On Being Right vs. Being Effective

He was right.

The surgery chair had reviewed the literature, convened thought leaders, modeled the reimbursement, and mapped the learning curve. He presented a detailed, evidence-based argument to the hospital board for why purchasing a da Vinci robot was a mistake.

Everything he said was true. The board voted with the CEO anyway.

Over the following years, his assessment proved entirely accurate. The urologist they had recruited to use the robot left. Maintenance costs were crushing. The expected marketing halo was minimal. The juice was not worth the squeeze.

But the rift he created in that boardroom — by being undeniably right in the most public way possible — poisoned the physician-administration relationship for years.

This is the difference between being right and being effective.

Being right means your analysis is accurate. Being effective means your accurate analysis actually changes something. These are two entirely separate skills. In clinical medicine, they are often the same thing. In executive leadership, they frequently are not.

The most dangerous version of a physician leader is one who is consistently right and consistently alienating. The analysis is impeccable. The delivery ensures it doesn't matter.

I have made this mistake. Most physician executives I respect have made this mistake at least once. The ones who grew from it learned to separate the quality of the idea from the strategy of its delivery.

Where have you been right in a way that ultimately cost you more than being wrong would have?