ABSTRACT
Progressive clinical leadership in an era of postmodern management is based on the ability to relinquish obsolete thinking before such supposed “triedand-true” ideas become sacrosanct or mistaken for truths (Sherman & Schultz, 1998). Postmodern clinical leadership considers the complex interplay of various, diverse, and seemingly unrelated causal aspects over the more traditional modern approach of linear cause-and-effect relationships. Although this may seem an obvious and easy task for the intelligentsia of clinical leaders, it is often very difficult. In fact, many find that the practice of clinical leadership involves daily battling of illogical bureaucracies, coping with glacial timelines (or lags), constant evangelizing of one's perspective, fostering the systemic adoption of change as a value, and proffering of nonlinear, complex examinations of multiply causal business and clinical considerations. All this plays against a backdrop of perhaps years of preestablished, centrally organized, bureaucratic policies, clichés, and inertia that tend to maintain the often irrational status quo of an organization.
