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How to Lead Infectiously in the Era of Big Problems
Epidemic Leadership
LARRY McEVOY, MD
Copyright © 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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ISBN 9781119787457 (Hardcover)
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For the joyous crowds, the great herds, the endless flocks, the teeming schools (of fish and children), and all whose goodness incubates in obscurity ahead of coming abundance
Introduction
When I started writing this book, epidemics didn't hold the attention of many people beyond epidemiologists and risk-policy wonks. Then, COVID-19 hit. By a freak of timing, I found myself writing as the pandemic ended hundreds of thousands of lives, closed our schools and workplaces, crashed the global economy, monopolized the daily news cycle, and drove us out of the open and into hiding, from our parks and streets and deeper into our screens and phones. Like all of us, I watched as the spread of a brainless virus exploited our societal divisions and inequalities, exposed the inadequacy of leadership and supply lines, and tilted a presidential election. A microscopic clump of genetic material enveloped in proteins made the reality of epidemics a palpable threat and an urgent teacher. It challenged our notions of command and control over our environment and opened the possibilities around what leading must become in a changed and changing world.
I write from my perspective as a doctor and particularly as an emergency physician. My clinical career began as a medical student at Stanford University and took root in the garden of pathology we call the emergency department during my residency at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. I learned the highly specialized skills that allowed me to diagnose, treat, and resuscitate patients whose unpredictable palette of disease, distress, and destruction flowed into my workplace every day, night, and weekend. Over the course of my clinical career, I learned to find a sense of ease amid the chaos of lives abruptly unhinged from the illusion of “normal.” I learned that high-trust team intelligence outpaced disconnected expertise. I learned that all the algorithms and protocols in the world don't equip us to match the way disease and illness multiply in our populations, a reality our health care personnel recognized only too well from the strain on them during this most recent pandemic.
I also write from the perspective of an executive who has worked with hundreds of leaders and teams over the course of my career. I had the opportunity to help an emergency department and two health care organizations work their way through duress and subpar performance to results both objectively demonstrated and subjectively immeasurable. As the CEO of my state's largest trauma center, I watched several thousand people turn an entire organization around when it was listing badly during the national financial meltdown of 2008 (and when cynics predicted our inevitable collapse). Perhaps befitting an emergency physician and others who find themselves facing the braver work of leadership, I have always worked and learned in places where what used to work doesn't anymore, where people are trying hard and wearing out, and where hope is essential and hard to find.
We live in such times and places today. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Our technology ambiguously speeds things along and rushes us so fast we can't think straight. Our models of organization, leadership, and governance are breaking down, or at least
