Suzy Welch's 10-10-10 Process Can Help Guide Important Health Care and Caregiving Decisions

Around 2003, when Mom exhibited memory loss but hadn’t been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I wish that my family would have had access to Suzy Welch’s book, “10-10-10: 10 Minutes, 10 Months, 10 Years – A Life-Transforming Idea.”  My gut instinct in 2003 was to jump in, take control and solve the problem; instead, our family kept hitting heads because we each took a short-term view that varied by individual.  And I personally went through a lot of emotional, mental and physical turmoil in trying to be a “good daughter” through providing help for my mom that wasn’t focused on what she needed while trying to keep our family together (and also juggling a high-pressure job and taking graduate courses).

In reading this book, I found that Welch’s strategy can help readers move past their initial gut reaction so that they can base their decisions on their own values and what they want their own lives to really look like (as opposed to making a split decision in the heat of the moment). “While we can handle many types of social interactions with highly evolved aptitude… our minds are not nearly as adept at making decisions with multiple variables and time frames...” Welch wrote, adding that rationality is undermined by stress caused by factors such as time pressure, peer pressure, lack of information and information overload.  The 10-10-10 system provides a good way to tap into what a personal strategic planning process that looks at the ramifications of your decisions and allows you to look at what you want out of your life.

So how does the 10-10-10 process work? Here’s one of the examples from the book, which also happens to closely mirror my experience (albeit without Alzheimer’s). A woman named Lynne planned to start a new public relations firm. However, a week before she was supposed to travel internationally to meet with her first major client, her parents fell ill. The parents called and asked Lynne to cancel her trip and come to be with them in another state, even though neither parent’s life was at stake. Lynne’s initial instinct told her to travel to be with her parents, but she decided to use the 10-10-10 process to analyze the situation in which she found herself.

-          Using the 10-minute timeframe, Lynne believed that if she decided to visit her parents, she would lower the guilt she would feel about leaving them when they requested her help. However, Lynne worried about the impression she would give to her first major client and the ramifications for their future work.

-          In looking at the 10-month view, Lynne believed that her parents would be healthy again and back into their routine; however, she believed that if she cancelled the international trip, her firm would be struggling because she hadn’t built the relationship with the client.