Do not be a problem solver, be a problem preventer. (Episode 140)
Interview with Peter Mehlape, Managing Director, Southern Africa for Medtronic.
You know the saying “If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem?”
Well, it’s time to start saying: “If you are not part of the prevention, you are part of the resulting problem.”
To think about creativity as “solving a problem”, as many people do, is actually a very limited way of thinking around creativity. Instead, we should think of how to use creativity to prevent a problem from even arising.
After all, why wait for a problem to become a problem before solving it, when you can stop it from ever becoming a problem?
The idea of being a problem preventer might sound obvious, yet when we take a look around the world, we can see unlimited examples of people wasting energy on solving problems that they easily could have prevented.
If we want to improve the world immensely we should really teach people to solve problems before they are problems.
It’s like there is a bug in our human system that makes us partially incapable of preventing problems.
As any parent will know, we can learn to be preventers. New parents suddenly run around the house looking for potential accidents waiting to happen so that they can prevent them.
And sure, we prevent a lot of problems from ever happening, but my point is that we could be so much better at it if we dedicated more of our creativity to problem prevention instead of problem solving.
So why don’t we?
I recently discussed this conundrum with Peter Mehlape, Managing Director, Southern Africa for Medtronic. Medtronic is a global medical technology company that produces medical devices and technologies such as pacemakers, defibrillators, insulin pumps etc. Peter has spent virtually his whole working life in healthcare, and he has been getting exceedingly annoyed at the healthcare industry’s tendency to solve problems (sickness) instead of trying to prevent them (health).
Peter: “If you wait for a problem to happen and then solve it, it tends to be much more expensive. Think of fixing a water leak vs making sure water pipes are in a good condition.”
So what is the reason we do not spend more time on prevention? According to Peter, there are multiple reasons.
1) Because prevention requires a much deeper understanding of the issue at hand.
2) It’s usually harder to get buy-in and resources for prevention as people do not want to use resources to fix a problem that doesn’t exist (yet).
An example: According to Peter, many health ministries in African countries cannot see the value in investing in safer roads even if it’s clear to the experts that safer roads creates fewer hospitalizations, which means lower healthcare costs for that country. In some of these countries the reason for not seeing the problem is that the countries do not even have the right statistics for costs of traffic accidents so they cannot even see the problem that exists.
So how can you get people to get more excited about preventing problems?
Peter recommended:
1) Show data
Weather forecasts predicting flooding can get people to prepare.
2) Paint a picture
A prevention is a story from the future. A happy ending to a story that hasn’t yet been told.
If you want people to invest in prevention they need to see that happy ending. So paint a picture that people can relate to.
Think of the story of the three little pigs.
3) Create short term benefits.
Since people have a problem seeing positive gains in the future, “trick” them by giving them a short term gain.
Want people to prepare to avoid floodings in their homes? Have the insurance company offer a lower insurance fee if the home owner agrees to an inspection of the pipes.
When you think about it, health care should really be 99% prevention and 1% curing. We will never get there, but we should be more passionate about prevention of problems.
People like Peter, who are ambassadors of preventive creativity, should get more recognition.
What problem are you going to prevent today?
11
Sep