Pete McCanna serves as CEO of Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health, the largest nonprofit health system in Texas, and he brings with him decades of healthcare management and consulting experience.
Mr. McCanna took the helm of the 51-hospital organization in January 2022 after serving as president since September 2017.
Before joining Baylor Scott & White, he served as executive vice president and COO at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine. He also previously served as CFO of Albuquerque, N.M.-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services and CFO at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver.
Mr. McCanna told Becker's Hospital Review that he got an early sense of what it takes to lead a business from his first job, and despite his deep experience in healthcare, he looks to a different industry when reflecting on an example of what not to do. He shared these lessons, discussed agile management and revealed what accomplishment he wants to achieve before he retires.
Editor's note: This is a regular series of conversations with CEOs of the nation's health systems. Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What's an industry or business outside of healthcare that you think we could take notes from?
Pete McCanna: One reflection on an old industry is looking at the example — and it would be a negative example —of the auto industry of the 1970s. It was three big legacy companies — Ford, General Motors and Chrysler — and during a period of disruption, they were obsessed with what the others were doing, and the product improvements were only incremental every year when they brought new models out. And they were selling and promoting antiquated models that were gas guzzlers, they were big, they were low quality, and they were high cost. The companies' single-mindedness was around regulatory protection, maintaining their market share and profit levels, and one-upping each other, who have essentially the same model. And during this period, they were completely disrupted by innovative Japanese automakers who brought to our markets a whole new model that responded to customer needs in terms of higher gas efficiency, lower cost and higher quality. I think it's a very good lesson of how legacy industries can get very insular in their approach and miss that their industry is being disrupted. I thought that was an old industry model that serves as a cautionary tale.
And then new industries are really new service companies that have robust platforms and data insights so that they know their customer, they can personalize products to their customers, and their service offerings are scalable. I think we can learn a lot from newer contemporary companies that are based on data and customer platforms.
Q: What was your first job? How old were you? Biggest thing you learned?
PM: My first job I was a paperboy. I was 12 years old. I learned a lot about business being a paperboy. At that time, you did the billing, you did the collecting, you did the distribution. I think the most important lesson was if I served the customer well, the customer treated me well. So I made a lot of money on tips. If I put the paper exactly where they wanted it and I delivered it in the time window they wanted it, I did well on tips, and I learned a lot about the basics of business from doing it. I thought it was a fabulous experience.
Q: If you could go back in time 10 years, what would you tell yourself to start doing, or start learning about? What ended up being a bigger deal than it might have seemed at one point?
PM: If I could go back 10 years and start doing or start learning about something more than I did, it would have been agile management methods, which is a new way of management compared to the historical hierarchical approaches to management. [To be] agile is to be adaptable. It is notable for its speed. It's notable for how it empowers a broader set of professionals and employees. It's very collaborative. And it leaves a lot of room for creativity. So that speed, that creativity, that adaptability are hallmarks of agile management that are not present in historial hierarchical management. And I would have learned more about that method and applied it more extensively over the last 10 years knowing what I know now.
What ended up being a bigger deal than it might have seemed at one point is clearly artificial intelligence and its potential. Every bit of what we learned since the announcement of a workable generative AI model really points to another revolution in American business and global business. I think that's a far bigger deal than we could have ever anticipated 10 years ago.
Q: Picture this. It's the first day of your retirement. What, if anything, do you worry about regretting? What do you hope your legacy will be?
PM: Honestly, I don't care about my legacy. But what I really care about is that our leadership team is able to have the satisfaction and the celebration of winning. What I mean by winning is the achievement of our vision. Our vision is "empowering you to live well." What does that mean tangibly? It means three things that we are building that would tangibly achieve that vision, and I wouldn't want to retire without achieving that. The first piece is a frictionless, high-quality delivery of care that's customer obsessed in and out of the hospital, in every setting. The second is a digital-first experience through a multichannel expansive customer engagement platform. The third tangible piece of that vision are expanded product offerings, also known as a product ecosystem, of convenient health offerings. I wouldn't want to step into retirement without this team here at Baylor Scott & White truly achieving that vision. And we're on a journey to achieve it right now.