“Kings, queens, knights, and pawns have given way to
presidents, vice presidents,
assistants to the regional manager, and pawns.
Always pawns.”
-Andy Kessler
Command and Control?
Standard Oil, Ford, AT&T,IBM, Sears, and Apple all have something very similar to the current American medical system:
Command and Control.
Or the more acceptable term in the American economy:
Vertical Integration.
Human beings have been trying to do this since the dawn of time.
Kings, Caesars, Emperors, and CEOs of hospital systems have been trying to control resources and tell everyone how to use resources from the top, down.
And while it may work for a short period of time, it is usually harmful to people in the longer run. Yes, the “workers” are harmed, but most assuredly the consumers (end users of a product or service, or patients for health professionals) are harmed.
As you read in previous posts, Transitioning to the New Health Economy, ALL systems end up collapsing. And what all systems – empires and corporations – have tried to do is own, control, and tightly manage all resources – especially as the system is in the midst of collapse.
Yes, and unfortunately, many of the largest corporations in the United States (and even the United States government), have tried to “command and control,” from “soup to nuts,” with 5-year plans, their entire companies and industries…just like the Soviet Union of the 1980s.
(If you are younger than 35, Communism was – and still is – bad. And there was no innovation that wasn’t stolen first, just ask the Chinese Communist Party.)
Vertical integration is an end-of-life-cycle business structure.
Vertical integration neither encourages, nor allows, for innovation.
Think about this logically.
– Standard Oil
– Ford
– AT&T
– IBM
– Sears
– Apple
– The American medical system
– And many others
None of these companies/systems have innovated for a long time.
Has innovation come from some of these companies?
Yes, of course.
But these companies have not done the innovating.
If these vertically integrated companies need innovation, they go buy it.
But, as discussed in a previous post, Transitioning to the New Health Economy, eventually systems run out of “energy” (money) and innovation ceases.
Horizontal Integration
Going “horizontal” with a business, specifically, helps the economy generally, which benefits us all as consumers, patients, and individual business owners.
According to Andy Kessler,”[h]orizontal means doing something better than anyone else and inserting yourself into a product or process by having someone else do everything else.”
When it comes to the economy in, general, and specifically, the New Health Economy,”[h]orizontal is better than vertical because it harnesses separate layers of innovation, something the vertical model makes almost impossible. It sounds odd, but a partnership between two profit-driven enterprises is usually more manageable and productive than the relationship between two divisions of a large company.” (Kessler)
Horizontal seems counter-intuitive. But it is actually most efficient because of three reasons: price, pace, and new entrance into the marketplace.
First, prices are set by the marketplace, not by some intermediary or third party, as the current American medical system is.
Second, innovation then occurs at its own pace. When innovation occurs in a horizontal market, others are able to adapt quicker – and more profitably.
The third reason to “get H” with the New Health Economy is that it’s the easiest way for entrepreneurs and innovators to enter the marketplace. Let megive you an example of this:
Over the last 20-30 years, when a physician has decided to start their own practice – it does not matter the specialty – that individual “provider” must get a computer system (or paper charts), way more staff than should be required, equipment, permissions from a local hospital system (they call it”privileges,” but it’s actually permission).
This is because the American medical system is actually a vertically integrated, command and control system that, thank God Almighty, is about to collapse.
Yet, in the horizontal environment that has been developing over the last 20 years or so, physicians –and other health professionals – are able to start their own business, out-source the technology, hire a company to staff the office, simply know where the hospital is so they can refer their patients there when it’s necessary.
“Getting H” happens everywhere, we just don’t always realize it.
The intelligent and informed choose “getting H” over the uniformed and, frankly, old school greed of the command-and-control operators, organizations, and improper mindsets of the past that rely on cronyism, back-room deals, and politicians to make new rules to fit the vertical agendas.
This does not happen in the New Health Economy when entrepreneurs are both encouraged and supported.
Energy is contagious
Enthusiasm spreads
Tides respond to lunar gravitation
Everything turns in synchronous relation
-Neil Peart
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