Tag Archives: Leadership
The best of Michael Dowling: 8 timeless pieces of leadership advice
When it comes to offering leadership advice, Michael Dowling, president and CEO of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, has vast experience to draw from.
Mr. Dowling has led Northwell Health since 2002. Before that, he served as the health system’s executive vice president and COO. Prior roles include senior vice president at Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield and various roles in the New York State government, including director of Health, Education and Human Services and deputy secretary to the governor.
At the helm of Northwell Health, Mr. Dowling has guided the system through numerous accomplishments, including the expansion of its footprint across New York, the launch of a health plan that covers more than 100,000 people, a systemwide rebranding and the creation of an office dedicated to population health management.
Mr. Dowling’s leadership style is refreshingly candid with high integrity. A regular contributor to Becker’s, Mr. Dowling has shared innumerable pieces of valuable advice with our audience. Here, we’ve collected some of the best.
Cartoon – Where have I gone wrong?
If you have built castles in the air
Why Organizations Fail to Solve Their Greatest People Challenges
I’ve written previously concerning why people and organizations struggle to change. When we miss opportunities to do so — we fail to unlock an enormous amount of potential.
There is an enduring theme that must be acknowledged (and added) to that conversation. Organizations are made up of human beings. As human beings, we often struggle to let go of old product frameworks and notions concerning our customers. When organizations face persistent people problems such as low engagement, depleted morale or rising turnover — they also struggle to make progress — and there is a clear reason why this is the case. It’s often not about recognizing a shift.
Let me elaborate.
If there is a single, worrisome story that I observe it is the following:
Company finds great thing. Company begins to rest on its laurels concerning great thing. Company neglects great thing. Company eventually loses great thing. Company begins to decline.
Sadly we are not talking about customers or products — this story is about people. (Please know that I do not view people as “things”.)
Lamenting declining people-centric metrics will not solve people-centric problems. Identifying sub-groups of contributors in the gravest danger of jumping ship — is not the answer. Quantifying the high cost of turnover, is not the answer. (See a great discussion addressing employee engagement here.)
The answer lies in action.
The Best Chief
6 things keeping supply chain leaders up at night
East Lansing-based Michigan State University partnered with the APICS Supply Chain Council to identify critical issues on the minds of supply chain leaders.
To compile the report, the groups interviewed leaders from more than 50 firms across the globe and asked them: “What keeps you awake at night?”
Here are the six most common issues on supply chain leaders’ minds, as identified in the report.
1. Capacity or resource availability. Many companies expecting market growth cited managing capacity issues as a main priority. They often wanted to avoid outsourcing and identified challenges to maximize their facilities’ capacity by replacing old equipment, among other activities.
“We’ve implemented a supply chain for a point in time,” one leader said, according to the report. “However, a supply chain is a living, breathing thing, and one needs to think about it as dynamic and impermanent. Is there a point where the supply chain becomes inappropriate for where we’re going, and we need to build a different kind of supply chain?”
2. Talent. Participating companies also described the struggle to find and keep good supply chain talent.
“The competition for talent is much higher [than it’s ever been],” said another participant in the report. “You go out to the market, and it’s one of those ironies. Right now, you put a job description out there, and you hear about 8 percent unemployment. However, I can’t find an industrial engineer worth his salt — you know, someone who can really think about strategy and think about [profit and loss statements] and drive change.”
3. Complexity. Some firms faced issues with their products becoming more complex and found it difficult to manage the increasing amount of stock keeping units.
“We’ve started building different types of products, completely new types of products. Whether it’s low or high volume, it creates another level of complexity,” said one leader in an interview.
4. Threats or challenges. A lot of supply chain leaders are worried about managing supply chain risk, and many mentioned the importance of continuity planning.
“I worry about supply risks in general, whether it’s from natural disasters or things like … a troubled supplier or a variety of issues with the whole supply chain risk piece,” one participant told researchers. “Partly that’s because that stuff is hard to control. You can try to proactively mitigate the downsides, but that’s just hard to control.”
5. Compliance. Participants cited numerous compliance issues like product regulation, trade controls and continually changing regulations, according to the report. Many leaders said they were struggling to keep up with both the high volume of regulations and how much they constantly changed.
“[The changes] are really causing us to spend a lot of money and a lot of our time. It is sucking up a huge amount of our information technology dollars and resources to be able to be compliant with those regulations,” said one study participant.
6. Cost or purchasing issues. While pressure to rein in costs is a focus for companies in every industry, it’s a top priority for healthcare and drug companies amid the shift toward value-based care, according to the report.
“Everything in healthcare is submitted through insurance for reimbursement,” one leader said. “The government won’t pay you any more to treat your patients, so you better get [the payout from] your suppliers. Well, we’re the supplier they’re coming after.”
To view the complete report, click here.
Simplicity
Root Out Bias from Your Decision-Making Process
We’ve all experienced the disappointment of an important decision not going our way. The feeling is far worse when you feel that the decision was somehow “rigged” against you — that you never had a chance, that your input wasn’t given its fair due, or that only some of the data was considered. You can accept a fair decision that goes the other way, but a rigged decision feels much worse. And the ill will festers.
Poor decision making happens in our business, civic, and personal lives. But often we are perpetrators, participating in or making rigged decisions, even if we may not realize it.
Rigged decisions are all too frequent, and while they come in many forms, the most virulent feature the following steps:
- Make the decision based on some or all of the following: ego, ideology, experience, fear, or consultation with like-minded advisers.
- Find data that justifies your decision.
- Announce and execute the decision, and defend it to the minimum degree necessary.
- Take credit if the decision proves beneficial, and assign blame if not.
5 steps to get your hospital’s MACRA strategy off and running
Anand Krishnaswamy, vice president of Kaufman Hall’s strategic and financial planning practice, makes the case that MACRA readiness should be a priority not only for physicians, but also for hospital boards and executives.
The first performance year of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act is now underway, which will determine Medicare Part B payments in 2019. Although 2017 is designed to be a transition year, providers who dive in now have the opportunity to maximize financial rewards and set themselves up for success down the line.
“The biggest underlying issue is the lack of awareness and engagement by health systems and physician groups,” Mr. Krishnaswamy tells Becker’s. Though many providers are distracted by the uncertainty on Capitol Hill, MACRA and value-based care are likely here to stay — and it’s time for hospitals to craft a strategy.
Mr. Krishnaswamy suggested providers take the following five steps to prepare for MACRA.
HENRY KOTULA 