Rowitz On Leadership

I was recently at a meeting of a number of experts on public health preparedness and response. Part of the discussion related to the discussion of a new set of tools related to preparedness data collection. Another part of the discussion related to a number of tools that had been created to carry out a similar process of collecting information to guide preparedness activities. We have been telling leaders about the importance of building their leadership tool box so that they will be prepared for all types of events and audiences. We have spent much time on the creation of tools to guide our work and are always on the lookout for new tools that will be better than the ones we already have.

Let us go back to our childhoods and the glee we experienced on our birthdays and Christmas when we got all those shiny new toys and games. Each year, these special events were wonderful. The new toys and games came wrapped in colorful paper. We loved unwrapping the paper and hoping we got the latest and most popular of new toys. These shiny new toys took all of our holiday attention. Within a few days or weeks, the shine was off. We played less and less with these toys and games and tried to get our parents or other relatives to buy us something new. Over time, our mothers would say that we should give away these toys if we were not going to play with them anymore. There is an important lesson here for leaders.

I want to talk about what I will call the shiny toy syndrome. I have gone to many meetings which discuss the latest tools that we as leaders will find the most relevant and the more useful than anything that we have used before.. We will be able to get rid of those tools that have been useful and replace them with something better- a shiny new toy. It is important to build and use the best tools that we can and not necessarily the newest. We will need constant assurance that new is better. Shrinking funds may mean that we need to be careful of the new and expensive. It may be that the tools that we use can be tweaked or modified to become more reliable with the modification. Let us go for the best and not the shiniest.