How we as decision-makers get stuck in our ways

Let’s say you are in a leadership position in (pick any field). You work your way up to management. You learn the ropes and get good at it. You develop a reputation as a good community partner. You join a local club and service organizations and are recognized for your good work.

Later, (some years in), it becomes routine, comfortable, and maybe a little boring.

Then someone tells you about a successful program and approach to poverty or addiction. You attend a workshop and use the ideas to improve the outcomes at your organization. Great, you’re in—it works!

This is a familiar story, a success story. Unhappily, this is often where it fades and becomes routine.

Here’s the thing: Poverty, like addiction (think of the opioid epidemic), hits almost every sector: education (K–12), social services, healthcare, mental healthcare, addiction services, law enforcement, corrections, faith, housing, employment.

People in every disciplinary silo struggle with their clients/patients/employees who suffer from these obstacles. They each use their standard best practices, with varying degrees of success. But both of these problems are cradle-to-grave, and those who suffer from them fall in and out of their efforts to recover. Our communities lack a comprehensive approach or knowledge base to deal with the issues.

Leaders who find an approach or program that works apply concepts that help people into recovery and health, but their success is confined to their organization. From your clients’ point of view, your organization is a bright spot in their lives, but the broader engine of addiction and poverty rolls on.

Both of these maladies exist on a continuum that may start early in a family’s life and extend through the years,following its victims through the progression and along a time-worn trajectory.

Well-meaning and successful professionals from all sectors do great work in their silos, but they could be doing so much more. They need a common language about addiction and poverty based on science and best practices. They need to create a continuum of care, practices, and programs that cover prevention, education, early intervention, treatment, after care, housing, and employment.

You, with your reputation, can help build this structure, this continuum, but it means operating above the silos. Learn more about this by attending a Bridges Out of Poverty workshop.

For more about silos, read The Silo Effect by Gillian Tett.

About the Author: Philip DeVol

Phil DeVol is an international consultant who has been working with aha! Process since 1997. He used aha! Process concepts to make institutional changes at the addiction treatment center where he was the executive director for 19 years. During this time he also co-wrote Bridges Out of Poverty with Ruby Payne and Terie Dreussi-Smith. His book Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-by-World is being used to engage people in poverty in the work of building communities where everyone can live well. It worked so well that DeVol used it as a basis for a prison reentry model called Getting Ahead while Getting Out. He works with community leaders to help them move quickly from an attraction to application of Bridges concepts. Getting Ahead and Bridges are being used in hundreds of communities in the U.S., as well as a number of sites in Canada, Australia, Ireland, Scotland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. His books have been translated into Spanish, Slovak, and Czech.