Dartblog

Bill Moyers interviewed President Kim for a segment on PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal airing this weekend, and I must say, I was thoroughly impressed with President Kim’s answers. You can view the entire interview here.

The discussion centered around what makes a good health care system, a topic on which Dr. Kim sounds eminently sensible. But in the course of his answers on health care, Dr. Kim made a number of telling statements relating to his leadership style and his aspirations for Dartmouth. I was particularly pleased with the following remark, in which Dr. Kim explains the importance of methodical measurement of progress in achieving major goals.

DR. JIM YONG KIM: Well, I’ve noticed over the years that when it comes to our most cherished social goals, not only do we tolerate poor execution, sometimes we celebrate poor execution. Sometimes it’s part of the culture. You know, these folks are trying to solve this terrible problem. They can’t keep their books straight.

They really don’t know what they’re getting. They don’t measure anything. But they’re on the right side, so that’s okay. I think we’re in a different time.

That is the best explanation of Dartmouth’s current predicament I have seen in a while. Among Dartmouth’s bloated bureaucracy, poor execution is “part of the culture.” The bureaucrats work hard individually, and are good people, “on the right side,” but the system “[doesn’t] measure anything.” It never takes stock of itself to say, “what the heck is going on here?”

If President Kim is brave enough to bring his insistence on careful, honest measurement of progress to Dartmouth, where the statistics collected during the Wright era were always disingenuous and sometimes absurd, then Dartmouth’s future looks bright.