In the fields of leadership, healthcare and entrepreneurship these three words (Availability, Affordability and Accessibility) are of great importance. It is not enough for a person or thing to be available in the market place, he (it) has to be affordable and accessible too. Without affordability, availability profits nothing and without availability, affordability profits nothing. Without availability and affordability there is no accessibility.
In healthcare, any of these could be a major problem, especially to the poor. We have already argued that healthcare for the poor for the most part is poor healthcare. Sometimes the poor have poor health because they have access only to poor healthcare. At other times the poor are poor because they have poor health and poor healthcare, so are either unemployed, poorly employed or grossly underemployed whichever suits your fancy.
The relationship between poverty, poor health and poor healthcare have been amply demonstrated in literature.
Who waits a year to see a doctor and pays him a thousand dollars if there are in fact other doctors you could see within a few days for a couple hundred dollars? Who waits for a year to see a doctor for free if he can readily afford to pay a thousand dollars to see him today? The poor always make trade offs that the rich wouldn’t worry about. So poverty and poor health tend to be in a vicious cycle because of the inability of the poor to afford what they want.
To get some great leaders to speak in a conference or an event could be very expensive. Any or all the three issues under discussion could be a problem. To honor an invitation, (s)he has to be available, affordable and accessible. The problem is that meeting these three conditions in one person at a given time could be unpredictable. The time of the year and the individual’s itinerary may get in the way of access assuming that affordability is not an issue.
A leader who is available may not be affordable and the one who is accessible may not be available and the one who is available and somewhat accessible may not be affordable. How do you navigate these issues given the tight budgets of this present economic situation with many organizations? What trade offs are you willing to make and yet achieve the purpose for which you want to reach or invite this leader? What knowledge, insight, empowerment or strategies do you stand to trade off if you settle for someone who you can readily afford?
Effective leaders are accessible leaders. Accessible leaders are not just available but they don’t build ‘walls’ around themselves. They can be reached as need arises and they are responsive to the people. It is not difficult to differentiate an inaccessible leader from an accessible one. Even then, some leaders are actively accessible while others are passively accessible. While the actively accessible ones reach out to their team and connect with the members, the passively accessible ones maintain some kind of open door policy where members can reach out to them with issues, questions or concerns.
Although passively accessible leadership is better than inaccessible leadership, actively accessible leadership wins the vote every time. Passive leadership misses lots of opportunities to know what’s going on and be able to make inputs before it becomes a crises situation because most employees or proteges would not take advantage of the open door policy.
Every leader needs to be effective and that demands connecting and communicating with your team members, especially those who would ordinarily not come to you. You may be surprised where you would get the greatest ideas on how to move your organization to the next level. A time came in one of our churches that we had a problem. This problem defied the rank and file of leadership until it was brought to the open at a church meeting. A lady who was not taken very seriously was the one that suggested the way out of the impasse to the amazement of everyone. Had it not been brought to the open or had she not spoken up, she would have robbed the church of her God given idea. Leaders glean ideas from followers to become even better leaders. To do that, the leader has to be available, and accessible at all times.
Who wants to work for a leader he cannot talk to? Nobody deserves a snob of a leader who has all the answers all the time and who is always right, even when he is wrong on an issue he knows nothing about. Even Kings get ideas from their subjects on issues. A prophet in the Bible prophesied against a king and one of the overzealous false prophets smote him on the cheek and asked ‘which way did the spirit of God pass me to speak to you?’. The king ordered food of affliction and prison terms for the true prophet until when he came back from the war…did he come back victorious? The last time I checked he didn’t come back. Some advice or idea from an otherwise insignificant fellow could be prophetic, you ignore it to your peril.
One of the things that I like about my profession is that pharmacists are available, affordable and accessible….much more accessible to the community than pastors, lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, name them. So when you come to the healthcare marketplace, you can pick up your phone and call any pharmacist with questions. You can work up to him and you can stop him on the road and ask questions. There is no ‘do you have insurance?’ Or ‘Call my tech and book appointment’ or ‘have you bought a registration card?’. How many hours do some of us wait to speak to our pastor for 3 minutes?
Back in the day pharmacists used to work behind some cubicles and only stuck out their hands to pass pills but nowadays we are community leaders, proactively getting involved and getting results. Some of us are involved in other community programs like chamber of commerce, local school management board, church board and so on.
So I ask you today, are you available as a ……….(fill in the gap). Are you affordable? Are you accessible? Do people have to follow long prompts on the phone before they could leave a message or even speak to someone? Impact is easy when you understand the place of availability, affordability and accessibility in your calling or office. Creating unnecessary barriers water down your leadership effectiveness and undermine organizational efficiency. Building walls make a leader ineffective and irrelevant. Those 3 A’s are keys to successful leadership, which proactively builds bridges and readily extends hands for fellowship.
Mezie Okolo is a leadership analyst @ www.mezieokolo.com