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Last Thursday, July 9, I had the pleasure to converse with Laurie Markwart, a health administration university student at the University of Saskatchewan, who is presently spending her Summer working at North East Health District, Nipawin. We talked about the changes taking place in management and about leadership philosophies. Laurie asked if "among such philosophies there was a happy medium."

It is an absurdity trying to reconcile management philosophies which preach either the assembly line, or the study of mice, or the contingency approach. I told Laurie that there were not happy mediums, and that today's role of a leader is to be an architect, a teacher, a facilitator of changes. In our knowledge economy, where we are all customers of each other, within or out of our organization, we have no "happy medium" management approach beyond the commitment to satisfy the real customer's needs to feel serviceable, cooperative, competent and human.