results. In the end, we can equate long-term success with White Space – and we’ve never needed more of it than we do today.