This has been a hard piece for me to write. A few weeks ago I had a skirmish with vestibular neuronitis, one of those viruses that still evades medical control. Of particular interest is the treatment for a disease that was bad enough to put me in hospital for a couple of days and prevented me working very well for some time after that. In line with a previous blog by Michelle, the medical staff applied a couple of immediate treatments to control the symptoms experienced when the disease was at its most acute.

Following that, the treatment was to do nothing. This was something outside of my control and outside of medical control. If the symptoms didn't resolve themselves over a few weeks, then there may have been further work required.

So we went from immediate treatment for acute symptoms, to doing nothing unless an ongoing issue became apparent, and only at that point instituting a long-term treatment plan if required. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones whose symptoms resolved themselves without any further work.

In my work, I have often seen times when we jump in too quickly with actions to resolve problems that really could have resolved themselves if given time. More recently in my new role, I have been doing some of this myself - one of the differences between consultancy and being in-house is that it is difficult to withdraw yourself from the day to day action focus of the in-house environment.

Sometimes after settling the immediate, visible and major symptoms, we need to sit back and see if the situation will evolve and resolve itself rather than trying to exercise a control which we often don't have. It's amazing how many times that advice has been ignored in my working career!

As an added bonus, the testing I went through as a result of this experience uncovered an issue that had occurred some time ago and was completely unrelated to the vestibular neuronitis. This hidden issue can now be addressed because the medical staff undertook extensive tests and didn't just focus in on what they thought was the disease to be treated at the time.

The more things like this happen in life, the more convinced I become that our models for leadership, business and management need to be based on living organisms (even viruses!) and not on the "machine-based" and mechanistic models we tend to use that focus on rules, policies and efficiencies.

I'm well now, thanks to the help of a couple of strangers at Rockdale Bizzo's Club and the associated Yum Cha Restaurant, a couple of friends and the medical staff at St George Hospital in Sydney.