As I write this, some core functions across U.S. health and research agencies have come to a halt. Past administrations have temporarily throttled the work of agencies as they come in. This time it’s gone much farther.
Many people across the health and research communities are, very reasonably, nervous, scared, frustrated, confused, uncertain, panicked, and pissed off.
Even so, I want to propose something to every leader in health and science, established or aspiring, who feels like the air’s been knocked out of them:
Embrace this moment for the rare opportunity it presents.
Here’s what I mean:
I read a book a couple years ago that will forever change the way I think about adversity. It’s called The Gap and the Gain, and it’s by an entrepreneurial coach from Canada named Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist.
Their premise is that we ultimately have the power to decide how we respond to our circumstances, no matter how severely they impact us. We can respond based on one of two mindsets. They call these two mindsets the gap and the gain. They’re actually more than a mindset – they’re more like states we choose to embody.
We can be “in the gap,” or we can be “in the gain.”
When we’re in the gap, we operate from that desolate chasm between what our situation is and what we want it to be. Out there, on the horizon, is where we want to be, and we see the vast distance between here and there.
In the gap is only suffering. Maybe it’s pain of being harmed by somebody, grief that comes from loss, the anger of being wronged, the fear of what might come next. Any time we experience a setback, or even when reality just fails to meet our expectations, we’re primed to go into the gap.
That’s because we have little control over those initial emotions. We feel what we feel. But at some point, they argue, we get to make a choice. If we want to turn our situation around, we must move out of the gap and into the gain.
In the gap, we see how far we are from where we want to be.
In the gain, we do the opposite: we look back at where we started, and we see the distance we’ve already come.
I want to be clear about what Sullivan and Hardy propose here: Stepping into the gain doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t change objective reality. But it does something important: it changes the story we tell about our circumstances, allowing us to grow into a leader capable of creating something better from those circumstances.
Measuring backward, we can suddenly see those times in the past where we have been resourceful, where we learned, where we stretched, where we adapted to challenges and overcame obstacles and became stronger and more resilient and a better, more capable version of ourselves. It gives us the frame of reference needed to see opportunity in our present circumstances, knowing they’ll force us through another period of growth that brings us closer to our ideals. That’s being in the gain.
Michael Hyatt, the former CEO of publisher Thomas Nelson, writes in The Vision-Driven Leader: You can use adversity to “create limiting beliefs about what’s possible, or you can embrace one simple, liberating truth: whatever’s behind you, the best is yet to come.”
I urge you to accept the challenge. Be in the gain with this. Whether you’re Tania Cernuschi, who inspired the “1 dollar, 1 world” campaign to fill budget gaps that would be left by the U.S. withdrawal from WHO, or if you see this moment as an opportunity to push for additional reforms that would make the agency more effective. We are just at the beginning of a critical period for health and science, and we each get to decide how we’ll respond. Look for opportunities to grow and become even more effective in the long run. To make health and science better in the long run.
That’s what I intend to explore through this newsletter.
I’m going to seize the opportunity to step up and advance a positive vision for health and science. Starting with an Op-Ed I wrote for STAT last fall, I’ll continue sharing my thoughts on where systems intended to support the health sciences have been vulnerable or failing for a long time, and how we should rebuild them.
My views are shaped by more than 20 years of working behind the scenes with public health and scientific leaders from all over the world as well as by my unconventional personal background. I grew up in a global “end times” movement–something almost none of my colleagues know about me, but which lies at the root of my deep appreciation for the role that science plays in society. I’ll get into it, stay tuned.
I’ll also be hosting lively chats with people in a range of roles who are raising their own alarms and can offer solutions.
I’m calling this newsletter Building Deep because I’m inspired by this principle: To build a tall structure, you need to build a deep foundation.
Science has made our thriving possible. We cannot survive without it. But the foundation is cracking. How we respond will shape our futures for years to come.
A parting note: I write a lot of Op-Eds for major news media. Very, very few of them are in my own name. I’ve done them in collaboration with leaders in health, science, and business from around the world–people you know, some of them leading the foremost institutions and companies. I train their teams in Op-Ed writing and strategy, too.
Just as I’m starting to do more of my own opinion writing, I’m also offering training and coaching for others who want to refine, publish, and share their opinions in a way that creates real impact and advances their goals.
I’m starting to offer a lot of this for free, and if you want to work more deeply with me and my team, we can arrange that too.
If that interests you, you can find details of our next free training here.
If any of this resonates with you, I’d appreciate you subscribing and spreading the word.