The Teams of Leaders (Tol) Concept

Abstract

The revolution in computer, information, and telecommunication sciences facilitated revolution in “the way we do business.” Despite the wealth of new actionable information and actionable knowledge that this revolution created in healthcare, it was not enough to break the barriers of thought, bureaucracy, and politics. Thus, although the knowledge and professional expertise that are required to avert the threatening collapse of global healthcare are readily available, they remain locked in isolated pools separated by historical barriers, increasing intra- and interdisciplinary specialization, and by stiflingly narrow perception of healthcare complexity. Based on maximum integration of CT, IT, IM, KM, and multidimensional human expertise, the concept of “Teams of Leaders” (ToL) has been employed with rapidly growing success. Implementation of ToL leads to the development of “actionable understanding” that converts highly capable but isolated islands of creative power, into unified mission and task oriented “swarms” endowed with a vastly expanded, collective expertise and operational capabilities. With its roots deep in the advanced technologies of IT/IM/KM, Teams of Leaders transcend bureaucracies and politics, and the collaborative outputs generated through ToL-based operations may constitute one of the pivotal elements of the desperately needed healthcare restructuring.