What if the biggest barrier to better health in your community isn't a lack of resources, but a set of assumptions you didn't even know you were making?

In this conversation, co-hosts Ed O'Malley and Susan Kang are joined by returning guest Kenny Wilk of the University of Kansas Health System. Together, they unpack how hidden assumptions — about who should be involved, what needs to be done, and how fast progress can happen — quietly shape how people in authority think and act. Wilk shares candid stories from his time in the Kansas Legislature and offers a fresh lens on exercising leadership. This conversation will challenge you to surface the assumptions driving your own work before they become "premeditated resentments."

Highlights

• The three most common assumptions the 30,000 make when tackling complex health challenges, and why each one can derail progress.
• The critical difference between adaptive and technical challenges.
• Kenny Wilk's hard-won insight from the Kansas Legislature: don't ask people to change their minds; give them new information so they can make a new decision.
• How sharing information to ‘slow things down’ can help a group go farther, together.
• The "sidewalk story" is a simple metaphor that reframes how we see ‘work’ being done.
• The danger of bringing people together only to present a baked solution, and what to do instead.

Chapters

0:47 —Leading Health Review, Preview and Big Picture.
3:02 — Chapter Eight insight: "Closing the Health Gap Is a Leadership Challenge Because Our Existing Assumptions Fail Us"
4:55 — The three common assumptions the 30,000 make
6:28 — The quick fix trap
8:37 — Technical vs. adaptive: a broken bone example
11:14 — Kenny Wilk joins the conversation
12:18 — The water debate: a lesson from Kenny's first year in the legislature
14:52 — Defining "assumption" — and why we're all starting from different places
15:56 — You have to slow down to go far
16:22 — Getting up on the balcony to examine assumptions
17:52 — New decisions, not mind changes
19:13 — How authority can create space for assumption-surfacing
21:05 — Why leaders jump straight to solutions
22:59 — From kitchen table to campaign trail to governing — three different phases
24:27 — Technical vs. adaptive challenges in practice
27:13 — What authorities must do differently on adaptive challenges
30:46 — The sidewalk story: seeing the invisible work of adaptive leadership
33:50 — Takeaways and preview of the next episode

Resources Mentioned

• Kansas Health Rankings
• University of Kansas Health System
• Kansas Leadership Center (KLC)

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