It does not happen often, but sometimes during strategic planning, I have to interrupt the group and point out that they just made a hinge assumption. When people give me a perplexed look in response to this statement, I have to explain in greater detail.
Every day, we walk through doorways. In the process, we push open a door or close a door. We do not think about it. It is an unconscious act.
Yet every door opens or closes based on whether or not the hinge pin is in correct alignment with the door. The door can be a work of art or just something bought at a big box store. What ever the case, the door is useless if the hinge that connects it to the frame is not functional. In short, we assume that all doors have functional hinges.
In the world of strategic planning and in the translation of these plans into day-to-day operations, we often make hinge assumptions that may or may not work. For example, this past summer school districts across the country created plans to implement a hybrid model of teaching. Schools broke students into smaller groups and had them attend classes on different days. The goal was to reduce exposure and prevent community spread of COVID-19. If a student group got exposed, then the teacher and those particular students would quarantine for a set number of days before returning to the hybrid model.
The hinge assumption within this particular plan was that there would be adequate number of substitute teachers within a school district to work within this model. The reality was quite different. And many school districts had to abandon the hybrid model for all on-line education. The model was a good model, but the hinge assumption made it dysfunctional as more and more teachers and ultimately substitute teachers had to quarantine.
In the world of hospitals and healthcare, they also ran into a similar problem. They went with a plan that if nurses and doctors got exposed to COVID due to a variety of problems with PPE, etc., they also would quarantine for a set period of time before returning to work. Their assumption was that open spots in their schedules could be filled by other doctors within their facility and traveling nurses, i.e. RNs who travel from hospital to hospital and work for short periods of time. The hinge assumption was that there would always be an ample number of traveling nurses to meet their needs. In reality, nurses and then traveling nurses got COVID (mostly through community spread rather than work spread) and they had to quarantine due to this exposure. This created major operational problems within healthcare that are still a problem today.
As we move further and further into 2021, I encourage all of you to sit down with your team and your 2021 strategic plans and ask the uncomfortable but important question: Have we made any hinge assumptions? If so, then now is the time to make some changes before you encounter serious problems.
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