On a warm summer morning in 2024, I (Sara) am biking towards a conference centre outside of Copenhagen to give a presentation and conduct a workshop about the future of healthcare, imagination and how we can tackle wicked problems. I am on my way to meet a group of leaders from a large Danish hospital. On the way, my phone rings. One of the hospital section directors is calling. She wants to inform me that there was an unpleasant incident involving some of her colleagues in one of the wards the day before. A patient, in the process of detoxification, had become highly aggressive and threatened the staff with a knife. Several of the leader's staff are shaken and upset by the violent incident and are afraid to go to work.

She does not want to cancel and prefers to go ahead. She insists the organization needs to focus on the long-term perspective as well as handling the immediate, short-term issues. As she said:

As the section director insists on holding this somewhat uncomfortable tension and paying attention to the long-term change, it also puts things into perspective for me. As much as I pioneer long-term thinking and the importance of focusing on the future, this severe matter affects me. I do not want to belittle their experiences.