Something to Back Away From…

Any designer worth his/her salt knows that the clearest path to great design is to provide a big, bodacious, terrifying idea and then slowly back away from that, in partnership with your client. You also know better than to present a design that you don’t truly believe in yourself. Is it a political trick? Sure, but in the end, you get to innovative solutions by deliberately pushing your clients out of their comfort zone. That tension is necessary to drive innovation and start the conversation outside of preconceived restraints.

I have a theory about Obama’s Healthcare Reform and the surrounding firestorm. The guy is obviously no slouch. And he’s innovative. I have a bet that the last few months of Town Hall shout downs, viral videos, Fox News, Sarah Palin hysteria are all part of pushing us all out of our comfort zone, where now, as a society, we will start to come together to define and support the plan that he had in his mind all along.

From Huffington Post

As they say, in the absence of true leadership, true leaders emerge. I believe this is a test. That Obama has deliberately stepped aside from this process to see who would emerge as willing to work and willing to engage at a constructive level (kudos to Olympia Snow – R, for being one of the few).  It’s a risky move, but the potential payoff this early in a presidency could be huge moving forward together.

In the end, we will ALL have compromised but we will ALL have had our say. And we WILL end up with a healthcare plan that will cover every American…public option or not. It WILL be better. And it WILL get done. Just like he said.

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