Were it was that easy.  Like Groundhog Day, only without Bill Murray.  Do overs.  Remember how with each do over he got further than the prior time, and nobody was the wiser.  Some things are predictable—like when you’re watching an action movie and there’s a chase scene that ends up by the water next to a bunch of speedboats.  Before the actors are aware of it, you know that two of the speedboats will have their keys left in them, and that the protagonist and the antagonist will both happen to be expert boat drivers.

Other things don’t always turn out the way you expect.  Like when you’re working in another city and you discover that you missed The NEWSHOUR with Jim Lehrer because it comes on at 6:00 p.m. instead of at 7:00.  In the space time warp continuum that won’t amount to a hill of beans.  Other things will.

All organizations do forecasts.  Forecasts are not foreknowledge.  You can’t forecast the success of your EHR; you can merely put a plan in place and hope it works.  The purpose of a forecast is not to predict the future, it’s to define the target the organization wants to hit and to develop tactical plan to hit the target.  Forecasts however, have nothing to do with an organization’s ability to see the future, simply their ability to arrive at the forecasted outcome within the selected time horizon.

What if there was a reliable way to know now how a future event will impact your continuum?  Like knowing which horse will win before you bet?  On a scale of one to three, what is your organization’s comfort level of the future outcome of a major event, the EHR?  Is it:

• Prescient, having foreknowledge,
• Parviscient, having a little knowledge
• Nescient, lacking knowledge

What happens if your EHR doesn’t turn out the way you require?  Do you request a Mulligan?  Do you give it the Old Yeller treatment?  You can try multiplying by negative one, but I don’t think that’s going to work this time.  Clearly, having a negative outcome two years out is ruinous—at least for some of the people.

What can you do today to improve your foreknowledge of the outcome?  If you can improve your knowledge of the outcome, you may be able to change your tactics enough to positively affect the outcome.