Slow learning, poor context, and disloyalty

As I ease back in after a lovely vacation horseback riding in the isolation of the British Columbia mountains, I'd like to take one moment to comment on items that have piqued my curiosity as I've caught up on recent newspaper articles.  (Don't worry: Health care topics return soon, but this post also relates to my other favorite topics--leadership, cognitive errors, and negotiation.)First, there's Thomas Friedman's August 8 interview with President Obama, with these final paragraphs:Whether it is getting back into Iraq or newly into Syria, the question that Obama keeps coming back to is: Do I have the partners — local and/or international — to make any improvements we engineer self-sustaining?“I’ll give you an example of a lesson I had to learn that still has ramifications to this day,” said Obama. “And that is our participation in the coalition that overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. I absolutely believed that it was the right thing to do. ... Had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be Syria. ... And so there would be more death, more disruption, more destruction. But what is also true is that I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that di...
Source: Running a hospital - Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs