The article below, although taking Healthcare as the example is exactly the situation in all sectors and critically the financial sector at this time; a direct result of the western, reductionist and reactive democratic institutions.
The Blog wants to see these retained but we are poised on a knife-edge and unless we recognise this and evolve them to take ‘holistic’ and long-term proactive action we will fall into the abyss.
dd
Crisis = “A good excuse to do the wrong thing.”
……………………..The worrisome part was Governor Deval’s remarks. In response to demands for what he called an “Utopian system,” he said, “Let’s not get caught up on how to make our healthcare system perfect…or else we will just talk and not walk.”
That is exactly the approach that keeps us from ever healing healthcare. The crisis mentality says we must act now and take what we can get, do what we can do, because we are in a crisis. With respect, we have been in a healthcare crisis for at least 40 years and ad hoc crisis managementhas kept us from beginning to truly fix – to cure – healthcare.
Forty-six million have no health insurance. This is called a crisis and we must fix it now! Was it not a crisis when only 20 million were uninsured? Then too, we applied a quick fix and look where we are now.
The call to do what we canperpetuates the failure cycle in two ways. First, it accepts what is do-able rather than working toward something that really fixes. Second, it ignores the interdependence of the elements in a system such as healthcare. You cannot adjust (much less fix) just one part without affecting the other parts, usually making them worse. Systems thinking and experience with healthcare should have taught us that by now. …………………….
………………….The excuse to do the wrong thing is that we have a crisis and must act now. In ARRA 2009, over $670 million is allocated to healthcare to: increase insurance coverage; promote electronic medical records; and beef up HIPAA. This piecemeal approach will work. It will work to: raise national healthcare expenditures; complicate communication; increase errors; expand the already bloated bureaucracy; and exacerbate shortagesof nurses and doctors. All are unintended adverse consequences caused by ad hoc crisis management and the lack of systems thinking.
Full article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deane-waldman/crisis-a-good-excuse-to-d_b_179232.html
see also
Keeping Ahead of the Oil Curve 