1. What have you found most challenging as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise?

Too often healthcare organizations cry for help with changing reimbursement within 1 year or less, except they really don't want to change their culture as in "the more it changes, the more it stays the same" with unhealthy Board members to refusal to adapt and adopt new industry standards to move the healthcare organization from survive to thrive while balancing clinical decision making with fiscal fitness. All too often, from my Healthcare Senior Executive experience, especially with frontier and rural healthcare organizations and clinics, they don't or ultimately refuse to change in their cultural norms and their very survival is threatened except they don't want to accept rigorous honesty and reality checks that major changes must take place for future sustainability. If they are not willing to change and more or less putter along with a clinical director gone CEO then my best to them, they will continue to struggle and lose mid and high performers all the while chasing their tails trying to figure out the problem, when it's really a shift in adopting healthier core beliefs, cultural norms and communication to promote and progress to a satisfying culture, more engaging and enriching practitioner and patient/client/consumer experience, and truly do Value Based Care with more effective clinical outcomes for not only the clients but the staff as well.

Furthermore, cultural shifts from a culture of accepting sub-par clinical, operational and financial standards across the organization to meaningful, clinically relevant, trauma-informed, trauma-sensitive clinical, medical, operational, and financial high performance using Studer Group concepts, McKinsey's 7S Business model out of Harvard University and Just Culture to transform and lock-in a culture of high performance, productivity and clinical relevance from current and emerging healthcare trends impacting their business models. The best trifecta scholar-practitioner, manager-stewards and servant-leaders will be embraced in these types of more traditional environments to make them go from good to great to superior as best in class.

2. How did you become a CEO or executive of a large enterprise? Can you please briefly tell the story?

Was my goal and I pursued opportunities to stretch my knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) to achieve the ability of being a CEO to have direct reporting relationships to ensure the changes were made to cause a healthcare organization to thrive and not just survive.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I'm a servant to healthy habits. My routine preps me for the day. I do some variation with my routines because status quo frustrates me and when I have Leaned out all the inefficiencies I need a new challenge or angle to see a different dimensions on the how and why I am doing what I am doing as self-care, self-love, self-protection.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

Don't get out ahead of your team too far because they will think you're the enemy and try to shoot you as the proverb basically goes. That's true. Pacing my positive change agency with advancing a company to be best in class does take precision, time and crucial conversations.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Quint Studer's Hardwiring Excellence. We utilized the teachings and material to incorporate into our culture to create a culture of performance.

6. How do you build leadership capacity in a large enterprise?

Balancing clinical decision making with financial discipline, taking healthy risks with good ROI and that meet the trifecta always of meeting community, staff and client unmet needs through the key drivers of client diversification, revenue diversification and technology advancement, which never escape healthcare regardless if the company is a health and human service organization for individuals with ID/D and/or ASD, Community Behavioral Health System, Federally Qualified Health Center, Critical Access Hospital, PPS Hospital or a large health system from inpatient acute or sub-acute to outpatient care.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise so far?

Always look for the opportunities within threats and making strengths out of weaknesses as they are opposite sides of the same coin, in really leveraging SWOT analyses to really work for you. The ability to convert threats to opportunities is the mark of a great healthcare leader as threats or forces on the company never cease. Navigating the terrain and with the trifecta of proved experience, education and expertise is indispensable to weigh in the balance strategic objectives and organizational successes using the triple win of meeting community, staff and client unmet needs. Can't lose if you stay persistent and learn from mistakes and have a supportive Board of Directors and leadership team who are competent, credible and creative with driving innovation across all levels of the organization in creating a culture, as the expression goes, where all ideas are welcome and where managers grow and develop and become more effective. As we know in HR management, staff don't leave companies, they leave managers is number one reason for turnover of positions. Since there are not enough healthcare professionals of every credential and badge, retaining top talent by re-interviewing them to see what they need for the high and mid performers, and delivering on that need whether is equipment or the like, reduces criticisms, condemnations and negative critiques of the healthcare company and you have happier staff which translates to a better more satisfying patient experience. As the adage goes, you cannot transmit something you have not got.