So, this isn't Heather. It's me, the husband. I have the extreme fortune to be one of the 66 successful candidates from Kaiser to attend the Harvard University Executive Leadership Program (ELP) for a total of 4 weeks, on site in Boston (two weeks now, two weeks in May), plus some additional study work in Portland. I'm here to continue my ongoing education (on the job and formal and informal) in my health care career. I'm here with my good friend Alex Lowenthal, plus about a dozen people I already knew from my work at Kaiser in the last 7 years. I'm posting to create a record for myself, to share with Heather what goes on here, and to avoid having to talk to my father or my mother-in-law too frequently. Dad and Nicki - this is for you to read, and then develop some questions to ask me beyond "how's it going, and what do you think"! Get going on your homework!
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Sunday, February 27th
Alex and I flew on the plane together from Portland to Boston. After arriving and greeting some folks, we decided to walk to Harvard Square, across the river. There's a foot of snow on the ground, and it was 27 (feels like minus 27). We walked around for an hour or so, got Alex a knit cap to cover his head, and then came back. We had a reception from 6 to 7, and then we and several of our new friends decided to explore the tunnels under the campus that allow people to move from building to building without being outside. We went to the gym / workout facilities and signed up so we can use the facilities, and then found our way to a dorm with a pool table and big screens to watch the Oscars on one screen and the Miami / New York NBA game on another. When we got back, I hooked up Skype and called Heather and kids and checked in on their day. We went back out to our dorm's common area and stayed for a couple of hours, watched the rest of the Oscars, and studied a little. I finally called it a night at 12:00am.
Monday, February 28th
And then we begin!
Great first day! Opening remarks from Dr. Jack Cochran, the leader of the Kaiser Permanente Federation (the physicians group), focused on the situation that Kaiser is facing in the United States health care debate. He characterized the leadership challenge as requiring the best from everyone, every day. As a physician-led, professionally managed organization, everyone in a leadership position has an accountability to perform to the very best of our abilities.
My notes:
- our competitive advantages at Kaiser that will make us successful: integration, advanced technology systems, and the ability to receive prospective payments (think HMO model)
- why are we better than everyone else: we keep score on everything, we are transparent with what we score and measure, and we are a learning organization
- the "new questions" we should be asking: how many of our patient's problems can we solve today, how can we create complete systems that support the patient, and what is the best way to optimally monitor a condition our patient may have or need or support with
Amy Edmondson, Chair of the ELP and one of the featured lecturers, provided an overview of the entire program and helped to frame the expectations we should be building for ourselves and our participation. The support from the faculty, facilities, and support team is tremendous! Very excited to be here!
Our first task after the opening orientation was to pull our study group together. I was randomly selected to be a study leader for week 1. Our group has 8 members, diverse backgrounds, including physician, health plan, and medical operations leaders. We discussed the case studies supporting the leadership displayed by John F. Kennedy and his teams for the Bay of Pigs situation and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Everyone agreed that we have a good group, and we had a good discussion.
We went back to the lecture hall and had a dynamic discussion, led by Amy, about the case studies and the impressions and outcomes we formed. All of the notes and materials are organized in 3 sections: Key Issues and Ideas, Impact on My Leadership Point of View, and Actions to Implement at Work.
I'll spare all the Key Issues and Ideas (they are lost without the case study to read), and share the other two notes I collect. For this initial discussion, my conclusions:
Impact on My Leadership
- we need to set up team to provide input, rather than rely on the leader for being the "decider"
- we need to insist on more options to review before making a choice based on one or two options; as leaders, we have to pull that out of our groups
- we need to get better at taking more time to analyze alternatives that have been provided by people other than ourselves
- we need to watch for and eliminate situations where advocay is being used instead of inquiry / problem solving
Actions to Implement at Work
- take an opportunity to read "The First 90 Days", a book recommended by Chris Otham, to help leaders make an appropriate impact in their first 90 days, or the first 90 days for an existing leader if they want to make an impact even if they are already on board (the leader of our insurance company operations for all of the areas outside of California). Update - we received a copy, courtesy of Chris, on Wednesday.
- must clearly set expectations of my direct reports and the vision of success for their teams
- complete the following steps in a cycle: Assess, Discuss, Plan, Act
After lunch, we went back to the lecture hall and spent the afternoon discussion on Perspectives on Leadership with Scott Snook, an instructor and graduate of West Point. We used a case study about Scandanavian Airlines (SAS), and then discussed the differences in leadership success between Jan Carlson, the 36 year-old head of SAS hired in the early 80's to turn the company around in the midst of the numerous pressures on the airline industry in the early 80's and Frank Borman, the CEO of Eastern Airlines. We watched some videos and discussed the numerous learnings and differences between the two men and the companies they ran.
We then discussed Leadership Styles and what that is made up of as far as components of leadership are concerned. The intersection of Self Awareness (who we are), Situational Awareness (what happens around us), and Self Regulation (our ability to apply the right skills to the right situation) define our leadership style. A good excercise in discussing these attributes led to the following:
Impact on My Leadership
- with a huge capital investment, we must maximize its use, leading to me wonder why we aren't using all of the Sunnyside Medical Center (our hospital in Portland) space we built but haven't opened
- to question if we have any messages concerning cost cutting that mirror the very poor way Frank Borman spoke to employees at Eastern about their challenges when they were facing bankruptcy. He blamed the employees.
Actions to Implement at Work
- we need to get better at creating the conditions to increase the likelihood for success, reduce the opportunities to fail, and do it in an authentic way to get the outcomes that we seek
- we should discuss how to build our "Little Red Book" - simple messages that outline our service and operational excellence program, and focus on fighting the competition, not fighting each other
- we should ask ourselves if we have a single minded focus like they did at SAS (to focus on the business traveler) so that most decisions can be made in the context of whether the outcome supports our focus, and if not, should be avoided or existing things eliminated to free up resources for our focus area
We had dinner and reception from 6pm to 8pm and then have time to study for the 3 case studies tomorrow. However, Alex and I also squeezed in a walk to Harvard Square, had a pint and an appetizer at one of the college bars, and met up with a couple of other folks - Mike Brady, the Kaiser Chief Technology Officer based in Oakland and someone becoming a good friend to both of us, and Thomas Risse, the Chief Financial Officer for the Hawaii Region.
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