Anthony Romeo, MD, became chief of orthopedics for Philadelphia-based Rothman Orthopaedic Institute's New York division earlier this year after spending nearly 25 years practicing orthopedics in Chicago.
As the head of Rothman's New York division, Dr. Romeo is responsible for cultivating a relationship with New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, the practice's New York health system affiliate and growing the organization's presence in the state.
Here are Dr. Romeo's three key elements of building a successful business.
1. If you're going to start a business, you have to have direction and a clear vision of where you want to go. That is your compass and dictates all of your decisions. The leaders of your organization and all those who work with you must agree to the vision. It begins as a dream, then becomes a goal and then becomes reality. Having a vision will guide the decisions that culminate in your business.
2. You have to have strong leadership. The leader of your business must be a person you trust, and a person that has integrity. This person must talk the talk and walk the walk, so the other people in the organization are willing to give 100 percent on their behalf, because they know the leader is doing the same thing. You have to have a person in the leadership position that will bring the company forward.
3. It's clever to have new technology, a great business model or a unique way of doing things, but relationships equal results. You have to have the ability to develop the relationships with people who are key to success in your business. That may be your customers, partners or people you affiliate with as you grow.
In our situation, we have an affiliation with Northwell Health, which is the largest employer in the state of New York and includes more than 100 orthopedic surgeons. We affiliated with them because we developed a relationship with their CEO and administrators that was built on similar principles and incentives. Strong relationships make a difference. There are so many key decisions made in business based on the fact that the person making the decision agrees with or finds uniformity with the other person in the relationship. It doesn't always make sense financially to begin, but if it ends up making sense financially in the end, people call the leader a visionary.
Passion is also important, and we all have passion for something, but it's not easy to execute on passion. You won't accomplish your goals without a vision, leadership and relationships. I try to work on this every day within our organization and share these ideas with my colleagues to make sure we're all on the same page.
Every day I think about these things: How can I make people see the vision? How can I be a better leader? And what relationships do I need to work on today? I think that will be the secret sauce that will make the organization successful. It won't be easy, but people will be amazed at what we accomplish.