Our theme for this year’s Union Delegates Conference is “Transformative Leadership.”

Many people equate transformation with change. That’s not it, really.

While it’s true that the world of 2011 is very different from the world of 1961, 50 years ago, we know from our personal life experience that the world did not simply change—no one flipped a switch. The world transformed over time. We can make definitive conclusions about the differences between then and now.

But we also know from our own experience that it is rare that our personal lives change in a linear or predictable fashion. So, too, with the world around us. To appreciate the nature of change, we need to see it as it is, a process of observable, real-world experience. Not easy to do!

To do this, we must take the time to observe and understand our world by reflecting on our own experience and problem-solving capacity.  If we don’t do this, we become demanding that “people just see it our way.” That doesn’t work, as we know!

So, as we think about our roles as leaders, I suggest that learning about what to do going forward is also transformative in nature; that is, we must commit to a learning environment in which our colleagues and co-workers go through an internal process of reflection on how things have changed and why. In so doing, we rely on the experiential knowledge in everyone, thereby creating an authentic approach to problem-solving.

Out of crisis we found common ground

Remember, it was a crisis that created the Labor Management Partnership. It was a crisis long in the making: the combined and complex pressures of health care transformation in the 1980s and 1990s created many external pressures on Kaiser Permanente and the unions. Those pressures created strife, strikes and acrimony. By 1996, the relationships seemed broken.

But, instead of all parties stepping over a cliff, they found a common, higher ground: They called it Labor Management Partnership.

In essence, LMP asks all of us to “transform” from a traditional to a non-traditional labor-management relationship. This transformation has key drivers and definitions. The LMP asks that:

• We adopt interest-based means to solve our problems;
• We subordinate the traditional, alleged violation/grievance response with issue resolution and corrective action;
• We make a commitment to fully understand the business of KP and the unions and fully understand the external forces that place pressure on our business models and missions;
• We identify and live by shared values as we work in this new relationship.

We wonder why this process of transformation is difficult. I think it is difficult because in the real world, we must carry on and change at the same time. This requires different investments of time and resources for very different approaches to improvement and problem solving. It means making choices. Making choices forces the power dynamic of “who decides?”

I suggest that we must recognize that it was crisis that created the need for a transformed condition, and that crisis did not just happen. Transformative thinking, transformative leadership, indeed transformation itself is a process of synthesizing experience about the nature of crisis and creating a vision of solution to the crisis. We replace conflict and power with a continuum of consensus. This process applies to all involved—in our case, all workers, managers and physicians.

Indeed, we are living through a massive global crisis of inequality and want. This crisis is much bigger than anyone could have foreseen. We have chosen not to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the current state; instead, we have chosen a new and transformative path.

To the 700 frontline leaders who are attending the 2011 Delegates Conference: Bring your own reflections on events, ideas and people in your life that helped you transform. Together, we will learn to be transformational leaders. 

In my next blog, I’ll be sharing some of the thinking, learning and transformative action that comes out of this gathering.