Gus Malezis serves as Chief Executive Officer at Imprivata.
On October 10th, Gus will serve on the panel "Cyber and IT Security Today: The Best Approaches and Ideas" at Becker's Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place October 9-12, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Gus' session, click here.
Question: What is the No. 1 principle you uphold and practice to effectively lead a team?
Gus Malezis: To me, effectively leading a team requires a commitment to a series of First principles. These include the following:
(a) Promote cultural values of utmost professional and ethical behavior – passion, integrity, courage of conviction, teamwork, and community support
(b) Focus on customer success and creating customers for life – innovate for value
(c) Communicate clear, common goals and objectives – for corporate, team, and individual success
(d) Always be a leader who is visible and available – listen carefully, engage when asked, coach and develop leaders
These principles reflect who Imprivata is as a company and as a people, and how we operate with our people, our customers, our market, and our world.
Q: As a leader, how do you stay connected to the actual work that is being done – and not just by watching others execute, but by executing yourself? If so, how do you balance between leading and executing personally?
GM: As a leader of a healthcare technology company, it’s critical that I pay close attention to the innovation that’s going on within our walls. First, I view every aspect of the business as crucial to success and therefore each receives appropriate attention and engagement. Our operating principle is: “Knowledge and curiosity of both the job and the task at hand” – and that approach enables me to appropriately engage and assist when needed. This approach applies to both internal and external projects. For internal projects, we primarily use our regular meetings as a forum in which we openly review projects. At Imprivata, this part of the job actually comes very easily. We have truly exceptional people on our teams, working on clearly defined and communicated goals and focusing on solving real customer problems. They value the operating and cultural principles noted above and appreciate having regular review points with the teams. Our people generally execute independently, with incremental focus at the start of the project to ensure we have tight alignment on the goal/objectives for success, followed by regular status and update meetings. Externally, we’re focused on working with our customers, prospects, and partners. We execute regular customer activities that involve reviewing the relationship and communicating about current and future initiatives and projects. These engagements are regular and direct and involve meeting with the parties at their location, at various industry trade events, and on those occasions when we’re able to host them at Imprivata facilities. CEO and senior staff are always present at these engagements, thereby ensuring a strong direct connection with customers.
The job of a CEO is heavily weighted towards leading, guiding, and coaching – with a smaller proportion of time invested in personal execution. Most of the personal execution centers on customer and partner engagement. When these engagement opportunities emerge, the approach depends on the seniority and capability of the individual and/or the team involved. Senior staff might benefit from engagement that’s more supervisory, directional and periodic in nature, with a good deal of coaching. For developing or emerging staff, the engagement is more involved. We try to make this continuous, starting at the beginning of a project and proceeding through the development and delivery/finalization stages. In this mode, I’ll adjust my involvement (tapering up or down) relative to the level of complexity and how the teams are developing and scaling. The philosophy here is to enable the teams to learn-up, to develop their skills, and to take ownership and responsibility while developing their own path(s) towards the end-goal. While my mode is generally “roll-up-my-sleeves,” that is carefully balanced with a “trust-in-the team” attitude and taking a coaching role.
Q: What does healthcare need more of? Less of?
GM: From my perspective and the vantage point of Healthcare IT systems, solutions and services healthcare can benefit from a broad series of initiatives and investments, including the following:
- HIT solutions that are tailored to providers: Healthcare IT solutions that are interacting with and servicing providers should always be tailored for providers; this is often referred to as clinical workflows. Enabling this audience to easily and quickly access healthcare systems and patient data will allow for improved operational efficiencies including time recovery, which can then be invested in elevating the quality of patient care, improving the provider work environment, and reducing burnout.
- An integrated and simplified HIT stack: The complement of systems, hardware, software, on-premises, and cloud solutions – used in healthcare settings today and in the future – are amongst the most sophisticated, complex, diverse systems in any industry. The use of these systems can benefit from better integration and interoperability. This will elevate value and performance for both the provider and the patient while reducing IT ops costs and improving compliance and cybersecurity.
- Focus on cybersecurity: Cybersecurity in healthcare is a particularly unique challenge, due to the complexities of the HIT systems, and the diverse provider, general user, and patient communities. This is an area that requires incremental focus by the solutions provider community.