I recently read Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, an excellent book on leadership, persuasion, human psychology and improving health care throughout the world, by Dr. Atul Gawande. I finished the book right before a leadership seminar to a group of health care professionals and included the following quotes in my presentation.
Dr. Gawande had just traveled to India and witnessed the tremendous problems and deficiencies in their hospitals. For example, patients have to leave the hospital to purchase the equipment and supplies that the doctors need to perform even lifesaving procedures. Although he was saddened by what he saw, he was also encouraged by the ingenuity of the doctors.
"Using just textbooks and advice from one another, the surgeons at this ordinary district hospital in India had developed an astounding range of expertise. What explains this? There was so much the surgeons had no control over . . . the overwhelming flow of patients, the poverty, the lack of supplies, but where they had control, their skills for example, these doctors sought betterment . . . They understood themselves to be part of a larger world of medical knowledge and accomplishment."
Effective leaders control what they can control. They take responsibility for their own thoughts and actions, for their own development. They act on the world, instead of being acted upon. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, they "do what they can, with what they have, where they are."
It is tempting to blame external circumstances for our inability to improve, create change or lead. But there is always something we can do and that is where we should focus. Leaders don't seek excuses or accept them from others, even when they are obvious, even when they seem overwhelming. There is always something that can be done.
