The Lancet Commission’s Global Surgery Plan Offers Lessons For Large Businesses

Washington Post: Large businesses can learn from lessons on global surgical treatment
Gerry Yemen, senior researcher at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, and John G. Meara, professor of global surgery at Harvard Medical School

“…Leaders at a top medical journal, The Lancet, created a commission on global surgery to examine the realities, problems, and potential solutions for delivering surgery to all in need. … The commission created a national surgical plan template to help ministries of health develop systems worldwide that incorporate surgery and anesthesia and suggested six core indicators that every country should collect in concert with the WHO and the World Bank. … It turns out that many of the problems the Lancet Commission set out to examine are similar to those in large business organizations. Among those: motivating managers and employees with a sense of urgency, moving workers toward a common goal, managing reorganization to better deploy resources, launching employee and organizational change, and creating short-term wins to keep a process going. Executing a complex action plan in any context involves seeing the issues, understanding the situation, asking what elements are missing, and anticipating obstacles” (1/2).

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