The CEO Becomes Enamored with Smart Beds
The CEO came back from a conference of other hospital CEOs with an idea.
Every bed in the hospital would become a smart bed.
This was a multi-million dollar decision. It was made without input from the nursing staff who would need to learn the technology. Without input from the medical staff who would need to know its capabilities. Without an ROI calculation. Without a defined metric that would improve as a result of this expenditure.
The stated rationale involved improving HCAHPS scores. There was no concrete plan for how the beds would accomplish that, or how the effect would be measured if they did.
The pattern is familiar once you have seen it: a leader encounters a new technology in a high-status peer environment, becomes excited, and arrives home with conviction. The social proof of other CEOs doing it is enough. The analysis comes later — if at all — and it comes in service of a decision that has already been made.
Technology evaluation that works backwards from enthusiasm to justification is not evaluation. It is rationalization.
I have seen the same dynamic in operating rooms, boardrooms, and startup pitch decks. The energy is real. The excitement is genuine. And the discipline of asking 'what problem does this solve, and how will we know if it is working' gets treated as an obstacle rather than a prerequisite.
The smart beds may have helped. I genuinely do not know. That is exactly the problem.
What is the most expensive technology decision you have witnessed that skipped the problem-definition step?