In Health-care’s domino effect: Turning challenges into building blocks, I wrote that crises in health care behave like falling dominoes, one tipping the next, revealing fragility everywhere. The dominoes are still falling.
But collapse is only one story. The deeper story lives underground, in the quiet places where resilience begins.
If we want health care to stop failing in predictable patterns, we must look beneath the surface to the conditions that allow organizations, people or systems to grow in the first place.
And sometimes the clearest reminder comes from something as ordinary as a pot of flowers.
Bend down and look at a planter. You notice colour. Shape. Height. Each bloom is distinct, just like every nurse, physician, porter, social worker, administrator, family member and patient who shapes the care ecosystem.
Above the soil, everything looks separate.
But lift the plant from its container and a different truth appears: the roots are intertwined, interdependent, quietly connected, sustaining one another without performance or permission.
In this small ecosystem lies one of leadership’s most overlooked truths: What sustains life is almost never visible.
The real strength of a health-care organization, especially one as strained and emotionally heavy as ours, does not come from dashboards, policies or structures. It comes from the invisible networks of:
- trust
- belonging
- shared purpose
- psychological safety
- and the dignity we extend to one another.
These are the roots of transformation. Without them, the most polished strategy is just a stem without nourishment, upright for a moment, wilting soon after.
Leaders often focus on what they can measure. But what matters most is seldom measurable. Vitality is not compliance. Structure is not spirit. And management is not the same as nourishment.
What keeps systems alive is consciousness: the human spirit of curiosity, empathy and courage that moves quietly through people when they feel valued and seen.
When leaders default to control rather than connection, the roots dry up, even if the branches look orderly. A dying plant can look symmetrical. A dying system can look organized. Both are illusions.
Reanimating health care requires more tending, not more managing. It requires leaders who cultivate the soil with:
- honest conversations that are not performative
- boardrooms that make space for bedside voices
- decisions that prioritize care over hierarchy
- leadership that grows trust, not territory.
The planter reminds us of something essential: What appears separate above ground is connected below it. And what keeps life going is often what we fail to tend.
The question for every leader, every team, every system is no longer: How full does the container look?
The real question is: Are you nourishing what keeps it alive?
The flowers are waiting. So is the health system we hope to transform.
