It isn’t as world-altering as the Reverend Martin Luther King’s, but I do have a dream. My dream is to make a good kind of impact on our country and the military. My dream more specifically involves VA hospitals and clinics.
People can say (and do actually say), “There is no way to fix the VA. You can’t possibly think that you would ever even be in a position to make that happen, much less be successful with it!” The barrage of such comments have caused me a moment of pause and reflection to ascertain whether my dream is perhaps too lofty and ultimately unrealistic and unachievable…but only a moment. Who created the Department of Veterans Affairs? People did. Who runs it? People do. Who can improve things? People can. My dream is not too lofty or unrealistic, and people make it achievable.
I have struggled in my mind, partially due to the naysayers (I’ll admit it), how and where would I even begin? In the world of electronics, where I lived for many years, when I wanted to fix something that was broken, I would troubleshoot. The same questions that I asked are applicable to the VA:
-What is it supposed to do?
-What is it doing (or not doing) right now?
-Am I missing anything to make it work properly?
-If I need a part, what is it and where is the best place to get it from?
-Is the problem software or hardware related?
-Do I need to involve other qualified/certified/licensed people to help me fix it?
-Do the users need training on how to use it?
It sounds quite silly, but I literally had something come to me in a dream, like a vision. In my dream, I was at work, in a quarry about how to know where to begin fixing a process at work and how to figure out what exactly needed fixing. (How silly is it that I was dreaming about work process improvements?? Well, if you knew me, it wouldn’t seem so far-fetched!) An individual I did not recognize walked up to me and said, “What happens to things if you do not change them?” I said, “Well, they stay the way they are.” The individual then said, “Exactly. So, when you consider each thing, keeping it the way it is, and you feel calm and don’t feel concerned or panicked, don’t change it and move on to considering the next thing.” I’m telling you, that is genius.
Am I going to fix the VA? I don’t know. Am I going to try? Yes. After all, it is my dream.
