I recently attended the annual forum of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which is probably the leading health improvement organization in the world. The forum has grown from under 100 attendees in 1989 to almost 6,000 this year—half of whom were there for the first time—with now thousands more virtual participants. It has become a cliché that invokes my gag reflex when participants say, “Oh, I go to get my batteries charged.” And I always wonder, on hearing this, Why were they drained?

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