On Monday of this week, the New York Times published an article called Why Doctors and Pharmacists Are In Revolt.
I want to do a three-part series on this article alone because there is so much rich information here that literally every worker and leader in America needs to hear.
So today I’m going to dive in with part one, and that is to say, you need to read this article and you need to understand that this article is about workplace culture.
Interestingly, the word culture does not appear anywhere in the article.
It’s about working conditions, metrics, the changing landscape of the healthcare industry, the unionization of doctors and pharmacists for the first time in history and healthcare administrators trying to manage patient care through doctors and the balance of power that is now shifting and how uncomfortable that has made literally everyone in the healthcare industry.
That’s culture. Culture is how people think and act to get results.
This entire article is about how people think and act to get results.
At the end of the article, the doctors say that if they were listened to, if they had a voice, if they were able to manage the care that they’re giving more, they would be less inclined to unionize.
And the healthcare operators that do give their doctors a voice by holding listening sessions, et cetera, aren’t unionizing.
So that is a key here that for both workers and leaders, we don’t have to unionize if employees are given a voice.
We saw with OpenAI, Sam Altman was ousted by the board. The employees were not unionized, but their voice was heard, and Sam Altman was brought back, without a union…employee voice matters.
And when leaders listen, everyone wins.
That’s part one. I have a couple more things I want to dig into in this article, but that is the overarching message you need to understand.
If you’re confused on what culture is, read this article. This entire article is about culture.
Stay tuned for part two.