TV imitates life. The economy and the ills of the health care system set the scene for this season’s Gray’s Anatomy. In the first episode, we learn that financial difficulties have forced Mercy West from across town to merge with Seattle Grace, where Meredith, Christina, McDreamy, and assorted other characters work. ER meets West Side Story.
This past week’s episode, “I Saw What I Saw,” highlights what hard times can do to our relationships. It opens as docs of the two opposing gangs nervously await their turn to be questioned about an unnecessary death. Through a riveting series of interviews and Rashomon-like flashbacks that follow, we learn that even in the face of a mass emergency–a hotel fire with multiple traumas–the newly merged staff members continue to rumble. Every scene involves gossiping, back-stabbing, and jostling each other out of the way in order to get the “good” cases. Yet, somehow, no one takes responsibility for the woman who died.
In the last ten minutes, this being television, the mystery unravels, and we learn that a Mercy West intern was distracted by the sight of a man with an ax protruding from his chest and forgot to check the patient’s airway. Derek (McDreamy) questions whether it was really the intern’s “fault.”
“Maybe it’s not one doctor,” Derek suggests. “Maybe it’s too many doctors who don’t know each other and who don’t trust each other.”
The Seattle Grace/Mercy West merger crisis is not just happening on television.
Lost jobs, reduced paychecks, and the disorder caused by downsizing impacts our relationships as much as our bank accounts. Many of us are living these stories. The “bad guy” is often someone we don’t know–a higher-up who made a decision over which we have no control, a foreign invader from a different department or company or a consultant who’s encroaching on our territory–or we blame ourselves and walk around angry.
When people are laid off, staffs combined, or institutions overhauled to survive the digital future, insecurity and fear reverberate through the ecosystem–the network of consequential strangers who are affected by the changes. Steps have to be taken in order to adjust and rebalance, but policies and new practices won’t create change, people will.
Whether you find yourself there by intention or accident–in a hospital, an office, or a volunteer organization where a Jets vs. Sharks battle is taking place–beware of one shortcoming of consequential stranger relationships (see Chapter 6): We are more likely to gossip or even lie about people we don’t know well. The antidote is connection and conversation, but it’s not always easy to get there. You might need to create an “Influence map” of the network, as explained in Chapter Two:
- Fly above the fray, for a better view of the network–in this case the personnel of both hospitals, as well as service providers, suppliers, patients and families who are affected by what goes on there.
- Ideally, take in the view with other “stakeholders.” Their perspective might not be the same as yours, but try to grasp the idea that they’re looking at the same situation through different, but not necessarily “wrong,” eyes. It can help ease hositilities.
- Together, look at how people are linked. Where do alliances already exist? Where should new bridges be built? Who’s protecting their own little corner of the network? Who’s willing to forge new relationships? In life, as in the TV version, sometimes there’s a split right down the middle–the home team vs. the invaders. More often, alliances are subtle and complex.
The goal is to get the various players to be mindful of their connections and help them understand how much more can get done by reaching out, cooperating, and seeing beyond their own little fiefdoms. Otherwise–literally or metaphorically–lives will be lost in the rumble.
