By David Jarrard
5-minute read
“You can’t argue people into feeling better with statistics”
Every election offers an education for leaders looking to learn and willing to hear difficult counsel. We all went to school last week.
Donald Trump’s decisive victory over Kamala Harris has delivered us pointed instructions – and a dose of kind truth – for America’s healthcare leaders.
Just what were voters teaching us through the ballot box?
The answers matter because provider organizations are more politically vulnerable than ever. The erosion of the public’s trust in individual health systems and in the industry writ large is significant. The critical scrutiny from lawmakers, media and competitors is relentless.
Healthcare needs to win and keep the public’s trust and have active support. How now? The campaign autopsies are already the stuff of endless coverage and will be filling bookshelves soon.
Here are three lessons from Tuesday night that are urgently relevant for our industry.
Wonky doesn’t work.
The economy – with its subsets of inflation, wages, the cost of groceries and houses – was the cornerstone issue for voters (as it is in most every presidential campaign). James Carville’s campaign clarity from 1992 remains stubbornly true: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
But is today’s economy “really” good or bad? Facts are only part of an effective message, and secondary, at best, to people’s experience and what is important to them. “Two-thirds of voters described the economy as bad,” said exit polls. And voters who described it that way went big for the next President.
“Democrats had a good empirical case that what they had done to steward the economy was very successful. They just had no political case,” argues Atlantic writer David Graham in What Trump Understood, and Harris Did Not.
Republicans disagree, of course, but Democrats had explanations for inflation, had taken complex action to address it and could reason the American economy “was running better than any other,” Graham says.
“All of this was true and also politically unhelpful,” he writes. “You can’t argue people into feeling better with statistics.”
Exactly.
A lesson here for healthcare leaders? To effectively and persuasively tell your story, you must meet people where they are and acknowledge and address the issues that are most important to them with clear language they can appreciate.
That’s called politics.
Example? Too often, healthcare leaders respond to honest concerns about the extraordinarily high cost of care with a cold word salad that requires an MBA to eat.
In the effort to fully explain the deeply complex, we can sound evasive and clinically dismissive of the anxiety behind the question. We can appear aloof from the very people we serve.
One in six Americans say they have avoided seeking the healthcare they need for fear of its cost.
Do we get that? Do we understand the political and emotional power behind that? Can we speak to that fear plainly with our own passion for the mission to which we have dedicated our careers?
In effective messaging, emotion must meet emotion. Leaders must acknowledge the concern as real and valid, and meet it with an expression of their personal drive to address. Yes, it’s a problem. Yes, we see it, too. Yes, we’re on it. Let me explain…
The details matter. The complexity matters. But when a patient owing six figures for a preauthorized procedure asks why healthcare is so expensive, the first answer shouldn’t be about the intricacies of payer contracts. Do non-profit hospitals provide their fair share of community benefit? The first answer shouldn’t be a mish-mash dissertation on Medicare shortfalls.
Nuance is nice, but it’s not first. People do want details, but don’t begin with the byzantine. We lose them in our labyrinth.
Neither the economy nor healthcare are engineering problems. Not at first.
It starts with the cost of butter and the cost of the ER. Start there, too.
Be real.
Trump was – and is – a messy messenger. Harris was controlled and structured in a sharply packaged and well-financed campaign in her 107-day, last-minute sprint for the presidency.
Whatever side of the aisle you live on (or, on no side at all, thank you very much), there is broad acknowledgement that Trump says what’s on his mind – probably in real time— and voters gave him points for this sense of authenticity.
In fact, the majority of voters overlooked a host of issues and norm-breaking behaviors to take him seriously, not literally, rejecting a polished Harris operation supported by cultural luminaries such as Taylor Swift, Beyonce, a constellation of Nobel laureates, former Trump administration officials and, even, Oprah. This league of surrogates could not overcome the fact that in a sprint campaign voters did not feel like they knew Harris as well as they knew Trump.
“Trump’s greatest strength, and perhaps his greatest weakness, is that he is always himself,” wrote PRWeek, calling his appearance of authenticity the “message that won Trump the election.”
This is not so much about the content of the message (though that’s related). It’s about the performance of the messenger. It’s about offering that sense of risk and all-in commitment to a message that can be powerfully compelling and effective in the delivery of your message.
To be clear: The point here is not “be like Trump.”
Instead, healthcare leaders, it’s this: Ditch the PowerPoint. Lower the notecards. Shake hands, go to Rotary, round the halls, look people in the eye and tell stories about your kids. Have slow conversations over coffee. Healthcare is a uniquely human business. Bring your human self to your important engagements. Tap the strength of being real.
Take no one for granted.
Don’t assume the trust and support you enjoyed in days of yore remains true today.
As this election demonstrated, we are in an age of historic reshufflings of support, loyalty and trust. For generations, it was a given that Democrats were the party of the working class with deep support from minorities, unions and those with less education. Republicans were the party of the monied, college educated, business-minded. Not today.
We’ve witnessed a realignment – for now anyway – of party allegiance.
Most hospitals and health systems have been the power brands in their markets for generations, the center of gravity for the delivery of care, earning strong trust throughout communities from decades of care.
Is that still true? Can you still count on that support? How do you know?
- Have you checked in recently with your community and market area to see if there are any changes in perception and satisfaction with your organization – beyond whether they prefer X or Y service line?
- What about your physicians and employees? The public trusts them. Do they trust you?
- More specifically, within the ranks of your advocates, employees and spokespeople, are the people you can rely on to speak on your behalf the same as they were five years ago?
Better find out. Your first important work may be close to home.
There are more lessons to learn from last week, of course. The fragmentation of the media landscape, the plummeting influence of traditional news organizations and the rise of informal, “real talk” podcasts and social media feeds has been brought into sharp relief. We’ll unpack those another time.
A national election is a kind of national CT scan, deeply revealing what’s important to our communities today and what communication strategies work (and don’t work) now.
The challenge for healthcare is not that the environment in which we serve is changing.
It always changes.
The risk is that we don’t learn the lessons it has to teach. The risk is that we don’t tell our powerful, compelling story because our strategies and our message remain frozen in what worked in the past.
Let’s ace our next test.
Contributors: Isaac Squyres, Tim Stewart, Emme Nelson Baxter, David Shifrin
Image Credit: Shannon Threadgill
