Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom
I must confess I had never heard this phrase until today when I read a Crossover Health blog post quoting Anna-Lisa Silvestre, VP of Online Services for Kaiser Permanente, regarding Kaiser's commitment to "Health 2.0." Said Silvestre: "Health 2.0 implies that the consumers are finally able to engage in their health and get connected to what they need in term of their health. We have not had many applications to help people make a behavior change in the past - where is our iHealth equivalent app? You know, behavior change is really, really hard. The more tools that are available to help people change their behavior the better. I firmly believe in the "Let a 1,000 flowers bloom" (sic) philosophy. Since it is so hard to manage diabetes, manage weight loss, or quit smoking, we need to provide as many tools as possible to help personalize the quest for each individual. Health 2.0 is a descriptive term for this new level of engagement."
The subject of "Health 2.0" as described by Silvestre is certainly of interest to me, as I'm sure it is to many other folks in the health information technology field. Lord willing I'll write more on that topic shortly. But before we follow the yellow brick road to Health 2.0, I think we'd do well to understand the story behind the phrase, "Let a thousand flowers bloom."
According to Phrases.org.uk, the phrase is actually a misquotation of Chairman Mao from a speech in 1957. Mao's actual words were: "Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land." It certainly sounded noble. Unfortunately, Mao evidently didn't much care for the scent of some of those posies, judging from the ultimate outcome. The debate continues to this day as to whether or not it was Mao's intent all along to use the Hundred Flowers campaign as a ruse to flush out his political enemies. At the very least, it appears Mao intended for the Hundred Flowers initiative to clearly demonstrate the superiority of his socialist agenda for China as opposed to capitalism. In any case, more than 550,000 intellectuals, officials, students, artists and dissidents who dared to express opinions critical of the regime were eventually humiliated, imprisoned, demoted or fired from their positions, sent to labor and re-education camps, tortured, or killed. It would appear that regardless of the flowery (pardon the pun) language Mao used to describe the Hundred Flowers campaign as a means of encouraging new ideas, all he really wanted to do was further entrench his own agenda.
The lesson for us, then, is that letting a thousand flowers bloom (or a hundred flowers blossom, if you will) is all well and good UNLESS we've already made up our minds ahead of time about what we think our garden should look like. I've seen this dynamic at work in a number of business, professional, and associational settings, when employees or customers or members are asked for their input only AFTER leadership has already charted a course and sailed past the point of no return. We can no longer afford that mentality in this era of Health 2.0, Web 2.0, etc. The mantra today is "engagement," and whether we're talking customers, members, employees, or website visitors, staying engaged means not only HEARING what's being said but actually LISTENING and be willing to adapt to a changing marketplace. Business as usual, no matter what business we're in, simply isn't sufficient to survive and thrive in today's labile socioeconomic climate.