As a leader of a Canadian health care organization, you understand the importance of having a clear strategic direction that allows you to deliver quality care to your patients and communities, educate future health professionals, or create and maintain policies and procedures to protect the public. You've collaborated with your teams, analyzed trends, and set evidence-informed priorities to guide your decision making. You feel confident that you're steering your organization in the right direction.

But then the political winds change. Suddenly, the priorities you've carefully established seem misaligned with the new focus coming from your provincial capital or Ottawa. Projects you've invested in get stalled or discontinued. Funding shifts toward initiatives that, while flashy, don't address the most pressing needs of patients, students, or practictioners.  

The troubling reality is that health care and political leaders are often dramatically misaligned on priorities:

When we polle...

As a health care leader, you're probably rolling your eyes at yet another article about organizational change. Between managing clinical excellence, navigating regulatory requirements, and keeping the lights on, who has time to think about furniture arrangements and office layouts? I get it. Whether you're leading a hospital, running a regulatory college, or directing a professional association, your plate isn't just full - it's overflowing.

But here's the thing: environmental design might be one of the most underutilized tools in your leadership toolkit. And if you're wondering why that matters when you're dealing with staffing shortages and budget constraints, stick with me for the next few minutes.

Why This Is Harder Than It Looks

The challenges you're facing aren't small:

• Clinical spaces are often designed for efficiency and patient care, not relationship building - and changing them requires navigating complex approval processes and regulatory requirements
• Professional...

In this video from our Reimagining Health Care Leadership event, Nikki Martin, DE&I Consultant and Inclusive Leadership Trainer and one of our strategic planning colleagues at OnePagePlans shares her journey as a person of color, highlighting her interracial upbringing and the impact of her parents' ‘revolutionary’ marriage.

She discusses the challenges of growing up biracial, feeling marginalized, and the struggle to find her identity. Nikki’s turning point came in 2020 during the lockdown, when she co-founded the Black Wellness Cooperative (BWC) with other black fitness professionals. The BWC provided a supportive community, leading to her realization of the importance of self-care and the permission to be exceptional.

She emphasizes the need for authentic leadership and advocating for spaces where individuals can be their full selves and lead with vulnerability and bravery.

As a health care leader, you're likely hearing about artificial intelligence (AI) constantly. Your clinicians, staff, or faculty probably share articles about its potential to transform their work – some with excitement, others with extreme trepidation. Your board might be asking about AI strategy while your IT team warns about infrastructure gaps. And somewhere in between, you're trying to chart a course that serves your patients, your public, or your students while supporting your internal team and maintaining financial sustainability.

For a technology that is supposed to make things easier, the conversation around AI seems to be incredibly complex and overwhelming.

At our Reimagining Health Care Leadership event, we polled the audience on the statement, “Artificial intelligence will be positive for health care overall.” The results were not as conclusive as many of our other poll questions:

• Strong Agreement: 9.1%
• Agreement: 45.5%
• Neutral: 24.2%
• Disagreement: 12.1%
• Strong Di...

As a health care leader, you know the weight of responsibility that comes with guiding organizations through complex challenges while supporting your colleagues' well-being. Whether you're leading a teaching hospital, running a regulatory college, or directing a professional association, you're likely feeling the tension between maintaining operational excellence and creating space for authentic dialogue about well-being.

The pressures of health care leadership can make deep, meaningful conversations feel like something that you have neither the time nor the headspace for. But what if I told you that the quality of your conversations could be the key to both organizational success and your team’s well-being?

The Leadership Challenge: Why Authentic Dialogue is Hard in Health Care

The obstacles to authentic dialogue in health care settings are real and significant. 

Here's what I've observed while working with health care leaders across Canada:

• Time constraints create a default...

In this video from our Reimagining Health Care Leadership event, Marie-France LeBlanc, CEO of the North End Community Health Centre, discusses the transformation of a Travelodge motel into the Overlook, a residence for 60 chronically homeless individuals battling mental health and addiction issues.

NECHC's approach emphasizes housing as a foundation for health, offering wraparound services, community, and dignity. Marie-France also discusses a police incident at the Overlook that underscored the lack of value placed on such communities.

She advocates for housing as a health intervention essential for individual and societal health and calls for systemic change to prioritize housing as a basic human right.

If you're leading a health focused organization right now, you might be feeling a bit like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day" – living the same challenges over and over. (It’s a great movie if you haven’t seen it!) As someone who works with health care leaders across Canada, I see both the frustration and the opportunity this creates. While we're investing billions in system improvements, we keep encountering familiar hurdles in surprisingly familiar ways.

At Reimagining Health Care Leadership, we polled our audience on the statement, “We know enough about ‘what went wrong’ in our health care system that we will not repeat past mistakes.” The results were quite conclusive, with 79.4 % not agreeing. (44.1% in disagreement and 35.3% in strong disagreement.)

Let's be honest: it's tough to watch your teams navigate challenges that feel eerily familiar to those you faced during past reforms, public health crises, and system changes. Whether it's wait time initiatives, primary care reforms, re...

As a health care leader, you're probably reading this between back-to-back meetings, maybe during a quick coffee break or late at night when you finally have a moment to think strategically. I get it. Leading teams of current health care professionals or educating the professionals of the future isn't just complex - it's a daily high-wire act of balancing urgent operational demands with strategic thinking.

When it comes to making strategic decisions collaboratively, you're facing a unique set of challenges. Your team members likely include highly educated professionals with deep expertise in their fields. Whether you're leading a teaching hospital, a regulatory college, or a professional association, your people are trained to think critically, challenge assumptions, and advocate forcefully for their positions. That's exactly what makes them excellent at their jobs - and sometimes what makes collaborative decision-making feel like herding cats.

Why is this so challenging in health ca...

Creating lasting change in health care by addressing anti-Black racism through new leadership approaches in medical education and competencies.

In this video from our Reimagining Health Care Leadership event, Dr. OmiSoore H. Dryden, a professor and researcher at Dalhousie University, discusses the challenges of confronting anti-Black racism and white supremacy in academic and professional settings.

Dr. Dryden shares personal stories to illustrate the pervasive nature of these issues, including being the only Black person at decision-making tables and experiencing microaggressions such as being asked to prioritize race over gender. She emphasizes the importance of understanding structural racism and the need for leaders committed to anti-racism to address these issues within their institutions.

If you're leading a cross-functional team of health care professionals, you likely already know this story. You present a critical challenge facing your organization, and the room falls silent. Heads nod in agreement—yes, this needs to be addressed. Then comes the question: "How do we solve it?" Suddenly, the unity fractures. Different groups, each with valuable perspectives and experience, propose conflicting solutions. The consensus that a problem exists dissolves into a maze of misaligned approaches.

At our Reimagining Health Care Leadership event, we polled the audience on the statement, “There is consensus between different health care professions regarding solutions.” The results showed that the majority of respondents (68.6%) disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Why does this happen? Each professional group brings:

• Unique training and educational background
• Different approaches to risk assessment
• Varying perspectives on resource allocation
• Distinct professional cultures and ...