Cartoon – In Lieu of a Raise or Promotion
Tag Archives: Talent Management
Cartoon – The Real Question
The evolving CFO role, in quotes
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/the-evolving-cfo-role-in-quotes.html
As healthcare evolves, so too are the roles of hospital and health system CFOs.
The CFO role is becoming more strategic as organizations face additional financial pressures and navigate the shift to value-based care. CFOs today generally play a greater role in operations and are seen as business partners by CEOs.
Four panelists provided thoughts on this evolving role during a session at the Becker’s Hospital Review 6th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable in Chicago. Here are quotes from the panelists.
Jim McNey, senior vice president and CFO of North Kansas City (Mo.) Hospital, addressed the development of Centrus Health, a physician-led clinically integrated network including City, Mo.-area physicians across NKCH, the University of Kansas Health System, Merriam, Mo.-based Shawnee Mission Health and Kansas City Metropolitan Physician Association. In these types of scenarios, he said the CFO almost acts like a “salesman.”
“You have to sell these ideas to people who may not be receptive. … You’ve got to go out. You’ve got to get educated. You’ve got to stay current on what’s going on. …You can’t ever quit learning.”
Britt Tabor, executive vice president and CFO/treasurer of Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Erlanger Health System, noted the move away from the traditional CFO role.
“What I’ve seen … is there’s [now] dramatic input of the CFO from a strategic and operation standpoint. I’m meeting with two or three physicians a week talking about the business model of the health system.
“As pressures have come, we’ve hired a lot of doctors. I do think physicians are getting the idea that we’ve got to balance the quality, the patient care and the business scene,” he added.
Angela Lalas, senior vice president of finance for Loma Linda (Calif.) University Health, talked about the skills necessary for today’s CFO.
“We’ve [previously] looked at finance professionals as number crunchers and more focused on historical. Now it’s more communication and interpersonal skills [are the] top needs for finance professionals to become impactful and effective.”
Brad Fetters, COO of Prism Healthcare Partners, a healthcare consulting firm, described the finance discipline as “becoming more sophisticated.”
“What I mean by that is the leadership used to be kind of the scorecard — they were in the room to make sure the numbers jived up — then somebody else was working with physicians and influencing. What you’re seeing now … in other industries … [is] when CEOs abruptly leave … they promote the CFO because they’ve gotten more strategic, there [are]softer skills around influencing and changing behaviors. That’s what you’ve got to do with this information so those successful CFOs are in the room kind of influencing everybody.”
Courage: Critical Leadership Characteristic
Our new year is bringing ample challenges to the healthcare industry, from strategies to deal with the Affordable Care Act, to the realities that deficit reduction will require additional cuts in Medicare reimbursement to providers.
Congress is still in denial about the biggest problem with deficit spending – Medicare, but healthcare executives should not draw any hope that they will somehow escape the pain.
Cuts in payments inevitably will spark conflict on a national basis, as various healthcare groups bicker over how to divide the smaller financial pie. These “who wins and who loses financial conflicts” will almost certainly “trickle down” to local relationships between hospitals, physicians, and other providers. When money is involved, there will always be tension, and tension will lead to conflict.
This tension, and the conflicts that surface, will be the second biggest contributor to CEO turnover during the next five years, after the Baby Boomer retirement effect. Today, annual hospital CEO turnover is about 17 percent. I predict that will escalate to more than 20 percent in that five-year timeframe.
As I considered these probable developments, I began to rethink my beliefs regarding the competencies and ideal characteristics of the senior leaders who run hospitals.
As I thought about this over the holidays, I realized that the leadership characteristic that kept moving to the top of my list was courage. Yes, communication and relationship management, industry knowledge and business skills are all critical, as is integrity, but I think courage is very important.
These next several years will produce unprecedented change. This change, in addition to concerns about finances, will produce enormous unrest as we redefine how healthcare must be delivered. Hard choices, very hard choices, will be the norm.
These tumultuous times will require leaders who are smart, who possess a deep understanding of healthcare operations who are proven performers, and who are excellent communicators. But more importantly, these men and women must have the courage, the courage to promote innovation and change. They must possess the courage to do the right thing when, career-wise, it would be easier to take the easy way out.
Stop Hiring for Cultural Fit and Start Hiring For Cultural Fitness
Culture is the glue that brings a team or organization together. But if the glue is too sticky it can make them stuck instead of making them stay together. Cultural fit can become a limitation rather than a strength.
Which takes me to the topic of hiring the right talent for your organization:
Do you hire people that are a cultural fit?
Or do you hire to improve your culture fitness?
Culture is something dynamic
The notion that people can or can’t fit into a specific culture is, to at least some extent, at odds with the fluid teams organizational structure. Cultural fit as an operating requirement not only forces new employees to adapt but, also hinders your culture’s ability to be influenced by outsiders. It limits its ability to grow.
When interviewing people, I do care about cultural fit, but I also look for culture disruption. As I like to tell candidates: “I want you to be influenced by our culture but, most importantly, I want you to challenge and influence our culture too.”
Cultural dynamics involve an ongoing struggle between old and new elements. If you only stick to what fits your existing culture, your organization will get stuck. Yet, if you only care about the new shining object, you might be throwing away core elements of your culture just for the sake of change.
Before practicing any competitive sports, we need to prepare our body. We stretch our muscles and warm up, not just to avoid injuries, but also to make sure we can play to our highest potential.
The same is true when confronting change. Just like with sports, you need to stretch your organizational culture. It needs to prepare, to warm up, to be ready to adapt to an ever-changing world.
Hire for cultural fitness
When evaluating candidates, choose those that will make your team grow. Stretch your culture by hiring people who will make it more adaptive, experimental and resilient.
Here are some considerations when hiring for cultural fitness:
- Amplify your team’s perspective:Hire people with diverse backgrounds, skills and personalities to avoid biases and so you are drinking something more inspiring and refreshing than your own corporate Kool-Aid.
- Encourage teams to dissent:Promote differences and tensions, not just affection. Dissent is not comfortable for everyone, but is the only way to avoid group thinking and stretch your team beyond its comfort zone.
- Continuously challenge your culture: Hire opinionated people, hire outsiders or hire from outside your industry. Bring someone with the right talent, but goes against your culture. Shaking things up from time to time will keep your culture in good shape. As I wrote here, misfits are the best option for energizing a team.
- Promote diversity of thinking not just demographic diversity: Train your team to embrace difference of opinions. The more heterogeneous the members, the more interesting and productive the team. Being more open to people from different walks of life will provide fresh eyes and make the team smarter. It will help solve for the “demographic” diversity needed too but with a purpose.
Diversity takes training
The real problem behind diversity is that teams are not trained to deal with differences of opinions. Managers and team members alike have been trained to think and behave the same: the corporate way. People are expected to accommodate rather than to challenge the status quo.
One of the key issues of bringing “diverse” people to a team is that they see things differently. They challenge things through their fresh eyes. And not every organization and manager can swallow that.
Here are some points to help embrace diversity to improve cultural fitness.
- Diverse means different not inferior: Conversations around diversity need to shift from quota to curiosity. Instead of thinking how we can provide a certain demographic with opportunity — a hierarchical approach — we need to ask what we can we learn from people that are different from us. Diversity is about becoming better at interacting with those who can provide fresh eyes and challenge the way we operate.
- Quotas limit rather than provide opportunities: Establishing percentages to have representation from different sectors might come from a place of good intention. But, in most cases, it misses the point — the need to create a balanced team. I’ve seen many companies that use quotas, simply to check the box and appear to be a good corporate citizen. But they have little commitment to embracing diversity of thinking.
- People are more than a demographic: Being part of a minority (age, gender, sex preference, etc.) is just one aspect of any person. Our identity is more complex than our religious or sexual preferences. Those do play an important role. But who we are is a composite of multiple factors: our origin, experience and dreams. Organizations need to encourage their teams to see people beyond their demographics.
- Encourage transparent conversations:Trust is the basis in which all emotional transactions are done. And is one of the most powerful elements to keep culture alive. Conversations around diversity are still too controlled. Organizations need to discuss these things more openly. Help people realize we are all different, not just those who don’t belong to our tribe. Creating experiences where people can share their journey or their personal hobbies and passions can definitely spark curiosity and show how that everyone can learn from each other. Creating a culture of transparency can help reposition diversity as learning.
Why cultural fitness matters to me
Everyone can learn (almost) anything. And anyone can adapt to any corporate culture. It can be hard or tough but smart people always adapt.
What I care the most, is how a new hire can help make our organization smarter. This is my checklist of what I look for:
- They are smart and talented
- They possess the ability to adapt to change
- They are genuine and have a voice of their own
- They are open to learn
- They are generous rather than selfish
If they score well in the above, then they will definitely help our culture stretch, regardless if they are – today — the right cultural fit.
One last thing. I always like to ask candidates: “What are you bringing to the table that is unique?” Basically, I want to know not just what that person is good at but how they will help make our organization smarter. I want people who will build and strengthen our cultural fitness.
A Looming Leadership Talent Crisis: Can you solve the Leadership gap?
More Memorial Hermann execs to depart
Three more executives plan to leave Memorial Hermann Health System, Houston’s largest nonprofit health care system, according to multiple reports.
Last week, Arizona-based Banner Health announced it hired Dennis Laraway as CFO, effective Sept. 29. Laraway has been CFO of Memorial Hermann since 2011.
Following the announcement, Modern Healthcare, Healthcare Finance and others reported that two other executives plan to step down. Memorial Hermann spokeswoman Alex Loessin confirmed to the publications that Christopher Lloyd, CEO of Memorial Hermann’s physician network, and Jim Garman, chief human resources officer, also plan to leave. That’s in addition to Craig Cordola, president of Memorial Hermann Health System’s west region, whose departure was announced earlier this month.
The reports did not specify when Lloyd and Garman will step down or what their next positions will be. Cordola, however, will become senior vice president of St. Louis-based Ascension Healthcare and ministry market executive of Ascension Texas, effective Sept. 1. Memorial Hermann is evaluating a successor for Cordola internally, Loessin previously told the Houston Business Journal.
“Career moves by top leaders to other signature health systems speak volumes about the caliber of talent we have at Memorial Hermann,” CEO Chuck Stokessaid in a statement to the publications last week. “While we will miss the contributions of these individuals to the organization, I’m incredibly proud of all they accomplished, and I wish each of them the very best. We have a strong management team at Memorial Hermann and excellent support from our board.”
Stokes was named CEO for Memorial Hermann in early July. He had served in an interim capacity for a few weeks after Dr. Benjamin Chu abruptly stepped down from the position June 19.
True Sign of a Great Leader > How Well They Protect PTO
To me there is one way to know if a leader is worth their salt. It is something I don’t recall seeing in leadership books, white papers, or in training sessions. To me the simplest way to see if a leader is doing their job is to ask team members one question:
“Did you use all your PTO last year?”
When a team member tells me they did not, my antennae go up. My follow up, of course, is “well, why not?”. Answers I get:
- I didn’t have time to take it
- I didn’t want to leave my team short-handed during that data conversion
- I forgot I even had PTO
- I have so much PTO I could never use it all
- I’d rather use our great benefit that allows me to “cash in” my PTO
Here is the deal. If you are a leader and you are OK with any of these reasons, you are not doing your job. I’ll take it a step further and say you should not be a leader. Quit. Be an incredible individual contributor. But you need to let go of your dreams of being a leader. Let that go. It’s over.
I’m emphatic about this.
Cartoon – Recruiting for Value
What is a blind reference?
Some people naively think that the only reference checking that is done is with the references given by a candidate or a head hunter. Executives recruiting for talent will peruse your CV looking for places where you might have common acquaintances. They will also look for places that some of their friends and professional contacts might have insights. When these links are found which is most of the time for an experienced recruiter or hiring executive, you are about to become the victim of a blind reference.
A ‘blind reference’ is an investigation into your past by a hiring executive that you know nothing about.
I do not put a lot of faith in references provided by a candidate. I also disregard reference letters. No one is going to intentionally give a reference that is going to provide a bad report on a candidate. The same is true of letters. No one is going to write a letter that states the candidate is bad. On occasion, I will write a reference later for someone as a personal favor but I aways counsel them that reference letters in my opinion are a total waste of time. The only time I pay any attention to a reference letter is if I know the author.
Because of political correctness and the cold legal realities associated with references these days, the best you are going to get from formal references in most cases is that the candidate was hired on one date and departed on another date. The most you are likely to learn is that the candidate actually did work for the firm you are contacting for the stated period of time. They will rarely tell you anything more because references are subjective by nature in most cases. Subjective references that cause a candidate to be ruled out of a search can become a liability for the person that gave the reference. This is one of the reasons that blind reference checking has grown in my opinion.
If I get a call on a candidate being evaluated by another firm by someone I do not know, I refer the call to HR where I know what they are going to be told. Even if the reference call comes from a friend, I know the candidate and I know them to be bad, instead of giving a reference, I will refer my friend to HR where they will get the standard, canned response. The hiring manager always gets the message. If a friend encounters me refusing to give a reference, they understand the communication.
The more frequent call that I get is from a decision maker that is checking references that are not on the candidate’s list. These are the calls that are dangerous for candidates because they are blind to the candidate; hence a blind reference call. The candidate will never know in most cases they were vetted through a blind source. This is one of the many reasons why it is so important to keep up your networking and to not burn bridges unnecessarily. Of course the blind reference is not necessarily a bad thing. Under the right conditions, it can propel you to the front of the line. I received a blind reference call on a candidate I happened to be considering at the same time. I told the blind reference caller that my reference is simple, “If you do not hire her, I will.” I had worked with this candidate before and she is outstanding. She was going to end up with a gig regardless of how the reference checking worked out in this case.
HENRY KOTULA 