Summary Of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point

Words: 833
Pages: 4

Broadly speaking, Americans like donating to charitable causes. But although general giving has been trending upwards, donations to nonprofits in the healthcare sector have been decreasing for the past few years. Although we’re still waiting for the numbers to come in for 2015, but if the past is any indicator, charitable giving in the healthcare system could be down again.

However, this downward movement doesn’t have to continue. To turn it around, we should be approaching change from a simpler angle. Instead of re-focusing the message, it’s time to try re-thinking the team.

Assembling a Team

It’s no secret that Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point played a huge role in our fundraising operations when I was at the Florida Hospital Foundation. In the book, Gladwell argues that it is often the smallest changes that have the greatest impacts. And while the average reader is keen to connect his hypotheses to sociology, criminology, and education; it can work in other fields as
…show more content…
Thomas Coon perfectly illustrates this role. While most orthopedic surgeons have a long list of patient procedures they conduct, Dr. Coon is an exception— he only conducts knee surgery. In recent years, his focus has been only on knee replacements. But when he arrived at St. Helena Hospital in 2009, the rural California hospital was not doing knee replacement surgery of any kind. Furthermore, it had no funds available to secure the equipment and technology necessary to accomplish his goals. However, he systematically went about teaching the community how his services could position the small community hospital as a West Coast magnet for knee surgery. Within less than a year, over $2 million was raised from the community and the technology firm MAKO to install surgical robotics for Dr Coon. In the year that followed, Dr Coon and the surgeon colleagues that he recruited to join him were conducting over a thousand knee replacement cases on patients from across the west