Kodak Moments
A reader commented this week to an old blog post of mine. Over a year ago, I posted about becoming an older physical therapist and the challenges and emotions I was experiencing. Another therapist responded and voiced similar concerns regarding change, getting older and the desire for security that seems to come along with that. As I read through my colleagues' blogs, similar observations and questions occur.
Change scares many of us, myself included. However, not changing has its consequences as well. I came across this blog entry from the Harvard Business Review.
It looks at what used to be one of the most successful companies in the United States, Eastman Kodak, and how its inability to adapt was its undoing. Kodak sold photography; people wanted images. Close, but not the digital, instantaneous and sharable images easily available to all of us now. The piece then goes on to compare this situation to the current state of healthcare. The public wants to be well, to be in good health.
Is that really what the US healthcare system is selling? What business are we actually in? As a business model, can this system survive the changes that are happening? There is a reason that "patient experience" is gaining momentum in healthcare! Never mind the Affordable Care Act, "Liberating the NHS," or vouchers for Medicare; the healthcare landscape is going to be vastly different rather quickly. How are you positioned to deal with these changes? Do you even know what they will be? Do you sometimes wish you could just capture the present in a photograph and stay there? Kodak was betting on it.
So it appears change is inescapable in our lives, careers, profession and society. We can try and predict what it will be, but we can't always get it right. It doesn't matter what change we're talking about, we're never assured of success even with the best preparation.
My response to the person who commented about my post? Move on. When we stagnate, we lose. Going through major change again right now, I'm scared as well. I've made my choice, I'm acting on it and I could be dead wrong. If that's the case, then I will have other choices to make. That will still be better than paralysis, in life and career.