Jun 8, 2009
The Value of Agility
by Jerry Jaker
Many people have described MIPH as “The Little Company That Could”. Some of our long time staff bristle at that, preferring the moniker, “The Middle Sized Company That DOES”. Regardless, what we’ve experienced is, there is great value in being smaller than a large bureaucracy, and that value is in being agile. That’s “agile”, according to Merriam Webster Dictionary, as in “resourceful and creative; able to move with quick and easy grace”.
It’s not like it’s our aspiration to become a large company one day – that if you water us and tend to us like a plant, we one day too will grow up to become like the University, the Government or a large corporation. On the contrary, its our belief that we get hired specifically because we are NOT those entities. Being smaller permits us to be more flexible, resourceful, and creative, with comparatively less entanglement in the trappings of bureaucracy. That is often the characteristic our clients want from us. And it permits our larger clients to be who they are and do their needed service, while getting the best of MIPH’s creativity and agility in our programming.
There is an informal history of MIPH that you can request from us at no charge, entitled Some Place Special: A True Story of the Minnesota Institute of Public Health. It's a tongue in cheek but genuine story of the lessons we’ve learned about what we do well, how we know what we don’t know, and the wisdom to tell the difference. Should bring you a smile, and may be worth 15 minutes of your time, to get to know us a bit better, quirks and all. Just email me at jjaker@miph.org and I’ll send you one.
So, we may have the best of both worlds here: as an unbranded Affiliate of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of MN with separate location, Board, budget, and client base, we can move quickly and with agility, while if need be can access -- at fair market value -- the strength and expertise of a large, successful Health Company. MIPH has been a proud Affiliate for ten of our thirty-eight years, and so far, so good!
It’s not like it’s our aspiration to become a large company one day – that if you water us and tend to us like a plant, we one day too will grow up to become like the University, the Government or a large corporation. On the contrary, its our belief that we get hired specifically because we are NOT those entities. Being smaller permits us to be more flexible, resourceful, and creative, with comparatively less entanglement in the trappings of bureaucracy. That is often the characteristic our clients want from us. And it permits our larger clients to be who they are and do their needed service, while getting the best of MIPH’s creativity and agility in our programming.
There is an informal history of MIPH that you can request from us at no charge, entitled Some Place Special: A True Story of the Minnesota Institute of Public Health. It's a tongue in cheek but genuine story of the lessons we’ve learned about what we do well, how we know what we don’t know, and the wisdom to tell the difference. Should bring you a smile, and may be worth 15 minutes of your time, to get to know us a bit better, quirks and all. Just email me at jjaker@miph.org and I’ll send you one.
So, we may have the best of both worlds here: as an unbranded Affiliate of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of MN with separate location, Board, budget, and client base, we can move quickly and with agility, while if need be can access -- at fair market value -- the strength and expertise of a large, successful Health Company. MIPH has been a proud Affiliate for ten of our thirty-eight years, and so far, so good!
Posted on June 8, 2009 - 7:47am by Jerry Jaker
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