The "Living Like a Leader" series provides a platform for some of the brightest executives in the healthcare industry to share how they manage their energy, team and time to be successful.
For each "Living Like a Leader" interview, executives are asked a series of questions about their daily routine. In each interview, several quotes stand out. Below are a dozen that stand out from:
Scripps Health CEO Chris Van Gorder
"Healthcare is always going through a lot of change, and sometimes employees, managers and even physicians, think we are making those changes because somebody in administration decided it's the right thing to do. The reality is, we're reacting to what's changing in the marketplace or what we believe will be coming in the marketplace. If we don't adjust fast enough, then it will negatively affect our organization and employees."
Keck Medicine CEO Tom Jackiewicz
"I realized over time that being successful as a CEO is to be able to work very quickly and transition quickly from issue to issue."
HealthPartners CEO Andrea Walsh
"I think gratitude and focusing on the little things is really important for leaders. From my vantage point, it's important to focus on things that need to be fixed and where you want to head, and it's important to be appreciative of the things that are going right. We have to find the right balance between those two."
CHI Franciscan CEO Ketul Patel
"There's a piece of advice I received from a board chairman when I started my career: To live your life like you're riding an elevator. He told me if you want to be a successful executive, you must live your life in an elevator, so you are connecting at every level of the organization."
OSF HealthCare Children's Service Line CEO Dr. Divya Joshi
"Time is a very precious resource. Time enables or disables communication between people, and we all know that leadership is all about communication. The day's schedule has to accommodate the freedom to enable interpersonal communication."
Vidant Health Senior Vice President-Nurse Executive Dr. Linda
"There aren't really typical days when you're a clinical leader in a 974-bed hospital. There's really no such thing as typical."
WVU Hospitals and WVU Health System CEO Albert Wright
"I think visibility is important, but I think you have to be visible in a way that you're comfortable with. So, I do two things. I do skip-a-level meetings every week, which is when I'll go and I'll meet with the direct report of one of my direct reports at their place of work."
Adventist Health Southern California Regional President Andrew Jahn
"I'm a firm believer that as leaders, there's certain work that we need to be in the driver's seat conducting. We can't delegate all of it."
Tenet's Northern California CMO Dr. Gabrielle
"The needs of patients don't really fit into an eight-hour day, and the responsibility we have as leaders doesn't either. Leadership is largely about communication, and it doesn't fit neatly into a workday, especially in a patient care environment."
Methodist Hospital CNO Jane McCurly
"I do snack rounds at least once a month, where I take some goodies out, visit a floor and just talk to people. I think I'm highly visible and engaged with my frontline team because I recognize their importance to the organization."
University of Rochester Associate CIO Robert Evangelista
"Since the services I support are across academia, research and clinical lines, something that's a little different for me is that I must manage the priorities of the services within those different areas. So, I have to weigh a lot of those issues daily. Additionally, there are very different styles of management between research, clinical and academia, and you have to change not only how you interact with people but also how you think about different solutions."
Adventist Health Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Hoda Asmar
"I am an early bird, which means I am usually up by 5 a.m. I enjoy that first hour or so of the day, using it to anchor myself in the 'why' of my work, drink a few cups of coffee, read national and world news and plan my day."