Let’s care
Caring collectively
In this rollercoaster, two things stand out. First, there isn’t a single moment of worry about how we will pay for this. There is only our gratitude for the care of all the people taking care of her. These are the heroes who dedicate every minute, with both mind and heart, to saving your life. And we pay for these invaluable heroes together. The care they provide, we all pay for as a collective. That is priceless. In Intensive Care, in Hematology, no one is judged by income, color, background. In the Dutch healthcare system, everyone can count on excellent care. Safeguarding that collectivity, which ensures that every person counts as a human being, is essential for the quality of our society. That applies to healthcare, pensions, and education. Our foreign colleagues, friends, and family remind us that this should not be taken for granted. An American colleague tells us that a family member is raising money for an initial leukemia treatment. We feel sick at the thought.
Learning to care
Secondly, it's striking how incredibly good these care heroes are at what they do. Every organization, every team, every CEO can learn from this. At the Intensive Care Unit, there are extensive procedures in place to ensure that professionals make mistakes before they've made a mistake. Everyone is a specialist in their field and works together in constantly changing teams on results that are a matter of life and death. There is no visible hierarchy, everyone knows exactly what they have to do and takes full responsibility. There are no meetings about the goal to be achieved; it's trained in advance, time and time again, with every possible complication visualized beforehand in utmost concentration, until the entire team is ready. And then the operation, or the project, if you will, is executed flawlessly. And always, throughout everything, there is a focus on the human being, the human dimension, the social aspect behind the medical.
The most important lesson: ‘be present’. Make anything count. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the goal on the horizon is important for the organization. But only if we are here and now and take full responsibility for what we are and do today.
Monday night.
Keeping hope.
Staying strong.
Being together.
Shall we?
This column, written by Cato and Pieter Hemels (ftrprf), was published in Management Scope 04 2025.