Robert Fromberg
Editor-in-Chief, HFMA
Our family’s annual trek to watch the fireworks contained a management lesson for me. My wife, kids, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and I left the house for the fireworks after it had started getting dark. I prefer to leave early for everything (it’s a family joke, if you can call a joke something the rest of the family refers to while gritting their teeth). But we live in a fairly small community, so it doesn’t take long to get from home to the local high school, where the fireworks are launched.
The place we usually watch the fireworks is a square block enclosed by a fence. Within the fence is a sports field and blacktop. We arrived to see the area within the fence already pretty dense with people.
“Oh well, “ I said, “in we go,” or words to that effect.
But my wife suggested it was too crowded. And she pointed out that leaving the enclosure always takes forever because there are only a few narrow breaks in the fence.
We were standing in the middle of an intersection; the streets were blocked, so no cars were in sight. People were beginning to set up chairs on the strips of grass between the sidewalk and the curb—in fact, I saw no grass available except people’s lawns.
“Where should we sit?” I asked.
“Right here,” she said.
“In the street? In the intersection?”
“It’s blocked off—no cars,” she pointed out.
Sure enough. We had a clear view of the fireworks. We had a clear spot to put our chairs. The kids would have room to run around. We would have a clear exit when the event ended. And we weren’t going to be flattened by cars. What could be better? We set up camp, and within minutes others joined us, so we had a nice little community.
All of which is yet another example of the power of thinking outside that fenced-in area of what-we’ve-always-done.
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Yesterday, the 4th of July, I received an email message from an author containing a revision of an article, which reminds me—again—of how hard we all work these days. I’m sure this author was not the only healthcare finance professional using the holiday to catch up on some work. Still, I hope everyone found a little time for relaxation.
