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 for this special episode in collaboration with MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference, an event that brings the Healthcare Ecosystem Together. I have the pleasure to be joined by J.R. Clark, Senior Vice President of Health Plan Product and Strategy at Paytient Technologies, where he partners with thoughtful employers, insurers, and health systems to help people better access and afford healthcare. J.R. is a former Director and Actuary of Anthem, where he was known for his public exchange marketplace strategies and creation of alternative products in the Individual and Small Employer segments. He began his career as a nuclear engineer with Florida Power and Light in Juno Beach, Florida, where he developed optimization strategies for spent nuclear fuel. J.R. obtained a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Mechanical Engineering and completed graduate coursework in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
JR, so good to have you with me today!
JR Clark: That is great to be here. I appreciate you bringing me on.
Naji Gehchan: Before we dig in “removing financial barrier to care” the topic of your panel at SHBC, I am eager to hear more about your personal story. What brought you from nuclear engineering to healthcare and now solving this crucial issue of access and healthcare affordability?
JR Clark: great. I’ll give you a little background and it isn’t a typical transition, but I think what is typical for a lot of the guests on this, uh, is that, you know, People don’t always end up where they expected to be, which is what’s fun in life. So I guess a quick background, maybe I’ll go a little bit back or, you know, to young ages to kind of give a little bit of foundational story here.
Um, so when I was growing up, I was born and raised in St. Louis. I currently live in St. Louis and, you know, my, my parents owned a small business. And it was always interesting to see growing up as a child that, you know, my parents put a lot of their time and effort and energy into their company. And, and even within that, you know, my, my dad was always the person who rolled up his sleeves.
He was often like the, the dirtiest person at work, you know, coming in with the dirtiest clothes, doing the most dirty jobs. And, and he was always, and he was okay with that. Um, My mom was always the first person at work every day. She, you know, she’d get up at 2. 45 in the morning and head to work. And she was there all day.
She often worked, uh, very late. And I think kind of the lessons that they really demonstrated for my brother and I is that it takes a lot to get things done sometimes. And you have to really be willing to put in that extra work to do it. And sometimes you have to do that even when you don’t. You don’t like doing it because you look at the outcome of what it’s doing and, and, you know, invest as a consequence of that.
But I think also on top of that, my parents really spent a lot of time and, and really like focused on sending the message that you should never expect more of others than what you’re willing to do yourself. And that’s not just a talking point. It really is a, like a practice, not just a, Oh, I did that once.
And so now I expect others to do it all the time. It really is. Um, if I expect others to do it all the time. As employees, and I really need to be doing it all the time as well. And so really, those were key lessons informative for both my brother and me. And I guess maybe the 3rd thing that they were really demonstrated.
Well, is that somehow with all that, they really managed to stay involved in their church and with their friends, especially being intimate in their friends lives. And. Honestly, that there’s an art to that, like, of how you balance that. And admittedly, it’s something even today. I don’t think I do well. Um, so it really was a lesson that really, whatever your level of busyness is in life, like, there really is value in investing in others.
So they really kind of demonstrated that pretty well. Um, so anyway. My brother and I started working at their company at a very young age and like when I say young age, I mean, like, early elementary school, we did jobs like, you know, cleaning the office and the bathrooms and doing things like, you know, sitting with the adding machine and totaling up bills for people.
And I think that’s really where it kind of, like, I probably, I, my, my math side of things comes from is that starting with, you know, sitting in front of an adding machine and putting things together. So kind of fast forwarding from that, you know, my. I also happened to meet my wife at a young age. My wife and I met when we were in high school.
And, you know, she is a, she’s a very charismatic and caring person. And probably by now your listeners can tell I’m not a very charismatic person. And that’s why I’m an actuary right now. Um, but really like it was, it was really neat to see, like, She was the first person who I really spent a lot of time noticing how her actions of caring for others really, like it really caused a response from people because people really like to feel valued.
So when you value somebody, there’s a different response that you get from them because they are valued by you. And it’s not a manipulative valuing. It’s got to be a genuine value. And my wife really is good at that. Um, you know, and so I guess moving forward into college, you know, I, I am very fortunate in life that I had an older brother that actually wanted to be around me.
And he, you know, he’s incredibly intelligent. He’s very, very diligent and invests a lot in whatever he puts his mind to. And he headed towards being an engineer. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I just kind of followed in my brother’s footsteps and became an engineer as well. And, and really, like, In college, and I guess I’ll even say college and into my first job as being a nuclear engineer, there were a couple of things that were really impactful.
Um, that really is the first time in my life. And you think when you go through school, you’re kind of trained like to get from a point to a to point B in the most efficient manner. Like you sit in a math class and it’s like, these are your rules, use the rules and you get to a final result. And the reality of it is that in life.
You know, sometimes the right answer is to straight line from point A to B, but there are other times in life that while it may seem less efficient, there’s actually a lot of value in meandering between point A and point B. That’s actually where a lot of the like learnings and the discovery happens. And so, you know, that really was a valuable lesson learned it very much.
So both in college and in graduate school, and then definitely in my first job in nuclear engineering. So kinda here comes the, how does it. How does somebody go from being an engineer to being an actuary, uh, and the crossover into healthcare and everything on that front? Really what happened was, you know, we were working in Florida, in Juneau Beach, Florida, Florida Power and Light, and my wife and I, you know, we knew that we wanted to have a family.
We knew that we wanted to be near our family, and so we, we decided that we were going to move back to St. Louis. St. Louis, Missouri is not a hotbed of nuclear engineering jobs. And so, uh, you know, so basically I had to think through what, what would the future look like? I happened to be in a conversation with this woman who was like, Oh, my uncle was an actuary and she.
You know, he, she was saying he takes these tests and when he takes tests, he gets pay increases and promotions. And I was like, that sounds interesting. So I looked into it. The thought of it was great. I took my first test and then immediately jumped into consulting. And, and so I went to work for a company that’s now Willis Towers Watson.
At that point, it was called Watson Wyatt before all the mergers. And so really like. There was where I got my start in understanding what it was like to be in a fast paced kind of lifestyle of almost think of it as mile wide, foot deep, uh, type of information and I loved it because what, what we did in consulting really was around the idea of take little pieces of information.
And then figure out what to use of that to, to assimilate it into a package that is a value to somebody else. And, and what that did was it created a lot of like, I call them high five moments. They’re like the moments, the moments in a company where your team thinks that there’s no way possible to pull off a task.
And yet you continue to work together. You continue to kind of struggle together. You continue to, like, press and you get to this final state where you actually do it and you actually deliver something. And like, there’s just a satisfaction of the team. It’s that high five moment where you know that Collectively, you worked through something that you thought you couldn’t do.
And you got to a point of completion on it. And that’s been really like, that’s been really core. You know, you think about things that are like core memories or core experiences. Those high five moments are very core experiences. And I think they’re very motivated, motivating and inspirational for people who work, you know, in companies.
So all that being said, I loved consulting. I love the teamwork. I love the atmosphere of it, but I also realized, you know, at that point, Uh, I, no better way to say it than this. I didn’t think that I could be both a good consultant and a good dad simultaneously. And my son was on his way and, um, some people pull it off very well, but for my skill set, it, it was not something that I felt like I could balance well.
And so I needed to take a kind of a turn in my career and move to something that was a bit more stable. And so I moved into insurance, um, really kind of a big difference between think of consulting versus insurance is that in consulting. Like I said, it’s mile wide, foot deep. In insurance, it’s a whole bunch of tranches of foot wide, mile deep.
The NAU Insurance has the aggregated, like, efforts of a bunch of foot wide, mile deep people. And I was fortunate to get to be in a spot in my career in insurance where I got to take all of that deep knowledge of everybody who was doing that mile deep work, I got to aggregate it and make business decisions off of it.
And so it really was It was a cool spot to be in. It was a, I mean, just so it really was a wonderful place to be great people to work with. And there were a bunch of lessons that came out of that. You know, in terms of that environment, kind of lesson number 1 is that, you know, when you’re setting up a corporate structure, oftentimes it’s like, how do we trim redundancy?
You know, how do we how do we make things as lean as possible? But really, in the same way that there’s a value in meandering between point A and point B. There’s also value in redundancy, and I think that value that gets overlooked is the fact that when you have two people that have a portion of their task or a portion of their mindset that overlaps, what ends up happening there is that when two people can kind of bubble up together on, on some portion, it’s almost like a I don’t know, it’s almost like a nuclear fission situation where the, the end outcome is much bigger than the combination.
You know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts or whatever you want to call it. And so I think we underestimate the value of redundancy in the typical corporate structure. Second lesson really from the insurance side of things is that good managers are not one size fit all. Like, you can take, take two people that report to the same people or under the same organization structure, and one person may hate a manager and the other person may love a manager.
And so it’s always interesting to evaluate, like, what is it that causes those differences? And I, I, I think, and this is a personal opinion, I don’t know if everybody would agree with it, but I think there’s value in having that where a manager isn’t trying to be one size fits all for everybody. So I think of two managers in particular, one of my favorite managers I ever had his name, Steve.
And he operated his business and his teams just like he was a basketball coach, 100 percent like a basketball coach. And he required a lot, he expected a lot, but in return, he would go to the mat for anybody that was on his team. Like once you earned the spot, like you knew you had somebody backing you up.
Now some people hated that, some people loved it. I personally loved it. And, but I can see why other people maybe wouldn’t, I think is fantastic manager. And then I, another manager is one of my most favorite managers. Her name is Jen. And she, she knew better than anybody I’ve ever worked with how to prioritize things such that for herself and her team, she made sure to let the things that weren’t a big deal, slip off the plate and focus energy and effort towards the things that were a big deal.
And I think what that did was kind of circling back to this whole idea of value. It made people realize that they were valued and they had the ability to contribute to the value of something, which was impassioning, you know, their, their ability to do well at their jobs. So, you know, and I think with all that, when you think about that, you know, it’s valuing what is important, not just to yourself, but to your team, even on a personal level, like valuing what’s important to them really does bring a positive outcome at the end of the day.
Like I flat out through my career, I’ve seen tons of examples of people who are working 60 hours a week and giving up on the things they valued outside of work, where, when we focused on saying what’s important to you on your time outside of work, like, Oh, you have Thursday night where you get together with your friends and you have pizza and you go somewhat go watch some show together like that’s important to you.
Well, don’t skip that because of work. And what ends up happening is having that extra value outside of work and feeling valued. Ends up producing more output and better experience and better mood, better, like feeling more loved and appreciated. It has positive consequences in the, the lesser hours that a person’s working because they walked away to go do that thing that they value outside.
So I love that. That was a great lesson in the, in a large organization in particular. Uh, kind of, I know I’m probably having on long, so I’ll say the last couple of things really quickly on this is that. You know, the last lesson I learned in insurance, it actually happened after I broke my leg. Uh, and my leg and my hip and ended up in the hospital.
I was ice skating with my daughter and unfortunately just took the wrong fall at the wrong place. And that was the first time I ever experienced firsthand what people feel when they’re in a moment of, of kind of a healthcare crisis. Um, and you know, I’m a very data driven person. I spent a lot of time in Excel or in data or working through making decisions off of data.
But And what oftentimes I don’t do well is to stop and think back, like, Oh my gosh, what is it that our. Our folks that we are serving, what are they experiencing and how does that impact like the overall ecosystem with what they’re experiencing? And so, you know, we, that was actually kind of illuminating in the sense of, you know, I’ll say, like, 1 day, we were sitting there going through some, some cost of care reports in a meeting and I realized that we didn’t ever spend any time focusing on members out of pocket costs.
We spent all of our times focusing on all of our time focusing on. Like the plan paid costs associated with healthcare. And I was, it was like a light bulb moment, like, man, we need to be focusing more on out of pocket because that’s the first thing that people experience. And because of that, like there’s a downstream impact that can happen.
And so ultimately the reason I left insurance is really because. I really want to focus on what we can do to help people get care at the right place, right time with the means to do it so that they’re prospectively thinking about care instead of retrospectively thinking about it. Because I think that the downstream consequence of that is healthier people who are able to make better decisions around what their health care should be.
And ultimately that has planned savings, which saves employers costs. It saves, you know, health insurers costs. Ultimately makes a better outcome. And then even the, the underlying thing of it is that health systems get paid for the services that they’re rendering. Like, there just is a net benefit that happens all downstream as a consequence of it.
So anyway, uh, I think that’s kind of the, the quick backdrop. So that’s why I’m at patient right now. It’s really honestly to help people. Access and afford care on that front line by basically giving them them the means to pay for that front line care.
Naji Gehchan: Well, what an inspiring journey and incredible story of of impact and what you’re doing today within your organization to help patients before we go.
To this specifically, because I really want us to, um, to talk about how you’re doing it within your company and the topic of the panel. You talked about high five moments. I love this concept. Any major, is there one leadership learning that helped you, that you used or help you get into those high five moments with your teams?
JR Clark: Yeah. So maybe I’ll, uh, yes, I’ll say leadership. Leadership way of doing it is honestly, it’s. Putting people in a spot where they are able to do what they do best. And maybe I’m going to sidestep it for a second and then bear with me. I’ll come back to answering it directly. I think in, in a leadership structure, we oftentimes fail to recognize that everybody isn’t going to be good at everything.
And, and what happens when you do that is that you’ve ended up putting people in spots where they’re more prone to either do something lackluster or even utterly fail at it. And I don’t think that’s a fair thing to do for folks. I don’t think that’s the right thing for them to position, put people in for your employees.
And so I think the step number one in it is doing projects and building, like building out solutions that fit with the skillset of the folks that you have. Sitting there on your team and not expecting more of the things that are outside of those skill sets. And then kind of part two of that is building teams where people have overlapping skill sets, but also independent skill sets.
So it allows them to kind of bring something to the table that nobody else is able to bring to the table in that team. And so I think that’s kind of the foundation of creating those high five moments and then frankly, like kind of the direct answer is I think life just tends to bring itself.
Situations that you can make high five moments out of as, as managers, as leaders, um, by really taking on things that. Maybe others hadn’t really focused on or finding like early on. Here is something of value that we’re really not yet putting our energy toward and let’s try and do something with it. So hopefully that answer what you’re.
Naji Gehchan: Yes, yes. And I love how you frame this. You know, I always talk about, I don’t think anyone in life wakes up not wanting to do a good job, but several times we have wrong casting. For the job. So it’s not about the person and their capabilities. It’s just like ground casting. And as leaders, we should be accountable for this, right?
And make sure that we’re getting the right people to be at their best in the right places. So if we now go into the panel’s discussion, this is obviously a very important issue we’re facing in healthcare, financial toxicity, financial barriers. Can you share first your thoughts about how to improve this?
How to even remove these barriers?
JR Clark: Yeah, so maybe I’ll, I’ll take it kind of from two sides for the answer. The first is maybe I’ll, I’ll talk a little bit about the MIT Sloan Healthcare and Bio Innovations Conference and kind of what the focus was of the specific panel. So the panel itself was comprised of, you know, a handful of folks from industry being direct insurance, but kind of alternative insurance products.
Uh, so there was a person named Allison from Shurist that was on there. Uh, there was a woman named Nikita who, uh, she was from Fortuna Health, which their, their mission is really to make the, uh, make the ability to, like, enroll in Medicaid a lot simpler for folks so that they get access to care, because in a lot of cases, people just don’t get access to care because They don’t know how to get through the process of enrolling something that would get in, in something that would get them access to care.
And then there’s a woman named Laura, who was there from Amazon, uh, Amazon pharmacy. And her focus was on how do you get, how do you get medications or drugs to people in an easier way for a cheaper price? And so that was kind of the backdrop of it all. And it’s kind of some unique perspectives in there, but also some overlapping perspectives.
And I think maybe I’ll start by saying, you know, the number one focus in all of it. Was how do you make sure that people know that they can get care in the 1st place? And so that’s that is step number 1 and all of this. So, whether it’s, you know, Amazon giving cheaper prices for drugs or whether it’s, you know, surest, uh, finding alternative health plan mechanisms so that people can get care, uh, with a lower out of pocket than what they otherwise would have been or whether it’s, you know, Fortuna actually just getting people enrolled in Medicaid in the 1st place or as patient, you know, my company.
Making sure that when people are exploring getting care and they’re going to have an out of pocket component that they make the right choice because they have the ability to pay. And so I think all that kind of combines just to say, like, there’s an underlying structure here where it’s almost like trying to take mentality and say, like, I don’t, I don’t want care to just happen to me.
Instead, I want to be able to think through and act on my own behalf and be an advocate for myself. In actually getting care taken care of when I need care. So I know from the patient side of things, we see all the time. Like I’ll, I’ll take another sidestep here and sorry, again, more blabbing. But you know, we, when the company was formed, we had the hypothesis that people weren’t getting care because.
Like, oh, shoot, I have a 3, 000 bill at the hospital that I’m going to have to pay, and so I’m not going to get care, or I already had care, and I have to pay 3, 000, and I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it. The reality of it is, you know, 5, 6 years into it, what we actually see is that, like, people need help getting routine care.
They need help for specialist visits, the 70 copay for a specialist visit, or the 50 pay for an urgent care, or even, no joke, like, How do you spread out the cost of a 10 copayment at the pharmacy? Like, that’s a legitimate need of the population right now. And there’s a lot that happens on that side of things solely because people don’t have that prospective ability to know that they can get care.
And so I think that’s kind of the underlying theme of the, the panel discussion at the conference, but it’s also the underlying theme of what all the companies represented there are trying to achieve.
Naji Gehchan: So as you discuss this, and obviously your, your company is focused on improving this, should we be hopeful that we will see less financial toxicity in the next decade?
JR Clark: Yeah, that’s a great question. And the answer to me is yes. No. And, and the reason I’d say we should be hopeful is because there’s a lot of focus being put on this. And maybe the way to say it best is, you know, you hear the cliché phrase of, like, creating win win wins, right? People say that all the time.
But the reality of it is that, like, number one, the foundational structure of our healthcare system is good. The intentions of the people operating it are good, like, I’ll give a quick example that my mom, you know, she had lung cancer and had to have part of her lung removed. And we were, we were sitting in this, there’s like a special waiting room for people who are having more serious surgeries.
And unfortunately, one of the other families that was sitting in the waiting room, they got the notification, like, while we were sitting there, that their family member didn’t make it through surgery. And I walked out of that waiting room. And when I walked out of the waiting room, there was no joke. 80 80 staff members of that hospital lining the hallway to kind of, for lack of better words, I’ll say, call it provided like a processional for that family as they left and these hospital administrators were in tears.
These doctors, nurses were in tears and you can’t look at a situation like that and say, health care is broken when that many people are showing up to work every day with that much care. And so that gives me hope that number one, our health system at its core is right. Uh, you, you won’t ever hear me say, you know, healthcare is broken, but what there is with inside of our healthcare system, there are little nuances or little inefficiencies and.
Like, when we talk about creating win win wins, what we, what we want to be doing in the healthcare system is inserting different solutions in each of those inefficiencies, so that we push out whatever is creating that inefficiency. I think from patients side of things, we see that paying, like, the kind of barrier to care that is paying for it, that creates downstream impacts.
We have 67 percent of our members that say that they would have, Deferred or foregone the care that they got, had they not had access to pay for to pay for their care with their patient cards. That creates a downstream inefficiency for the system. So just by plugging this little hole there of helping people pay for care.
People take their medications that reduces cardiovascular events in the health, you know, in, in the hospitals, people go see their specialists. They like, they do what they need to be a little bit more proactive in the health side of things. And so I think from your kind of direct answer to your question, am I hopeful?
Absolutely. Because I do think that we’re seeing like a little turn in the tide. Of just plugging more of those little inefficiencies in the system to help solve them.
Naji Gehchan: Oh, thanks for sharing this and hope your mom, uh, is doing okay. Yeah, all great. Yeah. Thank you. Great to hear. Um, so as you’re, I love how you framed it into kind of plugging some small solutions that will have a larger impact at the end of the day, like really tearing it down to some small inefficiencies and making it better.
So a question on this, do you, do you believe that the technology by itself will help us improve financial, uh, you know, toxicities over here to care, or do you think there is still a big social question about how do we think about healthcare, you know, and I’m biased, I’m coming from, you know, like coming from France, where we think healthcare is a human right and like there’s a lot of discussions about how we do healthcare and I’m not saying that we don’t have issues we have actually probably even more issues than here but certainly finance from a patient experience is very different.
Patients do not think about it. The society thinks about it from another perspective. So I’m intrigued. How do you see this? Is, is it technology that will solve it? Do you think there is still a social component to it? And how, how will all this be resolved in the next decades?
JR Clark: Yeah, so I don’t know how it will be resolved, but here’s here’s my hopeful guess and all of it.
Um, I think that we have the good fortune as a society in the United States that we’re starting to see all of the parties that kind of have a hand in In like, call it the, call it the, um, I don’t want to say reconstruction, but the, like, improvement of the system, all the price, whether it’s health systems or health insurers or employers who have benefits that they provide for employees, uh, financing mechanisms.
Like, everybody is starting to kind of come together with a little bit more realization of, oh, yeah, if a happens, it produces B result. B result if, you know, is either going to have. You know, a bad C outcome or a good D outcome and, like, starting to understand that there’s some binary decisions here that all kind of have a downstream impact that are either going to make things better or worse.
And fortunately, like, you know, I know in the red, like, when you were opening, like, we talk about patient working with thoughtful thoughtful partners. We’re partnered with nearly every major health insurer now, because health insurers are recognizing, like, oh, man, paying for frontline cost of cost of care.
Is an issue for a lot of people, and that has downstream impact. And so they’re working towards a solution by partnering with us. Hospital systems are realizing that they’re kind of their distribution of kind of on collectible debt, or whatever you want to call it process. It’s not working right now, and so they’re partnering with solutions like us to help kind of fix that employers are starting to see, like, man, I’ve been raising my deductibles for my employees as a cost offset.
But now it’s really starting to have an impact. So what can we do to help fix that? And, and so just kind of the fact that all of the stakeholders that should be thinking about it are thinking about it and should be acting on it. Are acting on it. I really do feel like that component is really a valuable thing.
Now, I guess maybe towards the social, like, the pure social question, like, if you start thinking about even from the government standpoint, even if you look at, like, um, Medicare Part D, you know, under the inflation reduction act, we just have the, the, you know, the passing and implementation of what’s going to be a payment plan.
For every single senior who is on a part D drug drug plan to be able to spread their costs, their out of pocket costs over time, it gets that same type of kind of kind of mechanism. So I feel like there is a social component, and it is kind of nice that that several folks are partnering in the solution.
Naji Gehchan: Well, that’s that’s great. And I really want to go back to something you shared, having either like you and other leaders in the healthcare system. We all strive and wake up every morning to make life better for patients. And I think this is something that is super important and starts with leadership, right?
All of us around the table trying to make the right decisions on behalf of patients, because all of us are patients at one point. So thanks, thanks for bringing those ideas here. I want to move now into a section where I’ll give you a word. And I want your first reaction to it. Okay. So the first one is leadership.
JR Clark: Okay, so first reaction. Um, maybe I’ve, I’ll repeat a little bit of what I said, but maybe with a little different nuance to it. Is that leadership, I, I’ll say it this way. Leadership doesn’t have to be thought of as hierarchy. Um, leadership, leadership is best when a leader is involved. They’re caring, they’re empathetic.
Okay. But they’re also very maniacally focused on what the end result is, uh, what, like, what the conclusion should be. And, and I guess when I think of leadership, I think of, like, again, like I pointed out the two leaders earlier with Steve and Jen. And they are people that balance that very, very well, um, setting expectations, valuing their teams, and understanding that, like, you all either win together or you lose together.
And and I really appreciate that side of things when I think of leadership. So that’s maybe a short and sweet answer. But yeah, we can go from there. What about health equity? And so when I think health equity, I think of it in terms that, you know, when somebody wakes up in the morning, whoever it is. They shouldn’t have to fear the idea, or they shouldn’t, let me say it, they shouldn’t have to have to make a different decision than somebody else based upon, uh, whether or not they can pay for care.
And so what I mean by that is, if, let’s simple example, if my throat hurts in the morning, like, if I, I have a high fever. Uh, the difference like I shouldn’t have to act differently in terms of my ability to seek care because of of my financial means in that moment. And so if I need to get a, I need to get a strep test and a antibiotic, I should be able to get that whether I am a person who has the means immediately or does not have the means immediately.
And, and so I think about that as kind of the concept of removing barriers to care. That really is the core function of removing barriers to care.
Naji Gehchan: I love this pragmatic example. It’s, it’s really a powerful way to think about it. The third one is work life balance.
JR Clark: Yeah, so that’s it. Uh, that’s multiple words there.
Uh, so work life balance. Admittedly, I’m a massive fan of work life balance. Um, I gave the example before I I’ve had multiple teammates where at the onset they were working, call it 60 ish hours a week, but by producing more, I I’ll give one example. I had a teammate, somebody on my team who. Um, she was working like 60 hours a week, and we set a goal to prioritize things outside of her life, get her work down to 40 hours a week.
And she inherently was somebody who, it’s already a two X producer. So when she works 60 hours a week, we were getting 120 hours of productivity out of her. Unbelievable person. And we worked to get her down to 40 hours a week by prioritizing things outside of work. And she did, she was able to get down to call 40, 45 hours a week, but no joke.
There was zero difference in the amount of productivity that happened within work, zero difference. In fact, like in some places, she actually like had more inspiration to step up and take on new responsibilities and new ownership that she otherwise wouldn’t have when she was buried in her. For 60 hours a week.
So I, I, at my core am a massive fan of work life balance. I know it’s idealized in some cases, but I think it’s something that we should as leaders really promote and really focus on because I think we undervalue the ability for folks to feel valued outside of work. And what that does. Uh, and how it produces a net positive result inside of work.
So, and back to kind of the stuff we talked about earlier, uh, it’s, there’s just such a, there’s such a value in valuing people and, and just like we all want to feel valued too. We feel better when we feel valued. So,
Naji Gehchan: yeah, it’s, it’s probably a perfect segue to my last word, which is spread love and organizations.
Uh, there you go.
JR Clark: Yes, that’s exactly right. I mean, your, your concept is, is absolutely amazing and it’s absolutely spot on. And, and I think of it all the way from like even deep examples of like, so I’m a father of two children and my son and my daughter were raised in the same environment. They are, but they’re vastly different people, vastly different people.
And. And like the way that they see a situation, they respond to it differently because of kind of being different, different people. And that’s true inside of an organization as well. And that two different teammates could respond to the exact same situation in a different way. And as leaders, when we think about spreading love in our organizations, it is a matter of being able to say, like.
I understand that two people are not going to respond in the same way, and I have to understand, like, I have to, I have to know that that’s okay, and I have to know that that different response is what produces better outcomes than if we always had everybody responding in the same manner. Back again to the meandering thing at the very beginning, there’s There is value in discovery.
There’s value in that meandering in life, and there’s value in the, in the different responses and perspectives of people.
Naji Gehchan: Certainly. Any final word of wisdom for healthcare leaders around the world?
JR Clark: Man, uh, uh, maybe I don’t want to call this a word of wisdom, but Every single day, I am continuously reminded that there are so many people out there that are way more competent than I am, that are way smarter than I am, that are way more, like, infinitely better at things than I will ever be.
And giving people the freedom and flexibility to use that, Produces such great outcome and stifling that produces such, I guess, such the ant antithesis of it. Like there’s nothing that’s more of a poison in an organization than not allowing people to to thrive with with their own talents.
Naji Gehchan: Wow, J. R. This is such an amazing way to finish up our discussion. Thank you so much for joining me today and for this great shot.
JR Clark: Thank you. I really appreciate having the conversation with you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love, an organization podcast. More episodes summarizing the MIT Sloan Healthcare and Bioinnovation Conference are available on spreadloveio.com or wherever you get your podcast. Follow us to get our most recent episodes and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement, our world so desperately needs.
Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to SpreadLove in Organizations podcast. Drop us a review on your preferred podcast platform
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