Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to “Spread Love in Organizations”, a podcast for purpose-driven healthcare leaders, striving to make life better around the world by leading their teams with genuine care, servant leadership, and love.
I am Naji, your host, joined today by Jeff French a resilient, collaborative, and influential global leader who leverages deep expertise on digital and information technology, customer experience management, and brings broad business accountability experience in international sales, marketing, manufacturing, and finance in both the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries. Jeff has held multiple regional and global leadership roles, digitally transforming organizations, re-engineering and standardizing business processes, establishing and embedding next-generation systems and capabilities, all in pursuit of building better customer experiences and driving real value generation. Jeff is currently Senior Director at DT Consulting, a specialist strategy consulting organization supporting the pharmaceutical industry leadership in modernizing their organizations across commercial, medical, and R&D functions. Most recently, Jeff was the Chief Digital Officer at ViiV Healthcare and focused on building next-generation channels and services that leverage bold innovation and digital technology to deliver exceptional and unifying customer experiences, as well as valiant digital health innovations in the HIV therapy area. Prior to ViiV, Jeff worked at Biogen, Lilly, and also Rolls-Royce Aerospace.
Jeff, It is so great to see you again and have you with me today!
Jeff French: Thanks, Naji. Great to be here and appreciate the opportunity.
Naji Gehchan: Can you first share with us your personal story? What led you to healthcare, leading large transformations and digital teams and becoming a senior executive in health industry today?
Jeff French: Yeah, sure. Um, it’s been a, it’s been an exciting adventure. Um, one that was, a lot of people say is a bit unusual, uh, because what, where I started was in finance. Um, and coming right out of university straight into the aerospace and the finance capacity, um, and really focus some, my energy a lot around, uh, making sure I understood how the business worked.
Um, that’s the beauty of finance. You get to learn a lot of different things, uh, from, you know, manufacturing to, uh, you know, the, the HR people, administration, sales, marketing, everything. Um, and what kind of drove me, uh, from aerospace was, um, The opportunity that technology presented. Um, I was helping the, uh, the company I worked for implement, uh, SAP, right, which is back then was the big thing.
And everybody really, uh, focus some energy and some investment in it. And obviously at that stage, I was young. Um, I was traveling around the world for, for Rolls Royce, helping to implement new sales and marketing, uh, warranty programs. And then I got, I got a call after doing the IT work saying, Hey, why don’t you come help us out in a small, um, Uh, effort at Eli Lilly and company.
And so I did. I jumped ship and went over there. Um, still in a finance capacity, but focusing on I. T. And specifically S. A. P. Implementation for for finance. Um, and that’s what really got me into health care and what got me hooked. Um, and I started really understanding the way that the pharmaceutical industry works.
Um, the misunderstanding that sometimes is associated with that. Um, and how the real focus is on helping people live longer, better, healthier lives. And, but really understanding that, that from a lens of, of it and finance. Um, so I understood how the drugs were developed, how they were produced, how they were sold.
And that really carried me forward, uh, for kind of the middle part of my career in many different avenues. And I was fortunate that, um, one of those was to join a program that allowed me to go around the world, um, and work in many different countries in support of that goal of producing better business processes in the kind of finance IT arena.
And that just opened my eyes completely about the realities of global health, uh, the realities of what it meant to, uh, to, to help influence therapies in different countries on, on improving health outcomes globally. And, and it made it so that’s where I realized at that point I wanted to stay. Um. Um, and also at the same time, it also made me realize at that point, I spent about maybe half my life in the United States and I was sitting here going, okay, well, what’s next?
And the opportunity outside the U. S. also came, uh, to fruition where I was able to, you know, work in many different countries, but really cemented myself in the UK. Um, and that was great. Um, and, and from that point, it’s, it’s been a learning journey and it was in the UK where I started owning and controlling and managing.
Um, everything related to I. T. For Eli Lilly. Um, both on the infrastructure, the technology, the business side, but more importantly, also is where I got my first taste of the commercial side of the business and really implementing. Programs that made a difference in utilizing CRM, the websites, the emails, all that stuff really started coming into and that’s when I started owning and controlling that it was the place I wanted to stay.
I knew that I hit the sweet spot of the focus area that I wanted to be in. And it was it was new. It was, you know, we were all feeling it in our in our personal lives, and I wanted to figure out how to make that live and breathe in health care. And that’s what carried me forward. So from 2010 onwards, I focused pretty much solely on commercial, um, technology, digital engagement, digital transformation, data and analytics, um, and all in the support of building better customer experiences, better outcomes for patients, et cetera.
And so I did that with Lilly. Um, really, they helped me You know, kind of through that experience, build it up, learn it well, also taught me how to work with my leadership, you know, in that capacity to really make a difference. And then I left Lily to go work for Biogen, do the exact same thing, but globally with Biogen and, uh, really, really appreciate that, that opportunity, uh, but expanded a little bit, not only from, um.
An I. T. Perspective, really focusing squarely on digital and what that could do and do it differently. Um, and also get a little bit takes innovation at that stage. So I started playing around in the innovation world and the innovation agenda and how to think about the next generation of care standards and how to, um, create new ways around that.
And then that led me to be, uh, where I absolutely loved my time at B for four and a half years doing exactly that. But more importantly, pulling it through, um, making sure that everything that we, we helped create at VEVE actually pulled through into the lives of the people that, uh, were depending on HIV treatment.
And, um, it’s the first place I can honestly say at scale, we achieved a lot. Um, both in terms of getting the digital transformation out there, getting it embedded within the organization at a global level, and making sure that, uh, You know, campaigns and, you know, engagement activities were all leveraging these, these new standards of innovation around digital transformation, customer experience, management, um, and making sure, you know, we’re starting to see the real fruits of that, that, um, implementation and activities.
Thanks, Jeff,
Naji Gehchan: for sharing your story. Before we go into your passion of digital and tech, I’d want to start really from the leadership front. You’ve been leading through large transformation across multiple geographies, different countries. I’m interested to learn more about One of the key learnings you had dealing and managing those large transformations,
Jeff French: the first, probably the biggest one.
Um, and I learned it very early on. Um, and again, goes with kudos back to the leadership at Lily for helping me to realize this. Um. First and foremost, when you’re dealing with large transformations on a technical level, focusing on what creates a common understanding across the leadership is absolutely imperative.
And the common understanding in a healthcare organization is all about what you can do to create better outcomes. Biggest learning I ever had is always take it back to the people that matter for the organization. And in our case, in health care, the people that matter are the people that are taking the, um, and taking the product, taking the products and the patients, right?
At the end of the day. Um, and that’s the biggest learning is if you can always take it through. To that conversation about what the difference is going to be, what it will make in terms of value for the patient. Um, it’s something that gets everybody on that equal playing field. Um, and that’s something I still to this day hold very dear.
You always think about the outcome of what you do and that carried me forward. I think from Lily and the conversations executive leadership teams driving to common agendas. Right. That’s the other big thing. This is a common agenda around the patient, um, making sure those common agendas, common objectives across the leadership are shared.
Um, and in the case of IT and technology. It was hard, right? Because back then it was more of a service function, right? So it’s, how does that, but nowadays it’s part of the, the, what do we call the, the, the fluid nature of, of the healthcare business. And everybody has a bit of technology and everybody has a bit of finance.
It’s no longer a separate function that has to service. It’s actually something that’s embedded in pretty much everything they do. So that’s allowed me to carry this. You know, leadership focus forward on on the end result on the actual patient outcomes. Um, and it made me smarter in terms of how to talk about it, how to think through business cases, how to create, um, you know, discussions around return on investment and return on objective, which is also something that’s near and dear to my heart.
So these are things that, um, really, I hold dear. That was the first thing I learned, and it’s the thing I still to this day carry forward.
Naji Gehchan: I can totally agree and relate, obviously, all we do is having patient at the heart and the center of why we’re doing what we’re doing on a daily basis and in health care, and you touched on this.
So, uh, I’d love to get your thoughts. I think you kind of answered that, but it’s definitely cycles, right? Where you have always this debate between digital I. T. Business R. N. D. Sometimes we go and consolidate everything. Sometimes we separate them and it becomes more infrastructure and, you know, and customer experience who owns it.
So I’m sure you’ve gone through all those different journeys across thinking and in different companies. I’d love your perspective. And now if we look forward, as you said, like those pieces of technology are embedded in everything we do. But how do you think about it organizationally and how for you a successful.
Organization should look like to answer and integrate actually those breakthrough innovations we are having both from obviously the medical side and healthcare, but also incorporating all those breakthroughs in tech.
Jeff French: Yeah. So that’s a great question. Um, and so it’s an interesting one. Cause if, to your point, the cycles have continuously evolved towards the element of everybody having to have some responsibility towards it.
Um, but if you think about what’s next and where as a leader, how, You know, effective companies really grasp and take hold of what these new technologies bring to bear and take advantage of them. They’re starting to showcase those companies that think in the leadership group that think about that as a core competency.
Those are the ones that are getting ahead. Those are the ones that are doing the things that everybody else wants to do, but their history, their culture, the things that, um, Uh, you know, got him to where they are today are actually slowing them down because their mindset to to take hold and take advantage of these technologies is one of incremental innovation versus those that are really trying to change the game.
And you can see that in healthcare right now, and especially with a lot of the new startup. Um, you know, healthcare companies who are really taking full advantage of the fact they just don’t have all that debt. They don’t have all that history. They don’t have all that baggage, right, around their technology and digital.
It’s harder for them to just pick it up and shift, whereas new companies are doing it instantaneously from day one. And it’s a bit of a cliche, right? You know, startup companies, you know, like you saw in the dot com era, could come in and just, you know, boom and create new business models really, really quickly.
Well, the funny bit is Those who are taking the risk to do that now to really jump into that space, and it’s a bigger risk than it used to be, I think, um, are the ones that are actually achieving more right? Um, as you would expect, but it’s the mindset of the leaders that’s been in a, uh, in a conference room.
And talk about where do we want to take those risks? What are the risks worth taking? And, and because technology has caught up so fast and it’s about ready to leap frog even faster with generative AI. And if people are willing to. Think through it, understand how, uh, large language models work, understand a little bit about the risks that they’re taking, then they’re the ones that are actually going to get ahead faster.
I’ve seen some recent, um, a lot of writing about AI, and I’ll use AI as an example of latest and greatest technology. It’s not the only one, but it’s, I’ll use it as an example. Um, but how pharma companies, as an example, are starting to think through it. A lot of pharma companies, big ones, are stepping their, you know, dipping their toe in.
To try and figure out what this thing is going to do for them. A lot of them are focusing on internal. They’re trying to build the understanding of what it can do, the types of risks that it’s going to create, the type of, they’re taking what I call the incremental approach, you know, to get to that next generation of technology utilization.
However, other organizations, new ones, are going, I don’t have to worry about that. Here’s how I think this needs to work. Here’s the processes that I need to build trust. Into my large language models and my generative AI such that they know the outcome on the other side is going to be valuable and some people make it a bit of a leap of faith on that trust factor.
Others are actually, you know, trying to qualify it along the way very early and those that are doing so are achieving much greater results. So the leader in this in this day and age, it is about taking bigger risks, but it’s calculated risk. And I think in the technology and digital landscape, it’s more important that they do that faster than any other time in history, because it’s so hard to incrementally innovate in the new technology landscape at this moment.
You have to take a risk to try something completely different, and people just have difficulty in doing that. Many, uh, Walk of life, but now in business, the team bigger,
especially
Naji Gehchan: in health care. So can we go a little bit more deep in this? And really, I’d love to get your view, actually, of those breakthroughs.
And how do you see it pan out somehow in health care? So you talked, obviously, about AI. We’re trying in different spaces to touch AI in the pharma industry, obviously. Uh, you can hear about, you know, some years ago about digitalization. We’re not even there. I think, you know, from, from a healthcare, if you look from all our value chain, we’re not digital or even thinking about customer experience digitally or omni channel, et cetera.
You have health tech, tech bio, like there’s a lot of buzzwords these days. So you who are an expert in this domain and consult with executives daily about. All the stack. What is what is the future vision? How do you see us? What is the possibility? I’d love to get like a futuristic view from you, Jeff, looking forward for for biotech
Jeff French: and formal.
Sure, so I can tell you my perspective on how I think things are going to pan out over time. And obviously, this has yet to be proven, but it is my opinion, but it’s. It’s one that, um, I think there’s some natural stuff that’s just going to evolve. Let’s first maybe start on the research side of health care, because I think that’s where the biggest implication, uh, will, will be.
Um, you know, what generative AI, what these new technologies do is process large amounts of data quickly and help propose new models on how to evaluate the effectiveness of, of, of what the data is telling them. So, by default, that lives in R& D. That is the bread and butter of R& D. That’s, that’s where we, you know, the, the power of computing will generate new avenues of opportunity for the healthcare sector faster than they’ve ever seen before.
The key factor there is trust, and trust in the data, trust in the, the ability to evaluate that data. But it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen fast. Um, and those who get there and focus their energy there, Will be the ones to first create the newest opportunities in product. And I think that to me is massive.
Um, and if every pharma company, which so far I’ve seen most, focusing their energy a little bit in that space to start doing that learning, building that trust, um, they’re, they’re gonna, they’re gonna achieve big things. But probably the piece that people aren’t thinking about. Um, is and we have a lot of people talking about internal operation efficiencies and how any I can create better opportunities there, et cetera.
But it goes back to what we said or what you what you said a few minutes ago. Historically, the industry has been the laggards when it comes to customer experience. Um, the funny bit is there’s there’s lots of data that we have around, um, you know, our products, what’s used, how it’s used. Um, there’s Especially in certain markets in the world where you can actually validate that with, with real time information, um, AI can now take a look at that and start to predict, you know, trends that can start to predict behavioral shifts around a product that can start to predict, you know, what worked and what didn’t work on or what could work or couldn’t work on, um, campaign development.
What’s important information? Um, historically, you know, Uh, pharma has always been scared of getting to what we define as, uh, in the, in the commercial world as an end of one, really understanding the individual customer and understanding what makes them tick, what their needs are, because it’s in our world, it’s hard to manage, it’s hard to support, it’s hard to provide new information at an end of one.
Well, with the power of AI and the power of generative AI, that can be done. So, specific, tailored campaign message around a specific therapy need for a given physician, uh, which has a patient portfolio of X, you can start to leverage that understanding and that power much more effectively to generate real time, responsive, uh, information to requests that those physicians may have on the product.
Um, so that’s being led by the physician and we’re there 100 percent to support it. And historically that would take weeks, if not months, to answer. Right? Now it can be done in seconds. And so the construct of commercial and medical working to support the portfolio of patients that a physician has is becoming clearer and nearer to, to, to healthcare’s focus.
And it needs to, um, cause I think only collectively between the likes of, uh, the pharmaceutical companies, the healthcare insurance companies, the physicians, the hospital network, the clinicians. Does the, does the uniqueness of a given patient actually become solvable, right? In terms of appropriate care, the constructs of, um, of, um, personalized medicine, right?
And tailored therapies. It becomes a reality, but all that has to start coming together. And historically, it was always kind of shied away from. Everybody thought it’s possible, but the complexity to make it happen was too difficult. But now, because you have this, these engines that can do that in almost real time, I believe strongly that that is what’s going to lead us down to tailored therapies.
Um, And it’s all because it’s based on information that they’re able and the technologies that bringing together. It does mean contracts have to be different. Liabilities have to change. Uh, the realities of who’s doing what and ways of working has to shift in support of patients. Um, and that’s no mean feat, but the technology will enable it.
Um, and it’ll make it so it’s no longer a question of can I, it’s more of a question of should you. Right. Um, and that’s what I think it’s really an interesting dynamic that, uh, uh, the healthcare industry has to grapple with. But the technology will be there. It’s no longer a question of if.
Naji Gehchan: Well, this is a great and hopeful vision.
Actually, where you’re touching, as you said, from the development early phases to drug discovery to the amount of information we can manage there, but also touching commercially and making sure that each customer and patient get the reliable information that they need. So it’s, it’s really touching all those different.
Functions. I love that you talked about contracting, you know, contracting procedures, like through those transformations, several times you look at those shiny things, but it’s a lot of work actually on the pieces that sometimes are not shiny, which is make sure your SOPs are aligned, reshape them, rewrite them, you know, all the databases, how you, you talked a lot about trust.
So do you really trust the data you have, how you ensure it is reliable and also. putting some light on some of the biases that your data have, especially when you look on clinical trials and how medicine is
done
Jeff French: these days. And to underscore that even further to put it in kind of a technology leadership terminology, right?
If you think about the role of technology leadership, historically, it’s always been about, you know, the fundamentals of architecture and how everything plugs and plays moving forward. It’s going to be around that data quality. It’s going to be around data management. It’s around security. It’s going to be around the things that surround the technology and ensure that it’s working, not necessarily the technologies themselves.
Right? So it’s, it’s making, I was literally in a conversation this week where we were having a chat around, you know, does the future state of healthcare and pharma specifically need to invest at a completely different level on its data? And the simple answer is absolutely. And it should have done it yesterday because the, you know, it’s the old adage of technology.
Uh, you know, garbage in garbage out. If you feed your system with bad data, you get bad data out. And so it’s so important now to build that trust that you spend the time, you spend the energy to make sure your quality of processes, how you’re ingesting data, how you’re integrating with other sources, making sure that those sources have good quality, uh, data management.
Practices in place to ensure that what you’re bringing out to the customer out to the patient is of high degrees of quality as well. Absolutely crucial. And this is the new world of technology. This is the new world of digital practitioning. It’s making sure the data works because the technology that’s the things that are making it all happen.
That’s actually getting easier because it’s all becoming off the shelf. Right. And I see that just evolution continuing. Um, back in the day when I mentioned earlier when we were doing SAP, everything had to be configured. All the data had to be managed by people, right? Nowadays, it’s all in the cloud. It’s all being done for you.
You have little buttons you can push, and it changes the way entire processes work, right? And in the future, those buttons won’t need to be pushed because it’ll be automated in some way, shape or form based upon predictive artificial intelligence. These are the things that will just make sense.
Automatically happen. It’s about how well the data is, how well those triggers to automate are actually curated and care and validated by the data itself. So just new roles and people in leadership positions have to understand this is coming. So skill sets and capabilities and training around this to to build this.
This new ecosystem
Naji Gehchan: is going to be crucial. So Jeff, one of the questions I frequently get from leaders and leading those transformations, right, whether commercial or R& D, probably more in commercial, because I think in R& D, we’re used to invest and wait longer to get a return on our investments, right? I feel in commercial, there’s always this question like, yeah, okay, you did this digital transformation.
Where is there a return, right? And you talked about, uh, in the beginning that you’re a fan of, uh, return on objectives. So how do you think about this? Because what you’re sharing is really deep investments in things that probably we won’t see in three months as a result, but more down the line in the customer experiences and lifetime value of, uh, of customer experiences.
So how do you help execs? Think about our I and their time frame specifically in this high tech transformation. We’re living.
Jeff French: Yeah, it’s um, it’s an interesting one because, um, obviously everybody wants to return faster, right? They want that validation. They want the ability to to confirm that their investment is worth everybody doing within the organization and scaling it quickly to be able to maximize.
And I think this is where a new rule. A new thought process goes a little bit to what I mentioned early on about um, kind of wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch. There, there needs to be an expectation in leadership. When you start to go down these paths, there’s different ways that you can do it.
Um, you can actually now basically start anew. You can, you know, carve off a country, carve off a business line, carve off different functions, start anew, look for that business value quickly, stand up those new processes, get that ROI or ROI, return on objective done and defined quicker. Um, it is doable.
It’s more expensive, typically, to, to, to do that kind of an approach, um, in the short term. But it’s it actually validates your your opportunity faster versus the other way is people incrementally innovate. They incrementally try new things, but they’re always then comparing that with what they already do.
Right. And that’s where people have tendency to get stuck in this new world because sometimes. Um, the values clear, right? Case in point. You can now use generative AI to create content, right? So there’s a mechanism by which you can leverage data to say, Hey, I need a new piece of content that’s going to go out on this email and I need an email created for this prompt and I need it to say X, Y or Z.
That can be done in seconds. Whereas historically, that would take you weeks, right, for something like that to be produced. Um, because you got to validate the market research, you got to validate the data behind it, the customer segments, you got to do all that stuff. But with generative AI, it takes seconds.
Right now, the question is, do you incrementally roll that into play within your business or do you start and for a whole new business and try, try a new and I would argue what back to the risk discussions. Most leaders have tendency to say, well, I don’t want to upset anybody in my organization and basically all that work that they historically have done or what they’re used to.
It’ll be easier if we increment within this culture of our organization. But those that are on the edge who try things differently, they start anew, they build from scratch, they try something completely different, validate it, and get it, say, yep, they pilot, I know I hate that word, but the reality is they try it, they focus it, they look for the result, did I get it, yes, okay, scale, right, and it’s, it’s about Constantly measuring, right?
It’s about making sure that whether you’re incrementally doing it or whether you’re doing it anew, you’re constantly measuring and looking for that value driver constantly. Just know when you incrementally do it, it’ll take you longer to get there, right? But know that up front and leaders have to agree with their other leadership that that’s the path we’re going to take.
Because that’s the, maybe the, perhaps the way that company wants to take it versus others who might be more aggressive, go, we’re going to do it this way. But once we do it, I need your agreement. We’re going to scale fast. Right. So it is an element of constantly measuring. I think there’s a new world of measurement.
I’m going to sidetrack for two seconds here, Nanji, because I think it’s important. You’ve got the practical side of speed and efficiency, right, which is easy to measure, right? How fast do things get done? Very easy to measure, right? What’s difficult to measure is quality of delivery. Right. You know what we call effectiveness.
Did it work? Did it change behavior? Did it provide the level of education that was needed to inform that, uh, let’s say physician on the possibility of, of, of a treat of a new treatment? I, um, paradigm for a different patient type. Did it actually change behavior? That’s the stuff that’s a little more more difficult to manage, but technology and the use of behavioral science with technology is starting to showcase the power of knowing whether or not that’s working.
Faster, and I think you’ll find that with some of the latest trends in this space, whether it’s some sort of, um, kind of CX measure that a lot of organizations are now going to, um. That is one. It kind of near term mechanism that’s being created for people comfortable and to build trust around customer experience measurement.
Um, and they should everybody needs to get on that. Um, because you got to get comfortable with it. If you look at what’s happening in our personal lives with our phones with, um, our online shopping experiences that’s happening. All the time in the background, people are constantly evaluating how long it took you to hover over something before you bought it, right?
Or how long, how many different car websites did you go to before you pick the one that you landed on and stayed there the longest, right? Because you were interested in something, or you went to the configurator to validate something. All that trend, that journey. It’s being measured and being behaviorally and this is the kind of stuff that we have to start getting comfortable with in health care to say, Hey, look, when a, when an individual clearly is not happy with their treatment, they’re going on this path, right?
What is that telling us about that individual or that group of individuals for that matter about what’s maybe going on in their lives? Um, and being able to infer that to help define better options and to optimize their treatment. It’s an example. So I firmly believe it’s, um, it’s a combination of those two kind of how do you want to approach return on investment?
Is it a quick way? Is it a slow way? And then on top of that, the mechanism we use. To determine value is shifting considerably. You have the old tried and true finance, the old tried and true efficiency. And then it’s about this new world of customer experience. And is that generating a shift in behavior?
And that’s the piece that I think is the new edge where everybody should be going to. For sure. And
Naji Gehchan: it gives a lot of hope for, as you said, patients taking in charge and, you know, and talking about this. As consumers of non health and health, it’s sometimes mind puzzling how much you can influence things that are not related to health, where with this transformation, it’s giving more the power back to patients who are making, who should be part of the decision of how they are taken charge.
Jeff French: Absolutely. And I think there’s some, there’s the, if I, if I even cast forward beyond kind of where we are at the moment within this space, I firmly believe that technology companies, uh, the apples of the world, the Samsung’s of the world, they’re going to have to start helping. People with managing their preferences, managing their, um, the stuff that helps them on their day to day basis, whether it be with their health or with their family or with their routines and administrative work that they have to do, um, it’s all going to be automated moving forward.
Um, and so the question is, how do you instruct your technologies that you interact with to help manage that for you? Right. So it’s not to your point. So it’s not giving you false positives or it’s not giving you information that you don’t want to see. Um, I had a great opportunity recently where I was with a, uh, an individual or a group of individuals and we were talking about the future of, uh, of technologies like Alexa combining with, um.
Generative AI, right? So we think of, you know, audio, uh, search and what that might mean for for the future. It’s something as simple as, you know, you’re sitting at a dinner table with the family and you’re talking about your next vacation. You want to go on and then all of a sudden, you know, the one of the one of the, let’s say the parent decides, hey, um, Alexa or whoever.
Um, we just had this conversation. Give me some options. Tell me what, tell me what my options are for that kind of a holiday. The whole time it was listening, the whole time it was, it was understanding that family’s conversation about where they wanted to go, what type of holiday they appreciated. And then on top of that, it’s got all that history, right?
Of understanding what they’ve done historically, what they’ve purchased, where they’ve gone, et cetera. And all of a sudden you can propose three, four or five options about what might be doable within a price range or within a subset of prompts that the, that the family gives it. And my whole point there is, yeah.
You have to tell Alexa that you want that, right? And that you want the, you can’t just assume that it’s going to happen. And this gets into some of the data privacy issues around the world at the moment in security. People have to take control of their health and people have to take control of what they want these technologies to do.
Technology companies have to allow that to happen.
Naji Gehchan: So Jeff, now I want to give you a word and I’d love, uh, what first comes to your mind. The first one is
Jeff French: leadership.
Community is the first word that comes to my mind when I think of leadership. Um, and that’s because to move anything in this, in this business and in healthcare, it’s a community of leaders that make things happen, not just one person. And they all have to cut back to the common agenda, common objectives.
Um, and I, you know, and my previous bosses will even probably hear this echo, um, in their ears right now, if they’re listening, because that is the thing that I strive to focus on the most is creating that sense of community across my peer group. As well as those that, you know, provide the, the, uh, the capability that we’re trying to develop and transform with.
Um, because it takes a group to move a mountain, right? And we have a lot of mountains to move.
Naji Gehchan: What about innovation?
Jeff French: Innovation is, um,
opportunity is the 1st word that popped into my head, but at the same time, it’s, it’s also about focusing on innovation and opportunities that make sense. There’s a lot of playing going on and a lot of people trying things because they can, um, I always felt like opportunistic innovation is not one that’s going to create value for anybody.
Innovation for purpose and intent to change things, we need to focus more around. Um. Because a lot of what we do is people are trying to find the next big, you know, shiny object that’s actually not adding any value to people’s lives. And I think in our sector, true innovation will occur with purpose, will, will occur with a purpose.
And I was, you know, my, my time at V taught me that it’s, um, true, true purpose led innovation achieves amazing things. Um, those that it’s opportunistic, just basically you invest in it, goes into a cupboard, sits in a desk drawer, doesn’t really ever come out again. Um, but the stuff that really tries to make a difference in people’s lives and that that’s, that’s different and that’s normally a, a community of leaders.
That make that happen. How does equity? Ooh, good one. Um, inequity is what I first think about it. It’s the first thing that comes to my mind. I do think we have a lot of work to do in this space. Um, lots of innovations have occurred a lot of that and lots of great innovation, even in global health markets.
Where, where the help is needed, uh, great, great things have happened there, but I would argue not great, not good enough. Um, the, the, the inequity continues. Um, and I, and I think that’s in this day and age, when you have therapies and medicines and products and services and processes, where it’s all about trying to stop it, you know, from for diseases to get out of control.
I mean, cobit proved we can stop things. Um, and yes, there are bits of it that are still continuing that have evolved, et cetera, but we all don’t have the confidence that it can be done. I think there’s. Work to be done to make sure that, and I think it would prove that there’s any quality inequity. Sorry in, in getting that medicine and those treatments out to the places where it’s needed the most.
Um, so I guess, yeah, don’t mean to put a downer on that, but I think there’s more work to be done. There’s more thought leadership around how to do it. That needs to be put in play. Um, and how technology can, can fix some of it. I think there’s a lot of opportunity there too. Um, yeah, probably not the right that, the answer that, that, you know, not the high, the, uh, positive answer you wanted to hear, but it’s definitely how I feel about it.
Naji Gehchan: The last one is spread love in organizations.
Jeff French: Yeah. I think there’s, it goes back to my community principle, I think with a clear common purpose. People can move mountains, like I said earlier, and if people put their personal ambitions aside. And start thinking about the group ambitions and the community ambitions,
the construct of spreading love within an organization will rise. And I’ve seen it and in organizations where the passion, the commitment, the focus on the outcome is what’s really driving them and the focus to resolve personal strife, uh, through, uh, particular issues and disease areas. When people focus on that, it, it, it works and everybody’s.
You know, feeling like they’ve accomplished something in their in their life, and I’ve been fortunate to be part of one of one of those. And now I want to continue that. So spreading, spreading the opportunity and the two on how to go about championing, you know, these, the next generation of technology to solve these kinds of problems and help people think about this community spirit and be as one to drive and solve problems.
Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great feeling.
Naji Gehchan: Any final word of wisdom, Jeff, for healthcare leaders around the world?
Jeff French: Yeah, I’d ask a lot of them to think differently about technology and digital. Don’t think about it as an incremental thing that’s going to help your existing core business. Think about it how it can change your business holistically.
Um, think about how, what plans you’re putting in place to, to do exactly that. Um, you’ll save money. You know, initially, maybe you may have to invest to do that, but over time, you know, process costs should reduce. I mean, that’s what these technologies are bringing to bear for. Um, and so there’s an element of, you know, ensuring that these opportunities are on the agenda, you know, that it’s a common agenda that the leadership are always focusing in this space.
And it’s not, how do I create, you know, what everybody else is doing. It’s how I’m doing it different than everybody else. Um, cause I think there’s, there’s huge opportunity there for people to think differently in the healthcare space versus just be one of the same. Well, thank you so much,
Naji Gehchan: Jeff, for being with me today.
Jeff French: Thanks, Naji. It was an absolute pleasure. Really, really appreciate this. And, um, yeah, let’s, let’s keep spreading the love cause this is, this is a fantastic podcast. I really enjoy it. And, um, and I think we’re going to make a big difference.
Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to SpreadLove in Organizations podcast. Drop us a review on your preferred podcast platform
Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on spreadloveio.com. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. Most importantly, spread love in your organizations and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement, our world so desperately needs