April 2017

Is The Chancellor Next? And Who’s Blabbing? By Leonard Zwelling http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Missteps-on-Houston-land-plan-cost-McRaven-11092204.php This Houston Chronicle story from April 22 claims that in a one-on-one meeting between Governor Abbot and Chancellor McRaven, the Governor counseled the Chancellor not to move forward with the land deal in Houston for a data center. According to the article, the two […]

DePinho Was Partially The Faculty’s Fault: The Danger of Conformity and Group Think By Leonard Zwelling https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-brain-science-of-conformity-1492722013 Robert Sapolsky’s piece in the Saturday, April 22, 2017 Wall Street Journal, goes a long way toward explaining group behavior that makes no sense. It appears that we humans have a need to fit in and will express

Why More MD Anderson Executives Need To Go: The Struggle For A New Direction By Leonard Zwelling By any measure, MD Anderson is in limbo. I believe the institution has been struggling for 15 years trying to reconcile some awful behavior on the part of its leaders with the core values of Discovery, Caring and

Artificial Intelligence To The Rescue: How Computers Will Bring On A Single Payer Healthcare System By Leonard Zwelling http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus-md In the April 3, 2017 issue of The New Yorker, Siddartha Mukherjee wrote an article called “The Algorithm Will See You Now.” As you can guess, it is about how the use of computers may soon

The MD Anderson Annual Report: A Confusing Document By Leonard Zwelling It arrived on little cat’s feet in our mailbox. It’s a white booklet with no picture on the front at all. There’s a big 75 in pastel hues on the cover indicating the age of the hospital and inside there are lists. There is

Changing Your Mind: A Thoughtful Strategy By Leonard Zwelling Decision-making is probably the single most important characteristic on which a leader is judged. While consistency of purpose is surely a positive aspect of a leader’s strategy, so is the much rarer trait of nimbleness. Can a leader change course when that change is beneficial and

The Cost of Costs: Increasing Revenue Streams Is Unlikely To Fill MD Anderson’s Financial Hole By Leonard Zwelling Every household has a budget. When that budget slips into the red, one of two strategies must be invoked. Either the revenue stream must be augmented or the costs contained. It is no different for MD Anderson.

Tactic Or Strategy: Missiles Into Syria, DePinho Out Of Office By Leonard Zwelling Any dramatic decision by a leader is immediately scrutinized for its meaning. This is certainly the case with President Trump’s latest foreign policy actions in which he sent 59 missiles into the Syrian air base from which a sarin gas attack on

What The Trump Family Could Learn From The MD Anderson Faculty By Leonard Zwelling While there are always exceptions to the rule, it is a reasonable axiom that experience counts in leadership and that ethical behavior derives from an internal sense of right and wrong. The team still being assembled in the White House is

What Admiral McRaven Could Learn From President Trump By Leonard Zwelling Readers of this blog know that I am no fan of Donald Trump. That being said, his decision to send cruise missiles into a Syrian air base from which raids were putatively launched that resulted in the use of Sarin gas on Syrian citizens