A recent email brought notice of four impressive National Academy reports. Two were 2021 reports on High Quality Primary Care and The Future of Nursing. One was a 2017 report on Pathways to Health Equity and the other was a 2012 report on Primary Care and Public Health. These are all impressive pieces of work. […]
The world seems to be coming increasingly complicated. Everything seems connected to everything. It seems reasonable to argue that this has long been the case. Diseases migrated from the old world to the new world, as did social and cultural norms. However, this process took years or decades. Now, accelerated by technology, it takes days […]
As I have discussed many times before, a compelling overall goal is a healthy, educated, and productive population that is competitive in the global marketplace. Anyone who is not healthy is a drag on the national economy Anyone who is not educated is a drag on the national economy Anyone who is not productive is […]
We have, of late, been focused on federal policies to assure and enhance the STEM talent pipeline in the US. There is a widespread sense that the pipeline is not as robust as the economy and competitiveness requires. Are we trying to “fix” STEM? Maybe, but we need to keep priorities in perspective. As I […]
Many problems and potential fixes are being considered and debated to address the pandemic, associated economic slump, and economic and social inequities. Climate change is hovering in the wings. How do all these potential initiatives fit together? I think we can integrate all of these ideas by thinking about how they all support pursuit of […]
What needs to change to transform our society in the ways needed to achieve new levels of equality, performance, and value creation? I have nine suggestions in two broad areas. In general, we need to move from status quo practices to best practices as shown in the table below. Function Best Practices Status Quo […]
There are several forces currently driving change in our society: Pandemic impacts that have completely upset the status quo Economic impacts of the pandemic that have left many in dire straights Disproportionate effects of economic, educational and social inequities These forces have led to an overwhelmed healthcare system, enormous unemployment, and intense frustration on the […]
How do people envision the future? How do they consider uncertainties? How do they think about investing today to have a better tomorrow? People seem willing to invest in their personal futures, e.g., retirement. They seem willing to invest in their children’s futures, e.g., education. The further they look into the future, the more difficult […]
Zoom and other online platforms are working out pretty well. Teaching class this way is better than many people expected. Many types of doctor’s appointments are much easier logistically and are more satisfying than driving, waiting, etc. Social get-togethers using these platforms are not as good, but they are much better than social isolation. Once […]
“Ok, what is the upside of the subsidy? I think I know, but I want your assessment, George,” Marie opens. “Faculty members publish journal articles, that get cited, and over time increase their h-index,” George responds. “An h-index of N means that you have N or more articles cited at least N times. Right?” “Yes. […]
A couple of ideas intersected this week. First, a piece I was reading suggested that the endeavor they were elaborating was “As difficult as baptizing a cat.” Depending on how you have related with cats in the past, this statement evokes an immediate sense of what the baptism experience would be like. I am on […]
To achieve promotion and tenure in science and engineering, you need 16-20 articles published in reputable journals. You need to accomplish this in five years, so you need 3-4 articles per year. You need to publish a significant portion of these articles with your PhD students. I will assume 10 with PhD students and 10 […]
My post “Cultures of Compliance” in September 2016 led to quite a few responses from readers. I noted then that a culture of compliance laced with administrative incompetence is particularly lethal. Many readers’ responses built on this theme. In this post, I highlight some of the stories they related. Many stories related to food, primarily […]
This has been quite a week for dealing with technology. It started with submitting a revised journal article using a web-based publishing platform. It was unhappy because the zip code for one of my coauthors was missing. It wanted me to add this information but I did not know the user name and password for […]
I have encountered many organizations, mainly in government and academia, where compliance with policies, procedures, and norms became the primary organizational objective. Producing useful outcomes became secondary, almost a nuisance because production took resources away from compliance. This becomes an almost insurmountable problem when the organization is laced with administrative incompetence. Perhaps well-intended but fundamentally […]
An industry executive that chaired an advisory board at a major research university once commented to me that academia’s unit of time is the semester. “When a faculty member says he will get back to me right away, he means by the end of the semester.” We measure performance of computers in cycles per second, […]
The steadily escalating costs of a college education coupled with spiraling mountains of student debts cannot be sustained. Universities are unwilling and unable to control costs, in large part due to the bloating of administrative and support functions (Rouse, 2016). A great example is the University of California System where, excluding the number of faculty […]
Much of contemporary analytics focuses on tabulating and portraying characteristics of existing systems, whether they are for energy supply, health delivery or a wide range of other complex systems. This type of analytics addresses “what is” or in many cases “what was.” This approach is backward looking, which makes a lot of sense if there […]
I once asked an Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Executive of a government agency whether he preferred to be in control of all the budget of his agency or to be in control of how the money was counted. He responded, “If I can control how the money is counted, I don’t need to control […]
Starting with the overarching objective of a healthy, educated, and productive population that is competitive in the global marketplace, what should be done? Let’s work through this piece by piece. Start with healthy. We are facing an epidemic of chronic disease, driven in part by an epidemic of obesity. The eventual financial costs of diabetes […]
