Don’t make following policy a matter of morality. Leadership is human, and human capacity will always have limitations. Growing, evolving, and limited.

The systems we work in are a symptom of the culture we’ve created. All of us: leader and follower.

• Redlining service distribution
• Payors that incentivize the denial of insurance claims.
• Unnecessarily slow translation of research.
• Unwillingness to fund in-house research for implementation and development strategies.
• Unjust pay structures that hog tie the entrepreneurial activity of healthcare’s most trusted and socially active profession.

When a health system c-suite demonstrates moral purity. When we can look at every decision they make, trace their rationale through the net of complexity, and consider them above reproach. When our own commitment to safety opens our eyes to the constraints the “rules” generate. When I get honest about the complicit role I sometimes play. Then, we can talk about venerating company policy to moral law.

Until then, stand your sacred ground and dance with the system.