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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 Gaurav Deshpande, an Experienced healthcare professional with 12 years of clinical, academic, and global health experience. Gaurav is currently the Head of Medical Oversight and safety at one of the largest cleft NGOs in the world, Operation Smile. He is Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at PennState Hershey school of Medicine with several publications in the craniofacial and cleft field. Gaurav is passionate about global surgery and is constantly looking to bridge the gap between patients and healthcare corporations by helping develop and disseminate high quality products and therapeutics.

Gaurav – It’s a pleasure to see you again and have you with me today!

Gaurav Deshpande: Thank you so much, Naji. It’s a pleasure to be on your show. And, um, you know, I’m, I’m very excited, uh, about this, uh, um, this meeting. Thank you so much.

Naji Gehchan: Can you share with us first your story from dental to specifically cleft surgery, MIT Sloan, and now leading medical in one of the largest NGOs?

What’s in between the lines of this inspiring journey?

Gaurav Deshpande: Well, I mean, if I would write, uh, this story, it probably would inspire a Bollywood movie for sure. Um, because, uh, there are so many. Unbelievable events that happen in, in, in, in between all this, um, you know, phases of my life. Um, So I did my orals and Max facial surgery residency in 2010, and I was an assistant professor at one of the teaching hospital in Mumbai.

And there was this opportunity that came in where Operation Smile was doing, uh, a humanitarian, uh, mission, uh, surg, short term surgical program in the northeast part of India Guha, um, which not many people knew. You know, it’s, uh, It was considered a remote area. There was a lot of, um, insurgency problem at that point of time.

Lot of political instability, et cetera. So what’s, you know, not a very great place to go, but, uh, you know, when they came there and started a program with the, with the Ministry of Health, um, and I got to know about it. I, um, Signed on on that program as a, as an observer, because to be honest, I had never ever seen a patient with clef lip and p and you know, this kind of, um, facial differences in my life because all those usually went to the facial plastic surgery department, not as, So I was here, I showed up, I got selected as an observer, and the team leader asked me, how many CLEs have you done have?

How many cliff surgeries have you done? And I was like, you know, should I tell him a few? Or, you know, the devil was pointing me with his trident. But, uh, you know, I, I told him the truth, you know, was I’ve never seen a, a case patient with my life. He was just theoretical article from the books and, you know, you should have seen his expression.

Well, long story shot. Um, I started working with

Naji Gehchan: them. Yes. Sorry for, uh, for stopping you here, but can you share with us a little bit more about clef patients? I’m not sure everyone listening to us who they know

Gaurav Deshpande: about it. Sure. So, uh, so clef lip andal is, um, the most common facial congenital, uh, anomaly, uh, in very technical terms.

Now, let me make it simple. It’s basically, um, you know, when a human being is developing in a mother’s womb, um, There are chances, um, one in 700 times, uh, that that baby would not have a complete union of the facial tissues. So what that leads to is there is, um, you know, like a hole in the pallet or the lip as we see them.

Uh, you know, we probably have seen, uh, people with a scar on their lip. We’re not able to talk clearly, uh, when we speak with them, uh, either on Subway or one of our friends or somebody’s friends. Uh, and as I said, it’s um, you know, the incidents is one in 700, so it’s pretty common, and especially it’s more common in countries, uh uh, who lack.

Resources, you know, whether nutrition is a problem. Uh, healthcare is not very good. Diagnostics are not very good. So, so this is what left mentality is like. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s a condition that we are born with. Uh, so, uh, yeah. So I started working with this gentleman. His name is Alex Campbell. Uh, we became Friends for Life and he, he’s my mentor teacher.

Uh, and I was also inspired by this that I decided to shut down my practice in Mumbai and moved to Guari and work with them at the center. Uh, my wife joined later, after six months, uh, because she was running a clinic and, you know, it was not very easy for her to directly shut it down, but, She came in, she started a dental department there.

Uh, we worked for around four years there. I took care of 16,000 patients. Uh, was, was a, was a great experience for us, not just helping kids, but also to develop our personal careers and life. Um, and then we moved back to Mumbai, started a similar center at a teaching hospital in Mumbai. Stayed the same work for six years with the Ministry of Health, uh, uh, the government of, uh, um, family welfare and uh, and health, um, you know, helped more kids.

And I always wanted to do administration because, you know, when we were running our center, a lot of things we did at that administration. Flavor to it, but we never knew about, like, you know, formally management. You know what it is? I had no clue. Because doctors in medical profession, you know, the problem is they do not, and you, you’re aware of it.

They do not teach us anything about finance. They do not teach anything about economics, accounting, nothing. Right. And it’s so important because doctors in a way are business people. So, um, yeah. Uh, so covid hit, we had to shut down elective surgeries, which is, you know, we only were operating emergency surgeries.

So, um, that gave me an opportunity to appear for the G R e, uh, perform decently well then, uh, apply for, uh, for Sloan. And, you know, luckily got there and pursued, uh, my dream, uh, course.

Naji Gehchan: Well, thank you for, for sharing this. Uh, I, I, I, I wanna go, let’s start by the end. So, you said your dream course, you talked about administration, uh, and, uh, how, how to lead, you know, organization.

So you, you moved from academia, from clinical surgery, uh, where you were having immediate impact on, uh, majority kids. Um, to now leading a nonprofit organizations more on the admin side, uh, as you described it. Uh, what have you learned through this transition and do you have any advice you can share with those who are thinking about such

Gaurav Deshpande: transitions today?

Yeah, that’s a great question, Naji, and I think it’s very common these days for clinicians to, you know, um, Pursue their dream. Uh, and that may not be surgery. Uh, and you pointed it out correctly, right? When you are operating on a kid, you are impacting that kid and their family. Um, it’s a 45 minute operation.

It’s a, I’m talking about left surgery. It’s a very simple operation, but has such a big impact, right? Uh, I always thought that, you know, Whether it’s a good idea to, to leave this because you see that happiness in the mom’s eyes when you give that, you know, new smile to the child. Um, but then I realize is that okay, this is, surgery is great, it impacts one child at a time.

But what if I pursue this dream of administration and workforce, let’s say Operation Smile. At that time it was not, uh, fixed. But even healthcare companies, even bio, uh, biotech, you know, pharma, uh, any healthcare company would gimme an opportunity to impact larger audience in that amount of time. So I think it was that thought that, you know, the, the, the impact that I would create, Over a larger population in short amount of time.

Uh, that was very pleasing for me. Uh, and, and you know, that gave me inspiration to, to change this field. Uh, and I think the same advice goes to whoever is at this point thinking about it. You know, um, we all are passionate as physicians, um, but we all. Sometimes, uh, are stuck in that idea is that direct patient care is the only way we can impact as physicians.

Um, but I think there are so many other alternatives to that. And you’ve, you’ve been doing that Naji yourself, uh, and we have so many other examples where people have actually impacted a larger population with, you know, uh, in a shorter period of time when they pursue both. And for me actually, um, operation Smile is uh, kind of a dream job as well because I can operate on the medical programs, so I can go as a volunteer and, you know, continue that surgical skills and practice administration.

So, you know, I get to have, enjoy the, uh, uh, both parts of the world. That’s,

Naji Gehchan: that’s great. I’m talking about large impact. It’s just incredible what you’ve been able to do through this journey, and it feels like a full circle now, being in this organization and doing it at that big scale globally.

Gaurav Deshpande: Yes.

Naji Gehchan: I’d love to hear, uh, as you are going through it, and really you’re in the nonprofit with Operation Smiles.

How, how do you see NGO’s role. In the healthcare ecosystem several times, you know, and as you said, so I relate to your, to, to your journey. And also I’m in the biotech biopharma industry. We hear about several partners, but it’s true, nonprofit won’t. It is not one of the first that would come into place, even though it has such a big impact.

And usually unfortunately, with underrepresented or smaller populations or those places, Where healthcare is a need or is a lack. So I’d love to get your thoughts as you’re now a leader in those organizations. How do you see your role as NGOs in the

Gaurav Deshpande: ecosystem? So I feel, uh, naji that nonprofits are like the catalyst to the process.

Uh, they can never be, uh, the sole ingredients. I mean, they could be the sole ingredients of the, um, of the process, but, but to, to make things more efficient, to make things, uh, you know, work favorably. It’s always good to partner, uh, with. Other organizations and that could, that could be governmental organizations, which is very important for nonprofits, uh, given the work that they’re doing.

Uh, and when we work with governments or ministry of of health, um, you know, our work is kind of made simple by them because, you know, they know the lay of the land. Um, many times, you know, we are far into that particular place. So it helps a lot if you’re actually able to partner with the government. Um, you can also.

Uh, partner with corporates. I mean, that, that’s like, um, you know, might sound funny, but, uh, but with the CSR initiatives with companies that have similar vision, you know, like, um, uh, if, if there is, I don’t want to name any particular, uh, organization, but if there is any, any, um, big corporate partner. Who have similar vision, who want to do the same work in that particular area, then you know, we can work with them, uh, in making sure that we have, um, the right elements to the, uh, to the process.

So I think nonprofit is that catalyst. So it brings in the government together, the corporates together, it has its own team, uh, you know, has been doing this for, um, that particular, um, specific job for many, many years. That helps to build the contacts as well. So, um, you know, working together is always the, the best way going forward, uh, especially in the low and low middle income countries because, uh, again, you know, we can impact the lives of many more, um, people by doing so.

Um, talking about Operation smiled specifically. Uh, we’ve always historically been, um, a surgical mission, humanitarian and mission driven organization. Uh, so what we did was we used to form a team and then send them into the, into this countries to, you know, to take, and we had local foundation who would, you know, find these patients who needed the care.

We would go there, operate, give them comprehensive care, and then. You know, the team flies out with a few people staying in the country to take care of the after surgery, um, care. Right? But now we are moving forward towards strengthening the local healthcare system. So our focus now is on education and training.

So whenever we are taking care of children, we are making sure that we are actually harnessing the local. Healthcare, uh, resources like surgery, anesthesia, pediatrics, biomedical, and we give them the necessary training so that they can now start taking care of their own children. Uh, and this is again, done in partnership with either the Ministry of Health, um, large corporations, which for-profit, who help us, you know, in donations in kind cash, uh, which help us to, uh, You know, take care of the pa the patients, take care of the surgery, give them a complete care, not just surgery, which includes dentistry, speech therapy, psychosocial care, et cetera, which is also very important.

Um, so, you know, I dunno whether I was able to answer your question, but, um, uh, long story short, I think it’s the, uh, the non-profit role as a catalyst that is very important in bringing all this partner together and forming that good uh, uh, team. You, you

Naji Gehchan: answered this question and my second one, which was around bridging the gap, uh, it’s one of your passion between patients and corporations, and you, you definitely talked about how you are doing it with your current role.

So let me pivot it to another question that is more personal, um, and talking some m MIT Sloan language, I’d love to hear more about your leadership signature. How do you define it? And how your leadership journey has been going.

Gaurav Deshpande: I think, uh, to define the leadership, uh, in one word, I would, um, say it as, uh, being an empathetic leader is so important.

Um, you know, um, many times we are so engrossed into what we want to do. We’re very focused on achieving our goals. And that point of time, we forget that, you know, there are human beings around us who are also doing the same thing for us. I remember us, uh, I was working with a senior plastic surgeon in India.

He was an American plastic surgeon and spending six months with us at this center, he would operate all day. And in the afternoon when it was lunch, there was no lunchtime. But you know, whenever you finish your surgeries, you come and you have lunch. This gentleman would go and see the patients who are waiting.

And when I was to say, Sam, you know, you should come and have your food. You, you are must be tired. You’ve been working all day. He said, but these kids are also waiting for us all day, so, you know, let me take care of them so that they can have their food and I can have it, have it later. So that kind of empathy, you know, when you see from people, you get so inspired.

And I think, um, uh, Sam Fuller is the name of the gentleman who has taught me that. Uh, and I would never forget, uh, uh, spending six months with him. We are still great friends. Um, Is to care for others, to take them together, you know, join hands. Um, there would be instances where, you know, there would be deadlines, there would be crunch times.

Uh, but I think if you have developed this relationship with your team, um, I think it goes so far, uh, uh, to, to solve the purpose rather than, you know, being, uh, very objective about, about the, uh, the work that we do. So, um, so I think, uh, it’s, it’s a mixture of that, but to, to summarize it, I think being an empathetic leader, um, is so important, uh, in today’s world.

Um, and that’s, that’s all I can say. Uh, and

Naji Gehchan: Guo, you talked about something that might seem obvious, but unfortunately we don’t see it. It’s this empathy to word your patients when you are a healthcare provider. So it, I’m saying obvious because many times you think like, yeah, healthcare providers are built that way, which is, as we both know, not always the case.

And, and then you also talked about empathy towards the people you’re working with. To provide this, this care, or in your nonprofit world to be able to lead and bring even more impact. Uh, do. Do you have any thoughts or stories, especially in Operation Smile as you are leading across cultures across really different countries, how do you think about those really?

I don’t wanna say cross-functional, but really like putting people from different places with a huge diversity to be able to bring an impact in those underserved population. How does the magic work somehow for you to be able to impact, uh, kids’ lives?

Gaurav Deshpande: It’s, it’s such a great question, Naji, because it’s so relevant to us.

Uh, so Operations Mile headquarters, uh, are, is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Um, And we work in 36 different countries. Each of them have their own foundations. Each of them have their own leaders. So, um, you know, it’s not the way that we can actually direct them to, you know, do things like this. But rather than, you know, respecting the local culture, respecting the local leadership is so important in this case.

And I think the communication is extremely important. Right. Um, Not just the communication, but the way it is communicated is so important. Um, what we do at Operation Smile Headquarters is, you know, uh, our, like a backend support for them. So we encourage the local leadership to take care of their own problems.

And whenever they have any pro any issues that are, you know, um, um, difficult to address, then we are always there with our resources to back them up. So I think the most important point here is to, to respect, uh, the, the local foundations, the local people. Many times what happens is, um, you know, we have the right experience, we have the right knowledge, but we do not know how that right knowledge and right experience can, um, you know, be, uh, of relevance in that local particular region, um, that we are working in.

So I think. Mutual respect to our colleagues from, from the local foundations to the local organization, the local, local companies is very important to get their perspective in rather than having a unilateral decision. Um, we believe in having that dialogue with them and discussing, brainstorming the difficult problems.

Easy ones are, you know, disolve it, we say, awesome, great job. Uh, when there are difficult problems to solve, we all sit together, uh, you know, get their ideas. We do. Definitely give some recommendations from our side, uh, and obviously offer help with other resources that, you know, as a headquarter organization would have.

Um, so I think it’s that combination of respect and good communication, uh, not being, uh, very, uh, direct about, you know, telling them how to do things, but rather getting the ideas from them and then mutually agreeing to what works best in that region. Um, is what is working so well for us. So I’ll give

Naji Gehchan: you now a word and I’ll want your reaction to it.

Okay. The fir, the first one is leadership,

Gaurav Deshpande: um, hard.

The second one is health equity.

Um, we are getting there.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. Do, do you think, so do you feel we’re, we’re striving, do you think we’re getting there? And what is your thoughts? You’re, yeah, but I’d, I’d love you to get your thoughts. You’re obviously working on equitable issues with Claf.

Gaurav Deshpande: Yeah. So, uh, you know, when, uh, during our time at M I t, um, I was, uh, in Healthcare Club and me and three other amazing, uh, individuals we worked with Biogen.

Um, on health equity, the same topic. And that was kind of an eye opener for me. Um, you know, when we were doing our research, the background research is how far we are, but the kind of, um, Excitement that Biogen showed with what our findings were and they implemented what we recommended, which was a big deal.

You know, these are four students from some business school coming and recommending them something. It’s a multi-billion dollar comp corporation, and they actually implementing that was. Such an amazing feeling for all of us. Um, and, you know, that showed us that confidence that, you know, people are really thinking about it.

And we have so many other examples. I’m, I’m probably ignorant about other corporations, but this is my personal example. Uh, same thing is with Operation Smile. Um, you know, as I said, uh, before, uh, the, the core now is. To make sure that we reach to the patients rather than the patient reaching to us. So what we are doing now, our strategy for the next decade is going to, uh, work in a similar fashion, like a cycle tire, right?

Hub and spooks. So what we are doing is now with the local foundations, we are trying to identify hubs which are this big, um, high activity. Academic centers, um, which can, you know, be the source of education, training, service, delivery, care delivery, clinical care delivery. And then we are also trying to find the spokes, which are, you know, well connected to these hubs, but are in the periphery towards the patient.

In doing so, what we are doing is, you know, we are trying to reduce the catastrophic expenses that the patients. Might experience and also make sure that they get the timely care, right. So, uh, instead of sometimes we have seen patients traveling for 16 hours, you know, sitting on a donkey, then riding a boat and sitting on a bus in a train, and then coming to the hospital for care.

And sometimes, you know, it just doesn’t work. The the kid is not, well, he cannot undergo the surgery. He has to go back. So that made us think like if we take that care and go to the patients, they have to just travel for less than two hours. That’s our aim. So whenever they need care, they can immediately go and get in there.

So, you know, that’s the way we are trying to, um, work on getting equitable healthcare to everyone. But again, you know, as I said, there’s, the journey is long, but I’m so glad that whatever my recent experiences are, uh, not just with my current organization but with with several other organizations, is that the journey has started.

We’ll get there. Yeah,

Naji Gehchan: I, I have the same hope. Uh, and I really think as healthcare, as a healthcare leader and all of us, uh, healthcare leaders, it’s just the right thing to do. We cannot be healthcare leaders and not think and act on health equity. And the example you gave is such a powerful example on, you know, thinking about the holistic experience, not only providing care, but actually for some patients, the journey for them literally.

To get to a center and get care or even what, what are the resources they have to be able to get and uh, and have care is, is so important. Thanks for sharing this. The third word is Sloan

Gaurav Deshpande: Fellows. Uh, the best possible, uh, the course. If you want to change to administration, um, I really enjoyed the, the experience, um, just because, you know, it’s in the, in such a, a unique kind of offering, right?

It’s not mba, it’s not executive, it’s a mixture of both and that makes it so special. So, you know, you spend time with young, very, uh, energetic. Folks from the, the regular two year mba. You also spend time with the senior leaders who are currently working. And then you have yourself a cohort, um, who are accomplished managers, uh, you know, with 12, 15, 20 years of experience themselves.

So I think it’s kind of the most unique experience that I, I you could imagine, um, Plus it’s m i t, it’s the kind of, um, you know, the, uh, the resources that just come with that name. Um, I always thought I was well traveled. I always thought that, you know, I’ve done fellowships at, uh, international universities, uh, I’ve done clinical rotations there, and I thought, oh yeah, well, I’ve seen the world.

When I came here, I realized I was living in a big pond, you know, uh, and. That was just an eye-opener for me. The kind of things I took away. The, the kind of people I met, the friends I I I made, uh, is just amazing. Um, and, uh, you know, there’s so much, um, positive energy that I took from there. So much positive learnings that I took from there, which are gonna be lifelong for me.

Yeah. So, uh, in one word it was amazing and, um, you know, a life-changing experience for sure. I, I was so

Naji Gehchan: afraid when you said the young mba, how you’re gonna describe, uh, the exec mba. So I don’t know how to take senior. It’s not all that please, but, uh, yeah. Okay. I, I take that the, the last word is spread love in organizations.

Gaurav Deshpande: Um, very needed. Um, and, um, let’s, you know, let’s do it together. Uh, that’s, uh, that’s a wonderful feeling, you know, when you, uh, give a compliment to your coworker, uh, when you just, you know, give them that encouragement when they are really down, um, when you, you know, in simple ways, very, very simple ways.

Show your appreciation. And the kind of, you know, impact that it makes on them is so huge. Um, you know, we’ve all, all heard and we have all, uh, in various fields have experienced toxic culture. We have also been lucky where we have found that one or two, or three or four, uh, coworkers who have been completely opposite, very positive, very optimistic, you know, full of love.

And we all agree that our. Uh, output. Our efficiency is the, is very high when we are actually working with these, uh, individuals who are positive. You know who, who mean love, who, um, you know, I keep using this word too often. Empathetic. Uh, it’s so important in my life and I’ve, uh, seen how it benefits. Um, so I mean, I am, whoever is listening, I can just request them.

You know, it’s a very simple, um, Uh, thing to do is just to, you know, be kind, be, um, uh, empathetic towards your, um, your colleagues. Make sure that, you know, you see their side of it. Sometimes, you know, we are, as I said, we are very focused on our outcomes and we do not see that, okay, this person is also human being.

May he also has a family, may have some issues, but when we start thinking holistically about all those things, I think, um, you know, just not. Um, better humans, but also better managers. So I, I sincerely hope that, you know, in the next decade or so we’ll be in a different place.

Any

Naji Gehchan: final word of wisdom, uh, gu for healthcare leaders

Gaurav Deshpande: around the world? Uh, well, I mean, I, um, I have been very, um, honored to, to have, um, see and experienced, uh, different styles of healthcare leaders. Um, and the only thing I would, um, you know, um, suggest, I mean, I, I’m not sure whether I even have, uh, that position to, to recommend, but, uh, what I could just suggest from my end, the small experience that I have is, um, You know, there is so much need in the world.

There are millions of people who, who lack access to, uh, safe care, safe clinical care, uh, safe medicines, you know, safe diagnostics, and, you know, we are losing precious lives because of that difference. In the distribution. Uh, so my humble request to all the healthcare readers in whichever field, you know, they are, is if we can work together and think about this inequity in the distribution and make sure that, you know, we work towards that, uh, we make sure that, you know, we have the resources that we can, we can distribute it around the world where it’s most needed.

Um, I think that would. Be very helpful, you know, to humanity and, um, uh, in general, uh, it’ll be very, very impactful. So that’s, that’s the humble request to everyone. That is such

Naji Gehchan: an important, uh, issue and topic that needs to be addressed. Thank you so much, uh, again, for being with me today and for this incredible chat.

Gaurav Deshpande: Thank you so much, Naji. Um, you know, uh, you and. An inspiration for me. I’ve learned a lot from you, uh, with our short chats during Sloan as well. So thank you for this lovely endeavor that you’re doing. I, I follow it very keenly. Um, you know, and so many fabulous, uh, leaders that you’ve, uh, you know, spoken to in the past.

And I’m, I feel lucky and honored, uh, that you thought of me. Thank you so much.

Naji Gehchan: Well, thank you so much. Your words mean a lot. We’re, we’re so many leaders more than a hundred now, who are definitely striving to make life better around the world by leading from a place of love, and you’re one of them. It’s been an honor to have you, Gaurav Thank you.

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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 partnership with MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference, an event that brings the Healthcare Ecosystem Together.

Jami Taylor is joining me today for this episode. Jami is Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Protagonist Therapeutics, and a Global Justice Fellow at Yale University, working to design new models to improve access to medicines in the world’s poorest and most challenging settings. Earlier in her career, Jami held global leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson across key divisions and was a founding member of Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health. Jami has served as a member of the National Academy of Medicine Forum on Microbial Threats; the Private Sector Delegation to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the Chairman’s Circle at the Center for Global Development; the Global Health Advisory Council at Harvard Medical School; and on many other committees and forums addressing priority issues in medicine and society. In 2014, Jami was named a Cross-Sector Leadership Fellow at the Presidio Institute, a program created by the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation to advance the work of leaders addressing society’s most complex challenges.

Jami – it is such an honor to have you with me today!

Jami Taylor: Thank you so much for having me, Naji. It’s great to be here.

Naji Gehchan: Before we dive into accessibility in a global health setting, which was the topic, uh, of your panel at, um, S H B C, I’m eager to hear a little bit more about your personal story. What brought you to healthcare and this inspiring journey of impacts you have.

Jami Taylor: Sure. I’d love to recount it. It, um, it’s something that I reflect upon a lot really. It’s the tension between innovation and access that’s defined my career and in many ways my own personal life and even my childhood. I grew up in Washington, DC and both of my parents worked on key legislation affecting the business model of the pharmaceutical industry, namely the Orphan Drug Act, and later Hatch Waxman known for really creating that split.

Between the innovator industry and the generic drug industry, which really defined that tension between innovation and access, and in some ways defined responsibilities between those two sides of a coin, so to speak. And so the innovator industry was. Tasked really with the work of innovation, uh, and the work of r and d and investments therein, whereas the generic industry was seen as sort of taking the baton on access after a particular IP period had expired.

And I think there was a satisfaction with this model, despite all the tension that remained within it for a long period of time. But ultimately, when we think it globally, and think about how the models played out. It’s fair to say that there are imperfections in it and the waiting period between the, the innovation as it comes forward.

And the medical sphere and accessibility, especially when we think about the world’s po poorest and most remote communities. It um, it strikes me that there, it always struck me that there were solutions that needed to come to the fore more quickly. And thinking about that sense of urgency, my childhood was really incubated in the crucible of the H I V crisis in the us.

I had an uncle who contracted h i v via blood transfusion in the early 1980s, and that sense of urgency and real desperation for innovation and for access was very much, uh, formative as I observed that as a child, and it imprinted itself upon me that experience. You know, well after his death many years later and is really a guiding light for me when I think about and knew that desperation at the time as it was experienced by my family.

And then now that I’ve traveled the world and spent a great deal of time in frontier and emerging markets and communities and all kinds of situations socioeconomically and other, economically and otherwise, you know, seeing that desperation as it manifests its itself. In many different contexts across many different disease states really drives my passion for expanding both innovation and access and looking for ways to innovate for access in the context of the innovator industry in which I now sit.

Thank you so

Naji Gehchan: much, Jamie, for sharing part of your story. Uh, let’s first, uh, talk about ACC access, right? You shared about accessibility and healthcare specifically. Can you share with us, how do you define this?

Jami Taylor: So, I define access, uh, pretty broadly. I use the term healthcare everywhere. I think healthcare really should be something that is integrated into every aspects of our lives.

Healthcare treatments within arms reach the ability to access physicians or train healthcare providers within a moment of need whenever that moment might arise. Thinking about healthcare very expansively and very ubiquitously helps us, I think, to set the mindset around access that we need to then drive innovation for access.

So if we

Naji Gehchan: take this into a global health setting, as was the panel, uh, discussion during the conference, uh, what are your thoughts, uh, as of today about ACC access accessibility in global

Jami Taylor: health setting? I think we remain in an urgent state where access falls far beneath the levels at which it should.

When we think about healthcare everywhere as a goal, as an ultimate aim, we fall far short of that. And I think obviously the recent pandemic laid bare many of those inequities, but those inequities. Are constant and I think we find too much satisfaction in the status quo. I, for example, find it completely unacceptable even when we’re able to scale old and toxic drugs and this sort of self-congratulation that accompanies that often on the part of, of, of companies in the industry.

It, it’s, Always important to scale. I mean every possible medication, but where we allow these sort of waiting games that I referenced prior and where we tolerate the absence of innovation, where unmet need is so clear and urgent. I just truly believe that there’s more that we can do and that sense of dissatisfaction is very much a driving force in, in my day-to-day work.

Naji Gehchan: So I love that you talked about dissatisfaction more we can do, and you really come from this, uh, place of, uh, urgency to ask, right? With the desperation that you shared. So can I double click on this and hear from you? What do you think we can do and we should do to improve accessibility?

Jami Taylor: Oh, absolutely.

Well, I mean, I could probably spend all day, you know, you know, a relative soapbox on this one, but I’ll just offer some perspectives just based on my own experience. One, it starts with the belief that we can do something about it. I know that’s many times, especially sitting in the pharmaceutical industry, we feel really almost straight jacketed by.

The systems in which we operate. There are legal frameworks, regulatory frameworks. There are just business models that in some ways have so deeply entrenched the status quo that I described, that it drives that sense of. Complacency around access to medicines. Uh, we’ve heard many times, at least in past years, even top leaders in the pharmaceutical industry accept that sort of bifurcation of responsibility that I mentioned, which I believe is a false dichotomy.

Innovation versus access with. Really generic industries responsible for access. I think we’re all responsible for access and frankly, I think we’re all responsible for innovation. And so driving an innovation for access MI mindset, grounded in that sense that we can do better. There’s, there are gaps that we can fill.

The status quo is not necessarily where we need to remain. I think there’s, I think it begins there. I feel very strongly that even. Where we feel like those deeply entrenched business models are, you know, sometimes insurmountable. There’s a role for advocacy and that can happen not only outside of our organization and the context of the policy and legal frameworks and regulatory frameworks that I mentioned, but it can happen in inside even large organizations and even small cap companies like where I sit, we can ad advocate for investment.

That has innovation and access as twin concepts and as pillars and priorities for how we allocate r and d dollars. We can advocate with our benefactors and shareholders for those who invest in our companies, we can push for an innovation for access mindset. And I’ve seen that kind of advocacy where it’s built upon, I think genuine intent.

And then of course, certain capabilities that can un unlock and realize a goal. I’ve seen that kind of advocacy really move mountains. Uh, early in my career, I worked with a group, kind of a ragtag group within Johnson and Johnson at the time. There was an attempt within j and j to turn around the pharmaceutical sector of the company, which wasn’t its high performing sector in the early two thousands.

And there was a huge profit margin imperative. A massive transformational INF innovation imperative, but less so at the time, an access imperative. And this was an observation that a few of my colleagues and I recognized. And so what we did was we created on our own an access and affordability team. It had three people, actually four, but one defected very quickly when he realized maybe this was radioactive from an internal political perspective.

But we, we began to really advocate around this idea of access and affordability and building into the priorities and the strategic, strategic pillars at a really critical time for the, for the company in this particular segment of the company. You know, at the looking back, it really was a risk in many ways, but in some ways we were seizing upon an opportunity of the moment where there was this appetite to shift a whole collection of innovators.

And it was a time when. Jansen, which is com comprises the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson and Johnson, was really begin to getting to brand itself and really understand itself as a single entity underneath the Johnson and Johnson umbrella. We seized upon, uh, a lonely asset that had been a development very quietly in our labs in Belgium for, uh, that appear to be very clearly effective against multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

Certainly that would not be, uh, a sort of, Big win blockbuster by any stretch, but we were able to really craft a narrative thinking about the ad advocacy angle as entrepreneurs where we were able to elevate this M D R T B asset as a driver of business model innovation a means of. Reaching communities and driving new access models that could help support our, our aims in terms of global expansion across the company’s portfolio of products and where we could push and test these new models.

In what, what, because there was no real profit to be had. That where we could test these models in ways that would confer reputational, gain, help to build rapport within new markets or markets where we had a lower footprint and where we could, where we could develop relationships and new public-private partnerships with governments in ways that constituted its own sort of innovative model.

That kind of advocacy proved to be very, very powerful, and I’m proud to say. That despite lots of obstacles along the way and a huge amount of internal and external skepticism, because we believed it was possible because we brought a mindset that said, access and affordability is a priority, and innovation for access is a meaningful direction.

Even for a major company with all of its pressures from shareholders and other stakeholders, we were able to, at this point save many, many thousands of lives around the world to prove out and new treatment regimen for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and potentially TB more broadly. And we were able to, uh, elevate what has now become from a three person team, what has now become many hundreds of people engaged in the formal work of global public health within that organization.

Naji Gehchan: Wow. Thank you so much, uh, Jamie for sharing this, and I love it. It’s a concrete example with impact, uh, that, that you’re sharing here and along with a lot of entrepreneurship that you know, I believe in. And obviously you’ve done it in, in large organizations, uh, and you talked about. I love how you framed it.

It’s belief innovation and access advocacy, and there’s the piece of access and affordability. So if I wanna double click on affordability, you know, especially in the poorest and most challenging places on earth, do you think cost is the only challenge? Or is, is it one challenge and there’s other pieces?

I’d love to get your perspective about how you think, uh, through affordability for the poorest spaces on earth.

Jami Taylor: One, I believe in models like the Global Fund to fight aids, TB, and malaria, where there’s. The opportunity to collect funds together in sort of a massive way even, and use that as a driver of effectively subsidizing costs for access as a priority for communities that otherwise could not afford innovative medicines or even generic medicines for that matter.

So there’s, there are models out there that I think offer us real guiding lights. But if, but as, as I’ll probably say through, through the course of this whole discussion, there’s more that we can do, right? We can never be satisfied as long as healthcare isn’t everywhere. And so to that end, one of the, one of the observations that I’ve made, you know, climbing mountains and Rwanda and, and trudging through, you know, banana plantations and Ecuador and really moving in lots of places in between.

Touring hosp TV hospitals in Chenai India. One observation has been this sense of absorptive capacity, where you have limited infrastructure. How can you bring some of our most sophisticated technologies to the market to really, uh, achieve the health health outcomes that you’re seeking everywhere. And that’s where that real innovation for access mindset can come in.

And where we can make palpable gains in that direction, we can obviate the need for heavy infrastructure for that so-called absorptive capacity. And one example is it comes from the company where I am right now, protagonist Therapeutics. It’s a moonshot company really taking areas of medicine or disease areas that are typically treated through heavy infrastructure treatment modalities.

Doctor’s, office based infusions, for example, of monoclonal antibody bio, large molecule biologic drugs. There are, um, diseases that are treated as first line with phlebotomy, for example. Where patients have to go in and have complic, it’s sometimes complicated procedures carried out, or even simple procedures are out of reach in some of these markets.

And so where you can look at those barriers and ask, how can we traverse those barriers through the power of technological innovation, harnessing a lot of human ingenuity along the way, that kind of creativity coming down to new drug formulations, new drugs that can. That can essentially displace and replace heavy infrastructure.

That’s the aim of the work that I’m engaged in right now. Really excited about the gains that we can make in that direction. Helping to solve for last mile problems and helping to keep some of these communities where. I mean even, uh, an an in reach healthcare clinic is out of reach. Putting ourselves in a position where we can scale medical therapy that can be used conveniently at home and preferably in pill form or even, or in long-acting injectable form or some way that keeps patients from having to go into, into experts to receive expensive medicines.

I think that innovation for access. Perspective and companies built around. It will really define the age of access, which I hope is very much upon us. So,

Naji Gehchan: Jamie, the, these are great example and really thanks for sharing what you’re doing daily, obviously to improve this, uh, this important, uh, issue we face, uh, since decades.

I, I wanna bring also this, you know, there’s the access piece. There is also a lot on the trust. Of the system, the trust of those companies. Um, everything around, you know, misinformation, miscommunication, which is becoming like even countries that can afford treatments. Unfortunately, we’re seeing people dying because they don’t believe in those treatments.

So I’d love to get your perspective, how you would, especially that you’ve gone through places, uh, that are underserved, uh, you know, countries where you have. Poor challenge to access. How do you see this fit in and how can we solve also this piece? Is it only about getting those drugs, for example, to this market or to this population?

Or is there more to be done also from, from a trust, from a communication standpoint, from any other aspect you, you think would be needed for us to solve this problem?

Jami Taylor: Naji, this is such a great question and I really appreciate it. It almost brings me to a very vulnerable place, reflecting upon the case study that I shared around M D R T B and the work that we did to bring Baklan now under the brand name curo to markets all across the world.

We really believed, I think, in our naivete that the moment we received F D A approval and were able to unlock that access to this drug, And given that, of course, that this was the first innovation in tuberculosis in more than 40 years, that there would be this organic outpouring of praise and celebration and uptake that we would be embraced as a company, that the drug would be embraced quickly across every community where it was needed, that we would have partners pouring out their own resources to, to support and shore up, and scale up all of that effort.

We were very surprised and frankly, at a personal level, I was very. I mean shocked and, and hurt at the time when we actually received quite a bit of criticism with the rollout of the drug. Much, much of that criticism looking back, was well placed. I mean, we struggled with the pricing model and attempted to be as innovative as possible and the pricing model around what we called equity-based tiered pricing.

But we did a really poor job of explaining the rationale there, and it almost looked like we were placing artificial limits on access. We’re trying to force a pricing model. Uh, in, in markets that where we hadn’t primed it, so to speak, we hadn’t done the work of patient intimacy in achieving that, that sort of deep listening to your customer to know all of the hurdles that they face, we were so engaged with the biology of the drug and, you know, understanding how it operated, you know, in that sort of physiological sense.

And so proud of that, that there was a lot of community engagement. That needed to happen pre-approval that we just didn’t even perceive as a requirement. And so when criticism came in, and I should say there it, there was that sort of organic that that slice of organic celebration, but there was also a fair amount of criticism in print and otherwise we took it very, very hard.

But in ways, in some ways, I’m glad that we did because. We taking that criticism so seriously, really prompt us, prompted us to reflect and reset and understand community engagement, stakeholder engagement at a whole new level. And from there, I think we were able to set a foundation for what would later become, as I mentioned, Johnson and Johnson Global Public Health set a foundation of intensive partnerships.

Intensive government engagement, intensive community engagement. We began to dispatch our teams into some of the most far flung areas of the world. We were camping with hippos in Uganda. We were touring hospitals, as I mentioned, TB hospitals throughout Southeast Asia. We were really beginning to understand the settings in which we were working.

Well beyond what our preclinical work in Petri dishes could indicate for us. And it takes both. It takes that scientific excellence, but also that stakeholder engagement excellence. And that’s really the lesson from that case study and certainly a lesson that informs so much of the work that I do today.

Naji Gehchan: That’s great. And really talking about this combination about science and underground, what people need in population. We’ve heard it several times during, during the discussion, uh, in the conference. W w with all that you’ve seen, you’re learning, you’re an expert in this field now. Uh, are you hopeful for the next decade that we will get there as a society?

Jami Taylor: I’m hugely hopeful. In fact, I’m, you know, with this sort of driving understanding that there’s so much more that we can do. I think that perspective helps to unlock a huge amount of optimism. On the research side, we’re seeing accelerating drivers of new research. New research timelines effectively where r and d can be compressed so that we’re not waiting 20 years for a drug to come to market, but rather through the strength of new regulatory pathways and certainly even new discovery modalities and lots of new tech being applied across the board.

I think we’re seeing our ability to move from bench to bedside. With a whole new, I mean, to use a term that’s become its own catchphrase, warp speed, and I want to see that, as I’m sure you do, and many in the audience here want to see that applied to the access space and the innovation for access space.

I think we’re seeing lots of other factors outside of healthcare proper that are coming into view, transportation and logistics, innovations that from drone delivery, for example, and, and so forth. Those innovations are helping us to traverse that last mile, which for many years just felt like was, it was such a firm barrier to access that we would never jump over it.

But by engaging some of those other actors in that space, we’re seeing some whole new ways of getting healthcare. Everywhere. We’re also seeing, uh, remote monitoring and telemedicine taking hold all across the world. I mean, even for some of the momentary quarterly earnings calls that suggest a decline in the usage thereof, maybe here in the US or other high income markets in in low and middle income markets, it is taking off like wildfire in ways that are very encouraging and hopefully we can continue to stoke that momentum.

We’re also seeing non-traditional actors, like I mentioned, like tech companies, seeing some of these longstanding gaps and creatively considering ways that they could help to fill those gaps in equity. And I think there are some powerful roles that some of those actors can play in ways that, uh, will emerge the benefit of, of everyone across the world.

I’m thrilled with the level of innovation that we’re seeing right now in diagnostics. I remember years ago listening to the president of Tanzania saying that the crippling aspect with of healthcare, the weakest link within their healthcare system there in Tanzania was lack of reliable and accurate diagnostics and access to diagnostics.

And here we’re seeing tests that are now reliable, accurate, and diffused. Everywhere and the power of some of those, those, those, the MedTech innovations that I mentioned to carry diagnostics forward at new levels across all kinds of disease areas. So absolutely thrilled about that. I think we’re seeing.

If not with the warming of the capital markets to this direction, we are seeing a lot of innovators jump into innovation for access. With access as an explicit priority for an innovation agenda among small cap players, your garage biotechs, some of your publicly traded biotechs, and I think we’re seeing large pharma really begin to set the tone.

I think. The industry is an entirely different place from a values point of view and how those values are expressed. When we think about, say, 1999, big pharma versus the large pharma actors today, and we see increasing evidence of this access imperative. All the time. And that advocacy within those organizations and outside of them can continue in ways that I think will really, truly bring us a new golden age of biomedical innovation, innovation for access, and will help to realize this vision of healthcare everywhere.

And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. I will shift

Naji Gehchan: gears now and give you words, and I would love your reaction to it. Okay, great. So the first one is leadership

purpose-driven.

Jami Taylor: Can you share, so a word, a word back, or

Naji Gehchan: I, I have to get Oh, yeah, you can, you can share more if you’d like. And, and I’m, especially when you talked about the values we have in biotech and in pharma, I think obviously leadership plays a big role on setting the tone and how you wanna drive this. So I’d love a little bit

Jami Taylor: more on this.

Oh, absolutely. Okay, good. Well, I’m glad you’re giving me more room too, to sort of opine. So, in leadership, I think there’s, there. Is something so powerful about that sort of fixed firm value system and how it evidences itself in every aspect of a of a, of a company or a movement. And I’ve seen that certainly in the case of Johnson and Johnson, where we were able to appeal to the fundamental credo values that hang on every wall in which are etched in stone at the company’s headquarters.

Think when it comes to leadership, there’s always something courageous about the best kind of leadership. And I mentioned early in our conversation all of these barriers that are deeply entrenched and systemic, right? I mean, where you’ve got, I. Uh, high regulatory bars to that, that dictate large timelines and large co or long timelines and large costs.

Takes a lot of courage to have a vision that’s often many years out. And to see that vision through many, uh, innovators today face, uh, lot of, uh, let’s just say heavy input. From investors, uh, the investors upon which they depend in order to carry out some of this, you know, more moonshot oriented work and sometimes, uh, whether it’s it, it’s shareholders of publicly traded company or early stage BC investors, what you find is that they can place pressure on you to adhere.

To the system as it stands and not to try to go against the grain in ways that, uh, potentially imbue more risk in the enterprise. And so leadership requires that courage and then that tenacity to see things through and to see a bigger vision through. And I think where the, where a vision can be expressed in ways that are deeply connected to values, then you can have the success of advocacy that we’ve discussed.

What about

Naji Gehchan: health equity?

Jami Taylor: I’m so glad we’re talking about health equity because, uh, years ago there really was almost wasn’t a place or a forum or even a, a, a phrase to really capture, uh, Inequality as it’s, it’s very clearly evidenced, uh, across either the healthcare access sphere, whether it’s in communities here in the US or, you know, certainly as those inequalities are present on a global basis.

And so simply the fact that we’re able to talk about health equity as this clear phrase and one that is familiar to probably everyone listening, I think it represents a leap forward in the dialogue that really governs the industry and where it should go. We talked about large cap pharma and MedTech companies, really setting the tone and leadership, setting the tone.

When I think about health equity today, I’m extremely encouraged and really enthusiastic over the number of CEOs that we see emphasizing health equity as a priority, and we see it not only in sort of you, I always worry about sort of glitzy social media posts or what I call the red carpet. The red carpeting of, you know, some of the, um, you know, some of the priorities that we’d like to see, you know, much more substantially connected to business models.

But we see health equity now connected to business models, and that’s evidenced in earnings call transcripts and, and. And the way organizations are being designed right now and the way leadership is being constructed across some of your largest healthcare players. And so I’m very enthusiastic about healthcare equity.

I’m, I’m extremely glad that it’s become such a familiar catchphrase and I believe that it is really is one that has teeth and will for the long term, and will be a driving force, you know, as it is a driving priority right now for many leaders of companies, large and small. Global justice. Okay. I love this word because it’s much more expansive than healthcare.

I love this phrase, global justice. I mean, we talked about some of the fundamental sort of framing tools that can help to give us the lens. That can situate a value system around healthcare access, and that can help to orient innovations and allocation of resources toward innovation for access. Global justice is almost even deeper than everything that we’ve talked about here and certainly much more expansive as a frame.

It suggests that there is something wrong with lack of access. To medicines and it does so, or it prompts us to consider that conclusion in ways that force self-reflection as across especially high income countries that are in many and, and markets and players that are in many ways responsible or at least partly responsible for injustice as it applies to healthcare.

And it’s, you know, in a world of a lot of moral relat, and I’ll certainly, you know, concede that everyone can have different views thinking about healthcare through a lens of global justice. I think it just hits deeper and it prompts us to think harder and it really raises that sense of urgency for moral reasons that I think cascade.

Across many different actors at many different levels within the healthcare ecosystem, and I hope that that justice lens can come more firmly fixed into the collection of lenses that we use to explore access to healthcare challenges going forward. I

Naji Gehchan: certainly, uh, deeply agree with you on, on this piece, and coming from a country where w we felt injustice, where even being in the US in a country where depending on the community or on you feel there is no justice and healthcare is delivered.

So it’s, it’s really, I think, a great point on how you’re framing it. The last word is spread love in organizations.

Jami Taylor: So Naji, I love this because in some ways it’s the thread. Looking back through our whole conversation. Yeah, that really opens, I would almost say doors, but I think that’s too modest. It really opens the floodgates to progress in this area. We talked about stakeholder engagement and patient intimacy. And I mean, I’m almost emotional reflecting on some of the moments where I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with patients who have multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, patients suffering from severe head and neck cancers and places like, like Uganda.

Without access to any kind of sophisticated care and the pain that they have to sit with is so powerful. And in those moments, sometimes it feels like love becomes its own medicinal force, but also this driver to bring. Medicines and tools and resources and expertise to really conquer these issues. It prompts us this sort of spread love approach prompts us to relieve suffering.

And I think that’s what love entails so much. And I think that’s the essence of compassion, which is the essence of access to healthcare, access to medicines. And I’m glad you reminded me of that today.

Naji Gehchan: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Jamie, for sharing those, um, those moments that you’ve lived a and I think we all have this, um, this responsibility as leaders in healthcare to ensure a better just word in in healthcare.

Any final words of wisdom for healthcare leaders around the world?

Jami Taylor: I really believe that we are on the cusp of this healthcare everywhere era. I believe that we are entering a whole new era of biomedical innovation that’s ed up by. All these different factors that I mentioned. Diffusion of diagnostics, the leaps forward, innovation in transportation and logistics. The entry into the space of new tech players and MO technology modalities that can infuse with our work, whether it be on the r and d side or the access side and everywhere in between to really accelerate our progress.

I think it really just takes a pre. Prioritization of innovation for access, with access as an explicit priority of the work we do to drive new medicines. Technologies, medical care approaches forward. And as we think about speed and scale, as has been many times discussed in the context of climate, as we think of speed and scale in the context of healthcare access, and as we take that bigger lens of global justice and the even.

Bigger lens that you’ve mentioned here of really love, compassion, and relief of suffering. There’s no stopping us. I really believe the sky’s the limit as an innovative community and as a community of leaders in the healthcare space today.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much, Jamie, for being with me today.

Jami Taylor: Oh, I was thrilled. Thank you so much, Naji. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spreadlove in Organizations podcast! More episodes summarizing the MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference are available on spreadloveio.com or on your preferred streaming app. Follow “spreadlove in organizations” wherever you listen to podcasts 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 Spread Love 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.

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 today, excited to be joined by Enrique Conterno CEO of Fibrogen. 

A native of Peru, Enrique is a mechanical engineering with an MBA from Duke. He joined Eli Lilly in 1992 and spent the next two decades working in the U.S. and internationally across sales, marketing, finance, business development, and general management roles. Enrique became the President of Lilly Diabetes in 2009. In addition to those responsibilities, he took on the role of President of Lilly USA in January 2017 before retiring at the end of 2019 after 27 years of service with the company. I had the privilege and chance to work in Enrique’s teams, learn from his leadership, and grow in the culture he has created.

Enrique – I am so honored to have you with me today!

I would love to learn more about your personal journey? What is in between the line of the incredibly successful leader you are.

Enrique Conterno: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to have these chats with you and matching. Great. Great to see you again.

Naji Gehchan: Great to see you too. I would love Enrique to learn more about your personal story, your personal journey, what is in between those lines of this incredibly successful, uh, career and that either you are today.

Enrique Conterno: Thank you. I’m not sure exactly where to start, but probably I have to start when. I decided to, um, embark on the journey outside of Peru and pursue my education in the United States. At that time, I was a swimmer I think. And, uh, therefore I had the opportunity as a swimmer to get us a scholarship or scholarships in the U S but beyond that, I think.

Uh, what, uh, that, that was the start of something that I believe shaped me throughout my career, which is, um, we have to take chances, personal chances, certain risks. Uh, it was not easy at that time for me to leave Peru, but I decided to do so. Um, and I think throughout my career, I’ve taken a number of, um, personal risks and for the most part, um, I’m delighted that I took those chances.

Not every single one. Worked in the way that I was expecting them, but we do have to take, be thoughtful, take appropriate chances and, and, uh, And then adapt to changing circumstances. But, um, I think in between the lines, I, um, uh, we’re all, I think our product of our experiences, and I think that’s something that has really shaped me is basically taking chances, uh, thinking certain risks and then, uh, uh, manage in the, in the best way possible to produce excellent outcome.

Naji Gehchan: When you’re talking to Enrique about taking chances and tourists, obviously you said you took it personally. I know as a leader also, you’re taught a lot of risks and you gave people opportunities and chances. Uh, how do you, how do you do this? How have you managed to always build successful teams, lead them towards even bigger successes for the organization stats.

Enrique Conterno: Yeah, there’s no question that talent is at the very heart of successful organizations and creating diverse teams, I think is critical to do that. And, um, and I think I always reflect on. As we, uh, build teams and give people chances. And the opportunity to grow one has to reflect the, somebody took the chance on us to take larger responsibilities.

And in some cases, maybe for us to step up in position, the maybe we thought we were not ready to take on and we have to reflect on that as we basically provide opportunities for, uh, others. Um, At the end. I think there’s no formula when it comes to hiring people or building teams. But I do think there are a number of elements that we want us to look for in a culture that one wants to create.

Um, and we can speak a little more about that, but there’s no question that, uh, people and talent are at the very heart of, uh, continued success in, uh, organizations.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, I would love, I would love to hear about those elements. I’ve, I’ve, you know, I’ve lived that. I think the country, you build a caring culture.

I, you know, I personally call it loving culture, but truly from this shared purpose, the strong values, and then leading your teams to where it’s exceptional execution, uh, to, to deliver on, uh, uh, on this chair and common purpose. I’d love to hear more about the elements you use shared. You shared those, but I’d love to hear more about.

Enrique Conterno: Sure. So, um, and you are absolutely right. I think it’s, um, it’s all about, um, I think centering on our common purpose and, uh, key values and what do we basically expect from all leaders or, uh, employees? Um, all of our colleagues in an organization. Uh, all of that I think is. Part of, uh, starting to create the culture, to the extent that one lives, those values, you start to create those, that culture.

Just try to, uh, uh, not just retain, but attract talent to the, to the organization now it’s, uh, clearly I think, um, there are, um, a number of other elements. Claim to that. Um, I’m a, I’m a huge believer in looking at a track record of success when building teams, uh, not just experiences, but really looking at the track records of, uh, individuals.

And, um, this sometimes can be misunderstood. Um, yes, we look for. The outcomes and outcomes are critical, but it’s also how people dealt in many cases with failures, I think, or, uh, with maybe a, uh, a hand that was not quite perfect. And well, what, what were the actions that the individual then the individual took to improve the situation to, to, uh, make the situation better?

Um, as we, uh, I think about that. I think, uh, we need to, um, and we build this culture and you call it a loving culture, um, a caring culture. Although I think all of that is true. I like to think of it as an empowering culture and you’re right. I think the leader in many cases, trying to serve to ensure that people can basically give, uh, Uh, the most, um, um, given their capabilities, the opportunity that they have.

I think all of that I think is very much true. Um, at the end of the day, I think, um, uh, empowerment needs to also come with accountable. And, um, I’m a big believer on, uh, marrying those two, uh, which is, uh, people need to be empowered, but at the end, I think that empowering needs to lead to increased accountability.

And hopefully the organization then works, I think, in a much better way, um, uh, so that everybody can contribute as long as the priorities and the purpose is clear. I think it’s, um, everything tends to work, um, much more effectively and efficiently.

Naji Gehchan: And thanks Enrique. And I know you’re passionate about DNI and you mentioned that try trick twisting at the first team, uh, while building this culture.

Uh, any, any advice, you know, as you are. Bringing those leaders. Uh, many times we, uh, we are faced with some of the inclusion challenges, and I remember something you always talked about remaining yourself, be yourself and continue to be yourself as you’re, uh, leading and, and in the organization. What, what, what do you do to make sure that people, as they join, uh, don’t change to be in the mall, but try to be themselves and being able to deliver to the expectations?

Enrique Conterno: Yeah, a discussion that I will, that I, uh, come, you know, often have, is that the responsibility of both the leaders in the organization, but also. The, um, the, the, uh, employees coming into the organization to ensure that we can build an inclusive culture. Um, It is through, we need to create that type of environment, a leader, but there’s also responsibility on the person coming in, um, to, in some cases to take that person arrest.

To always, um, uh, be able to speak out and quite frankly, not to just, uh, sort of, uh, come in and be just like your organization that are coming into the reason we, um, organizations can benefit so much from new blood, from fresh thinking from new talent, new hire. It’s because of the unique perspective that they bring from the outside.

What a period would it be that the second day coming into an organization that we lose that because they’re trying to fit in. And there’s no question that there is a bit of a compromise trying to fit in. And, but, um, to the extent that those individuals can be true to themselves, who they are, I think we have a best chance of the organization thriving and ensuring that the individual collective.

Uh, growth, uh, uh, benefits the entire organization. So yes, there is a responsibility of the leaders and there’s also a responsibility of the new hires to ensure that this culture can be built.

Naji Gehchan: Pivoting now to, uh, I, I know you, you know, you share it and you did it on leading in crisis even before, you know, if we want to talk about the current pandemic. Uh, but even before that, I read one of the articles you wrote about leading through moments of crisis. Uh, so can you share more about your learning experiences and did anything changed, uh, leading in this global crisis that we’re all

Enrique Conterno: living.

Yeah, I, um, my, uh, sense, I think when you’re living in a crisis, um, uh, one of, one of the key, um, it’s, it’s always, uh, critically important to remain true to your values. And do the purpose and to understand where the north star is for you and for the organization. Um, otherwise one can, uh, get lost, um, whether it’s a crisis or a.

A moment where you’re going to Sage is thriving. I think we have to recognize that there are, um, a few, I, I call it a few critical decisions each year that really shape, uh, the business, uh, outcomes, the people outcomes, the cultural outcomes of the organization and being thoughtful about those decisions, I think is critical.

Um, it’s um, A crisis, um, tends to, um, uh, challenge all of us because maybe it was, uh, an outcome we did not expect, uh, or an uncertainty that got resolved in an unfavorable way or personnel exiting the organization for other opportunities, whatever the crisis might be. I think it’s always good to remember the crisis.

So. Both, uh, opportunities in itself, it becomes reframed in the right way. So it could be a matter of, um, somebody succeeding. It’s the opportunity to, um, promote somebody. You maybe bring new talent in the organization and, uh, how, you know, how welcome we do that. Um, it’s, it may be a matter of refocusing that priority.

So the organization, or for us to think about, um, um, um, what those new priorities are at the end of the day, though, I think one critical thing throughout crisis. Uh, we all need to be grounded. What I call that reality. Of the ground, the real yet, and the relatives of the situation. I think it’s critically important as a leader that we can objectively assess the situation.

And at the end, uh, provide the direction for the business on the enterprise. Our people, um, sometimes in a crisis is one, one vents to maybe color how things might be. It’s just critically important that we don’t have those roads with rose-colored glasses and we’re able to tackle, I think the challenges.

Naji Gehchan: That’s great. You talked about being true to the values, right? To your personal values. You started with this, uh, around the common and shared purpose. Um, looking at it from an opportunity standpoint, are there things to do to refocus and then ending on a objective objectively, always assessing the situation?

The communication I imagine you mean in this is super important, right? Like giving hope, but at the same time being realistic to what we’re going through. Uh, is key,

Enrique Conterno: right? It is, I think, without being realistic, I think it’s, um, the changes not very lasting because. You lose credibility over time. Um, and at the end of the day, people can kind of objective, really assess what the situation is as well.

Um, so it is, uh, I think it is critically important than, uh, that the organization or the other days align and needs to be aligned on those. In, uh, a grounded view of what the realities are, uh, because I think then I think the priorities are better. Understood. Uh, demonization can be best aligned. And at the end of the thing, then I think, uh, um, that, that grace, a certain.

Um, build trust and trust is critical. I think, to be able to execute with agility and speed.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, definitely. Uh, Enrique talked about failure. Uh, we, we, we, we look at you, we see huge successes all over even, uh, you know, we we’ve seen you in your, in the different leadership role that you had taking things and making them happen, right.

Like, Challenging pieces, giving again through a vision and taking all the organizations to amazing, huge successes. How do you do this? Like, and did you ha did you have some moments of doubt you started in the beginning saying sometimes you have to take jobs, even doubting that you can, even to them, what, like, do you have a story that you can tell us, uh, around this and how you manage to, uh, to build all that you’ve been building throughout the.

Enrique Conterno: Yeah, I, I, there are there, there are probably many that I can share, but I think we can start. I think, uh, you were mentioning, we both worked together in, uh, diabetes. You were, I recall when you were working in, in France and I really wanted to show that you could come to the U S. In, uh, and I was delighted that you were able to come in and so that we were able to work together.

But, um, uh, 1, 1, 1 piece, I think. Maybe people don’t realize is that those, those first few years in diabetes, while everybody looks a little bit diabetes today, and it’s an incredibly growing successful business, the first few years were challenging. Um, um, it, they were challenging because, um, we were having a number of setbacks.

We had, uh, uh, uh, we’re losing market share with some of our key products. Um, we, our pipeline was not where we wanted it to be. And we had some setbacks in our pipeline. And at the end of the day, I think we needed to. Take stock of really where we were at at that time and make some, um, some pretty big decisions.

Right. Um, um, all of that did not change overnight. Um, it was a matter of basically building, you know, starting, you know, uh, at one point in time, we entered into Alliance with Boehringer Ingelheim, um, with. That today, of course, highly successful. Um, but at that time there was, you know, um, those, those, uh, uh, products were, uh, promises, if you wish.

Um, we were trying to build, uh, GLP one pipeline. And, um, you know, we’ve had some, uh, also a challenging, uh, collaboration at that time, uh, with, uh, with another party. So all in all, I think it w we were looking at a business, the what challenge, but had potential. And if there was, uh, There was something that I can, um, maybe look back it’s I’m, I’m glad that we felt, you know, um, the, we were committed to our strategy and we allowed for the strategy to play out over time.

It took a little bit of. Patients, um, net, net and, um, vision was needed at that point in time, because I think for Lilly, uh, overall I think, uh, the situation was a challenge, but it was not just for diabetes. Um, but we saw the potential, um, while, um, we, we, we didn’t have what I’m going to call it the perfect plan or the perfect roadmap.

Um, we saw what were the key levers to try to.

We followed those I’ll be honest too. We had overtime, we had some good breaks and some people say we took advantage of them. That’s true. Uh, but some of the journey and some of these strategic initiatives took several years to develop anything from that collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim that is highly successful in everything from developing the pipeline and the new products.

Uh, from, um, being much more cost efficient or, uh, our cost structure. Those were the, your projects. And over time, I think, um, we, uh, we were able to build that thing. Together with a great team, I think, um, um, a great organization, but it, it took time and I keep in mind that I was in that job for what is it?

Over 10 years. Um, so I had a chance to see the cycles of it. Um, and yeah, I’m, I’m, uh, very proud of what we built, but, uh, yeah, it’s. Everything else. It wasn’t all always roses. There were, you know, what’s a little bit of a rollercoaster in particular in the.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, but it’s the, the millions of patients around the word help through, uh, what you’ve built and, and the value that your breath is just, is just immense.

Um, you, one of the things, you know, we always talk in strategy. Uh, and I’d love your take on this that you said you had to be patient, try to build this strategy. You believed in it. We all believed, believed in it, and then you have to be patient. And we here on the opposite side. So now being, uh, see, oh, um, in a, in a different company and in biotech, we hear a lot about agility, changing the gap, making sure that we understand what’s going on and change if needed.

Any, any thoughts about this when to change strategy and when not to change and be persistent on it?

Enrique Conterno: I think it’s, um, clearly the circumstances, um, um, the, the fine, what the strategies should be. Uh, the strategies should be able to overcome setbacks, but I think sometimes that’s easier said than done. And I, uh, Depending on, you know, the, uh, resources, the size of the company.

And, and so for some of his strategies might be more valuable than others. And I think we need to reassess and adjust the strategy as circumstances change. Right. Um, uh, you mentioned, um, I draw a lot from, um, some of the challenges when we’re building the diabetes business, as I think about five region where we are right now, uh, the fact that we have, um, yeah, we had a pretty significant setback, uh, when it comes to a complete response letter in the U S at the same time we’d been approved.

China Europe, Japan, uh, to be able to commercialize rocks, reduce that. Um, so to me, I think it’s, um, um, clearly, uh, uh, as I’ve mentioned, I, uh, drawing on all of those experiences and thinking about how do we ground ourselves in and the realities of the situation. How do we adjust our priorities? Uh, how do we basically think about greatest, significant value for our shareholders, their patients?

How do we keep our purpose, uh, in front of us? And, um, and once again, honestly, assessing where, where we are and, and, um, and what is it that we have to focus on right now? So, Uh, as leaders, I think, um, we have to keep in mind that all of these experiences serve to ground us, right. They give us confidence for the path ahead and the ability that we can have to be able to, uh, basically for job, a very successful future.

Naji Gehchan: Thanks Enrique. I would love to get your first reaction to a couple of words out. I will, I will be saying, uh, and the word, the first one is leadership. What would it be? The first,

Enrique Conterno: first thoughts on, on leadership is change agents. Um,

Bias for action and, uh, working doors, um, working towards, uh, outcomes, uh, aligning or, uh, organizations.

What

Naji Gehchan: about mentorship?

Enrique Conterno: Uh, And, um, and mentors should have been a bit different from sponsorship. Uh, but men mentorship is basically, um, providing, uh, the advice and, uh, they use sites. At the personal and professional level for, for talent to be, um, uh, you know, as successful as they can be and different from and sponsorship because sponsorship, in addition to all of that, I believe it also includes advocacy and a real action from the leader in terms of.

Um, you know, uh, taking a, had done, um, basically allowing for that individual to, uh, take additional jobs or, uh, responsibilities as they basically grow.

Naji Gehchan: And I know you’ve, uh, you believe in reverse mentorship, I think too, right at where it got it. Any thoughts on this too?

Enrique Conterno: All of us to make sure that we are truly at the other, they connect it to what’s going on and receive informal feedback. I’ve I’ve had reverse mentioned mentorship one-on-one and also multiple in one meeting, just being able to hear people. And I, um, to do that, I think curiosity is incredibly important, uh, and openness, the ability to really.

Um, uh, here and try to understand as opposed to try to justify. You know, uh, why sort of things are what they are. So that’s, that’s a thing, the, uh, the power of it, but, uh, mentorship is a, um, you said is, um, dual way street. And anytime one is mentoring somebody in the way that I mentioned one can be mentored as well.

One is open to that.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. I totally agree. Um, vacation.

And I’m asking this because you wrote about it. Yeah. It’s um,

Enrique Conterno: I’m a big believer on, um, uh, working hard and playing hard as well. Um, uh, Uh, I believe all of us need to take that diamond space, you know, to refresh and replenish ourselves. And to do that. Sometimes we do have to disconnect from our daily work.

So, uh, uh, allowing for the space and time to be able to do that, I think it’s, um, critical. Um, so I’m, I’m a big believer in, uh, Ensuring that, um, that, uh, balances is going to be there. Sometimes people ask me to quantify what that balance should be, but I think that balance is very personal. It’s like people say, well, define for me with a work-life balance is how many hours I think it’s different for.

Different people. And each one of us needs to understand our own personal boundaries. And what is it that allows us to basically be as effective, you know, at work. Um, and we have to be self aware to be able to assess and evaluate that, right. Maybe somebody is able to work many more hours than somebody else and we need.

Naji Gehchan: We’ll be able to

Enrique Conterno: respect those, those boundaries and what we at the other day should look for is, um, what are the outcomes? Um, um, and how are the, uh, how, um, how effective is each one of us, uh, being in the positions that we have. So no hard rules, but, uh, finding that personal balance is incredibly important and the organization cannot find this balance for you.

You have to find it for yourself. Yeah,

Naji Gehchan: totally agree. And I think you shared it at the beginning. You’re a swimmer. I’m not sure if you. Uh, continued to spend, but I know for a while, that was also because I’m thinking about how every day, not only taking vacations, but even everyday how to disconnect, try to refresh our minds as leaders super important for not only us, but our teams, our families, uh, as I know, for, for a while, swimming was part of this for you, but definitely it’s important.

I imagine to disconnect daily, to.

Enrique Conterno: Yeah. I, I, I, I, uh, whether it’s swimmer swimming on a different exercise, I think it’s good to be, uh, active and, uh, and I’m pretty big believer for awhile was swimming every day. Um, Maybe between, uh, you know, when I was in my mid forties to my maybe early fifties, I was swimming every day and even competing in masters competition.

Uh, um, and I, uh, I got a lot from it. Um, but I wasn’t doing it just to be active, you know? And, um, but it’s, it’s fun, you know, because you can see your progress and you are getting in shape. Uh, so yeah, I need, it’s fine to compete. So I, I it’s, uh, I got a lot of satisfaction from that. I’m not swimming today, but I’m doing, uh, I do go to the gym at least four times a week.

Um, and I do spend about an hour. Um, so it’s, it’s, it’s something that I believe in that I think is critical. I think it’s as part of, at least my personal balance.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, that’s, that’s great. And it’s great to hear because many times we have those idea. No, you cannot, you know, work, be successful, be have your family, your network, and then do also train.

But another amazing example, uh, your, your setting here, Andrew, uh, the last word I’d love your reaction is spread love and organizations.

Enrique Conterno: Yeah. It’s um, That’s, that’s probably an easier one, uh, from the, uh, questions, I think aside, um, as you work, I think in the organizations you, uh, closely with people and when you align on, on, on purpose and objectives and when you’re committed to, uh, to a cause or, uh, an objective.

You, you tend to spend a lot of time with, uh, with each one of our colleagues. And of course, as part of that, you, um, you develop a certain closeness and you, I think all of us care for the people that are all of our colleagues that are working with us, um, And I think though the way that I think about spreading to this is your quote spreading love through the organization is, um, is caring, truly caring for four people and demonstrating that in a number of different ways.

There, there are a number of, uh, maybe axioms or. Uh, truth that one has to abide one, uh, uh, abide by one of them is to really be, uh, completely truthful to people and not just for people to hear what they want to hear, but truly what they should be hearing. And I know that sometimes people say, well, that’s hard.

Love it is really not. It is just truly caring about the person. Why would you want to say some person that is not really helping them, uh, maybe make that interaction easier, but at the end, I think longer term, I think we’re not, uh, the person is not going to grow. So when it comes to, um, uh, spreading love or care, I think it starts with, uh, the intent having the right intent and, uh, having a transparent, honest relationship, uh, with, uh, uh, with, with your colleagues.

I think that’s the basis, uh, for that.

Naji Gehchan: I love it and I will definitely keep it in mind. It’s not tough love. It’s true love, which is definitely true. Any final word of wisdom for the leaders around the.

Enrique Conterno: No, thank you very much for, uh, you taking this initiative, uh, with this, uh, set of, uh, podcasts. Uh, it’s exciting to see you again, and, um, I’m glad that you’re doing well.

And once again, thank you for the opportunity to share some of these thoughts with you. Naji Gehchan: Uh, thank you. Thank you for being here and sharing a part of your story and amazing advice. And for this inspiring, genuine discussion.

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.

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 exciting episode from our new series focused on us as leaders. I’m joined by Professor Elsbeth Johnson, Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and an expert on leadership, strategy and change. The main focus for her research is on what leaders need to do to help their organizations execute strategy, or deliver long-term, strategic change, without the need for the leader’s ongoing, personal involvement. Prior to joining MIT, Elsbeth was taught leadership at London Business School and London School of Economics.

Prior to academia, Dr Johnson worked as an investment banker, a sell-side equity analyst, and a corporate strategist. She also spent three years as a special adviser to the first Blair Government in the UK.

As a consultant and executive educator, Elsbeth has worked with a range of companies, helping them develop their strategy and the capabilities and culture that will deliver it. I had the opportunity to be her student this year in the MIT EMBA program and couldn’t but ask her if she can share her wisdom and advice with all of you!

Elsbeth – I am thrilled to have you with me today!

I’m eager to hear more about your personal story from investment banking to politics to now a professor of leadership! What’s in between the lines of your journey?

Elsbeth Johnson: Um, so I, I mean, investment banking was very much where I started and actually I loved the city. So the city has kind of what we, it’s the UK equivalent of wall street.

Um, lots of smart people, all of whom worked really hard. I really felt at home in that environment, but I’d always been very interested in politics. So as a teenager, um, as a student I’ve been interested and involved in. And so it was a bug that I had to kind of give into, um, until I felt like I didn’t want to be a professional politician myself.

And so I worked on, um, the labor campaign in 97, which resulted in, you know, the largest labor landslide and since 1945, not that, that was personally done to me. Um, but, um, and then I joined the labor goes or I left the city. Joined the government as a special advisor, uh, worked in three different departments of state.

Uh what’s on another two election campaigns. So it was very, very enjoyable. But what I, I guess I realized was there was quite a few things I missed from the private sector. Um, and there was quite a few things that I didn’t necessarily like about, um, doing politics. Professionally kind of for living. Um, but I guess if, if I looked at the red thread that linked.

Banking and particularly the kind of the kind of work that I did in banking. So corporate strategy, corporate finance, structure, finance, um, thinking about businesses and, and why they make money. I mean, that’s basically, you know, uh, sell-side actually almost essentially a well-paid financial journalist in many ways.

Um, and the sort of work I did in politics and the sort of work I’ve done since then. I mean, basically it’s thinking about. Two things it’s thinking about strategy. Um, you know what what’s, what’s not just the best way to do this, but what’s the right thing to do. And secondly, then once you’ve settled on what, what you’re going to do is what are the activities that leaders need to focus on in order to get that work done in the most effective way.

And so essentially, I mean, that’s that, I suppose to the extent that there is a red thread,

Naji Gehchan: Awesome. You touched it on, you know, this, um, this thread, uh, with your life or the decisions that you’ve made. And I know in, uh, in the very first course touch, we had video and the discussions we talked about, uh, you know, the green circle, blue circle, if you can touch it maybe before you say, but what I would love to hear from you is your, your personal green circle.

If I may, what is your personal purpose? I know you make us work a lot around this, so I’d love to hear that.

Elsbeth Johnson: So that’s a really good question. And, um, and it’s not the first time I’ve been asked this question and every time I’m asked it, I think, wow. I’m not sure my answer is very good. I’m not sure. My answer is probably as good as yours now is when, when not given, I asked you this question in class.

So I think, I think about the purpose of why, why I continue to do what I do with, particularly with clients, because I could just either teach all the time or retire or. I think what I really like doing is finding, and I think about, you know, the businesses with whom I work these days and the leaders with whom I work.

I guess what I really liked doing is finding and helping people find the work that they most love. Um, because an awful lot of people, um, you know, I, I don’t think spend enough time really focusing on the work that they really love to do. Um, you know, that a lot of people are very good at lots of things, right?

So they’ve, they, they’re in a spoiled position of, of having lots of options open to them. But if they were to focus on the work they really love doing, I think, I think that’s particularly interesting. I have to say, I think the most effective leaders out there are the ones who really want to lead rather than simply be senior in an organization leading and being senior are two very different things.

Um, the reason you, you do those things are very different, right? Um, so if all of our leaders are just the people who are obsessed with gaining and retaining positional power, then I suspect we’ll end up with leaders who are. It’s as good as the ones we, we could end up with. If we, if we really focused on getting people who really wanted to lead.

And so one of the things I really enjoy about my, my work outside of teaching outside of MIT is I get to spend time with people, both who are already like. But also people who are maybe one or two below C-suite who are thinking about, do I want to be on at the C level? Do I want to be a leader and really kind of helping, you know, finding the ones who really want to lead as opposed to simply be senior and then helping them get that is, is just incredibly real.

Naji Gehchan: I love where the discussion is going. Uh, you, uh, you know, I, I always say life is too short. , life’s too short. And I know sometimes it’s hard. It’s easier to say that into, but it’s just incredible when your personal, why isn’t total coherence with what you’re doing. I just think good morning. This is where I think magic starts.

Elsbeth Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m not sure that I’m, I’m always as disciplined. Like I really need to read my own slides a bit more than I do. Right. I’m not sure. I’m always as disciplined as. Could be about the Y I mean, you know, I really have no excuse to not focus on, um, you know, the stuff that I really enjoy and the stuff that I think has most value, um, because I’m in a privileged position of not, you know, not needing to work.

And so I have no excuse not to be doing the absolute, um, You know, most value adding work or most enjoyable work. And yet, you know, there’s still days when I just think, oh, why did I agree to this? You know, we’re all, you know, we’re all we all, we all, sometimes aren’t quite as focused as we ought to be. Um, but it’s the 80 20 rule.

As long as you’re doing it. Most of the.

Naji Gehchan: Exactly. As long as work is not more than, you know, 20% not liking a trap. We all have our jobs, things we do with sort of the people at that 20%. I do the same rule when you were talking about leaders, right? Is senior execs, C-suite leaders, younger managers, leaders that you have.

Is there a, what is for you the most important trait? For the leaders of the 21st century. If there’s one thing I know we discussed of different topics in class, taught us a lot about this, but for you, what is the most important one to have?

Elsbeth Johnson: So for me, and you’re right, there’s lots of traits that we know from empirical research or really.

But for me, and this probably says something about my own value set and upbringing. I am always looking for a combination of two things. One is high capability, and I guess what I mean by that is really high capability. Uh, really clever, very applied high capability with low. Now I have one or two clients who in my mind personify exactly that combination of high capability and low ego, and they are just a treat to work.

But I think if we can get more leaders who are in that combination, I just think regardless of the culture of the organization, that’s always a great combination because what that enables that, that what that combination enables is obviously high capability, right? People are smart. They’re able to get stuff done.

They’ve got a lot of processing power, but low ego means that they, they put the work, they put the business. They put their clients, they put each other, they put the people, the next generation of leaders before themselves or before their own. Need for validation or, um, or promotion. And, and I do think that’s important.

I think, you know, history is replete with examples of when, if an individual or a collection of individuals put the greater good, the quality of the cause ahead of their own need to, um, to benefit then. Chances are higher, that good things will happen. Um, I mean, as someone once said and forgive me, I can’t remember who this was, but it’s amazing what a mate, it’s amazing what good things you can do if you no longer care about who gets the credit.

And that’s kind of what I mean by, by low ego that they put the work and they put other people ahead of their own need for validation or.

Naji Gehchan: And do you think if I followed a double pick on this, do you think those are skills that can be developed? That can be COVID right.

Elsbeth Johnson: So, I mean, what, what psychology would tell us is that, um, you know, I mean that capable of both capability and low ego are a combination of, um, How we’re brought up and a little bit of nature, um, particularly capabilities.

Some of this, some of these intellectual or, um, cognitive skills are, are to some extent inherited. Uh, but our environment, particularly our young, early age environment is very, very important. I think, I think the low ego stuff is largely around how. What we, um, what we come to value and also, um, what our organizations value.

So, you know, I, I grew up on an island, um, where most people knew each other, a lot of people were related to each other. It didn’t matter if you were really, really clever. This island did not suffer tall poppies. So, so, um, you know, like you, you had to get on with everybody because you know, when, if the blizzard came and you needed somebody, hell you better have not been a joke to them at any point in the previous three years because people are on an island have long memories.

Right. So I think to your point about, is it, how, how do you, how do you get this combination of high capability, low ego? I think some of them. It’s nature, some of it’s nurture, but I also think it’s what we’re brought up to value. And so, you know, I’m, I’m pretty allergic to high egos because I grew up on an, in a, in a world, literally an island where hikers, just one tolerated, you know?

Um, so, so I think our own sensitivities to these things are, are largely a product of our value set. However that that’s been.

Naji Gehchan: You, you, you, you talked also, you know, we talked here about the traits of leaders. Um, you talked about you in your book. I, I have to, uh, relate to it and honestly the, the strategic leading strategic change and the framework that you, uh, that you give and, uh, and step up and step up that book is really amazing.

And you’ve touched on something that is called meaningful autonomy. So I’d love to hear about it. But before that, Why I’m talking about the book, because you summarize it in one sentence at the end of the class, and you talked about it, uh, just in the introduction here, you said something I would always remember is that the most essential Java either is to create more leaders.

So that, that is so powerful. And I think it clinks into the skill ego and how you care about your people, how you bring you sat in the beginning of the next generation. So a little bit more about the

Elsbeth Johnson: office. Well, let me, let me explain a little bit more on that. Talk about, um, meaningful autonomy. But, but I, I do think, I mean, this was, um, Mary Follett who’ve, um, originally came up with this idea that, or the statement that, you know, that the primary job of leaders is to create the next generation of leaders.

Now you obviously at one point or in one way, as a leader, you use your positional power to create the next generation of leaders just by promoting. Choosing a pipeline of successes and deciding who’s going to get the top job. I think the problem though, is that that either creates a vicious or a virtuous circle.

If the existing set of leaders are all, um, highly ego, um, you know, value certain things. What we know about human psychology it’s called the affinity bias is that people will choose. Um, they will essentially self-replicate, they will choose successes who look and smell like them. And so the real risk or danger is that if you’ve got an existing set of perhaps quite high ego leaders, is chances are that, that for, for a set, for a set of reasons, including that people self-replicate, but also that the candidates for leadership will look up above them and the low ego ones will go.

Oh, well, there’s no point in me trying to be a leader around here because when I look up above me, the only people who are in positions of power are high, he goes, so either I need to change and stop being low ego, or I need to go somewhere else and try and be a leader where my low ego tendencies are, are not going to be punished.

So the cell replication that we very often see in organizations around leadership and who gets promoted typically means. It’s quite hard to break the vicious circle of high ego leaders. But assuming that you can then, then yeah, your, your job as a leader is, is, is to create this next generation who can understand what good leadership looks like.

Who’ve been taught and coached about how to do it well. Um, because, because then it becomes, you know, you just cascade that down. So.

Naji Gehchan: Before you jump, make it to the autonomy piece, because it’s a very important one. You talked about affinity bias, self replication. Um, and I want to extend that even more.

It’s something I constantly have in my mind, try this. At some point, I remember very early in my career, someone told me, usually we recruit our clones, which I hate, you know what I think about it. Yeah. Especially when we think about diversity equity inclusion, right? So. Yeah. So this circle that we need to break on high ego, it’s the same that we need to break on.

Man. Women do diversity ethnicities. How do you consciously and intentionally look into those unconscious biases and every recruitment I make with the teams and the things specific you’ve seen and been successful on breaking this vicious circle last week.

Elsbeth Johnson: Well, I think two things. Um, I think first of all, getting as many people involved in the recruitment and promotion process as possible, um, if you like that, that’s not to reduce any individual affinity bias that any individual leader brings.

That brings to the table, but all it does is create a portfolio of hopefully different affinity biases, assuming that, you know, not all of your leaders are white, straight able-bodied men. In other words, assuming that there is some, both cognitive and social diversity amongst your leadership population.

If there isn’t, then you need to be looking outside for some help on that. Um, from, you know, recruitment consultants or, or head hunters to really force you to look at candidates who you, whom left to your own devices, you wouldn’t think of as plausible candidates. So that’s the first thing is to broaden the portfolio of afinity biases as to say, as individuals, we all have these biases because we’re human the best, almost the best we can hope.

Is that we, you know, if you and I are both recruiting somebody, you’ve got a different set of pharmacy biases for me, and therefore, you know, yours, yours will challenge mine and vice versa. So that’s the first thing. The second thing to say is that the process of recruitment. Um, has to be very carefully structured and managed.

So, um, you know, it frightens me, but it’s true that there are still some organizations in the world who don’t even use structured interviews, that they, they just kind of bring someone in for a chat or they meet over coffee or they recruit out of their network. And what we know about all of those sources of, uh, of candidates is because our networks will, will sell.

Um, there’ll be, and when we just chat with someone, we are essentially trying to work out, we’re trying to discern social fit. In other words, oh, look, we went to the same school or we, you know, we both play golf at the same club or we both, you know, do the same running track. Um, so it, it. So human beings are incredibly, um, almost invisibly skilled at sniffing out social fit.

And so if you just quote, unquote, have a chat with someone, um, actually you will be doing a terrible job, recruiting them or interviewing them. You’ll be doing a great job working. That whether you could be friends with them. Um, but so, so at the very least what what people need to do is have structured interviews.

In other words, you know, if I’ve got six candidates, I basically asked them the same question, hopefully in a sufficiently conversational way. So I don’t sound like a robot, but, but I am asking them the same set of questions. I can form my, um, my assessment of them across, but even more than that, we should be going beyond interview because most care human beings are actually very good at impression managing.

And so, you know, if, if you asked me to give you an example of where I’ve been really collaborative in the past, guess what. Semiotic human being. And I’ll probably come up with a couple of really plausible sounding examples of me being super collaborative and you’ll be thinking, oh, wow, she’s amazingly collaborative.

Actually I might not be, I might just be impression managing. So a much better way to test that is not in an interview scenario or setting at all, but actually in an experiential setting where you put me in a, in a group of other people, perhaps under some stressful conditions and you watch and see whether I can collaborate rather than ask and, and listen to me, tell you and quite possibly.

You know, fabricate some of my, um, collaborative tendencies. So I think there’s lots of ways we can get smarter about how we recruit now, the problem with all of the things that I’ve just talked about is they take longer and they are more expensive ways of recruiting. And so for those of us who, perhaps for organizations that don’t have that much time on or enough budget, it’s it’s, um, it can feel like.

Um, it can feel easy and free to compromise on our recruitment process. Whereas actually compromising on our recruitment process is one of the most expensive mistakes that organization can make.

Naji Gehchan: Definitely thank you for that. Going back. I want to go to this, these two words, uh, about meaningful autonomy and bed to talk about because.

Many people, some people would be afraid of the word autonomy. Some others would be excited about it, but I love how you framed it, which is meaningful. But me, what I have thoughts about this and for us as leaders, uh, how to get to that. Really good position where our people can, can be meaning fully

Elsbeth Johnson: autonomous.

Yeah. So the reason that I call it meaningful autonomy is because in my research, so my research is in inductive research, which means I go and watch and ask people, um, you know, very open-ended questions. Um, a lot of it done, um, by watching and observing. So ethnographic research. What is it that makes your autonomy meaningful or sorry?

What, what, what is it that, that, um, sorry, what, what is it that means that you don’t have to go and ask your leader for input or support or. And, um, a number of my informants, um, said, oh, well, in other words, what you’re really asking me is what makes my autonomy meaningful. And that’s the critical point that, that this, this, these words actually came not out of my mouth or my head, but out of the mounds of my informants.

And so that became a really interesting research question. Um, and it turns out there’s two things that really help someone come to work and access. The autonomy, the decision rights that they have technically been given. Um, but, but, but that where they feel that they can actually exercise these rights without having to escalate and go back to their leader and say, help me, or referee between these two options or tell me what I should do.

So the two things are when the autonomy, when the exercise of the autonomy is. Uh, in other words, they’ve got enough resources. Um, they’ve got enough time, uh, the scope isn’t stupid, um, or too great. Um, so in other words, lots of structural elements, all of the structural elements are in place to enable the, the, them to exercise their autonomy.

But then beyond the structural element, there’s almost a psychological element, which is that it is not. Possible, but also pleasant. Um, but they’re comfortable in exercising their autonomy. They don’t feel like they are having to go out on a limb or take on unnecessary risk. Um, and the elements that really help them.

Um, oh, when the leader has really put really signaled in every possible way that they can, what they want and, um, and back that up. So not only been clear about what they want, but also align the organization and been consistent in that, um, Uh, a period of time. That means that people don’t have to second guess, you know, well, you know, you say that you want this, but that’s not what I see you role model, and it’s not what you measure.

And, and by the way, that’s not how you know, it’s not all my OKR is contained. So, so all of a sudden, if you’re sending me in congruent, I’m having to second, guess what you really want me to do. And the critical thing there is that good employees who want to come to work and do their best. They do not want in congruent inconsistent leaders because that does not help them.

The Corolla is also. That your, that you’re less good employees who kind of wants to come to work and have a slightly easier time or not do amazing work. They upset you love it when leaders are inconsistent or in congruent, because it gets, gives them a get out of jail card. They can come to you at their performance appraisal and say so sure, I know you said you wanted me to do this.

You haven’t brought it in my job description, but I don’t see you role model and it’s not. You’re going to reward me and it’s not even what we measure. So you can’t possibly hold me accountable for the thing that you asked me to do. So that’s really what we mean by, um, by meaningful autonomy. And I guess the most interesting thing about, um, or, or almost counterintuitive thing about this idea is that autonomy needs to be constrained albeit in certain ways, in order to become meaningful.

Now this can feel a little bit paradoxical. First time I say that, right? What do you mean constrained autonomy. It’s almost an oxymoron. Actually. It isn’t unconstrained. Autonomy is. Actually frightening for your best employees because they, they actually really do need to know. And have you signaled consistently what you want?

Unconstrained autonomy is Nirvana for your back for your worst employees, because they just they’re rubbing their hands with glee. At that point, they, they get to do exactly what they want. They get to spend shareholder money doing whatever they fancy their hobbies. So unconstrained autonomy is fabulous for them, but this idea of constrained autonomy, it’s the constraints, the clarity and level of prescription that leaders give in the constraint that sets up that frees up, that they’re the people who report to them to really shine.

In delivering what the leaders have asked for. And so the, the, the quality of the autonomy experienced by managers is directly proportionate to the quality of, of prescription and the clarity of that prescription, uh, given to managers by leaders.

Naji Gehchan: That’s amazing. I’m not gonna detail. You know, things in

focus consistency. We’ve got to talk about these also a little bit more, but really the framework is super helpful. I’m going to jump into the section that is a little bit different. So I’m going to give you one word and I’d love to have your first reaction to it. And yeah, you can, will discuss a little bit about it.

So the first one is authentic leader.

Elsbeth Johnson: Um, and do you want a one word response or just, just my response

Naji Gehchan: and response. I’m going to be one. We’re going to be a fellow first thing in mind.

Elsbeth Johnson: So I guess my one word response would be misunderstood. Um, I know for a lot of people, I think certainly a lot of the leaders that I work with, they, they hear the words authentic leader.

And they, they, they misunderstand it in one of two ways. They either think, okay, in order to be authentic, I just show up as myself. You know, I just kind of vomit myself into the room, like a human hand grenade and, you know, whatever I’m kind of, you know, however I show up, that’s just my authentic self. So like, what else can I do in otherwise it’s relatively uncontrolled.

And that’s a huge mistake, obviously, because. As long as we have an obligation to manage ourselves for the benefit of, you know, our people, our organization. So, so that’s the first way in which I think a lot of leaders misunderstand authentic leadership and the requirements that it puts on them. I think the second way that leader is very often misunderstand, authentic leadership.

That they something in my experience, they don’t always realize that that who you are changes over time. Um, now I think that, that sounds really obvious when I say it, but you know, we very, again, part of the human condition, another, another cognitive misconception is that we very often. Underestimate the extent of the changes that will undergo as human beings over the longterm.

We typically overestimate how much we can get done in the short-term, but we underestimate how much we can do and how, how, how much we can change over the long-term I’m talking decades rather than months or years. And so I think as a result of that, we very often think, well, you know, in 20 years time, I’ll basically just be the same person, whereas actually, Johnson’s all that’s not true.

Um, but more than that, if you think you’re, you’re not really gonna change that much or that you don’t think you could change that much, you might be missing some opportunities that you could be looking for in your career. And I think that’s a real shame. So I think that will be my reaction. It’s it’s very often a misunderstood.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. And then you talked to, I remember you talked also about the different sounds try. It’s like in different places situation. So it’s really every day how we change over time. Right. The second word would be focused.

Elsbeth Johnson: Well, I mean, focus for me is the thing, it’s the secret. I’m going to say secret sauce, because that makes it sound like it’s kind of some secret recipe. Focus is for me, the thing that explains whether some strategies get implemented and some leaders make it versus other strategies that actually probably intellectually were equally good strategies, but they didn’t get implemented.

Um, focus is the thing that, that means that we, it requires choice. It requires deliberate choice to do certain things. We’ll spend time on certain things or invest in certain things and not others. And I think, I suspect we are much worse at this as human beings than we have ever been, because I think a lot of people they’re so used to.

No doing without in their lives, at least, you know, in the first world, right. You go on Amazon and you can have whatever you want. Um, you know, things are. Uh, available. Um, I mean, they’re not currently available in my country because we’ve managed to cut our own supply chain. Cause we’ve just, you know, left a 40 year trading arrangement unilaterally.

But, but assuming you, you don’t live in an irrational country that, you know, commit economic suicide, um, you know, things are available and, and I don’t think people have. Choose the often, but actually that’s a complete misconception because the most important things in life, like time for example, is completely finite.

So back to your point earlier, you know, life’s too short. I mean, that’s a classic example of the AFR. Uh, a series of choices. We only have so many hours in the day and so many days in our lives, so we have to choose how to spend them well. And, and, and focus is, is really the thing that focuses, what results from your, the choices that you make.

So the fact that Mo that an awful lot of people and organizations like focus, I think is basically because people just don’t want to.

Naji Gehchan: I love this frame, a bit of red choices, you know, and many times we see here discussing with leaders and organizations, right? The list of priorities that keep on moving and changing.

So I’m more, I’m more just talking about like, what are the choices, what are the two, three things that you want to do and be great at, right. And it’s, yeah, it’s tough to choose. And so what we need to do for able

Elsbeth Johnson: to be. But I would add to that, that I think the other problem is that, you know, an awful lot of organizations will run a strategic planning process, almost like an event, you know, um, once a year or once every two years, an ounce of that may actually come some pretty clear choices.

But the problem is that over time the clarity gets corrupted, um, because they add in, you know, so-called additional priorities. Um, and so one of the things that I, uh, I wouldn’t say force. Cause I mean, you know, I can’t quite force my clients to do things, but one of the things I very strongly advise my clients to do is that for every additional priority that they say they want, they have to take something off the list.

So the total amount of what. It doesn’t increase. And therefore the total amount of bandwidth that is being sucked up doesn’t isn’t eroded and therefore employees continue to have the slack that they need to stand back and think and reflect and learn about the work rather than just do the work. It’s what I call in the book, the tea party test, um, this idea that, you know, the total amount of.

Well in the tea parties, case legislation, doesn’t sort of passively accumulate over time. It’s exactly the same with work and organizations. You, if by all means, choose on alternative or another priority, but you can’t do that at the expense of the overall, um, you know, amount of work that’s on. So, so if something’s going to be added to the list, something else that was already on the list needs to be taken off it.

And it’s actually, by the way, amazing. When you say to people, okay. If you want that additional thing, that means you can’t have one of the things that you said was really important. It’s amazing how that focuses minds. Um, and an awful lot of people go, oh, okay. Well, in that case, I don’t really make that.

Naji Gehchan: And did the dude, did you find, uh, a good cutoff cycle to force leadership to go through the exercise and take, if you add something you, you take on something else or because you know, one of the things I’m always amazed by how organically things boil up and after like three months of clarity, if you don’t keep on having the same.

Discipline. Right. And coming back and making sure that it’s really focused on two, three things, organically things grow, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s always the case,

Elsbeth Johnson: such a good point. And it, it that’s that organic growth is essentially the thing that you’re trying to, uh, I mean, a bit like a Gardner is always trying to kind of keep the wildness at bay.

Right. Um, so one of the things that we always encourage is, uh, Sure leaders to kind of take a cold, hard look at themselves in terms of, you know, are they, are they helping create and protect slack for their managers? But we also, um, encourage managers to give leaders feedback on exactly that point. When we have a set of diagnostics that we run in these organizations to say to test things like how much bandwidth has been taken up, um, to what extent is your leader giving you additional priorities that, that, um, that suck up the time that you previously had as slack.

And, um, and if we get a signal that, that that’s becoming a problem, then that’s the kind of red flashing warning light that says to leaders that they probably need to go back and, and prune the activity.

Naji Gehchan: The last word above the reaction is spread love and organizations. What’s your reaction to this?

Elsbeth Johnson: I mean, I suppose, I mean, obviously this, it, this is the total of your organization and, and, and it perfectly encapsulates the ambition of the organization. Um, part of me just feels really sad that we even have to say this and spell it out because I mean, I mean, I love the word love.

I mean, I love how, how kind of, um, Because I’m sure in some jurisdictions that that must feel a little bit edgy to people, but, but I just feel like what would be the alternative, what spread hate, um, you know, spread antagonism. Um, so I just feel almost kind of, I almost feel sad that we even have to have to for this to be the invocation, um, because you know, the, the most effective leaders, um, are the ones who.

I mean, they might not describe it as spreading love, but they’re certainly spreading, um, you know, respect, um, you know, they’re spreading the talent, they’re sharing their skills, that teaching people that, as we said earlier, that bringing on that next generation of leaders. So. For me, um, I feel kind of sad that we even have to ask for this to be done in this explicit way.

Um, but I just think that’s a pretty damning indictment of about what, you know, what that says about the leaders who get promoted and a lot of the organizations that we see

Naji Gehchan: any final words of wisdom for all of you. There’s this thing there, the word.

Elsbeth Johnson: I think I would say two things. I think the first is, excuse me, and this might not be a word of wisdom. And just the kind of word of warning is that very often in organizations, we confuse confidence with competence. Um, in other words, the people who walk into our office and you know, are incredibly eloquent and, you know, sell us on an idea.

Um, Yeah, it’s perfectly possible that they are incredibly passionate and competent and their idea is the best thing that they’ve ever worked on. It’s also possible that they’re just incredibly. That they came through, you know, a private school, Ivy league education, and they’ve acquired the trappings of confidence and it has got absolutely nothing to do with confidence because the really dangerous thing for organizations is these things are not necessarily.

They’re not perfectly negatively correlated either, but, but, but when we conflate them and think that when we see confidence, it must mean that there is competence. That’s a very dangerous assumption. So I think that’s the first word of warning. The second thing I would say to all of those leaders who are out there thinking, Hmm, I’m not really sure that I want.

Like it feels a bit icky. Um, uh, and there might be some people that are particularly, um, particularly women, I think have, uh, have, uh, a bit less of a natural inclination to seek positions of power. Um, I think I would, I would just remind people that unlike every other type of power, social power, Uh, you know, the power of, um, networks or, or, or, um, or authority, um, positional power is a zero sum game.

And what I mean by that is if you have, if, if, if you and I are both going for the, for the top job and you get it, it means that I haven’t got it. So let’s make sure that the organizations that we’re putting. Give the positional power to the people who are most worthy of holding it and exercising it and using it for good, because if all of the good people who would use positional power, well, if they all take themselves out of the game and say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t want positional power.

No, no, no. I don’t want power of. Then the only people, the only candidates for positional power positions will be the people who just want to be senior rather than those who really want to lead and lead for the best. So I think that would be the final thing. I’d say, make sure that, that if, if you want to lead for the best reasons, make sure that you’re working out how to get your hands on positional power, because it is a zero-sum.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for such amazing discussion, the great tips that you gave us to be better leaders and go use all that we can do for us to change the world for the greater purpose.

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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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.

This episode is very special! In partnership with ESCP Business School, I’ll be giving the mic to students, our leaders of tomorrow, to discuss with incredible healthcare executives about their journeys and leadership beliefs.

Hello, I am a specialized master’s student at ESCP Business School in Paris and I am honored to host Dries Hens in collaboration with Spread Love in Organizations, who is in a mission to transform healthcare, continuously improving patient outcomes with previously unavailable insights.

Dries Hens is a medical doctor and a successful entrepreneur. Dries knew he did not want to go toward clinical practice, but still wanted to remain in the field. He wanted to do more in healthcare, by making the most of all the unexploited data. In parallel to his studies, he began to set up his company: LynxCare Clinical informatic. Dries is currently Co-Founder, Chief Business & Medical officer. Actually, Lynxcare transforms medical data into insights for hospitals, physicians and patients.

“Hospital system is on an edge: today we have a lot of relevant data, almost everything is picked up but the next challenge is: what are we going to do with it?”

Dries Hens: Thank you. By the way.

ESCP Student: Thank you. Uh, you have a once month that you wanted to do more and have cared and being an ethical doctor, and you wanted to do something that would have an impact. Can you tell us why you have this vision and how that assimilated to the thing beyond medicine?

I would love to hear about that.

Dries Hens: Yeah. So, uh, it’s uh, of course a long story, but, um, in terms of impact, of course, I have to say that that medical doctors really working in hospitals have the real impact of treating patients, but, um, After med school. So I studied, uh, like energy medicine. I did it in Belgium.

Uh, after seven years of med school, you have two choices or you going to specialize, for example, in orthopedic surgery, or you become a general practitioner, um, But for me at that time, uh, I prefer to dirt option because I was really intrigued by the health care ecosystem as a whole. And that’s why after med school, I started to, um, yeah, doing biopharmaceutical management and yeah, fire this program, I learned really how the whole healthcare ecosystem works from life science companies to hospitals to insure Speyers.

Dries: Uh, and this is where I saw a lot of opportunity really leveraging. Yeah, my education into a more broader, uh, complete story, uh, of really changing healthcare. Um, and at that moment I was still studying in Paris. So my co-founder contacted me and he said, let’s do something in medical data. And yeah, I was directly convinced of the added value that better healthcare means better data.

And there’s still a lot to do, like you said, in need introduction. And that’s why we started the company straight out of philosophy. Which is right now, a scale-up with 35 people. Um, and it’s a really nice, nice potential and they story

ESCP Student: and to do other regrets with.

Uh, yes, she was the path of, uh, non medicine. Uh, uh,

Dries: exactly. So, yeah, it’s a question that I got, uh, yeah, a few times during my, uh, the course of the company. So everyone, the beginning, a family friends of course found it really weird that I was, uh, not specializing or not further advancing really to become a healthcare professional work in hospitals, directly with patients.

But, um, The moment that , and that’s also how I am personally, the moment that I was convinced of the ID and that we had the bigger goal to serve with our company and that I could have maybe an even bigger impact by starting this company and trying to successfully, uh, I’m trying to successfully yeah.

Build up this company, um, that we could really have a, a further division or mission is being that we want to improve health care by making sure that more and relevant data is becoming, uh, actionable, uh, towered healthcare professionals to. The first use case that we did with our company, we directed, demonstrated that our company really can, uh, in case, uh, healthcare outcomes without me being really directly involved in the patient, uh, uh, process.

And that’s why from that moment on, I didn’t look back and I didn’t have any regrets that I’m not active in the hospital.

ESCP Student: That’s nice. And what made you the leader you are today and how are you preparing the floor to the young leaders of tomorrow?

Dries: I think, um, um, of course it’s so still young. I’m now 32 years old, but, um, the big, yeah. Stepdad, you have to learn because we co founded the company with one co-founder. So we were too in the beginning, but our company grew quite exponentially.

Uh, the following years going to five to 10 people then going at 2 35 people. So, uh, your position as well as, uh, an entrepreneur, but also co-found the changes along the way. Um, and I think my. Biggest path of learning, uh, internally as well was, was more self knowledge. So you have to know really, if you want to become a leader or you have to know what you’re good at and how you really want to support the company.

And you have people that are really good in daily management. On a daily basis managing people within the organization. Uh, but this was not really my strong point and by being transparent as well to investors or to my other co-founder of course, um, we were, um, yeah, the heck the, on a path where I could be more motivational and inspirational to young people in the company, uh, by letting them, uh, in, in, in the field of healthcare data and trying really to push.

Uh, to blossom, uh, in our organization, which in my opinion is crucial. If you want to make sure that, um, your company succeed, you have to make sure that your organization and the people really working in your organization, uh, can blossom professionally. Uh, and this is still, I think the biggest impact that you can have as a, as a leader.

ESCP Student: Thank you. Address. And based on what you just said, can you link who you are today with an event that shapes you in the.

Dries: Um, can you, sorry, I didn’t understand the question.

ESCP Student: Um, can you link who you are today with an event that shaped.

Dries: Um, of course with, with, with a single event, that’s of course difficult.

Um, you have to know if you start a company, uh, or, or scale up company to really a coaster. So there were multiple events that, that shaped, uh, what am today and, and how I am, um, pursuing my professional and personal life. Of course. So it’s always a balance, um, thing, the biggest event. That changed me professionally is really something personally being, uh, yeah, the, the birth of my first daughter.

So my first child, uh, which really gives me, or gave me the necessary, uh, how do you say the necessary, uh, Hawk eye view on the cost to a helicopter view on the company. Uh, and which, in my opinion, makes me a better leader professionally, because I could zoom out into problems that are not really relevant.

Yeah.

ESCP Student: That’s amazing trees. Uh, you also mentioned that you started, uh, your, uh, your career from scratch with a few people and you made them. So let’s talk about your first hiring experience. Can you tell us about it and, uh, uh, what was the impact on the evolution of links care?

Dries: Yeah, so, um, the first real hire that we did is still someone that works in our company.

I remember 12, the, uh, because we, we were on a budget, so my co-founder Josh is CEO of the company. So he is the executive leader of the business in all transparency. But, uh, the first guy that we hired T actually did his internship straight during university as well with us, the moment he finished, uh, school.

It was really, um, yeah, we knew that we had to get that guy incentivized. And as of today’s still the lead data engineer in our company, really making sure that the platform is, um, how we are seeing it as a school founders. So that really, of course, was a big impact into a company. And he is still one of the most important people as well in our organization.

ESCP Student: And deal with the true leaders like you, they will, they will always stay. Uh, now, uh, how about the fundraising? How challenging did you find that to, uh, to establish links care?

Dries: Yeah, so, um, we had S and you have to know, uh, five, five years ago when we started the company. Healthcare data was something that people knew of, but a lot of people thought that the importance of what we are doing was not really there.

Um, but, uh, Josh and I, yeah, we kept going and we kept really convinced, uh, for our vision and our mission that healthcare really needs better data. And then of course, uh, COVID 19 QA came, uh, two years ago where. In one moment everyone saw from whether you worked in healthcare or not. Everyone saw the importance of having good data in order to, for example, control a pandemic.

Um, and that moment for us was, uh, was a real game changer. Um, also business-wise because, uh, yeah, our business model for our company, uh, pivoted a little bit, uh, in that case, and that was a accelerator. So to come back to your question, being fundraising, that. The first three years, it’s really difficult for us as a company.

It was not that easy, um, to really find the right investors because, um, the problem or the problem was not that’s. How do you say visible, uh, through the whole industry? Uh, two years ago, when COVID-19 hit, everyone jumped on what we were doing, uh, and we are still doing so fundraising right now for us comparison with Tibet four years ago is a lot easier.

Um, And I have to say. If you, for example, start a company and everybody says you have to start your company with, with family and friends, capital, et cetera. I’m not a big fan of this because I’m not a fan of mixing personal with, with professional life. Um, At first, you really need to have champions in your company being business angels, who already did this before and who can guide you to a first bigger round with, with, uh, venture capital.

Uh, and that’s just crucial, the moment you hit the right metrics, raising funds in the time where there’s a lot of money, a lot of, uh, cash, uh, on the banks to invest that that’s not the most difficult one. It’s the zero to one that is really. The most, uh, the most difficult funding process in my opinion.

ESCP Student: And did that being a true leader, doesn’t also it doesn’t on here. And make people blossom, but really to, to face the challenges and keep going. Uh, now that you have, uh, in non traditional non-corporate path where a medical doctor, you founded and launched your startup right after graduating from the STP, can you give us some tips for that?

For the young graduates on how it should either an entrepreneur has no age limit?

Dries: No, exactly. It doesn’t have fast, no age limit. In terms of being an entrepreneur or being, or starting a company in the dependent on, on whether you just graduated or you’re already spending 10, 15 years in corporate life is, um, by really being convinced of something.

Um, and being convinced of an ID is simple, but you have to have also on a personal level, the drive to really, um, go all in. And this is where for a lot of people, this is a step difficult to make. In my opinion, I see a lot of great people that have great ideas, but will never, um, yeah, never jump out of their golden corporate cage in order to develop that idea.

But, um, but this is yeah. Something where I as well, want to play a part in and try to convince those people, of course, with the, with the right when, when the market and the company and the business model is, is clear, uh, try to push them to, to becoming an entrepreneur because it’s, uh, not the life that everyone thinks of.

So it’s not the most, uh, Easy life, to be honest, because I think a being or having a startup is often, um, romanticized to our, how do you say it in English? Uh, it’s really at all at Cosa, but you, you have to be ready the moment. Of course you can validate your initial ID or you can validate, uh, the mission of why you started this company.

And you could put it on paper that you realized it, uh, this ID, this is I think in my opinion, the most, uh, compelling story to, uh, to start a company. But you have to be sure whether or not it’s not age-related, but you have to be sure that you see opportunities this first, uh, and you see, or describe risks as challenges to overcome.

Another lot of people, uh, do it in that order.

ESCP Student: Thank you. Now, we would like to jump to another section. Uh, we will give you one word and we want to get your reaction. So we will start with purpose.

Dries: For me. Purpose is a yeah, it’s a way of living. Of course, you could see pers purpose as a professionally or personally. For me, it’s, uh, the purposes of course, to become happy, to stay healthy. And in that view, my purpose as well as if I start a company or with links care, what we really are doing is, uh, really try to optimize healthcare, uh, in a way of using better and more data.

So for me, the main purpose being. Healthy being active and being happy for the three points that are crucial in everything I do. So a, there will always be of course, a link, uh, professionally and personally, but this is what I, what comes up to me when I hear purpose. Yeah.

ESCP Student: So it’s probably, uh,

Dries: Leadership for me is, um, the best leaders are invisible at the moment that the company goes well, because if you have a lot of young, talented, or not only young, but talented people in your company, uh, and the company goes well, then they deserve all the credit to, in my opinion, true leader is when some things are not going well in a company that steps up and gives all the tools and support necessary.

Uh, to make sure that the internal issues or problems are being solved and that’s for me, truly leadership.

ESCP Student: What about technology?

Dries: Technology is a mean to, uh, to achieve a certain goal. For example, links care. We are really technology, product driven business. But the real capital or the real value is still in the people working in our organization.

So I think technology is always a mean to go from place a, to B, but it shouldn’t be the end goal.

ESCP Student: How about.

Dries: Yeah, a great, a great project, you know, a great program, you know, that, um, really, uh, yeah, always happy when I land in Paris or London to give the year the courses, I think. Um, yeah, if I speak personally, I think that everyone that studies medicine or studies from these should have during his education, the opportunity to.

To be, uh, included in a certain track. Like we have at the MSM, uh, thirsty bay for me, it was a game changer because yeah, in six months time, you really know. Quite well, how healthcare ecosystem is working, but also by seeing so many professionals talking about what they do at their company, you can really, um, make up for yourself what really interests you as a person and where you think you can blossom.

Because again, I think leadership starts with knowing what you’re good at and pursuing in something that you’re good at, of course, a true leader as well notice weak points. And then it’s. Are you going to solve them yourselves or are you going to be surrounded by team members that can make up for, for your, uh, for your floss?

Yeah,

ESCP Student: I totally agree with you. And now we will end up with the word spread love and organizations.

Dries: Yes. It’s spread love. Um, if I’m looking at a. The trajectory that we did with our company, because that’s the thing that I know best with links scared in the beginning. Yeah. It’s, it’s really chaotic. And especially if you don’t have too many people, uh, in your organization and you have to do a lot of work then, um, yeah, I can, I can look back.

Of course. As well see that we made Atlas, uh, uh, as, as the beginning founders of this company, by maybe pushing sometimes people in the company too much, because we have a lot to do a lot on our plates and we didn’t make enough time maybe to, uh, Yeah, to really support people the right way. And this was really, uh, as well for me, a learning exercise, um, by yeah, creating the time and really creating as well, an environment where people, um, can get to the necessary support and feed.

But, um, in all honesty, this is of course, something that you can do from a certain scale in the company. Don’t I think it’s not that easy to do it directly from the beginning. Um, but if I would start again with my company, um, I think. The much more, um, susceptible as well from a management perspective to how our coworkers or the people in our organization really, uh, feeling.

Um, and by, for example, two years ago, there was an experienced CEO joining our company. And the first thing that. Was he implemented a survey system where each, I think each month or every two months, uh, all the people can, uh, can fill in a survey and we can see how happy they are with the workload, how happy they are in the organization, what they want to do, et cetera, et cetera.

But that gave us so many insights related to. The better as well from a management perspective in the company. Um, and that would be something that I directly as well, which would switch, implement, uh, know,

ESCP Student: I can agree, uh, any words of wisdom, trees for leaders and entrepreneurs and healthcare around the world.

Dries: Um, of course as a true leader, I just want to not only incentivize people, but for me, um, we are taking big steps in healthcare. In general. There are a lot of big companies transforming the way, how they are looking at healthcare.

Uh, I think it’s a positive evidence. We’re really value-based health care comes into play hopefully in the next two to three years. Um, it’s, we’re still not there, but, uh, I’m convinced that everyone that listens to this, as well as, uh, everyone that works in the industry works for insurances, but also works for, um, yeah.

In, in, in hospitals, the real healthcare providers, um, and everyone really, uh, It’s aligned in a value based healthcare model. Um, and that’s for me, something crucial for the coming years.

ESCP Student: Definitely. I can totally agree on a attest to it. Thank you for sharing your experience with us today. It was such an inspiration.

We can really spend hours with you and never get enough. Thank you so much for your time.

Dries Hens: Thank you. It was my pleasure.

Naji Gehchan: Thanks, Dries, thank you all for listening to spread love in organizations podcasts. We have such an important responsibility as leaders of today to plant the seeds for the leaders of tomorrow.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 podcast, joined today by Dr Robert Bruce Associate Chief of Clinical Affairs at Boston University School of Medicine, and Director of Primary Care at Boston Medical Center (BMC). Prior to those roles, Robert transformed healthcare in the New Haven community focusing in the largest health center in new haven on quality and value based care which resulted in significant savings for CT Medicaid and the community. Doug was also Chief of Medicine at Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Yale University. He is a global expert in substance use disorders in people with HIV and hepatitis C. He has published widely on the topic of substance use disorders and HIV. He has provided technical assistance to CDC, NIH, and the United Nations.

Doug – I am so honored and humbled to have you with me today!

I would love to hear your personal story, from childhood to becoming an expert in HIV land hepatitis C living with and helping some of the most touched countries by those pandemics. What defined your journey and the incredible leader and physician you are today?

Doug Bruce: That’s a great question.

So, um, I grew up in the Cambridge kind of Boston area as a little kid, and I grew up and had lots of pulmonary problems actually. So I had like lots of asthma and what’s in and outta emergency room all the time. And so. I had some really good pediatricians and some not so nice pediatricians. And so at an early age, I thought, you know what?

I wanna be a doctor. I wanna be, I wanna be one of the nice ones but I wanna be able to help people. I want to be able to bring, um, joint and comfort. I, I realized that. What stood out in my mind as a child was not, oh, this doctor has more knowledge than that doctor. Right? It was more just, oh, this doctor seems to care about me.

Now, this one seems like I’m a widget. Um, I wouldn’t have said widget when I was a kid it was kind of the feeling. So I, uh, for a long time, felt like. I really wanted to be in healthcare. Um, my faith is really important to me and I realized when I was working in the public hospital system. So I, I went to the university of Texas Southwestern med school in Dallas.

And I worked at Parkland Memorial hospital, which is a big county hospital system. And I was taking care of marginalized populations of groups of people. Kind of, you might think of were forgotten by the system and began at that time, it was the aids epidemic was working with people with HIV, people, with substance use disorders and, uh, saw all kinds of things that, um, I felt like there were great inequities and great trials and tribulations that people were facing.

And that one of the jobs of being a physician was to be an educator, but also an. And so after I finished my training in Dallas, I went to Yale university and did a graduate degree in philosophical theology, um, because I wanted to read widely and think, and be very reflective about the care of those groups of people.

And then started working with the LH program and providing street level care for substance users and people with. And from that began developing programs and then working internationally with marginalized populations to try and systematically make things better for people who may not be able to advocate for the.

Naji: You, you have served, uh, Doug in countries hit hard in moments where few innovations were even existent for those diseases to treat those patients. Can you share with us your experience stories, learning that you take with you today leading in healthcare systems in the

Doug Bruce: United States? Yeah. So, um, I guess two, two things stand out.

One. I spent a fair amount of time going back and forth to Ukraine and what’s happening. There is a tragedy when I was in Ukraine. Uh, one of the trials that we faced was how siloed healthcare is, and we know that healthcare can be siloed in many countries. And so my time in Ukraine taught me that creative ways to try and overcome.

Seemingly impossible silos. So, uh, just concretely, for example, in Ukraine, if you take care of drug addiction, you’re an oncologist and you’re not allowed to prescribe medications or offer any treatments outside of your narrow scope. So like unlike in America, right? I’m not a psychiatrist, but I legally could prescribe psychiatric medications and Ukraine.

If you’re an oncologist, you’re not describe. Treatment for tuberculosis, even if your patient has tuberculosis, you have to get a special doctor, APH physiatrist who will do that. And then that person is divided between those who do it on the inpatient system and those who do it on the outpatient system.

So I kind of learned in that environment, just the critical need to begin asking questions to talk, not just to government officials or healthcare officials, but stakeholders. And, and I had known that in the, in the. Aids epidemic stays in the nineties and the importance of stakeholders, um, and importance of voice and people giving people agency and voice.

I think what I learned differently was also, um, sometimes the way to get to the truth is you have to just talk to so many different people. And that’s what blew my mind when I was in Ukraine. I didn’t understand the limitations and I. Because people were not forthcoming. I represented a government or I represented a university and people felt that they had to answer me a certain way, but when I would go talk to drug users or people with HIV and community, people were very forthcoming.

They’re like, ah, no, this doesn’t work. Or this is the real problem. Um, and like a classic example was when I was in hair song Ukraine, and we were just talking about like TB adherence rates and it was just, it was really difficult to understand. Like what the problem was because on one hand, like there are no problems, but eventually we got to the realization of, oh wait, you can just walk up to the pharmacy at the TB hospital and by part of a TB regimen.

So what, what we found out was like, if you were a substance user, you would go and get admitted to the hospital. You’d had no treatment for your heroin problem. So you got sick, which meant that you left, but you had started some treat. Your new treatment was important. So after you left, you could go to the pharmacy, but TV treatment was for medicines.

So you can’t afford four medicines, you buy one medicine. And so that helps you feel better until you get drug resistance. And so it was kind of this systematic problem, but it was very difficult to get at it through one lens. And so I think that was one thing that was really important to me. And I carried that with me when I went to Tanza.

And the need for stakeholders. So, um, an example of this was, um, so in Tanzania there’s a big heroin epidemic. That’s kind of really fed into the HIV epidemic. And we had a situation where those most at risk for HIV were female sex workers who also injection drug users. We had very, very high rates like in the survey samples that they had done, like over half of the women had HIV.

So we’re trying to get them into treatment on meds. You. But when you looked at the clinics, the clinics were mostly men that were providing services. And so what did we do? We had to go out and actually meet with the women and talk to them and find out like what’s going on. And they brought up just very logical reason, right?

Like what the clinic doesn’t have the hours that are convenient for me. Right. Cause the con the clinic had morning hours. The women were sleeping cuz they’d been up all. Uh, with their trade over, over the evening and using, using substances. So we had to think about, well, how do we lower the threshold so that women can get in?

How do we create a safer environment? What do we do with the men that are loitering around? How do we create an environment that’s, um, safer women. And, and that was based on the feedback from, from the women.

Naji: Uh, those are, those are powerful examples that, that you’ve, uh, led. Uh, so how, how do you ensure like this curiosity, but also this need actually to go on the field, understand what’s going on and bringing it back and change the system because you practically had to change systems to make this work for patients.

Doug Bruce: Yeah. So, um, I mean, I. You have to tailor it. Right. But to, to your point, just, just because someone recognizes the need doesn’t mean that they’re willing to help. I mean, an example of this is, um, we were showing that the tuberculosis rates among the patients in that first drug treatment program in Tanzania were very, very high.

It was not surprising. It was one of those things. You know that there’s a high probability that, that this is gonna be the case. Substance users are using drugs together. They’re in closed environments, inside poor ventilation, HIV increases your risk of tuberculosis. So the probability is that there’s gonna be TB among the substance users.

The there was no active program to search for TB. So one of the early programs we did intense and after we set up the drug treatment program was to check for HIV, offer HIV therapy, but then it was to start trying to be active in, uh, searching for tuberculosis. And so a, a student of mine went out there and, uh, started doing active case finding and the teams in Tanzania supported this.

So they were all really interested in. And part of the team’s interest, as you can imagine, was they didn’t want to get TB. And so, um, it was kind of playing off the enlightened self interest of this is a real material patient concern, but if there are high rates of this, this is a real material concern for all of the healthcare workers in that environment.

Cause. I mean, we didn’t have, they weren’t in 90 fives floating around for everybody to wear for TV prevention. Right? The main TV prevention is great ventilation, open windows, staying outside, um, where UV light kills it. So that program found that there were high rates of TVB like, not as high as south African mines, but like 20 times higher than the national average of tens.

So very high rates and eventually. You know, it’s not surprising, right? So you change your infection, protocol, infection, prevention protocols, you have better ventilation yet. Don’t put people in isolated environment. And, uh, eventually actually the TB program from the university hospital system in Tanzania started spending time taking care of patients.

And so it changed the system. But in this case, it was playing off on that enlightened self interest, which also paired with the patient. But then we tried to get, you know, external funding from a separate government agency that for all intensive purposes, you would’ve thought would want to fund this. Cuz their enlightened self interest would be like, oh, like you can get credit for this, but they didn’t wanna get involved because a different agency was funding.

The, the larger work that we were doing. And so they were worried about, they never said this, but it became apparent that they were more concerned about. Uh, who got credit for the activity, then the activity itself, which is very disappointing. So I wasn’t able to, to change them. They’re they’re much bigger than me.

Naji: well, yeah. And it touches to all those lenses. We, you know, we both learned in, in class mm-hmm um, the, obviously this is a huge impact that you had in, uh, again, in countries with. Tremendous need and in moment of crisis, uh, obviously in those countries, uh, I would love to get another leadership learning from you as you led teams there.

So you had students, you had physicians who were working with you, uh, and it’s kind of potentially also relatable to so many folks. And you went through the COVID pandemic yourself as a, as a healthcare provider. How do you lead teams in such moment? High pressure, attention, uh, emotional, uh, struggle and really life threatening diseases that you’re dealing

Doug Bruce: with.

That’s a great question. So I think probably the most important thing that I did in Tanzania, um, was to come in, in humility and say to the teams, cause like I’m a guy from the United States coming in. And I’m, I’m hoisted upon the people and people there, and they’re, they’re smart physicians there in Tanzania.

And so it can be very, uh, off putting, if you are, you know, a academic in the local university there in Tanzania, and some guy shows up from the west and says, I know more than you do. Right. So what I had to come in initially in the, even in the beginning meetings to say, I’m only here because I’ve done this before.

I have a body of knowledge. And so my job is to, to impart that knowledge and to work with you, but you have to figure out how this is going to be in contextualize in Tanzania. I’m not Tanza, I don’t know the local politics. I don’t know how to do this here, but we’re gonna work together to be successful.

And so I told them from the outset. I, there will be a day when I don’t come to Tanzania anymore because you won’t need me because you will be the experts. And so I think that resonated very strongly with them because they had been through, as you can imagine, a series of kind of us government funded activities, where people come in, kind of tell people what to do and set it up.

And, and it’s not as value driven from the, the people there. And. What I saw in my role as was just, I’m kind of your consultant, I’m your, your information person. And I’m really here to support the team, but you’re gonna actually contextualize it. And so a lot of that then became more about empowerment, more about working with the leaders to say, um, so like kind of an example, They were very worried about overdosing patients, which is a, a legitimate concern.

This was a methadone program in Dar Sal lump Tanzania. So they are keeping the doses really low. And so what that, what that happens is if you don’t give somebody adequate replacement therapy, they continue to use heroin, engage in risk, but they were afraid to go up on the dose because they thought, well, if I give the person more methadone and the person continues to use heroin, they can.

Which kind of is a logical fear, but the reality is as you go up on the methadone dose, they go down on the heroin dose. So, so I said to them, look, you all the very smart people. Why don’t you, um, just set up a small mini trial, just take some proportion of the patients, go up on their doses and see what happens.

You don’t have to make it a clinic-wide policy, but just use it as an opportunity to learn. So they did. Right. And this is this, I’m not like announcing this. I mean, this is just like private conversations with people and they did that. They went up on doses. Patients stopped using heroin and they were like, this is amazing.

And then the next thing I know, they have generalized that throughout the system and then they’re really dosing patient. But again, it was, it wasn’t about me coming in saying, this is what you have to do. It was. Let’s have a conversation and let’s talk about our options and why don’t you consider this kind of a pilot project.

And so I think humility is the most important thing that I learned in interacting, especially in international projects, because so often people are coming in again and just kind of telling people what to do, and then that’s so devaluing. Right. But as I talked to them and said, You’re the experts. How would, how do you, how do we do this intensity?

Like, what are we facing? How do we address this? It was, I think it was very empowering. They eventually set up training programs there where they were training additional physicians and, and who are now leading other programs, which was exciting. Um, but that’s something that I then took back to Boston and, and to other places of just, um, never underestimate the information and the power of the person that you’re meeting.

Regardless of education, regardless of position, they have something to teach you. And, and that, by valuing that person and partnering with that person, you can make a lot of change, more change than you thought you could. And it’s a great

Naji: pivot to my next question. You talked about humidity empowerment.

These are really strong, strong words. As a leader. In the last years, you’ve been focusing on innovation, operations, optimization, practice transformation, like all those large change management projects in academic, uh, medical practices in the us. So what is the main challenge you’re facing today and how do you lead through those large organizational

Doug Bruce: changes?

Yeah, inertia is a huge problem. I’m just amazed at how physicians, nurses, medical, assistant administrators really almost feel like the system can’t change, or if the system can change, they view it as, you know, one or 2% on the margins. Um, they view it through the current lens that they’re that’s, they’re passionate about volume value.

Um, Finishing my charting, right. Not spending the evening doing that. And so I’ve found it challenging to kind of help people understand that, wait, should you reconsider the entire paradigm here? You’re like, you’re living in this soup in this swimming pool, whatever you’re in. Maybe you should get out of it.

Like maybe we would need to completely rethink things. Um, and so some of that has then. You know, as I always do in a new environment, you spend a whole lot of time just talking to people, surveying the faculty, getting feedback, and trying to create an open door policy. And then also trying to help people understand.

Look, I’m not gonna take it personally, if you come and tell me that the system is dumb and it’s broken, like I’m, I’m, that’s fine. I want information and I want information so that we can make it better. But I would say like, inertia is a big thing and, and the pandemic. In many ways, because the pandemic was this push into the lives of people where people felt disempowered, they felt hopeless.

Like there’s this external factor and I can’t fight against it. And I think certainly where I’m working now, people have transferred that into their work environment. Some that, um, you know, my clinic got flipped from, in person to telehealth. I didn’t have control over that or. Alerts keep coming up in the electronic health record.

And I can’t control that. Or, and so there’s this sense that I’m powerless and because I’m powerless, I’m not really engaged with change management because I’m kind of hopeless about change. And so a fair amount of what I’ve been trying to do is find some small wins to show people that change is possible, but change is possible when we work together, change is not really possible.

Doug Bruce by himself trying to make change. Right. That’s completely ineffective it’s as we work together and come together that we can make change. Um, but fighting against inertia has been painful.

Naji: And this is a very interesting insight because as you said, pandemic has challenged all of us, right? And many would think that it challenged us in a way to change that now will be sustainable change, right?

Like from work from home and the hospitals, all telemedicine the speed of developing drugs, et cetera. But I’m hearing from you, the state of mind of healthcare providers today is not that like I heard. Hopelessness. We’re not powerful enough to make those changes. Where, why do you think that as we know, there is a huge mental toll on, on healthcare providers.

And many times I’ve shared it before we applauded them in the beginning of the pandemic, but actually didn’t change much of the, the struggle they go through, uh, after a couple of months. Right. So what do you think is happening and how can we do it as healthcare leaders across the different, uh, healthcare industries?

Doug Bruce: Yeah. Well, I, I think the, one of the things that I’ve been trying to do is actually apply some of those lessons that I learned in Tanzania and into academic health centers, because, um, academic, medicine’s a very hierarchical system where people don’t feel like they have voice or agency, um, and, and promotion systems and things can be somewhat opaque.

And so trying to give people an opportunity. And so some of that is. And this is seemingly silly, but I think people have found great value in it is personally replying to the emails that people send me. Right? Like I’ve, I’ve, I’ve heard what you said, you know, or taking time to you have a question. Well, let’s set up a call, let’s have a conversation about this, you know, do you wanna mean person?

Do you wanna meet on zoom again? It’s it’s really trying to be responsive. And then to be honest, I mean, the thing that I’ve been trying to tell people is like, look, I’m I’m, I’m not gonna lie to you about this. I’m gonna just tell you where it is and it could be. Your issue is completely legitimate.

Unfortunately, like right now we don’t have resources to address it, or we don’t, we can’t address it. We don’t have the technology or it could be like, I’ve got this fire over here and we have to address this fire before we can do this. And the faculty, I think at least in the feedback they’ve given me is that they’ve been very appreciative of the transparency and the honesty, um, because that builds trust.

And so then when there’s some trust and then you. We can do this. Like, Hey, like we can, like, there’s a pathway forward. We can make this change and make it happen. Well, people start to say, well, Doug’s been honest before. Maybe he’s being honest about this. Maybe he’s not just saying this, like people have said in the past to try and motivate us.

So we see some more patience. Um, so I think building trust through transparency and honesty is really important. If we’re gonna start trying to help healthcare providers. Get out of some of that inertia and hopelessness and feeling that they don’t have voice and they don’t have power. And so we have to create opportunities for voice and agency and we have to listen to that.

And then we have to be responsive to that.

I love that.

Naji: Uh, I, I would give you one word and I would love to get your

Doug Bruce: reaction to it. So the first

Naji: word is leadership.

Doug Bruce: I guess when I think of leaders, I think about people who get on the front line and work with and like, or in the, in the middle of the battle. Right. I don’t think of leadership as detached from what’s happening. Um, the, the most success I’ve had in leadership has been. On the front line, learning from people, teaching people and changing the system there.

Innovation,

I think increasingly when I think of innovation, I think I would say I used to think of that as change, like modify the current system. And I, I think of that now as creativity I think more and more of innovation. What’s a better system. Like just what’s a completely better system. And so I would say I’m learning in that space again, having a breadth of people speak into that is really important because of the, the realization that I could say the current system is bad.

Let’s make a new system, but it shouldn’t. My new system, it should be our new system. And so well, who are the, our, and so often, like the physicians in the practice will say, what’s, what’d the doc say? You know? Well, what, what about the nurse practitioners and the PAs? What about the nurses? What about the medical assistants?

What about the front desk staff? What about the stakeholders? What about the patients who are the actual people who are coming right? And so the more that we branch that out and the more that we give agency and voice, I think the more we can be truly innovative and have something totally different, um, which is what I’m now thinking more about as the word innovation, just making it completely different and better intellectual

Naji: property.

And it comes from a debate we had

Doug Bruce: Yeah, I think so. I, I really do believe that you need to protect intellectual property. So I’ve changed in my view of this, right? Like I, I was in the, probably more supportive of act up and like, Get meds to the world. I still believe that we need to find ways that we can get medication across the globe, to everyone who leaves it.

Um, the, the very reason that we did a methadone clinic in Tanzania versus anything else was because, um, it’s the cheapest thing to do. It’s also the most effective, which is kind of rare that the cheapest is the most effective, but it was incredibly effective, but because it was cheap, we could treat more people.

And, you know, in public health interventions, it’s really about treating large numbers of people. If you’re going to make a difference, right? If, if we only vaccinated 10% of America against COVID, we really wouldn’t be having the kind of successes that we’re having now. So public health interventions, especially with infectious diseases require large scale intervention.

I think that if we don’t protect intellectual property, people will not be innovative. They will not create completely new drugs. They will not create completely new solutions. I mean, I’m amazed when I started taking care of people with HIV, they were fists of pills that were incredibly toxic and horrible life limiting side effects to now, now, today, like, I mean, this is crazy to me.

It’s easier to treat HIV than high blood pressure and. Like I, if you had asked me in the nineties, in the middle of the aids epidemic, you know, someday HIV will be easier to treat than diabetes. I would’ve said you’re nuts. Like that’s just not gonna happen, but it happened because people, because let’s be honest, right.

There was a profit motive in, in doing that the same with hepatitis C. Like I never thought that we would be curing people as easily as we can now with hepatitis C treatment and. I want to preserve the intellectual property that helps foster innovation for companies to make a profit, because that’s why they’re innovating in the first place.

I just wanna find a way where we can, that those medications don’t just stay in rich countries. And then the patients that I care for in, in other nations of the world, who are people too, and who have I. Dignity as people and rights to good healthcare that they can’t access it just because they were born in a foreign country.

Right. That just doesn’t seem right to me. Um, but I do fear that if we just do away with IP in these things, or we fight against them, then people will say, well, why, you know, we’ll invest our money in real estate or something. And I don’t want, I want people to continue to invest in developing great medications, especially when there are some serious diseases still in the.

That we need people to be innovative about. I mean, malaria, for example. Yeah. What about

Naji: spread love in organizations?

Doug Bruce: Well, I think that, I mean, that kind of goes to everything that we’ve been talking about. Right. Um, I, you know, one of the things I, I tell healthcare providers who can be so serious sometimes , I’m like, you know, if all we do when patients come is tell patient.

How they failed in everything. They failed to lose weight. They failed to take the medicines. They failed to like, go get it. Just whatever, like who wants to come see anybody? That’s that negative? Who wants to come see the healthcare provider? Who’s like, yeah, you, you failed come back. Um, and my own life.

Right? So my, my doctor told me one that, um, cuz I was like, I don’t wanna exercise. Why don’t you just give me a statin for my Cho. And like the guy looked at me and was like, you’re a smart guy. Figure it out. Like just go exercise. And I didn’t go see him for a year because I was like, I wasn’t exercising.

And then I like exercised two weeks before I see him. So I could answer the question and be like, yeah, I’m exercising. And he didn’t even ask me. I was so upset. I was like, really, but that’s not necessarily a productive healthcare relationship. And so when I think of spreading love, I think of spreading love, both among staff.

So one of the things that I do often is I try to remind every member of the staff, their vital importance. So I’ll tell the front desk staff, like you’re the first point of contact when people walk into the clinic, like your role is incredibly important because that’s gonna set the tone for the rest of the visit.

If I’m mad after the front desk, I’m gonna be mad when I talk to their medical assistant, I’ll be mad when I talk to the nurse. I’m mad when I talk to the doctor. So, and then empowering medical assistants, like you are getting a proper blood pressure as like real material, healthcare consequences, like your role’s really important.

And so I think part of spreading love is helping people know that they are valued and that they’re not just parts of a machine and that we, I can flip a switch and easily replace you. It’s like, no, no. Like you are bringing you to work today. And you are valuable and you are important and what you bring is important.

And so I think as people feel that value as they feel that like coming to work’s really important, I like, I need to go to work today. Well, why? Cause I’m really important that then spreads to patients, right? If I’m really happy and experiencing joy in my job, because people hear value and care about me, I spread that to patient and that’s infectious.

I mean, I like infectious disease. Right. But like it’s really infectious. And so I think we just need more and more to do that. And it just starts with saying you have dignity as a person, and I need to treat you with dignity. And as I do that, I’m spreading well,

Naji: I love that Doug. And, you know, I, I thought a lot and you kind of touched on the four letters that I sometimes use with love.

It’s listen, observe value, and empower you. You literally talked about all of that. Thank you so much for those amazing examples. Any final word of wisdom for healthcare leaders

Doug Bruce: around the word?

Uh, I would say be creative, be a listener and be humble. The, you know, I I’ve had, um, high school educated substance users, um, teach me things. I’ve had people with multiple doctorate teach me things.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 episode joined today by Dimitris Bertsimas Professor of Management, Operations Research, and Associate Dean for the Master of Business Analytics at MIT.

A faculty member since 1988, Dimitris’ research include optimization, stochastic systems, machine learning, and their application in different sectors including healthcare. Dimitris is also a serial entrepreneur, he cofounded several companies like Dynamic Ideas sold to American Express, Benefits Science, a company that designs health care plans for companies, and MyA health, a personalized health care advice company. 

Dimitris has coauthored more than 200 scientific papers and several books. He has received numerous research awards, including the William Pierskalla best paper award in health care.

His work in healthcare through analytics contributed to improve many patients’ lives, and still more to come!

Dimitris – I am humbled to have you with me today!

Dimitris Bertsimas: It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Naji Gehchan: First, I would love to hear your personal story from electrical engineering, to math, computer science and analytics, and now being a serial entrepreneur and MIT professor what’s behind this impressive journey of yours.

Dimitris Bertsimas: Well, um, I was born in Greece and came to finish the computer science department there graduated in 95 and then came to the U S at MIT in that year of 1995.

And I have been at MIT ever since I finished my PhD in eight in enjoying the faculty that. Uh, so th there is, um, but back in my childhood, I mean, uh, there is, uh, my, both, my parents installed in me the idea to, to Excel in whatever one does. Um, so with these preconditions, um, we see something I try to do, I try to do as good a job as I can.

Um, then, uh, when I find myself in. In the, um, in the Boston area and at MIT, which is, uh, an environment that, um, sort of excellence is a given, uh, I thought, uh, and inspired by the, by the environment. I, I thought that it might be. Um, a reasonable idea to apply what I, I study and I do research on in the real world because in the end of the day, I, I believe then, and now that, um, the best theories are those that solve the problems that originated with theories and other results.

I have been involved in the beginning of the nineties in. In this early in the financial sector of Boston, Boston has a very strong one of the strongest in the world asset management area. But then later in healthcare, healthcare in Boston is very strong. Some of the best hospitals in the world are here.

So the combination, therefore of my predisposition to effect, to have impact, to matter, to affect the world, the environment at MIT that, um, uh, motivates people. Uh, for all ages to do as good a job as they can, and the opportunities that are available to somebody like myself, um, and, uh, who has both the mighty connection, deep connection, and it has an entrepreneurial spirit, um, to achieve these objectives.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you for sharing that you have a passion for healthcare, and you mentioned it’s here, um, as your work contributed 3d to change people’s lives on many of the research and the work that you’ve done. Why healthcare? Why is this passion specifically for this sector?

Dimitris of yours.: Um, at some point, um, I definitely have a predisposition to have impact, but, um, and in the beginning of the 2000, there was an opportunity with a close friend of mine to start a company called who also in healthcare. Uh, and I started, we started the company. Oh, my, he was doing well at decisive point was also that my parents also got sick.

My, I lost my father to cancer in 2009. She got sick in 2007 in the same year, 2009. I also lost my mother. So this is a period of roughly middle age. When you, you think about your. And, um, and you observe that, um, what is important. Um, and I thought, um, affecting the lives of people in a positive way is more important than, uh, perhaps making money and making rich people richer that I was doing when I was.

In an earlier life when I was working in finance and services. So I, I’m not that I have any negative opinion about these matters, but I definitely believe that, um, researching the and helping people to improve the lives, um, is a value is a worthwhile effort. And I have also observed that with the evolution.

All for analytics, namely the data in electronic form in healthcare, the opportunities are significantly higher than they were in the past. So, um, that’s some of my, um, aspirations.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, and we definitely share this similar purpose of making life better. And in healthcare you would frequently, I think you met with people who share this purpose, uh, deeply, uh, you, you start talking about, uh, data, uh, AI and what this can bring to healthcare.

So there’s obviously a huge hype on, on this, on big data AI and how this will disrupt the healthcare industry. You know, those trendy words these days, you’re obviously an expert there. I would love to hear your thoughts about

Dimitris Bertsimas: it. Um, so let’s take an analogy. Um, in, um, I was involved, um, in financial services in the late eighties, early nineties using quantitative approaches, analytics, beta, and so forth.

And, uh, it can have a significant impact in the field, um, in healthcare. The availability of data and electronic form of, uh, both fractured and unstructured, electronic medical records, uh, computer vision scans, uh, language is starting to become increasingly available. I would say in the last decade. Uh, so if you think about human doctors and how they, they, uh, reach decisions, uh, diagnosis and, uh, and prescriptions regarding their patients, they definitely involve data of this type electronic records test.

They do scans, they read reports that they read. Uh, recently genomic information. So it makes reasonable sense to me anyway, to utilize the same type of data that human doctors do to, uh, to make these predictions with a difference that computers, unlike. Typically don’t get tired. They are, they have less bias.

Maybe they might be biased on the developers, but, uh, of the algorithms, but, um, but nothing else. So it makes sense, you know, rationally to consider. The use of methods that have been unusually successful in other areas. I mentioned finance services, but you know, energy production, if you think about energy production in the world regarding why we have electricity today, and it works quite well, and I leave the keys behind it and we use of data and so forth.

So it’s makes sense that, um, given the availability, um, to, um, to attempt to do that, Um, and of course, many people realize. And when people try that, there is a complexity that unlike other areas, we are dealing with humans, both human doctors and human patients. So therefore other elements besides data, mother, understanding what drives them, understanding the culture, how they react to compliance that’s um, that makes it as what are some more active.

Um, in addition to being potentially. Can we double

Naji Gehchan: click on this because I love how you frame it, human doctors. Uh, I dunno if it’s compared to computer

Dimitris Bertsimas: doctors that something, that’s my that’s what I expect in the future might be at least in assisting doctors. Um, so, okay.

Naji Gehchan: Can we talk about this? Because many times we see innovation, some would see innovation as, you know, disruption, or like the end of.

Certain type of jobs. So you shared the complexity of it. Like, what is your vision about it? Shouldn’t be afraid as healthcare professionals, uh, from the technology or embrace it. What is your

Dimitris: view on this? We have seen disruption innovation in many industries over the centuries then. So it’s definitely the case that the type of jobs change, but humans are not replaced.

Take for example. Doctors, the medical education in the world has not changed primarily since 1920s. When John Hopkins introduced the care and structure of training doctors, the appendix, the append, this type where data doesn’t play a significant role. Um, this is, uh, I think in my view, this is about time to change because it makes good sense, given that the technology has now advanced, it might be not yet at the level that we can trust it a hundred percent, but it’s definitely has improved dramatically to train doctors in this way.

Therefore, it’s not that we’re not going to have human doctors. Of course they were going to have, but they are going to be in my office. Uh, the doctors of the future will be drained, trained differently. They are trained today in addition to anatomy, in addition to, um, do what they learn at the moment. And the experiential aspect is very important.

I think understanding. Uh, data and their exploitation using machine learning AI, I think it will be part of the story and programs in digital medicine. I, I already observed them reluctantly being in some universities, but I believe it was. Main stream in the years to come. And if you train young people in this way, this will take a generation.

Don’t take me wrong. It’s not going to be simple, but I have little doubts that in 10, 15 years, uh, the experienced patients will have in visiting doctors. In assessing, um, what will happen to them from a healthcare perspective would be quite different from what is today. But I do not believe that this would replace humans.

It will just be an adaptation of what the doctors do as opposed to replacing them.

Naji Gehchan: Well, you shared a in the class, I had the opportunity and pleasure to be in, uh, in, in your classes. Uh, great examples on how data and AI really transformed, uh, some of the care for patients, uh, and things you worked on. I would love if you can share one or two of these examples to give tangible.

Dimitris Bertsimas: So, um, I have a long collaboration with Hartford hospital. Um, hospital in connected cars and have for healthcare in that we have implemented, um, and, and, uh, machine learning, AI approach that, um, predicts for every patient. The length of. The probability of mortality, the probability of, um, going to ICU, leaving the ICU.

So in other words, for every patient in the hospital, based on the data they have, based on who is updated regularly, because there’s new information, the hospital, we basically can, um, make predictions about. The future and why this is relevant. Suppose you observe a patient. As we have that. The, the mortality probability we used to be, let’s say 2%, 1%, two days ago is now 3% today, 5% tomorrow.

So even though these are still small numbers, In the scale of things, the fact that our increasing might reveal and condition that human doctors, it’s hard to, it’s hard to observe. And in fact, in this particular case, this particular person developed, uh, an infection that was slowly developing. And the fact that we’re able to observe this, the album picked up the increasing probability gave you opportunity to doctors to actually attend to this.

Uh, even though the algorithm in other words was not designed for this purpose, the fact that you can use it in this way helped the outcomes. That’s one example. Here’s another example. I have been involved for a decade now in a company called benefit science that you mentioned its objective is to design healthcare policies for large organizations in the United States, but also around the world.

Healthcare is primarily the responsibility of the employer. So the employer typically provides the funding provides healthcare and they typically self in soar in that, but they also have to decide what type of plan. So rather than basing, only on demographics benefit science looks at actual data to design.

What is the best quality of policy of a policy? What combination of health savings account, um, PPO plans, HMO plans. To maximize quality subject to a budget. And we have found that, um, the companies, um, save money, but the quality also increases. Another example is another company that you mentioned, Maya health, my analytics health, that takes the perspective of not the company, but the patient.

So, so let’s say you are, um, you have a health savings account. So what is the best way from a to. Um, to monitor and optimize your health. For instance, if you want to do an MRI, what do you do the MRI? If you, because the price is very, very significantly, the quality of care at various places for various specialties also, uh, significantly changes.

Data provides you an objective view of reality. Data can allow you to, um, to basically take the bias out and make more objective and overall better. So this is an example from hospitals to two companies to patients. And it’s really endless. I could go on give you many other examples. Yeah. Thank you.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you for those.

You said data gives you an objective way to look at things I want to, I want to get into more leadership, uh, discussion. With data. And my first question on this would be when you shared the example, for example, uh, on, uh, on the healthcare, uh, hospital or the institution you worked with, uh, we always see reluctance from healthcare providers from experts.

Uh, whenever there is data saying something. And we don’t really believe or buy into, right? Like the model is wrong. No, it’s different. You know, we even see it in our industry is when we talk with different countries, like data shows something, but you always have, oh no, we are an exception. It’s different here.

How do you deal with this? Have you seen this and how do you deal with

Dimitris Bertsimas: it multiple times? There is skepticism that comes from culture, but also sometimes correctly. I mean, you deal with significant decisions about patients, life and death, this situation sometimes. So it’s appropriate to be skeptical. So in this particular experience with Hartford is I was fortunate to have met, um, two people.

Uh, there were four men, executive MBA students. I met them in the classroom. Uh, who have leadership positions in the organization? Um, Barry Stein and RJ Kumar, both of them are in the leadership of the Carrefour healthcare hospital system. And, um, I had the opportunity therefore, to be introduced to them and at least start in a relation of trust with these two gentlemen and over time, because I started working with people.

And then so forth. Um, there, the level of trust increased dramatically, a particular important moment is that I gave a class to about, it was just before COVID. It was 2000, January, 2020, just before March. Uh, and I gave a lecture, a set of lectures, um, to about a hundred professionals about the art of the.

We are the other possible in healthcare and this educated many people at the senior level physicians, nurses, administrative personnel, um, about what can be achieved using data and analytics and this open the door. Even for example, we, we developed a model for COVID, uh, for trying to help, uh, hospitals.

Size their ICU needs given that you don’t know how the, how the disease will develop. So the fact that they were already seen the benefits and the realities of analytics. Mainly leaders in the hospital to at least approach it with more trust. Of course you have to verify, but, but the door was open and therefore the method had an impact in the hospital.

It allowed them. Two sides. The ICU is not only my main hospital, but the eight hospitals of the, of the system, uh, and the rest was relevant. And the trust is not only at the leadership level. Healthcare is local, no matter what the CEO of the hospital says in the end, the decision maker is the nurse and the doctor who, who are, who are in, um, Near the side of the patient.

And if they go and that’s what you’re going to say, it doesn’t matter who supports. So my experience therefore, is that, um, the, the literacy aspect allows. The missile contact, but then we, we, the way we developed all these methods is that even today on a weekly basis with various groups, with the patient, the doctors that attend to the patients, the doctors that attend, um, surgeries, uh, surgeons, nurses, and so forth, we have weekly.

So as a result, when somebody asks, I don’t explain, they explain and it’s much more effective if your colleague who is, of course you have a decades relations whom you trust say something, it has a different gravitas. And, um, I have found that, uh, Understand, you know, understanding the culture of the environment and gaining trust, not gaining trust by, by basically demonstrating to people that we, first of all, you, you trust their opinion.

For example, if the algorithms benefited from their comments and if this, if this happens, it’s not anymore, the album I developed is the algorithm that we have. And that’s how it is presented. So I would say this is a combination of leadership from the top, but also literacy from the base. Uh, and in some cases, one is much more effective than.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, that’s that’s great. Um, you, uh, well, we had Barry in one of our episode, various time for the listeners who want to know more about his story, you shared Demetrius about, uh, all this power of data and really how they impacted lives and the most recent example with COVID, as you said, Um, there’s all this informed.

Decision-making also that as leaders we can do now, even better with all the data that we can, we can process. How do you see leadership? In fact evolving? Based on those data analytics algorithm that we can use. Do you see it changing or will it change? And what is the role of leadership overall and this a

Dimitris Bertsimas: massive word of that to set an example from yes.

So yesterday, one of the largest, um, Italian companies contacted me with the idea to they, they decided to increase, uh, the digital, uh, aspect in their company. So the use of data throughout. Right. I mean, they have no groups, but they have this desire to do it. So they are asking me very detailed questions about my experience on that.

So here’s a company that is not really not. It is not, I mean, yet they are thinking about, and this is of course the story of many other companies. It’s not that this is an exception. Um, I expect it has already been happening. It’s not even if this is not even a prediction, I’m probably stating a fact. Um, it is already today, but I think it’s going to increase in the future that I’m a chief digital officer.

It’s if analytics officer, there are multiple names and so forth, we’ll, we’ll be at all that many companies already have, and we will be fulfilling in the future. That would be the accurate reporting to the. Which means if, you know, typically a CEO of a large company has 10, 10 direct reports, um, you know, 10, 15, no more than that.

And I believe that one of them would be that that officer, it already is happening in many companies. I know. So it is my. And this is also by the way, through the hospital systems that I collaborate people that have responsibility on, on data and analytics report to the hierarchy of a company, the highest echelon of the company.

So it is my view that this is already happening and it’s going to increase as a result. Another instance of that. Is this access that the master of business analytics program that I started 2016 has had over the years. So currently the program has of, uh, maybe this year 1600 applications for 80 positions.

That’s a 5% selectivity. There aren’t too many places at MIT that have that level of applica application. And I would expect that in years to come, um, the demand for MBA. We’ll be lower than the demand for people with that. This experience has already happened in many places, not at MIT yet. So currently we applications for MBAs, roughly double, maybe 3000, 3,500 versus, um, 1600.

But, but I think this gives will meet as they have met before, because there is a high. I observe and I don’t observe it now. I’ve been observing it for decades. That’s why we started the analytics program. Uh, I have been observing it and in healthcare, I would say definitely I see the need. I see, uh, places, some of the major hospitals having one or more analytics group.

So it’s definitely, this revolution has started.

Naji Gehchan: I know, not to jump into a section where I will give you one word and I want your reaction, a word or a reaction to what happened to the word that would mention. Uh, so the first word is leadership.

Dimitris: Commitment is the word that comes to mind, um, and understanding.

Naji Gehchan: Can you tell us a little bit more, I’d love to hear a definition

Dimitris: from you. Yeah. Um, I believe that, um, the way I see it is that I better like the work on analytics, which is the science of using data to build models. That make that lead to decisions that impact the world positively data models, decisions, value, uh, AI is nearly a synonym in that it also uses, um, data sources, not traditionally utilized.

For example, computer vision. Um, languages, language, you know, answer actual data, but, um, the process, which I believe is our future, our collective future, using data to make decisions that impact the world.

Naji Gehchan: What about personalized medicine?

Dimitris: Personalized medicine is, is, um, also, uh, a very bright, an aspiring future.

If you can, only medicine is by and large, not personalized. This is what, one of the major reason in my mind that we haven’t been in cancer yet. Um, so if you look at how, um, one of these major killers in the world cancer is, uh, I lost my father to that is being treated it’s more or less a size 50. I had this, you, you, you diagnose somebody with cancer.

You give them some protocols that has been, uh, have been developed for, uh, for everybody, not the personal, uh, human, a significant human. We observed very different outcomes. In my personal case around the time that my father was diagnosed with, with cancer, gastric cancer, there was a lady friend of my father who was diagnosed with exactly the same disease and, um, sees a, to.

Um, and see what’s the same way, but it worked for her. It didn’t work for my father. So it is if there’s overwhelming evidence that, um, personalization mothers, I mean, we already see, I mean, we observe that some women, for example, have mutations that lead to development of breast cancer very early in their life.

Uh, at least in this case, we have taken action, but it’s hard for me to believe that cancer is not one disease. It’s multiple diseases who have an composite in one, in one name, and then they meet personally. The attention. This is not only about cancer. I mean, you know, think about, um, think about impact of COVID.

There are many people have COVID very few die, but, but, uh, clearly there’s personalization aspects. I mean, humans are different. They have different genomes. They have different. Even cultural components. They have many different things, diabetes. I, who do I start? I mean, you know, I, I think medicine, when I talk about this is all medicine and personalized medicine.

Uh, these are medicine can lead to personal life.

Naji Gehchan: And we’ve been, we’ve been hearing a lot about personalization in medicine, but yet it’s, we’re seeing a little bit more personalized care. Uh, but what do you feel is in the way, is it truly time technology and time that will get us there? Or do you feel like there’s something else?

Dimitris: I mean, um, the key aspect is education. Thinking about how we educate our doctors. We have not changed the education of our doctors since the 1920s. It’s a century ago. If you look what people learn, um, then, and how they learn it, you know, Does not play a significant only vis education. So when you educate young people, very talented, the doctors are fantastically talented people.

I do not believe they are appropriately educated at the moment. So as a result, you have to educate them in the art of the possible of personalized media. We have some successes. If you, if you educate a large collection of intelligent people, um, so that their mind goes into that, they start doing research, they start doing developing new methods.

Personalized medicine will be a reality, but you have to start. And I would say the key is, in my opinion is education and it’s starting, but you know, it takes as everything in life. It’s not. It takes some time

Naji Gehchan: and it’s, but it’s definitely a future we should aspire for. The last word is spread love and organization.

Dimitris: And organizations you would like you ask, you want to ask do as my reaction, you know, I, you know, in my view, uh, love is this most significant aspect of human happiness. Um, so specifically I say to my, uh, to my students that the two most important aspects of life is to find somebody to. And to find something that you love to do.

So love is in there in the definition of happiness. So spread love is in a way, um, aspires the way I understand it to increase the overall happiness of receivers. As well as givers of love and my, uh, I mean, in a way, one of the reasons I, um, I mean, there’s no security. I love working with my doctoral students.

I have a sizeable group of very young, very, very talented young people. Um, and the big aspect of our relation, at least on my end is luck. So, um, And as I mentioned, um, it increases my happiness increases. There’s

Naji Gehchan: any final words of wisdom? Uh, Demetrius for healthcare either is around the word.

Dimitris Bertsimas: The only, uh, the most significant in my opinion is, um, to, to make change. You have to have. Um, sometimes you enter an unknown, you know, utilizing data. You never know what you’re going to find. You might actually find that one or one of your departments using data.

It’s not doing a good job, but on the other hand, if you don’t know it, it still does it not a good job, but you don’t know it. But if you allow open your mind, And, uh, allow data to enter over time. Fantastic things will happen to patients, which is our ultimate objective as, as health professionals, but also to ourselves, to the hospital, to ourselves.

I think our life would, um, would be, I would say in a higher plane.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much. Uh, the interest for being with me today and this amazing.

Dimitris Bertsimas: Thank you. Nice to be with you.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 partnership with MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference, an event that brings the Healthcare Ecosystem Together. I am joined today Assaad Sayah, President and CEO of Cambridge Health Alliance. Assaad was named CHA’s President and CEO in January 2020 after serving as the interim CEO since June 2019 and chief medical officer since 2013. Before that, Assaad served as the chief of emergency medicine and senior vice president of primary care. In the Emergency Department, he led tremendous advancements at all three CHA hospitals, resulting in enhanced efficiency, quality, volume and patient satisfaction. He spearheaded primary care growth by more than 50 percent, expanding CHA’s access in underserved communities and integrating primary care and behavioral health services and systems to address social determinants of health. Assaad also plays a key role in CHA’s commitment to the communities it serves, including his tenure as the co-chair of the Cambridge City Manager’s Opioid Working Group established in 2018 to develop recommendations for strengthening the city’s response to the opioid epidemic. Additionally, Assaad is Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. His research and publications focus on operational efficiency, improving the clinical environment and patient experience of care.

Assaad – I’m humbled to have you with me today!

Assaad Sayah: It’s a pleasure, Naji. Thank you. It’s, uh, truly an honor being here.

Naji Gehchan: Before we dig in, value-based care, the topic of your panel at UH, S H B C, I’m eager to hear your personal story. What brought you to Medicine, er, and now running Cambridge Health Alliance and having such a tremendous impact on the communities you serve.

Assaad Sayah: Well, I appreciate it. Um, um, and, and, uh, it’s a long story, but I will keep it abbreviated. Uh, as far as medicine, um, this is, uh, calling, uh, I, as far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a doctor even before I knew what doctor’s all about. Um, I am the, uh, first, uh, college grad in my family. Nevermind, uh, a medical, uh, uh, professional.

Uh, and, uh, I have the, uh, truly the, the, the privilege of, uh, of representing, uh, my community and, and my ethnic background. I am Lebanese in origin, um, in the, in the greater Boston area. Um, medicine, uh, to me is, is truly more of a calling than, uh, than a profession. And, uh, what, what got me into emergency medicine?

Is two reasons. One, um, I am an adrenaline junkie by, by nature. So, uh, uh, anything, uh, that, that, uh, that’s up and running and, and exciting, I’m into it. And, uh, the second and more important thing, um, it is truly doing the right thing. Cause historically and even, uh, currently the emergency department is the only place where anybody can get care, regardless of their ability to pay 24 7.

And, uh, you know, this is a place where you get care and then we ask you for your insurance card versus anywhere else. Uh, as far that I know, you, you have to present your insurance card before you get your care, uh, for whatever it’s worth. That’s what brought me into, into emergency medicine. Uh, what got me into, um, Uh, into administration is curiosity and, um, uh, my, uh, difficulty in accepting things, not working very well around me.

So I always ask the question, how can we improve things? How can we do things better? And when you ask those questions, people say, well, go at it. If you can do it better, go ahead and give it a try. The more you try, the more you do, the more people ask. And one thing led to the other. And here I am, the c e o.

Wow. Thanks so

Naji Gehchan: much for sharing. Uh, let’s start now with value-based care. Uh, how would you define

Assaad Sayah: this? So, uh, value-based care, um, is, uh, is the combination or the formula that combines. Quality and cost. So if you, if you wanna say value equals quality over cost, the higher the quality, the better the value, the lower cost, the better the value.

The worst situation is an environment where you have low quality and high cost, no value at all. So you wanna improve to the best that you can, to the best you can, the level of quality while managing the cost. And, uh, the difference between, uh, Current value-based care and other attempts at managing healthcare cost is, is the equation that involves quality before.

Because if you go back to the nineties, uh, during managed care, it was only managing cost and there was no alignment of incentives. And with value-based care, one would think that the incentives are aligned between the patient who want the best quality. The organization that wants to provide excellent quality and get the best reimbursement and the payer that wanna manage cost.

And hopefully that combination is the magic sauce that will lead to the best work and the best healthcare environment.

Naji Gehchan: So you’re touching, uh, you touched upon those, um, the key players. So can, can you frame specifically who are the key players and what really needs to change today for us to be able to achieve?

High value based care.

Assaad Sayah: The, obviously the, the, the, the, the three major players in healthcare. I mean, there’s a lot of players you will add the government and policy makers and communities, et cetera. But the, the, the three big buckets are one, uh, the consumer, that’s the patient. And that’s the most important piece of all of healthcare.

We are all here for the patient to do the right thing. And the patient, what the patient wants is great quality and the best experience possible that is timely. Um, and that there’s a level of commitment and trust. Cuz trust is absolutely critical in healthcare. What the provider wants is, uh, the appropriate resources to provide.

The needs and meet the need and exceed the needs of the patient in an efficient way. And that requires funding and the right policies and the right pro, et cetera. And the right training. And what the payer wants is a partnership with the provider where when they give the provider the resources, cuz the payer doesn’t, uh, practice medicine.

The payer is basically the vehicle between the patient that’s paying premium. And the provider that’s providing the care, and they wanna make sure that as the care is provided, provided, it is provided at a good, qu good cost at the good price. The new paradigm is adding quality to the equation, is putting certain metrics, uh, that are reportable, that are measurable, that at least directionally define the level of quality that is provided.

Naji Gehchan: So do you think we’re well equipped? As a society to get there and, and really I would love your thoughts on health equity within the scope. Yeah.

Assaad Sayah: Um, we still trying as far as value-based care and in my opinion so far it is the, the best formula that has the highest probability of success. Um, Believe it or not, healthcare, uh, in general in the United States is all still, um, fee for service, which means you do something, you get paid for it.

Just like, you know, when you, when you call a plumber or electrician to your home, they come, they do the work, you pay them, they’re done, but you don’t know, you can’t evaluate the quality of their work. It could be great for the first day, the first week, the first year, but it could falter after that. And that’s basically fee for service.

There’s an hourly rate. You get paid for it. The incentive in here historically is the more you do, the more you get paid, but that’s not good. At the end of the day. You wanna make sure that you get the best quality, the best value for that job that you are giving to your plumber. Let’s, let’s say that. In the value, in the, in the, in the value-based care, basically, you get paid a certain amount to provide a certain amount of care at a high quality.

So the best way to cut down the cost is provide less. Care or enough care, but with the highest quality possible. And that’s how you manage the level of the cost of healthcare. That’s really going above and beyond. It’s always almost 30% of the G d P today, and some reports say that it’s higher than that.

So it’s gonna break our society if we really don’t manage our cost. Now, when you add the, the equity to the form, the equity piece to the formula, And as a healthcare organization, we are the only public hospital in the state, and our mission is to serve a, a safety net, uh, population historically and continuously.

And that population historically has been underserved and, uh, under-resourced at all levels, including with healthcare, uh, because one. The, the demand is greater. Uh, this is a patient population that has a lot of complication, whether it is mental health or social determinants of health, food, transportation, housing, you name it.

A lot of this patient population is, um, first generation immigrants. Many, uh, they don’t speak English. They have issue, issue with housing density. Many families are, are living in very small sh very tight knit, tight quarters. So there’s a lot of challenges in here. They’re all working, uh, difficult, many low paying jobs to really make ends meet.

Which complicate things. They complicate the ability to get healthcare. They complicate their ability to get, uh, to be transported there, to make certain appointments, to take time off of work. Uh, when they get there, their ability to communicate, understand, and follow directions, ability to get medications and follow medications.

That patient population is very complicated anyways. Not only the immigrant patient population, but also. Uh, the, the patient population that, that is, um, uh, less resourced from multiple ways, whether it’s financial, societal, uh, education wise, or even their ability to have access wide. Um, that’s what equity, uh, uh, plays a big role because historically, uh, we have not invested as a society.

In improving the condition, the, the living condition of, of that subpopulation so we can provide them, so we can keep them healthy and not only care for them when they’re sick.

Naji Gehchan: So can we double click on the, on this, because I know you’re doing a huge work, uh, and impacting those underserved population and you, you shared about social determinants of health.

So can I, can I get your view about this and how you have been leading your organization specifically to improve healthcare delivery for those underserved communities?

Assaad Sayah: Uh, one is you have to identify that community. So we are in the community. Uh, we do have, uh, um, 12 clinics out there all embedded in, in our communities.

Um, All our clinics, uh, have, um, primary care and behavioral health, and to a certain extent even dental involvement. So we can provide comprehensive care to the patient when they get care, get their, not start sort of shuttle them all over the place. Um, we have, uh, invested in, um, in our, um, Uh, multicultural department and, and that’s a department that is for the community, by the community that provides not only, uh, interpreter services, uh, but also support in multiple ways, uh, uh, speaking over a hundred languages, uh, out there, available in person and, um, uh, um, sort of virtually, uh, in our, um, Our ambassadors are not only there to interpret when the patient shows up, they’re also there to support the patient in their community.

So, um, you know, if they need their medication, they’re connecting them with the pharmacy, finding ways to get the medication at a discount, uh, or for free, uh, linking them to certain, uh, resources, um, and grants so they can get appropriate support, not only in healthcare. But in housing, housing, food, social services, et cetera, uh, going with them to follow up appointments, uh, you know, advocating for them, uh, when it comes to immigration, law, et cetera.

So they’re involved at all levels, not only to support that community, their community, cuz they come from that community, uh, uh, in only in the interface with healthcare, but in general to make their, uh, their environment more conducive to being healthy. I

Naji Gehchan: love that being, being there with them. It’s, it’s powerful.

I will now give you a word and I would love your reaction to it. The first one

Assaad Sayah: is leadership. Uh, leadership is, um, setting a strategy and creating a team, uh, that is committed to this strategy and to the work that needs to happen.

Naji Gehchan: Tell us more about it. I’d love to hear your story and how you do it with your teams, cuz you’re, you have a large team committed and I’m sure you’re, you’ve gone through a lot, uh, with, with pandemic and even today with everything’s happening around you. So I’d love, uh, to know how you keep your people engaged towards this purpose.

Well,

Assaad Sayah: I mean, uh, the, the, the most important, um, Role of of A A C E O and I call it be being a cheerleader. Uh, you have to be positive. You have to smile, you have to be a resource, you have to be available, uh uh, and you have to make sure that. Uh, you’re surrounded by people that are smarter than you, uh, and that I believe in, in the mission and the work that you’re doing.

Uh, because one person cannot change the world, they cannot, you cannot do the work yourself. You have to provide the environment and the resources for the people to do the work and the space. Uh, for them to do the work. Uh, it includes trust, which is the most important element in a team. Uh, and it includes clarity, transparency, and accountability.

Uh, and it’s a two-way street. Um, you know, I, I work with my team as a family. Uh, God knows we spend more time with each other than their own, their own, our own families. And, uh, we rely on each other, uh, good, bad or or indifferent, uh, every day to really do the work and make sure that we are, um, uh, maximizing and optimization, optimizing the resources we have, the opportunities we have to better serve the community and support each other.

I love it. What about care delivery? Um, care delivery, you know, I, I, I don’t like that word, to be honest with you, that, that, that terminology, uh, because it’s so narrow, believe it or not. Uh, but, but in general, uh, care delivery is, uh, um, meeting and exceeding the expectation of, uh, of the patient in the communities.

And, um, going above and beyond, uh, the healthcare system can do so much and has the ability and resources to do so much, unfortunately, that is not matched with the needs and it’s not matched with the expectations and the knowledge of, of the patients in the community. So we can do, we can do a lot more than than, than we do and, uh, and we should be able to do a lot more than we do.

So, um, care delivery is, Traditionally is the organization that provides care to the patient when they’re sick, when they need it. In my mind, uh, the best way to improve care is to, uh, provide, uh, what’s needed, what’s necessary for the patients to remain healthy in their communities and not need. Prevent them e every time a patient comes to the hospital or most of the time they come to the hospital, it is a failure of the care delivery system in my mind.

So the ultimate success is be out of business, believe it or not, and, and decrease the gotcha the needs, the traditional needs of the patient to really consume the amount of care that they consume.

Naji Gehchan: So true. You’re touching on prevention, how we do it, health

Assaad Sayah: education, absolutely. All of the above. All of the above 80% of people’s health or over 80%.

Happens outside the traditional healthcare system. It is what happens at home. It is the habits that happen at home, whether it’s, uh, smoking, obesity, you name it, drugs, alcohol, psychological issues, uh, food, transportation, you name it. Uh, that’s what influences people’s health. You know, there’s a, there’s a piece that’s related to the genes, what you’re born with, and there’s a piece that’s related to everything else we do to keep you healthy.

But the big chunk of it, uh, is what you do every day. And that’s what we need to invest, where we need to invest in early prevention, in screening, in early childhood, uh, screening and prevention in education of the families and the kids. So they have, uh, healthy habits so they remain healthy. So the third

Naji Gehchan: one is health equity.

Assaad Sayah: Um, health equity is, and this is not equality and this is not, it is basically, um, be thoughtful and purposeful in defining and bridging the gap. Uh, in the gaps in our society between the, um, safety net and the rest of the population, the population, that that has a gap. And so it’s not giving everybody an equal amount, it’s defining the gap and providing extra resources to bridge that gap at all levels, whether it is in healthcare or you name it.

There is equity in the, the digital divide. There’s equity in finances, there’s equity in education, there’s equity in healthcare, there’s equity in culture. I mean, you name it, there’s a historical gap, uh, that happened over decades and hundreds of years that, uh, The only way to, to, to, uh, mitigate that is to provide the appropriate resources to bring, to narrow that gap.

So the amount of growth and the amount of resources has to be exponentially greater here, so we can make up that gap with time. Otherwise, if it’s equal, there’s always be gonna be, there’s always gonna be a gap. The last

Naji Gehchan: word is spread love in organizations.

Assaad Sayah: Um, As I, we talked about trust. We talked about working as a family.

We talked about, uh, approaching things, uh, the way you wanna approach things, the way you should be approached things. And, and I have, uh, certain, um, rules that, that I live by. Uh, one of the rules that you hear about is, um, uh, you know, treat people as you wanna be treated. And, and that’s not my rule. My rule is you gotta treat people the way they wanna be treated.

Uh, because there’s a big difference. You can assume. How you wanna be treated. And, and that may not be satisfactory to others. And I think that’s a very important piece in love because you cannot, when in love, you cannot project your own definition. You have to project the other person’s definition of what love is about because that’s what matters is to the other person, is what they define it, not how you define it.

And that is true across all our society. Uh, and, and, If we approach things the right way, the way we conduct and live our life, not only professionally but with family and neighbors and society, I think that’s what matters is treat people the way they want to be treated.

Naji Gehchan: Any final word of wisdom has had for healthcare leaders around the world.

Assaad Sayah: Um, do the right thing. That’s another, that’s another piece. Um, and, you know, you’re always cha uh, seeing challenges and, uh, always facing issues that sometimes are insurmountable. But at the end of the day, we are all judged based on the work that we do. And, uh, at the end of the day, uh, the best way to be judged is for doing the right thing and sometimes.

Um, it may not be the most beneficial thing or the most lu most lucrative thing, uh, but doing the right thing always at the end of the day will lead you to the right place.

Naji Gehchan: Well, thank you so much. I, I can talk with you for hours, but, but I know you have to go and it’s been a really, an incredible pleasure to have you with me today.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Assaad Sayah: Pleasure Naji, and good luck to you. Thank you very much.

Thank you all for listening to Spreadlove in Organizations podcast! More episodes summarizing the MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference are available on spreadloveio.com or on your preferred streaming app. Follow “spreadlove in organizations” wherever you listen to podcasts and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement our World so desperately need.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 partnership with MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference, an event that brings the Healthcare Ecosystem Together. I am joined today Andrew Plump President of Research & Development and Board Member at Takeda. His career spans nearly 30 years in the pharmaceutical industry and academia. Andrew has been recognized for his contributions to the healthcare industry, education and the arts. He serves on several non-profit boards including the Board of Trustees for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation, the Biomedical Science Careers Program and as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the PhRMA Foundation. Prior to Takeda, Andrew served as head of Research & Translational Medicine, deputy to the president of R&D at Sanofi, based in Paris, France. Prior to Sanofi, he served as worldwide cardiovascular research head at Merck. Andrew received his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), his Ph.D. in cardiovascular genetics and his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in medical genetics at UCSF.

Andrew – I’m humbled to have you with me today!

Andy Plump: Hello Naji. And, and thank you. Uh, thank you so much for the privilege of joining you on this terrific podcast.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you. Before we dig in, challenges in scaling biotech innovation, the topic of your panel at, uh, S H P C, uh, I am eager to hear more about your personal story, really what brought you to medicine than pharma and now leading R n Z at Takeda.

Andy Plump: Well, it, it just so happens the timing for that question is impeccable because this past Sunday I gave a talk, something I’ve never done before. It was actually a mentorship talk to a group of. Emerging diverse, uh, scientists and clinicians and organization called the Biomedical Sciences Career Program or B S E P, I think you mentioned.

I sit on the board of this, this organization, and it’s an organization that’s existed for 30 years. Has about 10,000 members, incredible individuals. Many come from underprivileged or marginalized beginnings, so motivated to, to grow and to make the world a better place in, in life sciences. So I had a chance to give a talk and I was able to unpack some of my beginnings.

And so, so I thought through this and. This is audio so nobody can see the picture. But I had a slide that had a picture of me in my 1970s plaid bath, you know, bath ba bathrobe, um, with my mom at the age of four. And then a picture of me in, uh, uh, tuxedo actually as I was getting married in 1992 with my dad.

And, you know, and I think back, it’s, it’s a large measure to my parents and to my, my upbringing when I start to think about my journey. And there’s one piece of my childhood that was enabled so wonderfully by my mom and my dad that has really carried me through these many years, and that’s curiosity.

I’ve always been so interested and curious in what’s happening around me. And the two stories I told at the conference, which I’ll share with your, your audience, Naji are my mom at the time that I was four years old, maybe three, three and a half, with, in that bathrobe I was the third born. We ultimately had five of us in the family, but the twins were, you know, unexpected.

And so I was meant to be the youngest child of, and I had an older brother and sister who were five or six years older than me in school, and I would just, Follow my mom around everywhere and ask her question after question after question, and finally she looked at me one day and she said, Andrew, It’s time for you to go to school.

And the other question that you know resonated was I told, took my dad aside very earnestly one day and I said, dad, you know, if you could bring the person who had all the answers in the world and give me that person for a full weekend, I still wouldn’t be able to ask as many questions as I have. So curiosity has been what has propelled me.

Naji Gehchan: But thank you for, for sharing, uh, Enzi and I, I love how you’re bringing it, uh, with the fact of being curious. And, you know, I, I was thinking as you were saying this, how many times we actually as parents make this mistake of stopping our kids from asking so many questions. And I, I’m, I’m sure you, you throw.

By asking questions and learning. So now if we go into really the challenges in scaling biotech innovation and what you shared, uh, during the conference itself, I would love first your view on the most exciting current innovations in biotech. How do you define those? How do you look at those personally.

Andy Plump: Well, I, I, we’re in a golden era of healthcare, and if we get it right by the end of this century, we, we can have a, um, a therapy, maybe even a cure for every disease that’s, that’s known to Man. There’s no question we have all of the tools and foundationally there are, they’re the three pillars that allow us to be so bold and aspirational.

Our human genetics, we learn so much. But by dissecting the human genome in terms of target identification, in terms of somatic mu mutations that affect cancers, that’s one. The second is tried and true mechanistic biology that typically occurs in academic laboratories. So thinking through what it takes to generate a hypothesis and test that hypothesis in unraveling biology.

Our ability to do that at scale. And it’s not systems biology. Typically it’s an individual student or a postdoc, really thinking through the details of a, of a problem. That’s the, that’s the academic medical system that exists today. And then thirdly, this explosion of modalities that has come about over in principle in, in particular, over the last decade.

When I started in this industry, we had 90 plus percent of the molecules in pipelines were synthetic small molecules, natural products, or vaccines. Now if you look at the aggregate pipeline across our industry, those three form the minority. We have recombinant proteins, we have genetic therapies of multiple flavors, and we have cell therapies.

And so our ability to put these three together allows us to have the courage and boldness to think that we can tackle any disease. And in fact, the last 10 to 15 years has, has told us that, that with this toolbox we can, we have the potential to do anything that. That we can now, there are forces that work against us.

You know, one, one are intrinsic forces to our industry and it’s greed and avaris and, and behaviors that damage our reputation because we’re a highly regulated. Industry, what, you know, what we do really matters. Not just, it’s not just a business. There, there it, there’s a right to healthcare. And when we are, when we’re egregious in our pricing, when we, um, fail to abide by the compliance and quality codes that countries ask us to abide by, we’re damaging ourselves.

That’s our own intrinsic potential roadblock. But extrinsically, there are many roadblocks and we’re seeing this with. Regulatory agencies, which, which move up and down in terms of their conservatism. And we’re moving today towards a much more conservative regulatory landscape, particularly in the us. Um, there’s reimbursement policies, you know, especially in, in Europe, it’s, it’s very hard to demonstrate in diseases where you have existing therapy, um, that you have a better therapy that, that deserves reimbursement.

Because, because it’s impossible to show oftentimes in head-to-head studies. Um, that you are better and, and that’s what’s being asked of us. And so, so there’s, there’s, there’s this, um, the, the, this tunnel vision, I think that’s happening. We saw this with Ira, was having conversations recently, the inflation reduction act.

There are elements of IRA that make a lot of sense. We need to reduce costs in the US for patients, but there are a lot of elements in the I I R A that will squash innovation. So huge potential, but also, uh, huge, huge headwinds. So let’s

Naji Gehchan: double click, and I love how you framed it and so agree with you on the interest intrinsic, uh, roadblock that that we bring and those external ones.

And when we think about those innovation biotech, we’re frequently think about those nascent biotechs, those startups who are trying. To nail down one of like the most challenging targets, the most challenging technology science. Whe when you think of those, wh wh where do you see the biggest challenge for starting a biotech?

Like if, I want to think from those startups, what are the main challenges for them in 2023 after probably a boom in the last decade? How do you see those these days?

Andy Plump: Well, it, it’s, it’s a terrible time right now for, for the biotech, uh, ecosystem. And the, the, the challenge is getting funded right now.

There’s, there’s, there’s still a tremendous amount of venture capital available, but there’s a, there’s a, uh, fear a bit in, in the market, and so there’s been much less investment in new ideas. Now than there have been in the past. I, you know, we’ve seen cycles like this before, so I’m, I’m convinced that we’ll cycle out of this and that we’ll end up in a better place.

I don’t know if that’s gonna take a year, three years, or five years, but we’re in a particularly depressed market. So funding for biotech is, is taking a, a really big hit. But I think there’s a more fundamental concern, which gets back to my comments earlier around some of the extrinsic headwinds that we’re facing.

It’s just, You know, when you’re, when you’re dealing with more conservative regulatory agencies, more challenging reimbursement, um, environments, when you have the country, the country in the us which is responsible for 50% of reimbursement on our industry starting to really limit, um, access and, and price, um, that’s a problem for biotech because it all.

You know, it all cascades downward. And the starting point for most innovation is biotech. You know, two-thirds of what any pharma company will ultimately bring to a patient in the marketplace starts in laboratories outside of our own. It starts in biotechnology laboratories and academic laboratories.

And so if we’re not funding that and supporting that early innovation, it’s going to greatly damage, uh, access for patients.

Naji Gehchan: So I’d love to double click on the access piece because as you said, breakthrough innovations, uh, and really in a global environment that is becoming more and more challenging to bring those innovations, not only from an r and d standpoint, but once they are in the market to patients across the globe.

How, how do you think about this in a global aspect, again, of those breakthrough innovations for. All patients who need that.

Andy Plump: Yeah. And maybe I’m not using the word correctly. Cause when I’m, I’m talking about for biotechs, it’s not about access, it’s about actually being able to make a medicine, having it approved and having it reimbursed at some level.

And that doesn’t, that’s not, you’re right. That’s not the same as access. And in fact, when I think of access, I think about it in the context that you’re articulating, which is access to the seven plus billion people across the globe. But even within the United States, you know where you have 300 plus million individuals and you have marginalized and underprivileged groups who have poor access to many of these medicines, and we saw that in during the Covid Pandemic.

When you looked at the groups that were most affected by this lethal virus, it ended up that many of the more marginalized, socioeconomically depressed groups were much more affected. So we have an issue here in the United States that we have to get on top of. Of course the issue on the global scale is, is much larger.

You know, many companies have, global pharmaceutical companies will have marketing presences in 30 or 50 or 75 countries across the world. And so more than 50% of countries are not actually represented by commercial organizations. And that’s a real problem. It means we’re not developing, studying our medicines in those other countries, and we’re not bringing our medicines to those countries in in a systematic way.

Um, I think, I think we’re, we’re up and down in, in access, you know, one area where we’re, we’re, we’re driving immense accesses in China. You know, where you have, you know, one point, what is it, 1.4 billion people, which means 1.4 billion potential patients. And you know, What, what the Chinese, the C D E, the C F D A, the regulatory equivalents in China have done over the last eight or nine years.

China has made it a mandate that we, China wants innovative medicines available for its population. And so they’ve overnight, it feels like they’ve changed the regulatory policies to enable development in China, and they, they’re stimulating innovation. So an example, the c d E, the one of the, the F D A equivalent essentially had listed a couple of years ago what they consider the top 50 most innovative medicines.

And they said, we know we, we want you to be developing your medicines in Chinese patients, so we understand how those medicines perform in pat in patients in China, but for those 50, let’s just register them and then you commit to a phase four study to study them after they’re registered because they’re just too important not to be available to patients.

So that’s a great example of a business model for companies. Company stepping in and, and a government really opening up the for, for those individuals. But we have a long way to go. I agree. We have a long, long way to go to, to achieve access at the scale that each of us would, would truly want. Now thanks

Naji Gehchan: for this example.

It really shows this collaboration of stakeholders at the end. And if we really can work as partners, uh, the, you know, co every time I think of this, I think of Covid and how we developed and brought innovation with speed, like vaccines, treatments, et cetera. Cuz we were all together. Uh, As key stakeholders of the healthcare for the patients we serve, keeping the patient at the heart.

You talked about funding. I would love to hear your view about not only funding for biotech, which is a ch obviously one of the biggest challenges, but what is the role of leadership in building up and scaling biotechs?

Andy Plump: Leadership in, in what context? Within the companies themselves? Yes. Yeah, in the ecosystem.

Oh, well, I mean, everything is about leadership. You know, I, and, and I can take, I I’m asking for you to qualify the question because I can take it in so many different directions. You know, I think it starts with policy and how we, as we’re talking about and how, how, how, let’s just focus on the United States, how we create policy, regulatory policy, reimbursement.

Policy pricing policy, that’s leadership, and there’s a trickle down effect if we’re too shortsighted about some of the decisions we’re making. I mentioned the inflation reduction Act, where there are many provisions that are absurd and will destroy innovation. I’ll give you one example, by the way, which is that there are provisions in ira, which allowed.

The cms, which is the kind of federal agency that manages pricing for Medicare and Medicaid products. There are provisions that allow CMS to step in and to negotiate price with a sponsor. That’s okay and and there as long as that’s managed correctly. But that timeline for when C M S can step in and negotiate is different if you’re a recombinant protein or a small molecule.

If you’re a recombinant protein, they can step in at 13 years, and if you’re a small molecule, they can step in at nine years. Why? It makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it should be the opposite because it’s much harder to make a generic version of a recombinant protein than of a small molecule. But the reality is both can be transformative in terms of their potential for patients.

That’s an absence of leadership. That’s, there’s, there’s something behind that. I’ve actually spoken with many former, former officials in the, in the government, several ex FDA chiefs, to try to understand where that’s coming from. And the only answer I can get is there’s, it’s politicized in some way, in ways that I can’t even begin to, to understand that’s poor leadership.

So leadership is important at, at all levels. There’s, there’s also, there’s also something about our business, which I find quite interesting, which is that, Our business is somewhat stochastic, right? You can be, um, you can have poorly run organizations and toxic organizations that can do quite well for a short period of time, and maybe in your career you’ve been in bad situations that you were just not happy as an employee for where a company has done well.

It’s actually very hard in most sectors to sustain yourself for any period of time when you have a toxic culture. In our industry. You’ve had many companies that have been able to do that. Now, of course it’s, it has a runway. If you have a toxic culture, bad leadership, you will. You will Peter out. But in our industry, because our life cycles are 10 to 15 years, if you have a Keytruda and you’re America, not suggesting that Merck is a toxic culture, but that can propel you for, you know, 10 to 15 years and give you an immense amount of funding for that period of time.

And so you do have organizations where you have bad leadership, where you, you see stochastic breakthroughs. Oftentimes they’re not because of brilliance or because of luck, and that happens in our business, and you can sustain those environments, but I’m not advocating for that. But really, if you wanna be successful in the comp, in the environments that we work within, where the, the competition for talent is so intense, especially in your area, Naji in oncology where everybody is in oncology and there’s such a talent, a dearth.

If you’re not leading, if you’re not creating cultures that are positive cultures, you’re gonna, you’re gonna lose there. There’s a great line that now I think every biotech c e o uses, which is, excuse my language, but the no asshole culture right now. But, and actually that was something that 10 years ago, I don’t think anybody was really that concerned about.

Cause everybody was so caught up in that stochastic luck process. But now everybody tries to create a culture that’s strong and, and leadership is the foundation of all of that.

Naji Gehchan: This is a great segue to the next section where I would give you one word and I would love your reaction to it.

Andy Plump: So the first word is leadership necessary.

So I, did you want a one word reaction or did you want a Uh, you can give more. Well, I mean, I’m just shaking my head because it’s very interesting. I’ll take an aside here. Cause you’re, you’re, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re kind of, um, rattling you, you’re sha you’re shaking me, and then you’re, you’re hitting a chord.

So, so one, one of the things that struck me in r and d in our industry is that oftentimes the leadership within r and d organizations, Is more variable than what you see in in other parts of, of our organizations. You know, for example, to be a commercial leader, you obviously need to be smart, you need to be accomplished, but you know, you, you’re often selected more on your leadership.

Whereas in r and d organizations, especially in in highly technical areas, you know, where the pool size of individuals gets to be quite small. Where accomplishments and intellect and technical expertise tend to be valued more greatly, let’s say, than leadership. You’re often seeing organizations promote individuals based on their technical merit merits in intellect accomplishments rather than their leadership.

And so many r and d organizations are mismanaged with, with poor leaders. And, and actually it kind of makes some sense because you’re. You’re, you’re we’re dealing with people who have trained as physicians, who’ve trained as scientists and as engineers and have never really thought about leadership. So I think it’s abs it’s an absolute necessity.

And one of the things I’ve done, you know, I we’ll see if this will work out at Takeda cuz, cuz our we’re judged over a long period of time, is I’ve first and foremost emphasized character and leadership. Technical excellence expertise is a necessity, but you can’t be on my team unless you have strong leadership chops, uh, and strong character.

The next word is health equity a problem. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s a challenge and actually, um, we come out of covid. And there’s the, you know, the, some of the silver linings that come out of the pandemic are a recognition of the inequities that exist in society and what, what make, what’s quizzical about my saying that is, why should that be something that we’re, we figure out in 2022 and 2023, this has existed for decades and centuries.

Um, you know, hopefully these realizations will stick and something that I’ve really. Um, become more and more aware of and more cognizant of my, my privileges as a white male and my responsibilities in terms of being an ally and stepping up. Um, we have a long way to go and, you know, fundamentally it starts within r and d, certainly within our institutions, ensuring that we’re creating cultures that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

And all three of them, not just diversifying our, our population, but ensuring that we’re listening and being truly inclusive. That’s really requires learning, education and growth. Um, but then as we start to think about the patients that we’re aiming to serve, you know, if we’re not studying the effects of our experimental therapies in diverse patient populations, we’re doing.

An injustice to, uh, to those patients and, and not contributing to health equity. And so it starts early on in the process. And when you look at, um, when you look at industry across the industry and you look at clinical trials, they’re still nowhere near where they need to be. I think we’re on the right track.

You have guidances coming out of, you know, f FDA for example, and other organizations. So I think we’re all moving in the right direction, but it’s something we all have to own. And I still don’t see that ownership as. Uniform is, is what it needs to be. Even within my organization where we have, you know, there’s a huge foundation and focus on health equity and clinical trial diversity, I sometimes listen in meetings and, you know, it’s not oftentimes the first thing that are, it’s brought up when we’re talking about our program.

I think if we’re really equitable, we’re really thinking about health, equity and access. It’ll be the first or second thing that comes up in almost every conversation, and I just don’t, don’t see that we’re not quite there yet. I love

Naji Gehchan: it. I can’t agree more with you on diversity. Not only it starts internally, as you said, this is parts we can influence immediately, but definitely clinical trial diversity is a big, is a big topic we need to be

Andy Plump: focused on as leaders.

No, on this point I was, I mentioned this talk I gave on Sunday, which is a very, Powerful talk for me. It took a lot of time, a lot of preparation, and I thought a lot about it. It was not an easy talk to give, but my second slide after my title was two people sitting on a couch and in between the two people was a big elephant.

And I said, here the elephant in the room is here I am a 50 something white male. Talking to a group of 500 diverse, aspiring, um, healthcare and life scientists. You know, but, but the elephant, so what can I tell you? How can my experience help help you? And so my, my, my theme was that there are, there’s a perspective that I have that that can be helpful to anybody.

And there’s also a recognition that I have that we all, we all have our identities and our identities will shape. Our, our lives and our career, and for some of us, we’re able to be more opportunistic because of the color of our skin and our gender perhaps. And for others, we just need to be more purposeful.

But it’s not, it’s not incumbent. On just the diverse, marginalized individual. It’s incumbent on all of us to step up and to ensure that we’re helping create more, more equity in the world. And that’s where I think my, you know, my responsibility is as someone who’s actually experienced so much and through a life of white privilege.

The third

Naji Gehchan: one is, uh, symphony Orchestra.

Andy Plump: It’s, I mean, the Boston Symphony Orchestra. So even more specific. Yes. Are you, are you musical naji? Are you musical yourself?

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. Yeah. Guitar and piano.

Andy Plump: Well, so, okay, here’s the story. I went to school, uh, pointing this way cuz Mass is right behind me. And m i t is right after the road. I went to school at m mi t as an undergraduate, and I’m not particularly musical, but when I came to Boston, it was a town.

I mean, it’s, it’s changed so much. It was a town with m i t and Harvard and then Townies, you know, and it had a very unique kind of small town culture, but there was one institution. That was that, put it on a world scale and that was the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And so I, I loved the institution. Um, six or seven years ago, uh, I, we, we actually at Decat became sponsors of BSL because we were trying to, we were trying to imprint ourselves in, in Boston and nobody knew who we weren’t, right.

And it was trying to hire and build an r d organization here. And I would talk to people and they would say, Taketa the airbag company, like, no, no, Takeda. So we needed to, to, to, to market ourselves a little bit. And so we had two opportunities. The Red Sox, the Boston Red Sox, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

I’m a New Yorker. I could never, I could never promote. And I’m a big fan of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And so we became involved and then I got involved in some fundraising and some development efforts, and I realized how how distanced the life science community in Boston was from this iconic institution.

So you had to me, now today in Boston, there are two defining elements. There’s BSO and there’s the life science community. And so it felt like a match made in heaven and I was able to help to catalyze, um, that that match and. A couple years ago, they asked if I would be willing to step up and serve on the board of trustees, trustees, which of course, I, I, I’m more than willing, and it’s been an amazing experience.

And

Naji Gehchan: the last one is spread love at organizations.

Andy Plump: Well, I’m looking at you and I’m, I’m, you know, I didn’t, I have to be very honest. It’s one of my Achilles heels. I didn’t know about your podcast or your, your group until I was a, until I, I met your colleague. What was her name? Z. Z Zena. Zk. Zano, yeah. Z.

After my, after the panel at m i t, she came up to me and, uh, we talked for a few minutes and she asked if I would do this, and she told me a little bit about it. And, um, you know, I was more than, more than pleased to step in and, and I love what you’re, what you’re doing and reaching in and helping the, our community grow.

And asking the kinds of questions and that many people don’t ask. I never get asked about the Boston sy new orchestra. I get asked about leadership, but it’s not the most common thing I get asked about. And so the way you’re approaching this and the way you’re opening up our community to, to unique perspectives, perhaps from standard people like, like me, I think it’s really terrific.

So thank you for doing this and congratulations.

Naji Gehchan: Oh, thank you, Angie. That means, that means a lot. Any final words of wisdom for healthcare leaders around the world?

Andy Plump: Well, I’m an internal optimist, you know, and I, I, I have to be in our business, as you know, Naji, cuz a lot of what we do doesn’t work. And so you need to really be optimistic, um, and.

You know, as I said earlier, I think we’re in the golden era of, of healthcare and I, I, i, I, I don’t know if our, if these decades will be remembered for life science or for computer science, cuz both are making huge headways. Um, but okay, but I’ll, I’ll tell you a bit of an, an analogy. So in, in, in history, there are dark periods of time that are often characterized by war, by pandemic and by social injustice and unrest, and we’re just coming out of one with covid.

If you look back in history, there are many very similar examples that are characterized by that same triad of, of darkness, always. These dark periods are bookended by greatness, and typically that greatness is scientific or technological. You go back to the 19 early 19 hundreds with Albert Einstein, for example, world War I, and then some of the work that came after World War I was Sir Arthur Edington.

Um, you go back to the 1960s with the difficult period. Bookmark by greatness in our in space exploration. And if you come to today, we’ve established a left bar benchmark in my mind of this dark period, and it was the work that came out of Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuel Chappen with crispr. What we can do in terms of genetic manipulation is just amazing, and the potential for disease is just incredible.

I don’t know what the right bookmark of this dark period will be, but the people who are listening to your podcast will be defining it, and I have to imagine it’s gonna relate back somehow to our ability to manipulate our genome and create good.

Naji Gehchan: Well, thank you so much, Andy. It’s such a great way to finish up with an opening on hope for after all the darkness, as you said with the triad we’ve been going through.

Thank you so much again for being with me today. It’s been a privilege. Thank you.

Andy Plump: Thank you very much. Naji.

Thank you all for listening to Spreadlove in Organizations podcast! More episodes summarizing the MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference are available on spreadloveio.com or on your preferred streaming app. Follow “spreadlove in organizations” wherever you listen to podcasts 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 Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 Mike Ullmann. Mike retired from Johnson & Johnson earlier this year after over 33 years with the Company.  For the last 11 years, he served as a member of the J&J Executive Committee and the Executive Vice President, General Counsel leading a global organization of over 2,000 employees in 60 countries encompassing Legal, Government Relations & Policy, ESG Strategy, Intellectual Property, Corporate Governance, Data Privacy, Compliance and Security.  As General Counsel of the world’s largest Life Sciences company, he successfully guided JNJ through high-profile and high-risk situations, while helping to grow the business to annual sales of $94 billion, increase shareholder value and maintain its reputation as one of the most admired companies in the world. 

Mike – It’s a pleasure to see you again and have you with me today!

Michael Ullmann: Oh, thank you, Naji. It’s a pleasure to be here, and thank you very much for inviting me.

Naji Gehchan: Can we first start with your personal story, the in between, the lines of your journey to the exec committee of j and j and the inspiring leader you are today?

Michael Ullmann: Well, look, you know, I, I like to say Naji, that, that first and foremost, um, I’m a husband, a father, a son, uh, a grandfather, uh, a friend. Because I do think it really starts, um, with who you are as a person. And I think that, um, leadership really devolves I think from that, that individual level. And I think one of the things that we’ll talk about today is that balance between the individual and who you are as a leader and leading a large organization.

Uh, because to me, Um, in particular leading an organization of several thousand people, um, you always have to make sure that, that people see you as a person, as an individual, and that you’re not just a figurehead or you’re someone up on top of an organizational chart. And so I would always, um, in any of my conversations in, in any time I talk with people, Uh, would let people know what was going on in my life, and not, not to the extent of just talking about myself excessively, but just acknowledging, Hey, this is, uh, this weekend, uh, we had a, a birthday party for my grandson, and then I, I played golf.

And so, you know it just a little bit about who you are as a person. And so that’s what I like to talk about. Um, when I start off. And then look, I think that, uh, my story as a leader, uh, probably like many leadership stories is not a straight line, or certainly not like a straight upward line. Uh, you know, there are some twists and turns along the way and, you know, I, and I think, uh, happy to, you know, talk about that, uh, just to kind of trace my journey.

Yes, I’m,

Naji Gehchan: I’m

Michael Ullmann: eager to hear more about that. Yeah, well, look, you know, I think, um, to some extent I think my, my leadership journey was somewhat unexpected. And, you know, I, um, in fact, uh, when I was in my twenties and early thirties, um, I don’t think, uh, in fact I know for a fact that people that knew me, uh, did not expect for me to end up where I did.

Um, I, I wouldn’t say that I was a slow starter, uh, but I certainly was not like a shooting star and a wonder kid that everyone thought from, uh, day one in the workplace that I was going to be super successful. Um, and I think what I’ve learned was that, um, you know, for every person, there’s a, there’s a right environment, there’s a right role.

There’s a right company or organization. And so I didn’t really change as a person, but I changed jobs, I changed roles, and then eventually, um, I think I found the right environment and the right role where I could flourish and achieve my potential. And, and so, you know, part of why I like to focus on this is that.

Um, I’d like to tell people, look, if you don’t feel like you are achieving your potential in your environment, yeah, it may not be you, and it may not be the environment or the company, right. It may be that this is not the right match. And don’t, don’t be afraid to, to make a change. Don’t be afraid to do something different until you find the right, the right company, the right match.

Um, because you’ll hear people say, oh, well, like, that’s a really good company, or That’s a bad company. And I think it really depends upon, you know, what’s the right fit. Now for me, the right fit was eventually when I got to Johnson Johnson and being able to fill a multitude of roles. But then secondly, I think the second part of my, uh, leadership journey.

Was that I was not particularly ambitious. And you know, that’s probably not what you hear from many of the leaders, you know, that, that, that you talk to. But I was very happy with my life. Um, you know, my wife and I had been married a few years. Uh, we had three kids. Um, I lived close to where I worked. I was, you know, focused on trying to be a good father.

And, uh, and I loved my job, so I was certainly working, but my feeling was, Hey, I wanna do a good job. I’m in healthcare. And we can, we can certainly talk more about being in healthcare later on. Um, but it was, look, let me, uh, let me find that right balance, uh, you know, work life, home life. Um, but I think because I was not overly ambitious, What I focused on at work was helping other people succeed.

It was, you know, how do I help, uh, the people I’m working for succeed? How do I help my, my colleagues succeed? Uh, you know, at the time I wasn’t managing people, so it wasn’t helping people, uh, you know, that I was managing. But I was really, look, let me, uh, do what I can to make the company successful, to make my colleagues successful.

Um, ultimately that was recognized and appreciated and that began my journey as a leader, I think, in part because I was perceived as someone that was, um, you know, looking for the success of the organization, not for my own success. And then I think ultimately that kind of transitioned into the type of servant leadership.

That, you know, I have always been a proponent of and as I’ve moved up in the organization, tried to follow.

Naji Gehchan: I love that. And thanks for sharing first and really, you touched on incredible co uh, concepts. I would like to go and dig a little bit deeper. I loved what you said about the fit and this is why I was smiling, cuz even, you know, we’ve seen people who were, who are unhappy or performance is not there, and that’s one of my beliefs.

It’s probably the casting. And as leaders, we have responsibility for our people to, to share with them this, because every time we talk about servant leadership, people mismatch performance. Like how do you deal with performance? Actually, if you really care about your people and they’re not performing, you’re gonna tell the person.

Help them out find a better fit if it’s really a job fit as you shared. I, I, I love this part too. Um, I, I’m sure it’s hard to kind of summarize 33 years of, uh, of your experience at, uh, at j and j with one leadership learning, but I would love to kind of go there if there is one. What, what is the biggest.

Leadership learning during these years, that is also what you would like to transmit for, uh, for leaders moving forward?

Michael Ullmann: Yeah, look, um, there are obviously many, uh, learnings I could share, but it, but if I had to pick one, I think it would be, um, a sense of humility, right? Meaning that, um, I, I never felt that I had to have all the answers.

In particular because I, I was fortunate enough to lead a, uh, very large, you know, organization in many different areas, but I always felt that my job was not to be a, a superstar. My job was to, you know, be kind of, uh, the person that would motivate, empower other people. And I think if you surround yourself with good, smart, hardworking people, And you, you trust them and you give them the, the latitude that they need.

That that’s really the, to some extent, the secret sauce of leadership, at least in a large organization. And you know, to some extent, well, what I’m about to say is not very humble. And so when I talk about humility that may, it may not quite sound that, uh, I have humility, but I do think that. That, um, that level of humility that I had, which is, look, if the, if it’s the people around me who are shining, like I don’t need to shine as the leader, uh, because they, if my organization does well and we are accomplishing even more than what’s expected of us, then that will reflect well on me as a leader.

And I, I think that, um, That sometimes is counterintuitive to people who feel that if I’m a leader, I, I need to make sure that the most senior management, you know, sees me as the critical part, the critical hub in the wheel, that I’m the one that’s really making everything work. And I was always very comfortable just kind of, again, I have, I’m not a wallflower.

But I was very comfortable making sure that the people around me had that opportunity to make decisions to, to show what they knew. And then frankly, if you do that, you attract better talent. So it becomes somewhat self-serving because you know, good people want to work somewhere where they’re gonna get recognition and they’re gonna be respected.

And they’re going to get that type of exposure that they want.

Naji Gehchan: So Mike, I’m obviously a big believer of what you’re saying and and truly thank you for highlighting those important pieces. You know, I can, but think about some of the leadership today and some of like those who are in big lights. With quite the opposite actually of what you’re describing.

Like those who want to be in the light and reading dark organizations. And I, you know, I don’t want to go into politics also, but it’s those type of leaders obviously that you’re reading a lot about. Uh, and, and sometimes we’re discussing about kids before I’m, sometimes I reflect on this and why are those leaders having most of the lives?

While we both know the, the negative effect of this type of egocentricity, I, I’d love to get your reaction, how you think about these pieces and if, if you’ve ever been challenged about the way you lead people. You talked a lot about humility, shining through others, putting the others in the front, helping others be successful.

Have you ever been challenged on, on your style of leadership being too nice too kind? Several people I talked to, they would tell me. You know, I’m considered too kind. I’m too nice. What, what, what would be your reaction to this?

Michael Ullmann: Well, you know, naji, um, kindness is one of my favorite words. And, and I think it is underused in our society.

And, and interestingly enough, um, you know, I, I would use the word kindness to describe my leadership style. Now, I think that kindness though sometimes is, um, Is misinterpreted, right? Kindness doesn’t mean that, you know, every employee gets an A plus, right? Kindness doesn’t mean that, um, everyone is wonderful and does great at their job.

To me, what kindness means is treating people with respect and trusting people. Um, but you know, there are times where. Um, you do as a leader have to make tough decisions. Uh, and even there, you can do that with kindness. Uh, you can do this in a respectful manner. Um, so did I ever get challenged in my leadership style?

Yes, I did. Um, you know, and usually it would be that, uh, there was someone that maybe wasn’t performing. It didn’t happen a lot, but. Someone wasn’t performing well and I’d get push, uh, pressure, like move that person out or take action. And my feeling would be, look, let’s, um, let’s give this person a chance.

Let’s, let’s make sure there’s appropriate feedback that someone has the opportunity to kind of correct. Um, and sometimes that works, sometimes it didn’t. But it does get back to, I think something you said earlier, Naji, which is. What’s the right environment in the right role for people? And you know, it doesn’t mean if someone is not succeeding, it doesn’t mean that they’re a, they’re not smart.

It doesn’t mean that they’re a bad performer. What it may mean is that they’re not in the right role in the right organization. And I think, you know, I would say almost all the times I had to deal with that, um, the person realized that, and, and the person kind of welcomed that feedback. Because no one, no one likes to be unsuccessful in a role, right?

No one doesn’t wanna perform well, uh, but sometimes there’s inertia. And so I think if you treat people with kindness and you, you make that effort to help them succeed, even if at the end of the day they don’t, I think people kind of realize that, you know, things worked out for the best, and I think that’s important.

But I would say on the whole, you know, over 95% of the time, I think that people accepted my leadership style or my, the senior most leadership did, in part because my organization was successful. And I think that there was that realization that, look, you know, I, I, in fact, my, our c e O would say this sometimes, you know, Mike, you have your way of doing it.

It’s not the way other people do what their, their duties is manage, but you have good results. And so that’s okay. And look, frankly, I think it, it says a lot about a C E O and, and people at that level. Uh, and I try to do the same with my own organization, which is recognizing people have different leadership styles and, you know, as opposed to I’m the leader.

And you’re all going to manage in my way. I think another key part of leadership is recognizing and respecting different people, manage in different ways and lead in different ways. And as long as they’re creating the right culture, you know, as long as they’re treating people with respect and uh, and, and making ethical decisions and, and achieving results.

I think as a, as a senior leader, um, you, you do have to allow people to manage in style that’s right for them.

So

Naji Gehchan: Mike, uh, as you are, were working in j and j. You obviously took the company also during the last 11 years to a multi-billion, uh, successful company and serving so many, uh, patients and, and consumers in healthcare across the globe. Uh, you also went, uh, through developing a Covid vaccine and literally j and j single dose, uh, COVID vaccine.

Help humanity get out of, um, of the pandemic. So, uh, uh, can you share with us this particular journey you’re learning, leading those teams? In unprecedented times, delivering with speed, integrity, high quality. Also diversity. You worked a lot on how to make sure that you, you are representing the, the populations, um, when obviously all humanity.

What was watching you and you did it, you delivered. I’d love to, to hear the story behind the scenes and your

Michael Ullmann: learning. Sure. Um, well, look, I, I think there is a lot of pride there. Um, you know, the fact is while in the US the, the change hit Covid vaccine is really not being used. Uh, it still is in many of the developing parts of the world still being used, um, frequently in Africa, in other areas.

Uh, because it is one dose requires regular refrigeration. Uh, so there is a lot of pride in the fact that we continue to have an impact now to go back to really three years ago exactly to 2020, um, look, it was obviously a very difficult time for everyone personally as well as professionally. I, I think that to some extent the, um, one benefit that we had at Johnson and Johnson was we had a purpose.

And whether you were working on the vaccine, but really everyone in the organization, even if you were, you know, working on the Tylenol brand, you were working on other healthcare products because the need for oncology products and immunology products and surgery, it didn’t go away because we were in a pandemic, right?

The, uh, the healthcare needs of the world were still there. Um, and so I think that when people went home in March of 2020 to work, It really helped, um, our people because they actually felt that, um, rather than being bystanders to this pandemic, that we were working to make a difference. And, and I think that as a leader, that was very important.

And the message that certainly that, you know, I really took from there was when people feel they have a purpose in what they’re doing. They will work, um, very hard. They will work very passionately and they will really care about what they’re doing. So I think that then the next balance that I would say I, I found as a leader during the pandemic was, um, the importance of optimism, right?

That I would do meetings almost every day and I would do webcasts and zoom meetings. And I think people want their leaders to be hopeful to be optimistic. We’re going to get through this, you know, this is the worst, you know, health crisis of our lifetime. But, you know, with people like us working on this, you know, there is a, a way out.

Um, now you have to be realistic. It’s not like next week the pandemic will be over, but I think that element of optimism is very important in leadership. With that, however, I would say also came a, um, the importance of being openness, right? I would, uh, in, in all of my meetings and webcast, you know, I would talk about my own vulnerability, right?

Here’s, you know, I’m worried about, my mom is 90 years old, you know, uh, we worry about her. Um, you know, Thanksgiving, uh, first time I haven’t been with my children, you know, since they were born and, and things of that nature where, That balance. And I think, you know, Naji, that’s something as a leader that, um, you kind of have to work on developing.

But what is that right balance between being optimistic and being hopeful, but also sharing some of the, the challenges that you’re facing? And I, I think based on the feedback that I got, that that. That was effective. It was genuine. You know, there’s a lot of talk nowadays about authentic leadership. Um, I don’t know if I really was thinking that way, but I think that’s the way it came across.

And then I guess a fourth thing I would say about, um, leading during the pandemic was, um, the importance of being able to trust and delegate to people because it wasn’t like, you know, Pre pandemic where you might gather everybody in a room and, and make a decision that people, especially the people in my organization working on the vaccine, um, they had to make real time decisions.

And if you were working in Asia, like we didn’t wanna wait 12 hours every day for someone, you know, here in the US to make a decision. And so it was very much about, you know, Come to me. I mean, the, the, the message that I had was, you know, if you need more resources, if you need more money, you know, if you need more time or people let me know.

But other than that, you know, or if I can be of any help, you know, because you want my advice. But other than that, like you decide, you know, you’re qualified, you decide, you go ahead and make those decisions. And I think that following the pandemic, um, I, I, I won’t say that. Uh, I think we have made improvements in that.

I think we have continued that. Maybe not as much as we did during the pandemic, but I do think I see a bit more willingness to delegate and let people lower in the organization, make, make decisions. I love those

Naji Gehchan: and, and I hope we, as you said, we keep some of the, if we can say positives of the pandemic, but really in the leadership style, in the managerial Yeah.

Way of how things were handled and the, the pace, right. Uh, that we developed innovation for patients. Um, You, you mentioned it, and this is why I always like to take this pandemic, cuz as you said, I think it really brings this idea of we’re all here for one purpose and overworking. And I remember you shared an anecdote about relaxing afternoon where Yeah.

Where you were sent back to work. Like even from family standpoint. Uh, if you wanna share this for sure. Um, But the, I I’m, I’m interested also to hear, you know, without the pandemic, so after it and before it, how did you make sure that your people constantly think of this purpose and have patience in mind when taking the decisions?

This is where sometimes I feel it’s hard, right? Like each of us running through operations, leading organizations, Our, our team sometimes can be in the small details that we forget this big picture of patients. So I’d love to hear from you how you managed to keep this after the rush of adrenaline in a pandemic or even before

Michael Ullmann: that.

Yeah. You know, Naji, I would, I would say that that to me, um, was always, I think one of the biggest challenges of my role. And in particular because, you know, I, I’m not a scientist. I’m not doing, uh, research and the people in my organization, you know, were not developing vaccine. You know, they were not actually working in the labs, developing the vaccines, creating new cancer drugs.

Uh, there are people in functional roles working at a death and so, You know, how do you inspire people and how do you make sure that people understand that they have a purpose? And so I think what helped is even before the pandemic, way before the pandemic, um, that was something that I always worked at.

And frequently it would be when we would do, um, webcast, uh, getting patients, people who had benefited from our products, getting doctors, people who use our products, but. Making sure that the people who were sitting in the company headquarters of the desk had line of sight to what, you know, what is actually happening in the real world, and what do people look like?

What do patients look like? What did doctors look like? Hear them talking about our products. That was always very important. And then frankly, it really was, I think. What I always tried to do when I talked to different groups, and let’s suppose I was talking to a, a group of, you know, paralegals, which is just making them understand is that, you know, any pharmaceutical company, you know, it, it’s like being on a sports team, right?

Not every position is a glory position, but you need people in every role. And so, uh, a pharmaceutical company, Needs, uh, a, uh, an intellectual property group and they need, uh, patent lawyers and they need patent paralegals. And, you know, while it may not look like your job is a glory job or that you’re actually impacting patients, the, the people that are developing the next line of cancer drugs, they could not do that without you at your desk doing your job.

And so, That was always part of my talk track. Uh, and I think very important because again, when people realize that their role is critical, they will, they will go through walls. They will work as hard as they can. And that to me is a leader, is really what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to inspire people to be their best.

So

Naji Gehchan: Mike, now I’ll give you a word and I want the first thing that comes to your mind.

Michael Ullmann: Okay, so the first word is leadership. Uh, responsibility. Uh, do you want me to expand or just give you one word? No, you can expand. Yeah. I mean, responsibility, leadership is, um, whenever I would talk to, you know, people earlier in their career, like, what are your aspirations?

It’s like, well, I want to be a leader. I wanna manage people. And it’s like, well, why? You know, and it’s, uh, you know, I think that to me, um, the, the larger your organization is, the bigger leadership role, the greater responsibility that you have is, and so to me, the one word that leadership is, is it’s about responsibility to other people.

What about E S G? E s G is a critical, okay. One word, uh, future. Um, and I would say that, um, you know, we had spent quite a bit of time over the last four or five years on E S G, but the reality is social responsibility has been, um, part of the ethos of Johnson Johnson going back over a hundred years. Yeah.

We have, uh, like pictures. Of j and j products being delivered, uh, in the San Francisco earthquake of, I think it was 1908, uh, but part of the culture and the, the history of the company is being at disasters, being in times of crisis and, and being in healthcare, being able to play a role. So yeah, where we are today in E S G is somewhat of a, it’s a progression.

But I think that to me it is you’re constantly working on and improving not only your company, but the world around us for the future and for future generations.

Health equity. Health equity is, I think, uh, boy, one of the critical, critical unmet needs. Right now in our society and, and health equity, certainly just in this country where, you know, we have embarrassingly high infant and maternal mortality rates. I mean, among the, uh, the highest rates in the Western world, uh, where we have, you know, people that don’t get appropriate, healthcare is frankly inexcusable.

And I think even on a global level. Where, you know, the, the unmet healthcare needs around the world and the variations and life expectancies in a world like Earth is, uh, is very hard to justify. And so, look, I know from my perspective, um, you know, you, you can talk about large issues like this and it’s almost like boiling the oath, right?

Which is. Health equity, how, how are we going to self health equity? Um, what I tried to do in my organization was to, uh, you know, come up with projects, right? Like four or five projects. They’re not gonna solve health equity in the world or in the United States, but, you know, can we help? One project we did was in public housing and asthma, and that, the, that the fact, a large number of children, Living in public housing have asthma because of poor environmental conditions.

So we had a group of people in our organization work on public housing in Washington DC. So again, it’s, um, I think as a leader, when you talk about big issues like this, um, it, it’s helpful to say, okay, what can we do on a bit of a micro level? And again, you’d love to be able to solve the issues of health equity around our country, around the world, but let’s, let’s try to at least have an impact

Naji Gehchan: that’s, that’s super powerful and really thinking about local impact that can happen and make it, and make it happen.

The last one is spread love in organizations.

Michael Ullmann: Well, I think that, uh, look, the way that you spread love and organization, it starts with kindness as we’ve talked about, right? It, it talks about as a leader, um, what’s the culture you’re creating? And that to me, um, as a leader, probably the most important role that you have. And in particular, you know, in a large organization.

Is, you know, you can’t impact. I mean, to some extent, as a member of our executive committee, I was leading an organization of 140,000 people, you know, 2000 directly, but, uh, company of 140,000. So you can’t touch, you can’t touch that many people individually. You can’t touch 2000 people individually. What you can do as a leader is create a culture, create a culture.

Where you can, um, really demand kindness. I was going, I wouldn’t say just encourage, but ensure there’s kindness. Uh, ensure there’s ethical leadership, that people are making value-driven decisions, treating people in an ethical way, uh, looking out for patients and consumers in a, uh, values-based manner.

And so I think that by creating that culture, That’s how you spread love in an organization.

Naji Gehchan: Any final words of, uh, wisdom Mike for healthcare leaders around

Michael Ullmann: the world? Yeah, look, I think that it being in healthcare is really a privilege because we do have the opportunity and the responsibility, um, to impact healthcare, um, and impact the lives of people and.

You know, I think that it is so gratifying on those occasions when, you know, I, I meet people, I talk to people and they will say, oh, uh, Johnson or Johnson Johnson, like, uh, yeah, my mom was on your cancer drug. Or, you know, my dad takes this product and, and it’s made a difference in his life. And I think you realize that that ability to actually.

Help people live happier, uh, longer and healthier lives. Uh, I can’t think of a better field to be in, a better industry to be in. Um, it’s why I gravitated to healthcare. It’s why I stayed there for almost 35 years. And in fact, now in a nonprofit way, I continue to remain involved, uh, working with the, uh, the global healthcare ngo Americas.

Um, where I’m on their board of directors, but so I continue to be in healthcare. I always will be in healthcare because again, it is, uh, a privilege and, uh, it just, it really makes you feel that, that you can’t spread love around the world and really help make a difference in people’s lives.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much, uh, Mike, it’s definitely why we wake up every morning in this industry, uh, trying to make life better for patients.

Yeah. Thank you so much for being with me today. It’s such an honor and, uh, great chat. Thank you.

Michael Ullmann: Well, thank you Naji, and, uh, I really, I love what you’re doing. I love the whole concept around spread love because I think it really is such a critical message. And Naji, you’re doing a great job. So thank you for what you do.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 Dorota McKay a creative problem solver with a passion for finance and personal development. Dorota is currently a Vice President Controller and Chief Accounting Officer for Vapotherm, Inc., a publicly traded medtech company that develops innovative, comfortable, non-invasive technologies for respiratory support of patients with chronic or acute breathing disorders. Dorota holds active CPA, CMA and CFE designations. Prior to joining Vapotherm she was a Controller for Decibel Therapeutics and a Finance Director at Oxford Immunotec. She is also corporate trainer and coach certified in Canfield Methodology and a Certified Culture Transformation Tools Practitioner with the Barrett Values Centre.

Dorota – It’s a pleasure to see you again and have you with me today!

Dorota McKay: Thanks, Naji. It’s great to be here.

Naji Gehchan: Let’s start first with, uh, your personal story. What brought you to accounting specifically in healthcare, and what’s the story behind the great leader you became today?

Dorota McKay: Yeah, so, so it wasn’t a straight path for me. Um, and I think an important part of my identity is, uh, being an immigrant.

I was born in communist Poland under martial law, and I, uh, lived in communist Poland until. At the age of seven, that’s when communist fell. And um, I still remember that moment actually. It was, um, extremely important for us. And I, I remember the, the shortages of those years. Um, and I remember our neighbors actually hiding in our apartment for, from the militia.

So, um, was definitely a, a very different reality from, uh, where I live today. Um, and my parents were both teachers, uh, when I was growing up in Poland. My dad w is a linguistics professor and my mom was a high school teacher. And so when I grew up, I decided to follow in their footsteps and also become a teacher myself.

And I studied English studies and I got, um, masters in American literature and American Studies. My masters was on virtual and real in, uh, American science fiction. So very different from what I do now. And, um, after graduating from, um, a university in, in Poland, I decided to, uh, pursue doctoral studies. So I became an academic teacher and, um, I was also an exchange student in the summer.

That’s how I ended up meeting my husband, um, in Maine of all places. And, um, after a couple years, we, we decided to get married and I, uh, moved to join him in the, in the United States. And, um, I continued to work on my doctoral thesis, uh, remotely. But in, in 2009 during the great recession, my husband lost his, uh, job and he worked for a nonprofit on the, on the coast of Maine that provided us with, um, our only source of income and our source of housing.

So when he lost the job, Uh, we basically ended up with nothing. Um, and, um, that was a pretty difficult time in my life. So I was, uh, new to the country. I didn’t have a, a community, I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t have a job. I was working on a, on a doctoral thesis, uh, remotely. And, um, I remember having, having, um, a very difficult time just adjusting.

One day I ended up walking down the beach and, uh, just crying. I f I was feeling very miserable and, uh, and very, very down. And I, um, as I was walking down the beach, I tripped and I fell, um, head first or face first into the sand. And as I was, um, as I was, um, you know, on the ground, I saw this little piece of, um, uh, seaglass.

On the ground, and it was just beautiful and, and, and, um, very blue and, and this like, colorful thing in this very, very depressing reality. And it allowed me to just take a pause and think to myself that in every hard situation there was something positive. And I got up and I decided to really change things.

Um, so the, the transformation just took place in that very moment. And so I decided I was going to quit my doctoral studies do something different to better adjust to, to the reality and help my family become, uh, financially independent and, and successful. So what I end ended up doing is I, I quit the doctoral program and I went and got a job as a waitress at a local Olive Garden restaurant and I enrolled in a, a community college.

Um, and from there I did really well. Ended up going to, uh, state, uh, university. Uh, getting a degree in, in business ad administration, becoming a cpa. Uh, I got a job with a local, um, public accounting firm. And then from there I moved to, uh, the big four, uh, firm in Boston. And things just started happening for me.

And so while I was at, at, at, uh, Ernston Young, I worked with a, um, a large pharma company, and that’s kind of where I, uh, really, uh, started. Appreciating the, the pharma, biotech and medical industries and, and felt that I wanted to pursue a career, um, in those industries. Um, so after, after spending about four, uh, four and a half years in, in public accounting, I wanted to really, um, go and work for a business just to go really deep and, um, and help grow a business as opposed to just being a generalist.

And so, um, my first, my first job in medical device was, um, was actually, um, with Oxford Immuno Tech. And I stayed there for several years and, and grew my career there. Um, and it was a company that made, uh, tuberculosis tests, um, and really, um, very patient-centric, um, that, that, um, Allowed me to grow my career from, you know, a manager position to, uh, to a director.

Um, and what I would say is coming to the us, you know, starting in a, a completely different country and then basically start starting from nothing in the US and getting to where I am today, which is, uh, you know, a vice president of a publicly traded company. Um, For me, it’s proof that the American dream still exists and, and you can still be successful, um, if you really devote yourself to it and, and work hard.

And if you’re also fortunate enough to have the mentors and, and help that I had. And I think for me as a leader, it’s important to give back to others what I’ve received on this, uh, journey.

Naji Gehchan: Wow. Thank you so much, uh, Dota for sharing, uh, with us, uh, this, this journey. Uh, it’s powerful and inspiring, uh, for sure.

Uh, and you shared specific moments, uh, a as we call them, sometimes crucifix or other peak experiences. Uh, I’d love you to, to kind of share with us a little bit more, uh, on how you take these into leadership. You shared about, uh, the early moments in your life. When, uh, in, in Poland and then coming to the US and then the crisis in the US and several others, uh, I, I’d love to know how you took those, and you obviously reacted to them in a way that brought you, uh, where you are today and being this incredible leader.

Uh, can you share a little bit more this, those, those moments and what are the key leadership learnings that you’re taking with them, from them, with you?

Dorota McKay: Yeah, I think definitely, uh, starting, starting my career in the service industry in the US was, uh, was a really great experience. I think it learned me, it, it, I think it, I learned the respect for, for hard work and also the, the humility.

So I think the advice I would give to others is just be humble. Be open to opportunities. When things come your way, just say yes. And I think. My success has mostly been because I said yes to new assignments, new opportunities, um, and I, I definitely worked very hard, uh, throughout the years to, um, to advance within the various companies that I worked for.

But, um, I think just saying yes to new opportunities and often being uncomfortable was what got me to where I am today. So you’ve led

Naji Gehchan: teams and organizations in a very specific domain of the company. Uh, you’ve done auditing, uh, finance, financial controller, and accounting. These are usually functions, uh, that are challenging, uh, internally.

Uh, I, I don’t know. You might disagree with me, but I, I actually would love, uh, we’d love to hear from you how you approach those roles. Internally because they are crucial roles, but again, sometimes might be perceived as challenging or controlling, et cetera. I’d, I’d love to

Dorota McKay: get your thoughts about it.

Yeah, it’s definitely a challenging working in an administrative and support function in healthcare because you, you don’t really deal directly with patients all the time and you don’t necessarily deal with customers all the time, but you have internal customers and I think there’s also a sense of mission, um, especially for a company that might not yet be profitable.

Where you know that the, the financial results, the financial reporting that we deliver to our shareholders is basically what helps the company survives is we get additional funding to help us continue going for, for a couple more years until we show profitability. So I think, uh, my team has definitely had a sense of mission and, uh, working at Vapotherm specifically.

A company that makes devices that, um, you know, help address respiratory distress. It’s been an extremely interesting experience, um, and challenging during the pandemic because we, we literally had to do everything we could to make as many devices as we could and deliver them to customers because it was a life or death situation.

So I think in that way, it made it easier for my team to have that sense of mission and just work through, you know, long hours. Um, Constant deadlines. It’s something that we definitely deal with. And, um, I struggle sometimes with, uh, staffing as well because as you know, uh, usually in support functions there’s, there are budget concerns.

So I think it’s very important as a leader for you to fight for your team to make sure that you have adequate resourcing and that people are, you know, not working 70 hour weeks, uh, or 80 hour weeks. Um, cuz it’s just really, as much as we’re mission driven, it can have a negative impact on, on people’s wellbeing and, and health.

Um, and so I always, um, I always make it a. Make it a point to, um, to tell my team to, you know, recharge after periods, which are usually very busy for us, which is quarter ends, year ends, audits, things like that.

Naji Gehchan: Can I double click on, uh, the mission? As you shared, it’s important. Sometimes you feel you’re a little bit more, uh, like far from the patients and the impact you have, even though it’s a great example of what you’ve done and the impact.

You obviously help actual patients, uh, through the pandemic. How do you make sure that this stays alive daily with your teams these

Dorota McKay: days? Yeah, it’s, it’s, um, definitely been very different for us. After the, the pandemic ended, um, we we’re focusing now on a different subset of patients. Uh, so we’re focusing more on C O P D patients and our more traditional, um, kind of patient groups.

Um, for example, um, you know, patients who, um, Come down with the flu or RSV or, or similar respiratory conditions. Um, but I think what has been, what has united us together is after the pandemic ended, our company has been through several restructurings. So, you know, during the pandemic we worked extremely hard to make sure that the patients were served and, um, Our sales were really booming.

Then when the pandemic ended, the market has really been saturated with, uh, um, respiratory support equipment. And so we’ve seen a, a really pretty steep decline in our sales in, uh, 2022. And the company went through, um, you know, downsizing, uh, twice last year. And for my team, uh, it’s been especially challenging because we get to see all those changes, uh, firsthand.

And, um, I think just working together as a team and focusing on the, on the wellbeing of the company and helping the company as a company survive that, that difficult time has been what kept us together. Uh, cuz we. You know, have a lot of influence on, we’re watching budgets, we’re making sure that, uh, um, the financial resources are being used, uh, responsibly.

And, um, and we’re also responsible for, um, we’re helping with fundraising and we’re helping with reporting that, you know, uh, helps us, uh, continue as, as a business and as we’re retooling our business and making a lot of changes in it, we’re also expanding globally. We’re hoping that we can come out on the other side stronger.

So there’s, there’s still a lot of, there’s still a lot of patients who need our help and something that really drove it home for me is I visited one of our clinics, um, at one point that was serving C O P D patients. And I heard firsthand the patient who was doing the rounds around the clinic and how difficult it was for him to breathe.

No, I think. After hearing that, I feel like our mission is as much alive as it was during the pandemic. Not being able to breathe is one of the, the worst feelings in the world. And um, you know, as long as those patients are out there, we’re gonna be there to serve them. Oh,

Naji Gehchan: I, I love it. And really the centricity around patients right there is the urgency that the pandemic brought.

But at the end of the day, what we do, what you do, what what I do every day is really trying to improve life on patient at a time, at a time, make their life better. Uh, tell us, you touched it a little bit, your, your. Growing your team, you’re dealing with uncertainties, uh, with several different transformations.

Also business transformations growing, uh, you know, uh, funding, et cetera. Uh, and you have a passion for cultural transformation. Can you share with us a little bit more your learning as a practitioner, uh, and how to make sure that those transformations are

Dorota McKay: successful? Yeah. So, uh, so, uh, for me, uh, the culture transformation is really about understanding your teams and your own values and translating them into the ways that they, they map onto your organization’s values.

And so the first step you need to do is, you know, identify the values that you have, and there are various tools available for that. Uh, that I’ve worked through with, with my team. And then you also map the, the company’s values, which usually have the mission, the values that’s, that’s stated, and then compare it to what the company’s actually doing to see if it’s living those values.

And then if there, hopefully there’s an overlap bef between the two. And if people understand that overlap, it’s easier for them to bring themselves to work because. You know, their own values are aligned. So for example, if somebody’s value is, uh, family and wellbeing, you want to make sure that the organization is also providing them with time to, you know, devote to their family and wellbeing.

And if there’s no overlap, then you’re probably, your people are in the wrong organization, or the organization needs a lot of work. And usually what we do, um, as part, as part of the cultural transformation, it’s just showing whether there’s overlap and if there’s no overlap, what can we do to bridge that?

Naji Gehchan: I want now your first reaction that comes to mind when I tell you a word. So the first word is leadership.

Dorota McKay: Okay.

I think, uh, service is what I would say. Women

Naji Gehchan: in tech.

Oh.

Um, can be more than a word.

Dorota McKay: Can be more than a word. Yeah. It, it brings, it brings to mind. A little bit of oppression, but then also examples of some really amazing, uh, tech leaders. So I think maybe, uh, future, maybe hope. And

Naji Gehchan: if I go down this one, is there a specific advice you would tell yourself when you started your career in MedTech that you would now take and give it to other, uh, brilliant

Dorota McKay: women?

Yes. I would say, um, I would say, um, don’t be afraid to take risks and, um, always ask. Ask for opportunities because as women especially, I think we tend to, uh, just expect that people will notice us. And, and you know, if we’re doing a really good job, somebody will come to us and say, here, how would you like to be promoted?

Or, how would you like to try this new opportunity? And I think we’re sometimes afraid to ask for things. And if you go to your leader, mentor and say, Hey, I’d like more exposure to new opportunities. How about this role? Do you think I could be good in this role? Uh, they will often say yes. And the worst that can really happen is they say, no.

And you’re exactly in the same place where you started. So I think always ask, ask, ask, because you might actually get what you want.

What about Six Sigma? So, uh, six Sigma. I’ve worked in, uh, in a, in a couple manufacturing, uh, type, uh, companies. So every medical device company has, has a manufacturing function and I was fortunate to work for companies that, um, were very keen on process improvement, uh, lean and Six Sigma. And, uh, the companies that I worked for actually put.

All of their employees through the process, uh, through training when they started with the company. And, um, really Im implemented this, um, need to, to improve processes and understand processes, uh, from day one. And that was really helpful for me as a leader in the finance function. You know, you might think that this is very different.

It’s not a manufacturing process, but it’s a process. You know, there are inputs, there are, there are steps in the process. There are bottlenecks and there are outputs. And so I’ve fled, uh, several kaizen, um, process improvement events with my finance teams at various organizations. And we always find that that.

Brings the teams together. And it also makes their jobs more fulfilling because they can see exactly how their, um, job and what they do interacts with other parts of the process. And, um, we often discover that. People sometimes don’t talk to each other and they just don’t know that something that they’re doing really hurts somebody else.

And so when you bring the team together, you actually take that time to put them in the room for a couple days and, and walk through the process. And then maybe have, you know, couple fun events, um, like, like a dinner or, or some sort of a, a team bonding game that really, really, um, helps improve the day-to-day.

And, uh, we see a lot of, uh, benefit from that. Love it. You’re

Naji Gehchan: combining cross-functional work with fun, with a purpose. I, I love this. The last word is spread love and organizations

Dorota McKay: spread. I, I really love this, um, the, the premise of this entire podcast, and I, I think we should all be doing that. Um, so I think. The way, the way I like to spread love in organizations is by helping other people learn and grow. I think, um, it really makes me happy when I can coach somebody and, and provide them with opportunities for advancement.

Sometimes it’s hard because that also means that they might leave your team or they might even leave your organization. But I think as a leader, you, you have to be, um, Happy with that. You have to really be happy, uh, with the fact that somebody might develop so much that they will no longer, you know, be satisfied with, uh, with either your department or, or your organization.

Um, and I think, um, I think also as a leader, you know, it is a bit of a cliche where, where, uh, people say leaders take all the blame and give away all the credit. I think it’s very, very, Needed, um, because you need to provide psychological safety to your team. So people need to be, um, confident enough to be able to make mistakes and they need to know that if they falter or or if they make a mistake, um, there will be somebody there standing up for them.

And so, I would say that whenever something an issue happens in, in our team, we try to focus on the solution and not point out, you know, who did it. We might, we might, um, investigate why something happened, but it’s not a people problem. It’s usually a process problem. And so that makes it a lot easier for us to, uh, to proceed and it’s, it helps people come to you as a leader and bring up problems instead of try trying to hide them.

Well, thanks

Naji Gehchan: for sharing this. And it’s, uh, you’re bringing powerful concepts around psychological safety, about recognition, teamwork, and obviously, uh, another point for your incredible leadership, uh, grounded in resilience as you started, uh, this podcast sharing about, uh, your story. Any final words of wisdom that you would like to share with, uh, healthcare leaders around the world?

Dorota McKay: Yes. So my words of wisdom for healthcare leaders probably especially important for finance leaders, but I think for, for everyone is if you are ever in doubt, always choose integrity and follow your moral compass. I think your, your reputation is more important than any kind of short-term gain. You take it with you everywhere.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much Tta for, uh, for your, those final words and for being with me today, uh, and all this incredible chat. Thank you.

Dorota McKay: Thank you so much. My pleasure.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 today, having the pleasure to be joined by Melanie Ivarsson Chief Development Officer at Moderna. In this role Melanie leads the Clinical Development Operations department and delivers with her team all clinical programs within the Moderna portfolio. Prior to joining Moderna, she was Head of Global Clinical Operations at Takeda and spent 9 years at Pfizer in Clinical Development. Melanie also held roles within the early clinical development group at Eli Lilly. After receiving her PhD from the University of Bristol, she completed postdoctoral research at Lund University and New York University. Melanie also holds an Executive MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Melanie – It is such an honor to have you with me today!

Melanie Ivarsson: Thank you so much. It’s great to chat to you. The honors is mine.

Naji Gehchan: I would love to hear first your personal story what brought you to pharma in the first place to joining a month before the pandemic was declared one of the companies that helped humanity be out of the pandemic with vaccines – what is in between the lines of your inspiring journey?

Melanie Ivarsson: Absolutely. So, um, as you nicely summarized at the beginning there, um, I started off in academia as a neuroscientist and did a couple of postdocs. Um, and I’ve really enjoyed. So how that helped my brain be trained to think, to deeply analyze problems.

That was an amazing training for me. I’m a systems neurophysiologist by training, so I’m thinking big connections, big picture. And that actually is really the arc of my entire career. It’s the building, the big picture, how things connect together is what really fascinates me. Um, so during my academic career, I realized sitting in the lab at two o’clock in the morning that I actually didn’t have any interesting questions to ask about that were narrowed, that I wanted to ask the big questions.

Um, and that made me start to think that maybe, um, research grants and very focused academic work. In that discipline wasn’t the right place for me to be. And so I started my career at Lilly, um, in their clinical pharmacology department and spent, you know, 20 years moving through very large pharma company where you get to talk about very big problems.

Big organizations that are connected together in lots of sort of different ways. And you get to ask those big questions. Um, and I went all the way through Lilly, then Pfizer for nearly a decade, um, Shire, which then got acquired by Takeda. And in the last couple of years of my time in the sort of Takeda um, era, I was also doing my executive m MBA at M I T in parallel.

And that really gave me a different way of looking at some of these big picture problems, how to build organizations, organizational processes, strategy, how to put teams together. And it was at that time that I thought to myself, I could go. You know, do approach this differently, these learnings. Let’s don’t go and do something different.

And Moderna reached out to me looking for a, a new chief development officer. It was a newly created position at the time. Clinical development had 30 people in it. And they hadn’t even done a large scale clinical trial, and they wanted somebody who could come and build their organization slowly over a couple of years, a nice slow build.

And I thought, well, I’m never gonna get an opportunity like this. Go and build it the way I want to. Slowly. Over time, thoughtfully, carefully build out an organization that can deliver its first sort of phase three study in 18 months from now. Wow. As history shows, that isn’t quite what happened. I turned up on the 3rd of February as we all were about to get sent home as the pandemic was being declared and the weak Moderna decided that they were gonna go and develop a Covid 19 vaccine.

And so my nice gentle build, um, Uh, literally had to take place in days and weeks rather than the years that I thought. Um, and, and you know, the rest is history. We went off and developed our Covid 19 vaccine, um, in partnership, um, with, with the government and, and many others, uh, that enabled that. And, and it was an incredible experience, not what I was expect.

Um, but just an incredible experience and I learned so much about leadership and building teams. Um, and now where we are today, um, we, we are at again, a yet another inflection point. So, uh, an amazing leadership journey.

Naji Gehchan: Well, thank you so much for your, for sharing it and, and I, I’m gonna go and dig into this a little bit more from a leadership standpoint and, and your learning.

So you obviously led team as you said, like you thought you had 18 months to build and scale up and growth. But actually you did it in a couple of months in a crisis mode where not only in internal cr like the word was o obviously anxiously waiting for you to bring us hope, and you did. So what is the key leadership learning you took with you from this experience?

Melanie Ivarsson: So it is all about the people and how they make decisions together in a, in that moment of, In that moment, um, I think what I learned is that I absolutely did not need to be the smartest person in the room, but I needed to enable everyone else to talk to each other and make the right decisions and move things forward and put things in place, have the right conversation, and that’s a time when a leader has to actually lead from behind or, or take a step back and look at the full extent of the.

Of the problem ahead of them. So I’d never developed a vaccine before. That was not my expertise. It wasn’t a case of me turning up in Moderna and going, this is the way to do this. There were many better people who had all the right expertise. Um, we asked ’em to come on the journey with us and through our own team.

We have an incredible, very small, nimble. That this was their reason for being, this was the public health crisis that they hoped they would never have to live through. But for all people who develop vaccines, this is what they’re actually trained to do. That one day, a rapid vaccine response is going to be needed by the world.

Um, and this incredible team of people came together to do this, and my job was to not get in their way, get out of their way, enable them as much as. Get them what they needed. Um, open doors for them, wipe away their tears, be there for them late at night, early in the morning, um, and help get them up this incredible hill that we had to climb up together.

Um, and that took many different forms from going into really quite controversial and difficult conversations in the early days, trying to work out who was gonna do what and how. Thinking through, can we do this to, um, sending, you know, when everybody had to work through the weekend, um, sending everybody, you know, a, a nice food package so that they could just put things in the oven and not have to worry.

You know, it takes many, many forms to keep a team going through all those different times. Um, and my job was to just enable and not be in the way.

Naji Gehchan: I love it. Like I said it several times, enabling others and not getting in the way to do it. And, and as you said, there was this, I love how you framed it, right?

Like there was this big purpose that is so important and everyone was waiting for it. Uh, would you have a story or an example because you shared some of those, and I think in those moments of crisis, um, you, you always have ups and downs. Like there is this big purpose, but there is also some time.

Negative news that you get and you have to help the team go through it and keep on going. Like you have stories and examples on how you lead teams, specifically in those highs and valleys that they go through emotionally also in development. Any example on how you’ve done this for them to keep having the faith to get to the

Melanie Ivarsson: result?

Yeah, and I, well, I think it’s. One of the greatest challenges for all of us during the pandemic was leading when you couldn’t be in the room together. So there is a, particularly in a, in a small biotech, there’s a lot to be said for just getting in a room. The leadership at Moderna historically had been very in person, and so they walked the corridors.

I turned up at the beginning of February and we all got sent home within six weeks. So most of us had never met each. I had to hire a team almost entirely remotely. We all did. Um, and that team, um, needed to find a way to get to know each other virtually. You build a lot of trust through that sort of personal connection.

Being in a room with somebody shaking their hand, um, taking a few moments to sort of, Have the kind of conversation that helps you build stronger, uh, professional connections that is incredibly difficult over a Zoom call. And, um, that’s also very difficult when time is of the essence. Not only did we have to do that within ourselves, but we also were under operation whoop speed.

We were working with government partners, we were working with a network of investigators, um, that we’d never worked with. Everybody had heard the call to action. Everybody was there incredibly well intended, wanting to do the right thing. And you have this bringing together of private public partnership.

The government, the n I h uh, academic trialists, this little tiny biotech that had never done this before, that had. Technology that was full of hope. And then we also had to partner with other companies that were in the race as well. We all had to get out of each other’s way. We, the collaboration there was extraordinary.

So, you know, everybody was so well intended, but there were days when you just had to remember that because, You know, everybody was used to doing things a certain way, and so you bring all those people together, you can’t get them in a room. Um, you’ve just got to kind of cut through it. We threw time at it.

Time was our most important resource, and so we made enormous amounts of time for each other. Our friends and families really suffered during this period, but it was the most extraordinary experience of all our careers. So if you needed to be on the phone at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning, To have the right conversation with someone.

You did that. And so making enormous amounts of time for each other and also carving out times in the day where you’d say between six and eight, go be with your families. Have dinner. Take some time away. Let’s all get back in here at eight o’clock tonight. We don’t. We have to rest as well. And so finding that balance of being there for everybody, asking them to do this exceptional.

And then trying to preserve some sense of sort of wellness and rest, um, and making sure that people were actually able to sort of physically and mentally cope, um, was really, really essential. And as a leader, you’re going through it yourself, and you can only see people from the shoulders up, right? You can’t see.

How, how they’re really sitting. You, you’ve got to become this incredible good reader of those little small signals. Um, and I, after a while, I started to, uh, feel that I could read people, um, through their emotions, through the Hollywood, you know, the Hollywood squares on the, the screen in front of me, and became very good at detecting that face of that individual that.

They’re not where they need to be right now, and a quick follow up call. Everything okay? How are you feeling? What’s going on? Um, so emotional intelligence had to become a finely honed skill in a completely different medium. Um, and so I would say for leaders, um, nothing prepares to you for that kind of experience.

Um, but we all became very good at, at doing it. I.

Naji Gehchan: Well, thanks for sharing this. And uh, Mel, during, as you were, as you were talking, obviously what you’ve done, what other, uh, pharma companies stood up for the execution and did was something we all hoped for, right? Like you talked about this multi-stakeholder partnership and speed to get to a solution, uh, in on percent time.

And obviously this is what we all hope for. Doing all the time. Right. But obviously you cannot operate as we operated during Covid and like relentless hours, et cetera. But at the same time, there’s other people who still are waiting for better treatments. Mm-hmm. In all different diseases. So I’m wondering what are the key learning that you’re taking with you that we can implement at healthcare leaders?

In a more normalcy word, but we’re obviously speed and impatient for patients Yeah. Is still so important.

Melanie Ivarsson: It’s, it’s such a good question and, and one that we are, we’re all grappling with as an industry now. So what made. Covid such an exceptional time for our industry is that the entire ecosystem became focused on one thing.

So companies themselves didn’t compete with each other. We knew that we had to make enough doses between us or successful vaccines for the world, so we became. United in that mission, regulators, um, ethics committees, clinical trial sites, suppliers, CROs, vendors, labs, everybody. Um, were prepared to prioritize the vaccine and therapeutics work above all else.

And I think that is the reality is how much of that machine it. To deliver on really what ended up being just a few successful vaccines, um, and a few successful therapeutics at the end of the day. Um, so when you then try to, um, you know, bring that out into something like cancer or Alzheimer’s, what it would take to deliver the same focus, that becomes incredibly challenging.

Do what I hope it also does though. Recognizes, helps companies recognize what parts of their process they don’t actually need. Um, it’s very easy to believe that you need to go through number of steps to get somewhere, and it takes six weeks when at a time like that you can do it in a day if you can get the right people.

At the table, the virtual table in our case, to do it. And so I think, um, Moderna had never created any of these processes, so we were creating them as we went along for this development plan program. And now that we’re scaling up to doing so much more work, um, we are trying to recognize what got us there and what we can.

Where do we need to create more process, and where do we just always want to be this nimble? So strategic decision making is an example of somewhere where you really want to be very crisp and nimble. You don’t want to have teams having to wait weeks and months to go to governance and have to go and do all those pre-meetings and navigate all of the, you know, the different opinions before they go into the room.

You’ve got to decide what to your culture going to be of decision making. How are decisions going to be made? Are you then prepared to operationalize and execute on those decisions with great speed? And, and how quickly can you do that? Um, and sort of hold onto the core of that incredibly nimble pandemic, strategic and execution capability.

That we developed. And I think, um, I remember talking to one of my peers who was working for a much larger company, one of the big giants that was, um, in the vaccine development space with us. And I was. Talking about the need to get something approved and having to sort of hunt down two people to do it.

And she said, well, I have to get it through about 600. Right? And that’s the difference. I know she was being, you know, a little sarcastic probably in her comment, but I think she was trying to say the point that. Um, you know, everybody has, wants to have an an opinion and then that’s when you start to realize how important it is, how you structure your organization and the processes you put put into it.

Um, and when you start to feel that things are really slowing down because you need to go and gain yet another opinion on something, then you probably need to kind of sit back and go, okay, if we got this right, because we didn’t need all of that last time on, what’s changed?

Naji Gehchan: I love it. It’s reminding me about organization, lab, and, you know mm-hmm.

All the design work we need to go through. It’s, it’s, yep, totally. Uh, if I, if I double click last question here on, now that your adrenaline cutoff is going down, how are you making sure that your team and how can we make sure as leaders, uh, that our team constantly think of the purpose and why we do what we do after the adrenaline rush?

Melanie Ivarsson: Yeah. Again, another fabulous question. Um, you know, one of the things that we grapple with here all the time is how do you pull that culture through an organization and how? Um, how do you do that when you scaled so quickly? So I’ve, in the last three years have done a 20 x build. So I started with 30 people.

My organization’s now about 600 and it will grow again, maybe nearly double, um, again within the next year. That’s an extraordinary build because actually, I used, I’ve gone from knowing everybody’s name and knowing them reasonably well to not, and, and that’s difficult for any leader. And so you need to disseminate out, um, the culture and what’s important and be visible and contactable.

Um, we had a lot of people in the pandemic wherever they were. And so we’re not, it’s, we can’t even just bring everybody back into the office. I think the whole industry has grappled with virtual ways of working. So we’ve created, hopefully an environment that is much better for people’s own wellness, lifestyle, work life balance, because they can work where they’re at and they can fit in other important things in their lives much more easily.

Um, but at the same time, Cultural core of an organization. And that purpose of, of what’s important is becomes very dispersed in that. So we created, at Moderna, we created something called the Moderna mindset, and they, these are 12 mindsets that cover many of our, the ways we, we think about things. Um, it’s.

We pursue options in parallel, we pivot fearlessly in the face of new data. We’ve, we obsess over learning. These are just examples of some of them and there are way of speaking to each other in our own language, um, to make sure that we’re asking each other the right questions. We’re challenging each other the right way.

They’re, they’re sort of path, our cultural core and that really helps us. Move programs, move our work forward together because we, we have a very strong culture that everyone’s bought into. Um, and it allows us, I think, to have the right conversations. We’re always learning. Um, and as we evolve and grow, we’ll probably think differently about this and evolve and, and grow.

But for now, Those mindsets, that understanding of how you shop together every day and bring people together has been an incredibly strong, um, and effective, uh, mechanism for us, I think. So I would

Naji Gehchan: love to give you now a word and I looking for a reaction to it. So the first one is

Melanie Ivarsson: leader.

And you want me to tell you what I think when I hear that word? Yeah. Yeah. I think leadership is, is for everyone, right? Leadership, everybody in an organization, um, has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership. But I’m gonna react with a word that may surprise you, and that is, I strongly believe that leadership can be kind and there is nothing wrong with leadership taking the full picture into account.

Um, and so I’m gonna react with the word kind.

Naji Gehchan: I love it. It’s, it’s all my podcast co with the mission of spreading love and leadership. So I totally by kind the second word is impact.

Melanie Ivarsson: You want me to react with one word or a sentence?

Naji Gehchan: We can do a sentence.

Melanie Ivarsson: So I think, um, an Im, again, impact is, um, can mean very, very different things to different people.

Um, we. Had the opportunity to have enormous impact on the world. Not everybody gets an opportunity to be part of something like that, and it will define them. I, I see that in my team and my colleagues and the people around me that, that, that, that experienced be defines them to a certain extent now and something they’re rightly incredibly proud of.

Um, but impact can be something. Different. And for me now, it’s about enabling others to be the best that they can be. So the impact I would love, um, to leave is my impact on others to amplify what we’ve done and what we believe in. Um, and to, to go on to amazing things. Um, and that’s part of the legacy. So if by working with.

Um, my impact on them is something around the way we’ve done things together and made decisions and the, the joy they’ve taken from that and they carry that forward. Um, I would be very happy.

Naji Gehchan: What about health equity?

Melanie Ivarsson: Oh, that’s an incredibly important topic and one that we all became so aware of during the pandemic.

Not only. Disproportionate impact of covid itself on people from different backgrounds, but then access. Um, and so health equity, um, is something that we built into the way we have done things. So, you know, people are possibly aware that we actually made the, uh, very difficult decision halfway through our clinical trial to actually slow down enrollment.

The white population because we actually had a largely white, um, Number of clinical trialists, and so we actually stopped enrolling white people into our clinical trial in order to give access to people from different communities the information to make an informed decision about whether to enroll in the trial.

We thought that was incredibly important thing to do and it allowed us. To go out and build relationships with the different communities. Um, and we built, um, a diversity and inclusion board with a number of health equity experts, and that was probably one of the most single, most important and informative things for me personally that we did.

This was something that, like the rest of the industry I knew was important, but had done very little about person. And now it has become incredibly important to us. And so we now move forward with all our development programs With this in mind, um, And that is very, very important that you not only health equity starts with the way you study a new vaccine or treatment.

Um, we, 20 years ago, we talked about the fact that we didn’t have women in clinical trials, right? That everything was just studied in healthy, young, mostly white men. We’ve, and that then meant that all prescribing information and access actually was only fit for purpose for one small part of the popul.

Um, in order to make sure that there is access for all and equity for all, we’ve actually got to start by asking the right questions for all of mankind, and that starts with the basic clinical research and this topic I’m very passionate about getting right.

Naji Gehchan: The last word is Fred Love and organizations.

Did you say gridlock? Spread love. Can organizations,

Melanie Ivarsson: oh, spread love in organizations. Yeah. I, I, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think, um, people give their hearts and souls to their place of work. Um, they, people in healthcare are just the most incredibly dedicated, passionate, and committed, uh, people in the industry.

Unbelievably altruistic in the way they will put, um, The, the, the project they’re working on, um, above all elses for them. So I think we should thank them by making sure that we know that we want them to look after themselves. Um, wellness is incredibly important. Um, and we strive always to make sure that people take care of themselves first.

And it’s something I always say to people. I do a new high coffee connect once a month for all the new starters into the organization, and I go, Put yourself first, work out what it is that you love and who you love, and put them at the top of your list every day. Um, because nobody should be sacrificing what they love.

Um, for this place, one of the little anecdotes I would, um, share with you is we offered some clinical trialists, um, a a a token of, of appreciation. And they could, um, either exchange it for, um, something for themselves or they could exchange it for a charitable donation. It was extraordinary, the incredibly high number of people who’d not only gone into a clinical trial and dedicate, dedicated their time and effort to the advancement of science, but then when, um, offered.

The opportunity to sort of take a token of appreciation, chose to then even give that to charity. Um, I thought that was, uh, remarkably, uh, interesting about true altruism, um, and how it sort of works in in healthcare.

Naji Gehchan: Any final word of wisdom, Mel, for healthcare leaders around the world?

Melanie Ivarsson: I think, um, We are so blessed to have the opportunity to work in the sector of the industry that we do. Um, hang on to your, um, your true self through all of this. Um, I’m not ashamed to talk about the fact that as a leader, I believe kindness is incredibly important.

That’s who I am. Don’t try and be somebody else. Don’t try and emulate a leader. That you see somewhere else and think, I need to be like them. Be yourself. Whatever is important to you, show up every day. Be principled. Bring yourself to work. Care about the people in your organization. Enable them the best you can get out of their way.

That’s something I spend a lot of time trying to do, um, and, and enjoy it. It’s a real privilege. It’s a real privilege. And one day. You’ll be sitting on a plane next to somebody who’s had their life changed because of something you worked on or developed. Um, in our case with the vaccine, it happens a lot.

Um, it’s incredibly rewarding. Um, but yeah, just look after yourself and look after each other. Wow.

Naji Gehchan: What, what an amazing way to sum up this discussion. Thank you so much, Mel, for being with me today and this incredible chat.

Melanie Ivarsson: Thank you. That was wonderful to meet you. Thank you so much.

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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 Sema Sgaier CEO and Co-Founder of Surgo Health, a healthcare technology company developing a revolutionary socio-behavioral analytics platform and generating novel, real-world data designed to inform and improve health equity and outcomes by enabling a greater understanding of the complex factors that influence how individuals engage in their healthcare. Sema is a serial entrepreneur with close to 20 years of experience in healthcare. She co-founded and led Surgo Foundation and Surgo Ventures, where she led the development of analytic products that solve health problems with greater precision. She was Initiative Lead at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she brought innovations in data, consumer insights, and product introduction into large-scale health programs globally. She has over 60 publications and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and prestigious media outlets. She is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Washington. She completed her fellowship in Genomics at Harvard University, Ph.D. in Neuroscience from New York University, and M.A. in Neuroscience from Brown University. Sema is a member of the Board of Directors of the United States of Care. She was selected as a rising talent by the Women’s Forum for Economy and Society.

Sema – It is such an honor and pleasure to have you with me today!

Sema Sgaier: Such a pleasure to be here, Naji. Thank you for inviting me.

Naji Gehchan: Can you share first with us your personal story from genomics to development and now being the CEO and Co-founder of Sergo Health?

What’s in between the lines of your inspiring journey?

Sema Sgaier: Sure. Um, my personal story actually starts, uh, during my childhood. So I was born in Libya to a Libyan father and a Turkish mom. And I was born in a, in a, in a country where healthcare was actually really challenging to get, and I, I had a, a condition that required, um, advanced care.

And so my family, um, had to take me abroad. Uh, and I spent a good chunk of my childhood in hospitals and a good chunk of my adult life having to get. Um, but that really got me inspired in, in health and it got me really inspired and really, um, bringing health to a lot of, uh, people. I was also, um, you know, uh, very interested in science and so that led me to a career, or I started my career, I should say, in genomics and, and neuroscience.

But very quickly, um, missed the, um, the needs or, or really missed working with people and communities. I’d grown traveling all over the world and, and, and really missed that. So the journey started with moving to India. Uh, and starting on the ground, uh, developing surveys in communities, in villages to really understand their needs when it came to help, uh, you know, going door to door, asking families, asking mothers, asking husbands, asking children.

Uh, and that was really the beginning of understanding the power of data, uh, and the power of the human voice in being able to. Not just governments in terms of what the gaps are, but really inform all sorts of activities in communities, um, by companies, et cetera. Um, so, you know, long story short, I won’t, I won’t, uh, describe every step, but I ended up, uh, then eventually joining the Bill and Mill and the Gates Foundation.

Um, in India and lived there, um, for seven years working on, uh, an H I V prevention program. Again, working with communities. Um, and then from there, moved on to work on h I V prevention in Southern and Eastern Africa. The key part and the crux of, of really what I do, um, and I’ll, I can dive deeper into this.

The key part of my, what I learned and all of that work is that we really need to understand what people need on the ground and what. What is behind, um, their actions, their decisions when it comes to how they interact with healthcare, uh, and you know, how they consume healthcare. And, and for me, the really big question that we need to answer is the why question behind people’s behavior.

Um, because we often don’t approach healthcare, uh, you know, by un trying to understand the why. We start with what’s happening in the ecosystem. Um, and so. The three organizations that I co-founded and, and I’ll, you know, I’ll go of course into more details. Sergo Foundation, Sergo Ventures, Sergo Health.

Really the core mission of all three is bringing a big data approach to answer that question for every single individual so that we can inform, um, healthcare in a way that’s personalized to everyone.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much for, uh, for sharing part of your journey, and this is really a great segue. My question, actually, the first one was the mission of Sergo, uh, the different entities and, and really if you can tell us a little bit more your vision about data and how you’re gonna be able to answer those, uh, health issues.

Sema Sgaier: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, let’s start with just thinking about each of ourselves, right? You know, uh, and, and the people that we know. So we know that what people believe in, uh, what they, who they trust and, and, and how they trust, um, you know, the various barriers they face in the ecosystem, whether it’s the time, uh, whether it’s the transport, um, really.

Um, you know, how, how they interact with the healthcare system. And so, but when we look at the health ecosystem today, there’s a lot of data. There’s no lack of data. We’re actually swimming in billions of data. But a lot of it is really telling us, uh, as I mentioned, what is happening so we can map, for example, in the US the complete journey.

You know, which providers that they would, did people see, what were their diagnoses? What medications did they TA take? So that really tells. You know, that pathway, but if you were to ask me, okay, so, so why did this person living in this community not see a provider in the first place? I would be hard pressed to find that data, you know, readily available.

And so really the mission of of, of Sergo, you know, when we started Sergo Foundation, it was, it was really an operating foundation meant to incubate an idea and it was really meant to incubate this idea of how can we bring a big data approach. To really understanding people. So not beyond doing focus groups and having conversations, but how do we generate this data at scale and, and more importantly, and, you know, how do we analyze the idea?

So what are the innovations in the analytics space, and then how do we make it actionable for, for various stakeholders. Um, so Server Foundation, um, again, was really meant to. Demonstrate, incubate this idea. And we successfully did that in various programs actually in India. Um, and then let that led to the spinoff of Servo Ventures and from their um, servo health, which happy to go into the why behind those spinoffs.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, I love it. Before we go into the why of the spinoffs, can we double click cuz you’re, you’re talking really about something that means a lot to me. Insights, right? Like you’re looking into, uh, patients insights, customer insights, to understand the why. Uh, can you share with us some specific example of how do you see, how do you gather those insights at scale?

And then mm-hmm. How do you run those analytics for us to be able, uh, to solve problems, as you say, with precision? I like this word. So how, how, how do you do this practic?

Sema Sgaier: Yeah, there, there are many ways to, to gather data, but I think fundamentally where you have to start is what is it that you wanna collect?

Uh, and I think, um, one of the things we learned very, very quickly is that, um, stepping back and, and really being clear what are the variables that need to be collected to answer the why question is really an important part of the equation. And so, We’ve built, um, over the years, um, a team of, a multidisciplinary team of actually, um, scientists and I would say behavioral scientists who come from various disciplines, right?

So when people approach human behavior, they approach it from a, from various disciplines, right? You have the behavioral economist who are really looking at just biases and heuristics. Uh, you have social scientists who really emphasize the, the social, uh, ecosystem in which people live. But in reality, all of these things really matter.

And so the approach we take in, um, in designing these data collection efforts in, in stepping back and saying, you know, beliefs matter, biases matter, heuristics matter, social norms matter. Um, and then in the context, the laws and policies matter. The systems matter, the access. Influencers, media, all of these matter.

And so we really need to be comprehensive in what we collect and, and so that we can get a complete picture. And so the first, the first step is really making sure that you have a good sense of what you wanna collect. The second step is then, of course, figuring out how, how you, how you collect it. And we have various methodologies.

But one of the things that we do, um, to get scale is a, is actually design a large scale survey. So we collect data in, you know, in the thousands, tens of thousands and, and sometimes hundreds of thousands depending on what platform we use, whether it’s, um, whether we, um, you know, use some of the social media platforms in, in way to get respondents or whether we use panels.

So that gives us the first scale. And then from there we apply our machine learning, um, analytics or predictive models, approaches to be able to then predict that for, you know, all the people that were not part of that initial data collection effort. So there are various steps in this journey. Thanks for sharing

Naji Gehchan: those.

Uh, you, you know, as I was looking, you’ve done incredible work, obviously on several different disease states. H I V you shared about, I saw your work where on Covid 19 and, and the CDCC is taking it. You know, I kept thinking data, precision science, really in an era where I’m like, many times I’m feeling misinformation.

Uh, like wrong theories, hate populism is somehow ruling, sometimes policy actions, but even like people’s actions towards their health that is actually harming them. So since you’re collecting those, Data, are you seeing this trend? Is this something real that you’re seeing? Is this something that is coming out?

I, I would really love your thoughts about precision in data and then actually what we’re seeing that is more fictional, I would say.

Sema Sgaier: Yeah. Um, yeah, unfortunately we are, and, and during the Covid pa pandemic, we, we did see, and in fact we were one of the, the, the first and few who tried to really measure some of this misinformation.

Particularly we measured conspiracy theories, uh, that people were believing in. And, and so we really looked into, What are those theories and actually went in and measured those and, and when I say measured, really tried to understand what percentage of people, for example, believe that, you know, government is using covid to control people, you know, are implanting chips.

Like there’s all sorts of conspiracy theories. And so we wanted to see not only how often, but really who specifically is believing these conspiracy theories. I think when it comes to misinformation and, and, and you talked about data, you know, people at the end of the day believe in. Uh, it’s not about the data, it’s the story and the power of the story.

And, and even as scientists ourselves, you know, what’s really on us is when we want to communicate our data, the, you know, quote unquote, Real true data, we really have to put effort in, in using stories to tell, to tell that so that people can really align to that emotionally. We’re emotional beings. We’ve learned to, you know, listen and hear stories, you know, from thousands of years ago, and that’s what resonates.

And so I think. Storytelling is, is really an important part of, of this equation. And Naji, I don’t know whether that’s the answer you’re looking for, but, but I think that’s really important as scientists and data scientists who sometimes can seem very boring and just crunching numbers.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, no. Well, actually that was my question and I think you answered it.

The, the next one was really from, because you look from a customer, uh, lens, uh, on, on those data. So my question was, is data enough to convince? But I think you, you said it beautifully, it’s really about the story and how to shape those data in a language that is emotional enough for, for patients, for customers to change behavior.

Uh, I’d love if you have some specific example where actually. Because you talked about the actionability of what you do. So I’m, I’m intrigued and interested to, uh, to see how you turn those insights into actions to improve at the end patient’s health.

Sema Sgaier: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll g I’ll give you, uh, I have two, but I’ll, I’ll start with one and then, uh, happy to move on to the site.

And so the first one actually goes way back when I was working in India, uh, on h I V prevention. And there we were working, uh, with high-risk groups. And these were, um, sex workers, injecting drug users and, and men who had sex with men. And actually what was really interesting about this program was that community members were the, um, were people that were leading and delivering this program to their peers.

Uh, and so here you had, um, sex workers who had to go out to the community to be able to provide the services, and so it was very important for them. To know where these members were. And it was very important to them to know, for example, where the nearest clinic healthcare clinic was, where the nearest police station was, where the nearest safe house was, et cetera.

And so while the, um, you know, the, the scientists were collecting this data to put in the hands of this community. The question was how do we communicate this data in a way that they, you know, that, that they could use? And what they came up with was, was so interesting was, um, drawings, right? They, they took this data and rather than having these like sheets of like line items of here’s, you know, here’s where this person is and their address, they actually did these beautiful hand drawn, um, kind of, um, diagrams where they actually mapped locations and, you know, there were, there were like these children’s maps, but they showed where everything was.

And so this was. For me, it was an incredible example of taking hard data, right? Transforming it in, in, in, in a visual story and then putting it in hands of, um, actually people who deliver health so that their day-to-day healthcare delivery was, was, you know, effective. And, and, and it was, you know, we, we had a lot of evidence that this worked.

Naji Gehchan: I love this. Can you share the other, other

example?

Sema Sgaier: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The, the other example goes back to Covid. Uh, and again, you know, we all lived Covid and we also know that it was, it was, um, bombardment of information for all of us. Uh, and one of the, one of the approaches that we took during Covid is, uh, actually.

Data visualization and, and, and really, again, bringing art to telling that data story. So, uh, we, we had this amazing, we did these amazing stories with the New York Times. And so one of the stories that we did was a, was called Find Your Line in Your, find Your Place in the Vaccine Line. Uh, it was, I think one, it was the top red story of the New York Times that, that year or something like that.

But it, but it, you know, I don’t know if you remember in the early days, we were also concerned, when are we gonna get our vaccine shot? How long were we gonna wait? Now it’s a very different world. And so the, and we had that data. So we, we actually, um, were able to, um, show which group was gonna get their vaccine when across the United States.

And they did this beautiful visual where you could go in and put a few of your details, like your age, where you lived, and then they would draw this, uh, visual line and they would tell, You know, you’re gonna get your vaccine in 300 days or so. I’m, I’m making this up. But it was such an impactful way of actually communicating, um, you know, this notion of there’s, uh, an order at which these vaccines are going to be delivered.

You know, there’s certain priority populations that need to get it first. Um, and it, it was, it, it was, you know, so well read and people resonated with that. People understood it. They understood that whole vaccine delivery schedule, right, that we had in the early days through, through data and story.

Naji Gehchan: I love it.

What, what you’re talking about is just, it resonates so much, right? Like from, from really data, it’s all about data, right? But from data generation to understanding the why, not only the what and and what’s going on, but also on how you tell and how you share the story to make an impact at the end on, on people’s lives.

I love this. I wanna pivot though to, uh, to a question more on leadership. So you’ve had several experiences, uh, obviously in in non-profit, uh, with, uh, the Gates Foundation. You’re a serial entrepreneur. You’ve also founded a profit for-profit, uh, company recently. Uh, I’d love to, uh, to get what are your key learnings from a leadership standpoint, uh, that you are taking with you today from all those experiences and running, uh, your.

Uh, endeavor as a c e O.

Sema Sgaier: Mm-hmm. Um, Being a leader is, is, is an, uh, you’re always learning how to be a leader. I, I, I think it’s every day you’re, you’re, you’re going, you know, two steps forward, five steps backwards. I, it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s a never ending, I would say, um, learning process. Um, and, and I, you know, I certainly have a long ways to go in, in, in that, in that place.

Um, so what are some of my learnings, you know, Several, but one I would say, um, is that leadership, um, in many ways actually, um, has to be adapted to the culture and context and environment that you’re in. Um, you know, I I, I worked in many different countries and many different types of organizations, but one of the.

I’ll give you an example. So when I first started my, my job in India, that was kind of my first job outside of academia. And I was, you know, leading, um, you know, these research groups on the ground. You know, really my first job managing teams, or I should say big teams. And I would, you know, show up into these trainings and, uh, you know, day one people show up.

Day two people showed up. And then day two before they started, like falling, you know, Two people were missing three people. And then one day I was just so down and I went home and, you know, I had a roommate, she was, uh, from India, and I said, what is going on? People are not showing up. And um, she said, you know, you have to adapt to the culture.

You know, you have to, you have to lead in a way that resonates to them. And so that led me really to introspect and, and to really adapt. And so, and, and that was really true across right From there, then I moved to, um, you know, the, the India Office of the Gates Foundation, which was a small team of 15 people that was led by, um, the ex country head of McKinsey, India that everyone else was, was ex McKinsey.

And that was a totally different environment. My point is that, uh, when you are leading teams, The culture can be so different depending on what country, which country you are, and what type of organization you are. And so in many ways, you need to adapt your leadership skills, um, you know, to that. Really, that was one of my, my key learnings.

Um, the second one I think is, is, is really being authentic, right? I, I think in the initial days I was thinking, well, how do I become like that person or that leader or, you know, people that I admired and, and. Quickly learned that that’s, that’s a bad idea. Um, you are who you are. You, you cannot change who you are, but you can adapt.

Um, but you really need to be au authentic as you know. And you need, you need to be, um, honest and, and, you know, and, um, you know, be who you are in, in that environment. Um, so those are, for me, the, the key learnings. I have many, but those, I would say stand top for me.

Naji Gehchan: Thanks, Sarah, for this. Uh, I would give you now one word and I’d love your reaction to.

So the first, the first one is leadership

challenging. The second one is women in science. Inspirational. Can you share a little bit more? I know you’re, you’re passionate about diversity and, and women in leadership and

Sema Sgaier: science. Um, I, I’m, I’m very inspired by, um, well, first of all, I’m a scientist and I think, uh, women in science, uh, are, are really phenomenal and, and we need way more of them.

Uh, and I find it really in. Inspiring, uh, to actually coach and develop and, and have women in science grow. And, and I’ve actually dedicated a lot of, of, of my, I should say, leadership, uh, you know, skills to that as well. So, so I, I, I find it inspiring seeing more women in, in science.

Naji Gehchan: Can, can you tell me the number one advice you give to, uh, women and uh, and young girls that are in science or want to go there?

Sema Sgaier: Uh, be bold. Uh, you know, go for

Naji Gehchan: it.

The third word is health equity.

Sema Sgaier: A must the, I give you a two word answer.

Naji Gehchan: Give me more. I, I wanna hear more about how you look at equity, because I know it’s, uh, one of the core values of, uh, of also sergo.

Sema Sgaier: Yeah, I think we look at equity as something on top, right? Like something else. Something in addition.

Equity to me is everything. It’s core, right? Equity. To me, equity is everyone. Equity means that, you know, every single person needs to be part of that. And, and that’s really equity, right? It’s, it’s not about like, There’s, there’s the core and then there’s another group. You know, it, it really, if you have equitable healthcare, essentially what that means is that you’re making sure that the barriers to, um, you know, living a healthy, happy life is for all.

Uh, you remove the barriers for all, and those barriers are exist for all. And they’re very different for all right? For you and I, it may be a time issue, but it really is a must and, and that’s something we should all strive for, uh,

Naji Gehchan: for. The last one is spread love in organizations.

Sema Sgaier: Oh, amazing. It actually reminds me, uh, if you don’t mind, Naji, since you brought, uh, you brought this, um, I, it reminds me of love languages, and this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, you know, talking about leadership. One of the things about leadership, I think that’s really important is, um, how to motivate, you know, knowing how to motivate different people, uh, and understanding that different people are motivated by, by different reasons.

And it was really interesting. One of, one of my, um, one of my colleagues, one, you know, during his first week shared his love language with me just out of the blue and said, you know, my love language is words of affirmation and I. Okay. You know, I was like, that’s weird, you know, sharing your love language.

Uh, that was first week, but then, In retrospect, it, it is actually we need the, our professional love languages, right? We, we need to understand what is it that really motivates us, or what is it that really, um, gets us, you know, to, to be loving. Uh, and I, and I, and I think that’s really important, right?

Whether, whether it’s words of affirmation, whether. You know, it is the outcome or you know, whether it’s quality time or, you know, you can, you can translate it to work. But, sorry, the, when you said that spread love, I, it reminded me of the love languages and, and I think it’s a, it’s an important piece of the puzzle.

Naji Gehchan: It certainly is, and it’s a great reminder for all of us. Any final word of wisdom sum up for healthcare leaders around

Sema Sgaier: the. Um, I think this is, to me, it is the most important, uh, one of our most important topics of our time. And I, I would say that for everyone, be bold, uh, step up and, and really go after big ideas.

I think we are at a time where we have the opportunity to actually take a lot of big ideas forward and, and make this something for, you know, health for all. It’s, it’s really important. So, really go for it.

Naji Gehchan: This is such, such an amazing charger leaving us all with. Thank you so much, uh, SVA for being with me today.

Sema Sgaier: Thank you. It was an honor. I appreciate it.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to Spread Love 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 episode, joined today by Amy Kimball an Executive & Leadership Coach and former biomedical research CEO. Prior to launching her coaching business in 2022, Amy had been coaching professionals on the side for 15 years, while she held leadership roles in academic biomedical research. During her tenure as CEO of a midsized biomedical research institute, she led a turnaround to rebuild a culture of excellence, high performance, and people-centered service. Prior to that, she held research administrative leadership roles at large, Boston-based academic medical centers. Amy holds an Executive MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and has completed Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching program. She coaches CEOs and other leadership positions that feel “lonely at the top;” mentors and advises start-ups; and serves in peer coaching roles within the helping professions community.

Amy – so great to have you with me today!

Naji Gehchan: Can you share with us first your personal story and what’s in between the lines of your journey and the inspiring healthcare leaders you are today?

Amy Kimball: Yeah, so it is a bit of a story. I think there’s sort of two parallel paths to follow in this. So, um, the first path would be my pathway into biomedical research, and that actually goes back to, um, a thread that’s tied from growing up, which is growing up with undiagnosed A D H D and really struggling in school, um, having a very inconsistent experience.

And I poured my energy into persistence, grit, hard physical work. Um, instead of really finding a way to navigate the academic system that worked for me and I was actually not planning, I didn’t think that I was college material, so I wasn’t planning on pursuing a higher ed path. Um, but I was fortunate. I had a guidance counselor who invested deeply in me and basically made it his personal mission to get me into college.

And he did. So I went to, um, undergrad, just loving science and medicine and math, and wanted to pursue a pre-med track. But found out early on in my first semester during cell biology that I just couldn’t process the learning, um, in a way that made any sense to me. And I flunked out of that intro class.

Um, had a conversation with my advisor and basically it was made very clear to me, this is a four year track. You have to keep up and because you’ve already flunked the first class, there’s no way you can pursue this major. So I switched over to an English major. I struggled to stay in school. Honestly, I had a very low GPA initially until halfway through.

Yeah, again, just through sheer persistence and grit, keeping myself going halfway through my college experience, I got this sort of earth shattering, um, awareness of what A D H D really was about and got my diagnosis and treatment. Um, so I graduated with an English major. Which I really felt opened every door for me.

It was not restrictive. It was something where I could take communication skills and good research practices and really defending a thesis towards anything. And when I came out of college with, by the way, a, a pretty high GPA in the end, because of this turnaround that happened with my, my diagnosis and treatment, I was just eager to get in the workplace and get doing.

So I chose, I moved back home to the Boston area and I chose to look for just any general admin job in a hospital setting so I could be close to healthcare because I was still very passionate about it. And I found myself in a biomedical research setting within a, a teaching hospital. Um, I noticed early on that the labs were engaging in sort of, um, a very science centric only approach, and then there was this administrative sort of divide happening, the rules, the compliance, the, the black and white thinking, and I was in administration.

And I was really unsatisfied with that divide. I just didn’t understand why it had to be that way. So I took a, a deep interest in the science to try to understand what that world was like. And in the process of, of talking with folks and going to scientific talks, I learned a lot about the science that I wasn’t able to learn in that college setting.

And I started to really understand what was going on and have a deep appreciation for the work. Um, and so what I did was I basically said, look, I’m interested in everything. Give me anything you wanna give me. I’ll take it on, I’ll figure it out and I’ll try to make your life. And of course people loved that.

They jumped all over it. Um, I was given a lot. I became sort of the resident problem solver and my goal was always, how can I make science easier and less friction and more successful? Um, so I, I kind of quickly rose through the ranks within that organization and, and other organizations in town. And basically built a career on the basis of this creative problem solving.

And after a few years I, I was able to see a shift in perspective where it was moving from no longer me, the sole doer of problem solving, but really into investing in teams of people who also were interested in this problem solving and helping to lead that and cheerlead on behalf of the organization in leadership roles.

To get things done better and to. Deliver that customer-centric service to making research thrive. Um, in 2017, I became the c e o of a mid-sized organization, biomedical research organization, and through that investment in our people and in our processes, but really through their eyes. What’s the work you are doing?

What’s working? What’s not working? What would you like to see? How can we better serve our customers? We, as a team, were able to drive a very significant turnaround of an organization that wasn’t working well and that had some divides with its own customers. To an organization that helped the science thrive and really was able to advance things forward in a productive way, and also a culture that people love to be a part of where they felt valued and individually invested in.

So that’s the, the thread of biomedical research, but ending on that piece where people felt valued and invested in, there’s also this thread of my executive coaching. Which goes back about 15 years and started because people would just start approaching me in systems initially within my system. And talk to me about potential leadership development.

Um, what they were observing was something really common in systems, which is managers and leaders were getting promoted on the basis of skills and e. And like many systems, they just hadn’t been invested in in terms of their own leadership development or management development. And they didn’t know how to let go of the doing and the skills and that deeply embedded work.

And so it was frustrating for members of teams to, to live with that and feel like they couldn’t progress. So they would come to me. And the beauty of it is, you know, I think a lot of people think they want to trash talk the situation, but it wasn’t about negative talk about managers. It was about. What do you want for yourself and how can we help you get there?

And that’s coaching. So that work continued to expand on the side. Um, people just kept, kind of kept coming my way. And that work expanded beyond my organization into other organizations and higher levels of leadership. Um, and when I had completed the turnaround as C e O, I started to think to myself, you know, I’ve achieved my career goals faster than I thought.

What’s the thing in my life that really brings me the most fulfillment that I wanna invest in now? And the answer was such an obvious, it’s this executive coaching work, it’s human and people development. And, um, I took this bold risk of quitting my executive job last year and going full-time dedicated into this private practice that I started.

And I’ve absolutely loved the work completely. Thanks so

Naji Gehchan: much, Amy, for, for sharing, uh, part of your story and it’s, uh, incredible how you’re framing both of them. Uh, I’d love to start, you know, before going into your current company that you founded on your current practice, uh, you’ve been, uh, really in several leadership roles in academic and nonprofit, biomedical research organizations as you shared, uh, I would love your thoughts about leading nonprofits and.

Learnings along the way when you compare it to executives you coach in the profit

Amy Kimball: sector. Yeah, so this topic has a lot of misunderstanding surrounding it, and I’m glad you asked about it. So one thing is that people often feel that there’s a very big difference between for-profit and nonprofit work, and that can be true, but not in all cases, especially in biomedical research.

I found. Most people on the surface wouldn’t have known we were in the nonprofit sector. The only differences were, instead of shareholder value, we were focused on stakeholder value and reinvesting our profits in our programs so that we would continue to advance them. And the other thing is just simply how we derived our funding, which was a lot of federal grants and industry contracts.

Um, but day-to-day, You know, the practices are the same. And if you, especially if you’re a mission-driven leader in any sector, it’s all about thinking about the mission and perpetuating the mission’s advancement. So when I work with, and I typically do work with in my coaching people who are very oriented, I feel no difference.

And I’ve never, no one’s ever really cited a difference from me either. And, and I would really like to, People understand that there doesn’t have to be a difference, right? It’s especially in healthcare, like we’re all servant leaders and we’re all dedicated to terrific outcomes for the people we’re caring for.

Yeah, I, I’d

Naji Gehchan: say we all should be, you know, servant leaders and I think we, we’re trying, we’re trying to get there and I’m sure with your coaching, it’s something you’re focused on. So let, let’s go to the specific example that you gave about, uh, what the time when you were the C E O. Uh, and did a huge turnaround.

Uh, you talked about helping sign Thrive and the culture you created Drew and, and you rebuild this culture of excellence, high performance, and people centered. I’d love to know how you did this, because it’s usually with turnarounds, uh, it’s tough moments, tough decisions to be made, and then creating this culture.

Of people feeling safe and thriving. You used the word servant leadership. So I, I’d like to hear from you how you did that and how you’ve put all this together for its work.

Amy Kimball: Yeah, and it wasn’t easy and there were a lot of moments that were very, very lonely at the top. Um, which by the way does inspire my coaching work because, um, it’s a way to allow leaders to not be alone.

What happened was, so I came into an organization that, um, on the surface what I knew about it was that we were relying on business walking in the door and being handed to us. And I, I just, that didn’t sit well with me. I felt like no matter the circumstances or how needed we might be, we should be earning our business and we should be doing that through relationships and through our ability to serve our clients in a useful way that adds value in their life.

When I started to uncover what, what had gone on, I found more and more that just this culture had been created that represented sort of a div again, the divide in practice administration versus science. And I, I had been there and I thought, we can break these barriers down, but we have to all be in as an administrative team.

We have to all value that and care about that and want that. And it couldn’t be all but one of us. It had to be every one of us united in that mission and in that way of viewing things. So initially I started by engaging in working with the team in just talking and listen. Asking questions, asking them about their experience.

Um, why do you work here? Why do you like working here? Why don’t you like working here? Um, what’s most fulfilling in your work? What’s least fulfilling? What’s most frustrating? And we uncovered a lot of common themes between us around some of the things that, you know, that that really worked well and didn’t.

And we started to find over time. That a lot of our frustrations were the same, which is really interesting because people don’t talk about their frustrations. And I think that these subtle divides start to emerge around like, it’s your fault. No, it’s my fault. No, you don’t understand me. I don’t understand you.

How could you prioritize that? I’m prioritizing this, and it feels like they’re in competition. But when we started to openly. What’s frustrating to you? What would you like to see improved? There was more common ground than anyone realized, and then, you know, I think people would’ve ever believed. So the first moment of magic in this turnaround was when everyone, we did an exercise where we just simply listed out the things that were Bo, that were worrying us and shared it with the.

And, and we did it on individual post-it notes. And when the same theme was brought up, we would layer it on top of the Post-It and people got to see visually, whoa, there’s a lot of layering going on on this one theme. Wow, we’re actually sharing the same worries. It’s not about you versus me, it’s about us.

And then from there we started to invest in, from a bottom up perspective, what would you like to. To solve you. And I said, as leader of the organization, I said, you are closest to the work. You know it, what would you like to do to improve this situation? And that was very empowering because it had been a, an organization of these are the rules and people were very afraid to cross those lines.

So that, that energized the team around like, oh, great, I get to do something here. I get to have a say and a stake in this. And they really designed amazing solutions that, that worked for them, those the people like in the trenches doing this. Um, that we, we had to have the discipline to do in a very incremental way so that it could be sustainable.

Um, so a big, I would say that the majority of the transformation was culture. And when the cultural stuff started to come into place, the structural stuff quickly followed.

Naji Gehchan: I love this. You talked about listening, you ask questions, obviously, uh, a lot, and you listen to the answers. And it’s really about you’re bringing this idea of cowork and practically co building and let people who are operationalizing things.

Think about it and cowork and cobalt, the culture you want to create. This is, this is really great. Um, anything you would have done differently leading such a major organization? Uh, organizational change when you think of it? Oh,

Amy Kimball: I’m sure there’s a lot of things. Um, there were, you know, I, I guess I started the story by saying it was lonely at the top, and I always felt very supported by my team and by my board.

Um, they were just wonderful, wonderful colleagues, um, who were truly lifting me up in the process of lifting ourselves collectively up. But there were probably moments where I turned a little bit too inward and a little too isolationist because I felt like the world was on my shoulders alone. Um, and where I, where I could and would invest in the team.

There were these moments where I just thought, no, I can’t drag them into this. This is mine to resolve. And I just would say that’s kind of a red flag for our, our own thinking. If we think that we own a whole problem and its whole solution alone, that’s probably a trigger to start thinking how might that not be true?

And what else could we. That’s a great watch

Naji Gehchan: out. Uh, as you coach today, executives in different industries, I assume, what’s your number one capability you urge them to nurture or to develop

Amy Kimball: introspection? So it’s, a lot of people come to coaching thinking that it’s about skills building and concrete skills when it always ends up being.

Self-development looking deeper what’s going on below the surface. And it hearkens back to the earlier point about people love to, they find relief, I think, in complaining about their surroundings. And you know, my manager’s not fair to me, they’re not investing in me. But that doesn’t get anything done.

It doesn’t change circumstances. So how can we flip that into, well, what’s going on with. What do you notice in yourself whenever you get into these common patterns that make you feel really awful afterwards, what can you notice? What are the trends and how are you handling it now, and how might that be perceived by others?

And we explore all of that, and then we talk about, all right, well, what do you want for. And I think it just opens this world of, wow, I have a choice in this. You know, there’s actually some levers I can pull and things I can do differently, even though my circumstances aren’t great. That can influence outcomes in a way that’s much more values aligned for the person and also can create a new dynamic.

Naji Gehchan: It’s, can we double click on this because obviously there’s a lot. Coaches, I’ve been, you know, as, as a leader manager, obviously it’s one of your biggest job to coach people as you’ve done for several years before getting into fully your business, now being executive coaching ca, can you share a little bit more and help people understand what it, what is it about?

Because there is so many, like the coaching industry, I feel is kind of exploding. We’re seeing so many people starting to be coaches. I’d love, Kara, what is your take about coaching and how do you approach it, uh, with executive.

Amy Kimball: So I approach it similarly to what we talked about with the team at the beginning of any engagement is about me listening and learning.

So I like to get to know someone, hear about their background, hear about their story, and some of the things that have shaped them. And I think that serves a dual role of me gaining understanding about them, but also them releasing some understanding about themselves and connecting some of those dots around.

Oh yeah, this is something that really shaped and influenced the way I show up in life all the time, including work. And from there we start to talk mostly about, so in a session, someone will bring whatever’s going on in their work right now that’s frustrating them. And through some introspective questions that I’ll ask them, we’ll start to talk about, well, you know, I can understand how frustrating this situation is.

Um, what can you notice about. And so it really goes very quickly into that introspective place, and I, I believe that that’s the role of executive coaching. There are other forms of coaching that can be very skills development oriented, and there’s a great place for that. Um, but executive coaching, people who have risen to these levels have the skills they have.

They’re incredibly smart, incredibly driven, incredibly skilled skills, is not the problem. If there is a problem, it’s about have you been able to look deeper and, and by the way, the higher up you get, the less direct feedback you get from people around you. So have you been able to look deeper and think about and process what could be going on that you can do something about rather than just the external environment?

Naji Gehchan: I would give you now a word and I’d love a reaction, uh, that comes to mind. So the first one is,

Amy Kimball: So I think leadership is about an ability to make decisions under uncertainty that are for the collective good and the collective whole. So moving beyond yourself and what benefits you to, what benefits the whole system.

What about mentorship? I think mentorship has a really important place in this too. I think mentorship is more around being a direct sponsor for someone and serving as a role model. Um, and that’s where some of the life experiences and the shared approaches and exchange of ideas really comes in more directly through mentorship.

And that’s about enabling yourself to learn from other people’s experiences. And help shape what decisions they wanna make.

Naji Gehchan: What about lonely at the top? And you said it a couple of times.

Amy Kimball: Yeah. Um, I think lonely at the top is in inevitability in some ways. Um, there is a lot of weight on the shoulders of leaders and. There isn’t a lot of direct feedback. Um, there are a lot of resources and there are a lot of support structures, but there isn’t a lot of direct feedback, and I think loneliness at the top involves not having a, a real sounding board.

And I think that’s another role for executive coaching is just having someone to air some of these challenges that you really can’t bring the whole system into in a safe, confidential space. The reality is while you’re working through the ambiguity, there are moments in time where you just can’t bring the team into every single level of that ambiguity.

Once it’s ready in some way, I believe in sharing some of the uncertainty and being very honest about the way things are, including when they’re not good. But I do think there’s some working out that needs to happen, and that’s part of that loneliness at the top.

Naji Gehchan: And does this, uh, touch all the part of like, being supported?

There’s, you know, I, I had the pleasure to talk with several, you know, coaches, thinkers, and even executives who share, uh, you know, like, I, I don’t wanna use the word mental health, right? But it’s, it’s somehow the loneliness that you feel leaders. We don’t take care of ourselves enough. Sometimes we are really thinking about others organization.

To, to a point where unfortunately sometimes it’s a little bit too late until we realize we need to take care of ourselves. Is this something in the lonely at the top that you think of or you discuss with, with executives and leaders?

Amy Kimball: Yeah, that’s such a good way to put it, naji. It’s, it’s so true. Yes. It, that has been a universal quality that I think every one of my clients has felt and expressed, and as you said, we aren’t taking care of ourselves, so in many cases, I think it takes us a long time to even realize and be willing to admit to ourselves that it’s true.

Because I think that in our drive we have so much ambition and so much passion that we just put ourself and self-care and self-compassion, not even on the back burner, but not on the burners at all. Um, and I’ve noticed this correlation between. Highly driven people who have really risen to the top and a desire to please and a somewhat of a perfectionistic tendency that we often break down and challenge and talk about.

Um, even just exploring how has the path that’s led you here changed who you are today and how is who you are today? No longer needing to be anchored to the way you were, because that’s another point that a lot of people sort of have a hard time realizing, like, I’ve crossed the threshold that I’ve driven my energy towards all this time.

Now, what do I want for myself?

Naji Gehchan: The last word is spread love in organizations.

Amy Kimball: I think it’s really great what you’re doing with this. I, I couldn’t agree more that love needs to be spread in organizations. Um, it’s what it’s all about. You know, we, especially when we’re thinking of concrete skills, we could apply our concrete skills in just about any setting.

What makes us wanna stay with an organization, hopefully is the culture and part of that culture is. And is finding joy and mission and passion in what we do. And I, I hope that we can do more, finding that love and that more leaders can really lead with more heart, so that we can all just feel human in the place that we’re giving most of our energy too.

Naji Gehchan: I couldn’t agree more. Amy, any final word of wisdom for leaders around the world?

Amy Kimball: Oh, I love that you said leaders around the world because it really is a global community. Um, global is a small community in so many ways, and we’re so interconnected. Um, I just hope that we can keep working to break down these perceptions of competition and divide and just think about what are our common goals and how can we lift ourselves?

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to spread love and organization’s 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 podcast joined today by Ashoka Madduri. Ashoka grew up in a small village in south India. After completing his undergrad and masters he obtained DAAD matching scholarship and moved to Germany. He completed his PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of Groningen, Netherlands, where he worked on anti-cancer complex natural products. He performed his post-doctoral research to understand pathways involved in multi-drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis at Harvard Medical School. Over the years he has worked in multiple biotech companies and developed expertise in business development & corporate strategy. He received his Executive MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. Currently, he is a Blavatnik Entrepreneurial Fellow at Yale Ventures providing strategy & enabling multiple early-stage life science startups. He’s a Co-founder & CEO of TargetSite Therapeutics, a Yale spin-out, and Partner at Vestra Associates where he advises biotech companies on strategy and partnerships.

Ashoka – it is so good to have you with me today!

Ashoka Madduri: Thank you, Naji . Pleasure is all mine.

Naji Gehchan: Can you share with us, uh, first your story from growing up in a small village in India to Germany, Netherlands, US, and practically always being passionate about healthcare?

What’s, what’s in between the lines of this incredible story? Sure.

Ashoka Madduri: Uh, nai, it’s a long story. I think, uh, I will start, uh, my, uh, in a story from, uh, the s I grew up in South. We were, uh, we were a farmer’s family. My mother passed away when I was around six years old, and it was a really tough time for me and my dad.

My dad left us and, uh, remarried and left the villas. Uh, my, uh, my aunt, my dad’s, uh, sister took me in, uh, special woman who changed my life forever. Uh, so we used to, we used to form together to sustain. So we grew rice, cotton, vegetables, flowers to sell raised buffalos to salt their milk. Uh, so I couldn’t go to school full-time.

Uh, I had to work in a farm and take buffalos for grazing. Uh, so fetched, uh, drinking water from over two kilometers while, while I’m growing up, and sometimes the pot would break halfway. So, uh, so now your water is gone and your pot is gone. You can start all over. That is, that is really in a nutshell, my story when I’m growing up.

So, so basically, uh, uh, with that, uh, uh, growing up story in small villages, uh, I somehow finished, uh, uh, my childhood and my thought, uh, before I leave, I left my village right to bigger city to continue my college education. My aunt, the special woman in my life, taught me hope, optimism, and patie. That is, that is really, I took that to heart and I, wherever I go in my journey, I took it with me.

And that really helped me to, uh, you know, to be where I am and also spreading to the community I’m in, family and also industries. So, uh, I, I think, uh, uh, after I left my villages, uh, we, uh, I moved into, uh, town where I finished. My undergrad, my undergraduate, and also my master’s. So, Another religious during this time, another religious, my mom’s brother took me, uh, took me to stay with him, uh, for college.

Uh, it was totally different world in the city. I studied for Bachelor’s in science. Uh, the books were in English because, uh, in, during my villages, uh, my education was in, uh, local telegu medium. So I never exposed to studying textbooks in, uh, in English. So I had no idea what was written in them. So I purchased the same books in.

Local language and studied both books. Uh, side by side. The relative supported me temporarily. Even families can’t even make ends meet during this time. Even the small amount of Lao they showed. Done miracles in my life. So imagine if we can get even more in our families, industry and communities we are living in.

So that is something, uh, I always, uh, go back and remind myself, uh, how much, uh, smaller, uh, affection and, uh, care and love had impact in my life. So that is, that is my college’s life. Uh, uh, na you know, once I finished. Undergrad and masters in chemistry. I took, uh, my first flight to Germany, uh, by obtaining a dad matching fund scholarship.

Uh, so, uh, uh, follow following that, I finished my PhD in university, uh, CRO Netherlands, where I met, uh, uh, my wife, uh uh, my wife. Life, life law because this theme of your podcast is Lao, see Changed over my life Forever. Forever from there. And it’s a, it’s a, it’s a ki kind of big memory for me. Like during that time, I’m also discovering myself, uh, there is education part and also I’m also discovering myself, um, and found this, uh, law and, uh, spreading throughout, uh, in my college education and also meeting the communities, uh, under, under the impact it has, you know, in my, on myself and also the communities.

Uh, I’m, I’m, I’m living, I’m living at the time, so, uh, Nai, I’m sorry. I, I think, uh, I’m thinking, if you don’t mind, can you pause this? Sorry.

Uh, thank you nai, uh, that is, uh, really a, you know, uh, a heavy question because I, I see this in a couple of parts. Uh, so one is a hard work education, uh, discovering. Family, friendship, work on giving back. So I will, I will, I will, uh, touch base, uh, e each, each segment one by one. So I grew up in a small village.

We were a farmer’s family. My mother passed away when I was around six years old, and it was a really tough time for me. My dad left us and remarried, left the village. My aunt, my dad, sister took me in special. Women who changed my life forever. We used to farm together to sustain us. We grew rice, cotton, vegetables, flowers to sell, raised buffalos sold their milk, so I couldn’t go to school full-time.

I had to work in farm and take buffalos for grazing, fetch drinking water from over two kilometers, and sometimes the pot would break halfway. So now water is gone and the pot is gone. So we, uh, so we can start all over. That’s, that’s, uh, my life in a nutshell. Uh, during growing up in a small village, during this all the time, my aunt taught me hope, optimism on patience.

I took this close to my heart. Uh, I always take this, uh, wherever I go, and I always try to cultivate this, uh, hope optimism patients in communities, families and industry. Wherever I worked, I’m applying to, uh, work going. So this is, uh, my childhood. Uh, now the released by me goes to City. Somehow I finished school and, uh, another lady, my mom’s brother took me to stay with, with him for college.

It was totally different world in the city. I studied for Bachelor’s in Science. The books were in English. I had no idea what was written in them. I purchased them same books in my local language and studied both side by side. Uh, the relatives, uh, supported me temporarily. Even families can’t even make Smit during this time.

Even the small amount of Lao they showed. Done miracles in my life. Imagine if you can get even more in our families, industry and communities we are living in. This is, this is really something, uh, uh, that really reflected on my life. Uh, imagine the small amount of care and love and affection changed my whole life forever.

Imagine. We can spread this throughout the communities and families industry we are living in. And, uh, what, what are the things we can change under the impact we can have in the. So, uh, uh, after, uh, uh, finishing, uh, my undergrad, uh, in the city, I obtained a spirit of, uh, excellent scholarship and, uh, completed a master’s in chemistry.

Following that, I obtained a prestigious, uh, dad matching funds fellowship, and moved to Germany. Uh, that is, was my first flight to flying to Germany. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Uh, so following that, I finished my PhD, uh, from, uh, in west of Krogan Netherlands. Uh, I found my. My wife, I fell in Lao and that changed, uh, my life, uh, uh, forever.

Uh, as this, uh, podcast theme is Lao and that is one of the important component, um, of, uh, finding Lao not only in families, but also in communities and also the education, the place you are in. Uh, so, uh, following the, finishing my PhD, uh, I crossed the pond once again, moved to hardwood medical school to finish my postdoc.

Continued my professional journey, uh, in, uh, in, in, in the, in United States here. Work in small and medium sized biotech companies. Uh, built teams. Started as a, uh, head of r and d research and development built teams from scratch. Uh, uh, continued my, uh, professional journey into business development, corporate strategy and consulting.

While I’m doing this, I also finished, uh, my, uh, m mba, uh, from m I t. Uh, currently, I’m, uh, also working as a blaa entrepreneur fellow helping faculty. To, uh, you know, helping faculty on, on strategy help, uh, strategy to take their companies to next level. Uh, so I’m also, uh, uh, running a, a small company that’s a el startup is target side therapeutics.

It’s a small team, uh, but still in, even in a small team, the. Care, nurture, uh, em, uh, empowering people is very, very important because we are building from scratch that set the tone for our next generation of, uh, employees that are going to come into the company. So I’ll stop, uh, here. Nai, you know, uh, uh, I’m, I’m happy to continue if you have any other questions on this.

Well, thank you

Naji Gehchan: so much for sharing. It’s just such an inspiring story. Um, and thanks for sharing openly, uh, all, all you’ve done and, and your leadership and beliefs, uh, that I definitely believe like you and, uh, can you share with us? You’re learning specifically on being an immigrant, like there is more and more discussions about the immigrant mindset being an immigrant and you know, entrepreneurship, et cetera.

I’d love to, to see if your story of, you know, immigration moving those countries, uh, with the hardship that you shared, has this impacted at all your entrepreneurial journey and how you lead teams?

Ashoka Madduri: Excellent question, naia. I think, uh, totally, totally right. Uh, for me, I see entrepreneurship as, Is, uh, rewarding, but first of all is a really high, highly risk taking.

So I think, uh, coming, coming back to, uh, my personal story Rise, uh, and also, uh, it, it, it’s, uh, same story for any immigrant, right? Living their, uh, country taking risk to go to different country and new environment, new people, new language, uh, until, uh, uh, really. Kind of being com being comfortable learning that stuff, uh, and producing that is required.

Uh, you know, to sustain your life is not easy. Actually. I think that same thing you I’ll see in entrepreneurship too. It’s risk taking. It’s a lot of risk involved. Uh, so I think as immigrant, uh, I think it is, becomes a. Second nature to you to take that, uh, uh, risk and, uh, really build the companies.

Actually, I think, uh, that is the reason I see, I believe that, you know, um, uh, United States become United States just because that, uh, uh, you know, uh, risk takers like immigrants, people who come here and build this, uh, country, what it is now today. So

Naji Gehchan: you’ve been working in several biotechs and you co-founded one.

You’re running it as, as the chief exec, uh, officer. Um, and you’re also mentoring along the way, several other founders, biotech founders, life science founders. What, what is your key advice when you talk to founding teams starting life science companies?

Ashoka Madduri: I think, uh, the key advice is, uh, uh, I think of course we are in a very highly technical industry, right?

Science needs to be there for sure. I think, uh, more than science, right? I think, uh, building right team, right team is really important. Uh, I think, uh, Really, you know, last, first three or four people who are, you are really hiring, nurturing them, empowering them, and they’re the ones setting tone for your company’s growth, actually.

So I believe in really building team now, along with the, having a strong science foundation. So I think that’s where, uh, I, I, I put a lot of emphasis actually, you know, and this advice I’ll give to any entrepreneurs out there. Planning to build their company from scratch. Look for that, um, right. People actually who shares the value and to nurture the people, uh, that they work with.

Uh, that, that’s going to set the tone for the, uh, for the development of the company. So, so can you share,

Naji Gehchan: uh, with us a little bit more like those leadership skills? And how do you look at this, uh, in a founding team? Is it complimentary? Is it specific leadership skills you believe foundationally they should have?

I’d love to get your thoughts because specifically on this team, as you said, like this is the biggest piece. There’s science and team. Uh, how, how do you look through this and what are the skills and capabilities you

Ashoka Madduri: look for? I think, uh, uh, plus for sure, you know, Any, any, any team you’re building initial, right.

It’s always good to have complimentary skills. I think that is a, uh, uh, that is a given, uh, you know, uh, the, besides having complimentary skills, right. You know, I think, uh, people need to understand the vision, uh, vision of the company in, uh, in two ways. I see. One is really from technical point of view where we are.

Where we want to go in few years. And second thing is, uh, what kind of team we would like to build. So that’s where I really focus emphasis on actually whenever we are hiring, uh, new employees want to make sure that they share the same vision. For the technical side as well as for non-technical side, how to really build the teams and the company as a, uh, as a, as a, uh, as a, uh, you know, in, in small institute Right.

You know, ourself to nurture each other. So, so I think, uh, the important focus is really what values they share and, uh, uh, and, uh, whether they, they, they, they share the common vision with us to really build these teams, uh, uh, to take this.

Naji Gehchan: I love it. You mentioned a couple of times and you touched it on culture that this team is trying to build.

So there is the values, shared values, a shared purpose, uh, as, as you’re building this, especially when you’re a small team. Um, and then there is what you’re trying to build as a culture. And you said the first hires are key. Can I double click on this and ask you, what are you trying to build as a culture?

For example, if you take your, your venture now as a ceo,

Ashoka Madduri: I think, uh, culture is the key, right? Know, uh, na you know, the couple of reasons for this, right? Uh, you know, you attracting talent in this competent environment is not easy. Uh, you know, there’s plenty of options for, uh, People who are just coming out of school, uh, you know, they can choose to work in different companies, uh, in our at any time.

So keeping the talent in in-house or, that is very key actually. What it starts from is culture. It’s having the really culture actually, and the, uh, trust teacher there. And you empower each other and really having a, that, uh, caring affection love. I think that is very, very important at this stage actually.

I think, uh, money component is there. Some people really get motivated by money, but I think a lot of times I’ve seen is actually having that culture, care and empowerment and love, I think, uh, keeps the people together for longer time. I think that’s, that’s what, uh, for me, culture means. Actually. I think people who share these values and believe this is.

Way to go forward. That’s, I think, for me, the culture actually. I think, uh, this starts from first few people actually that you are in, in our company that is, I believe this is like, uh, uh, what’s your cycle? If you have three people and the share same values and you keep moving actually with the, with the team you build going forward.

So,

Naji Gehchan: So this, this is, this is very powerful and obviously I’m, I’m biased. I’d love to know how you do it in a, you know, in a small team to show this. Because culture, you can, you can say, I want this, but obviously it’s the perception of what’s going day by day that is making it lived or not. So I, I’m intrigued, especially in a space where, You’re fundraising.

It’s tough. Science is tough, and it humbles us every day in drug development and discovery. You’re talking with VCs constantly, and then you’re coming with like, I have science and I have a team, and I have love and passion. I would love to know how you’re.

Ashoka Madduri: So I think, uh, there’s no magic bullet. Uh, na you know, I think everyone knows, you know, fundraising is hard, uh, and also, uh, being a c for a startup company, right?

It, it is also highly risky job. It’s not fun too. You know, there is a lot of things can go wrong. We are, we’re trying to get the data that required to raise the funding. You may not even get it actually. So I think, uh, the one way I’m keeping, uh, all the things together, uh, I’m also learning from each other, right?

Not only me actually also looking to my early employees point of view, what they see. What the issues we’re facing actually. So learn from each other actually, and also at the same time, right. Understand being a good listener, actually. So I think a lot of, uh, uh, times I see in, uh, early CEOs, right? You know, they do have some kind of idea how to run the company, but I think they’ve, uh, failed to listen to the.

The early stage employees actually who are key instrument of the company. I think listening, I think this is very, very important actually. That really solves majority of the issues, uh, that early stage companies are facing. So that’s something I cultivated. Uh, na or listen to your employees and, uh, and uh, and see what they’re saying, uh, and act according to that.

That, that going to solve really a lot of issues. So I think that’s something, uh, you know, like cultivated in our company. And also second thing is, uh, having that bigger vision, actually, yes, you do have upside downs. Maybe things won’t work out the way you want. Uh, maybe even raising capital takes more than time required data you are looking for.

It may not get actually, but I think, uh, having that bigger vision, right, that belongingness like, okay, we are here for each. We can support each other, we can get through this. Actually having that kind of mindset, you can, you know, that can sustain you for a longer time. So certainly, and

Naji Gehchan: you mentioned a key, a key point, which is belonging.

Uh, and, and I think focusing on this can solve a lot of issues on retention, feeling part of something bigger as you already shared, be before. Uh, if, if I ask you a question more, Technical practically. Now, you’ve, you’ve been helping so many biotechs and you’ve been on the edge of new technology. I’d love to get your thoughts on how’s the biotech environment in 2023, since we’re the first couple of months of the year, and what’s your take on it moving forward for this year and

Ashoka Madduri: next one?

I think a, for sure, right. You know, public markets, as you can see, uh, uh, is, is brutal right? Environment. So I think. Just because there have been plenty of money already being raised in Covid time. That disruption happened during Covid, so so. So basically a covid taught us so many things, right? You know, especially biotech, a pharma industry, even though as much as they allow, it’s still a conservative industry compared to other, other, other, uh, industries.

We have a lot of regulatory environment here. We need to follow certain rules and regulations, you know, to really keep this industry moving. So I think, uh, uh, coming, but again, I’m really optimistic actually. So I think it’s kind of, uh, I believe in, uh, Uh, blessings, uh, uh, in disguise. Disguise, sorry. Uh, disguise in blessings is, uh, sorry.

Nazi. Uh, can, can I pause here? You, if you don’t mind. Can I take that question again?

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. Do you, do you want me to say it again?

No, no, no worries. Drink

Ashoka Madduri: water. Yeah, maybe I can start the question maybe again. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Sure.

I can, I, I know the question actually, so,

Naji Gehchan: okay. So gimme just two seconds for us to be able to edit it. Yeah. So we Pause two seconds and then you can start again. Okay.

Ashoka Madduri: Yeah.

Got it. So I think, uh, that’s a great question. Uh, NAZA, you know, Covid, uh, really disrupted biotech industry a lot. Uh, I think, uh, in 2023, uh, we, we is still seen a lot of headwinds in, uh, in, especially in public markets and also some in, uh, private markets. But I’m really optimistic in, uh, uh, uh, the lessons we learned from, uh, COVID, right?

How to be flexible. You know, how to be resilience. I think that, that these are the lessons actually very, very important for biotech industry. How, how we can be more flexible and resilient in this changing environments. So I think the hybrid culture is really going to stay for a longer time. Uh, there is something, uh, you know, industry.

Never thought is is going to happen. I think this two years kind of, uh, accelerated almost like 10 years of a life, uh, lifetime in biotech industry. So, uh, I think keeping this in mind, right, hybrid environment and also technological, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, evolutions that happening, especially in gene cell therapy and also mRNA, uh, the industry is, uh, good to do, uh, more things, uh, that, that.

Kind of can’t imagine actually 10 years ago. So that I’m, I’m really optimistic for this industry and, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m going to play one of the small company c e o key role going forward actually to really bring a transformation therapies actually that much more safe and focus for patients. That’s

awesome.

Naji Gehchan: And we, we, we need so much of all the innovation we are all working on, uh, patients actually cannot and should not wait. So it’s, um, thanks for all you’re doing with, with your new adventure and also advising all the other biotechs too. I would give you now a word and I would love your reaction to it. I’m, I’m sure you were ready for this section.

Sure. So the first, the first one is leader.

Ashoka Madduri: So for me, leadership is, uh, all empowerment. You know, uh, expand on that, you know, especially after Covid, people gone through so many transformations, being hybrid, uh, I think empowering, empowering is, uh, is kind of undervalued actually. So I think I really touch base on, uh, you know, any leaders out. Empower people around you.

I think even the small change, the small, uh, you know, feedback, the positive feedback that you, that you give to the person, that changes the life, that per of the person tremendously. So I think for me, empowerment, leadership is always empowerment. What about health equity equally? Health for all. That, that is, that’s what comes to my.

But, uh, is it really truly happening, uh, in our, the country we are living in? It’s still far away. Hopefully as a leaders, we collectively find the answers to make that, uh, e equal to all happen soon. The third one is

Naji Gehchan: fireside shots.

Ashoka Madduri: It’s scary. So, uh, but I think, uh, It’s scary. Uh, but if, if you, if you take that, uh, you know, moment to think about it, what kind of impact it can have, the organically sharing your story and genuine to and truthful to who you are, I think, uh, that can change your, and also that can change a lot of people life actually.

And I have a, in a positive way, having greater impact. Uh, it, I totally support, uh, five set charts in. There is something, you know, you won’t really see that you see normally, uh, you know, in other stories. So, uh, highly, highly recommend that you know any, any entrepreneurs, leaders, how do themself and also ask other people to do this.

Actually, that’s the only way we can, we can build a strong community.

Naji Gehchan: Just as a background for our listeners, the fireside chats are actually moments where we share our stories and we, we, I, I had the opportunity to be in the same program as, as you Ashoka, this, it’s really those moments where you have the opportunity to share your story and tell it.

Um, and it’s definitely. Powerful moments as you did today, sharing your personal story with, uh, with all of us here. Uh, the last one is spread love in organizations.

Ashoka Madduri: So it’s a, it’s, it’s a continuous, right? It’s a journey. So I think, uh, as someone said, life is a journey, not as a, not a destination. I totally believe save.

Same is true for Lao. Love is a journey, not a Destin. The reason I say this is, you know, you can even in a family’s right? You know, he found Lao, he got married. That is not enough. Same thing I see in industry and communities. Once he found Lao, you need to not share, uh, Look at the, look at the issues that you are saw, uh, going to stop, solve and facing every day and find solutions.

Actually, I think, uh, I feel this law is a journey. It’s not a destination and we should keep, uh, uh, cultivating this culture throughout our career, not only industry, also in family, and also in communities we are living in. And we’re

Naji Gehchan: trying here to do our part, bringing incredible leaders like you who believe in this.

And hopefully we can keep growing this, uh, this journey together to, to lead from a place of love for us to be able to execute and deliver for the patients we serve. And all the stakeholders. Any final word of wisdom for healthcare leaders around the world?

Ashoka Madduri: Empower people. Uh, empowering people is, uh, one of the thing, uh, I take, take very close to, uh, my heart, uh, uh, na, you know, uh, and what you are doing, uh, through your podcast, uh, you know, spreading Lao, I, uh, I love the theme. And this is, this something, uh, hope many people, many leaders will spread the law and empower, empower their people and, uh, empower their people.

Uh, this is, uh, this is, uh, you know, this is the way we can build a stronger communities and we can have a greater impact, uh, on society as a whole. So. Well, thank you so

Naji Gehchan: much, uh, Ashoka for being with me today and for this incredible chat.

Ashoka Madduri: Thank you, Naji. what you’re doing is great, and, hopefully, you continue doing this and spread love across the world.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to spread love and organization’s 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 episode from our new series focused on us as leaders. I’m thrilled to be joined by an exceptional MIT professor of Management, Operations Research, Statistics and Operations Management: Georgia Perakis.

Georgia teaches courses and performs research in analytics, optimization, machine learning with applications in pricing, revenue management, supply chains, transportation, energy, and healthcare among others. I had the privilege to be her student the past semester, and not only I learned about data, models, and decisions, but I learned about leadership from her as much!

In her research, Georgia investigates the theory and practice of analytics and its role in operations problems.. She has received numerous Awards and have several prestigious publications. Currently, and Georgia serves as the codirector of the Operations Research Center and on the council for the College of Computing, and faculty director of the Executive MBA (EMBA) program at MIT Sloan. I’ll never be able to share all her incredible work and impact so I’ll stop here and listen to her!

Georgia Perakis: Hello, Naji. Thank you very much for inviting me. Nice to see you.

Naji Gehchan: Georgia, before going into the world of data and leadership, I really would love to learn more about your personal story and journey to becoming the great MIT professor you are today.

Georgia Perakis: So, uh, I was actually born in the south of Greece in the island of Crete. I came from a, what I would call a very academic family that starts from my father who, uh, arrived before the second world war started. He was in Switzerland, uh, doing his master’s degree in civil engineering and studying airplanes, unfortunately, because of the war he had to come back and he had to serve the army for five.

So the dream of he used to pursue graduate studies did not work out. Uh, but as a result, uh, both my brother and I, uh, he basically instilled in us the passion to basically study and be academics. Um, and so both my brother and I are professors in the us in different universities, myself in, uh, what I would call applied math in business or analytics and my brother and sister.

So I, I would say in short, I’m trying to say that this is all because of how our father inspired.

Naji Gehchan: Oh, wow. That’s a, that, that’s awesome. Uh, and I’ve, I’ve seen you, you’re talking about how you get into MIT, academics, uh, and well, all the amazing work you’ve done so far and still doing there. Uh, and, and before going, you know, more into the data, I I’ve seen you leading your team, the PhD team that you have during the, you know, the sessions that we had, uh, and the course, uh, and it was really amazing to watch you like truly how you led the team, how you value them, how you brought them in front of the class.

Uh, Yeah, for me, I really felt it’s practically a real team. It’s one, it’s a one team that has, that is doing this. So can you share a little bit your leadership beliefs and your leadership journey and how you ended up in academia and building really strong teams with your.

Georgia Perakis: So how I ended up in academia, I already mentioned, and I came to the U S from graduate school.

I felt that I was just going to finish my master’s and PhD and go back. But of course, many double digit, won’t say how many I am still here. Am I teasing and incredible? Uh, it’s, I call it like a huge candy store with grape candy that it’s hard to choose from. But what I think is extremely unique are the students that we have at MIT, whether there are people like you, the MBA students, or whether there are PhD students, like the ones in the operations research center, which, where you’re doing.

So I consider myself very, very lucky to be able to interact and basically be among people like them and you guys. And so basically my goal is what I would call enabling these people to bring back back, to bring out the best of them. And that’s kind of my core belief actually in everything I do. Bring in enable the best in other people.

And so I know I have the luck to be among incredibly talented people. So bringing out their skills and enabling them is what I believe in doing in everything.

Naji Gehchan: Well, this is such a powerful, uh, such. Powerful word, you know, for a leader is right. Enabling others and making sure the environment and tries to return a lot about what is the environment that you’re creating for us to enable, uh, enable people to be at their best.

Uh, you know, um, I’ve seen all the work and the word I’ve seen all the work you have done with your team, and it’s also part of leadership and how you pivoted, I think with your team. The round. COVID try. I know many don’t want to talk about it, but it’s important where it’s still somehow in a, uh, can you share a little bit with us?

How, how you took your team into modeling all that was happening in COVID and ultimately the impact that you are having on, on policies, uh, now with the data and model, I think it’s a beautiful example on how you can. Take data and do something actionable about it. And it’s a, it’s a great. Leadership lesson, I’m sure you had, as, as things were, uh, on feeding during the pandemic.

Georgia Perakis: So I would say basically that, uh, when the pandemic started and we all had to go very quickly virtually, uh, the first thing that I wanted to do is to create community actually with my. And we have been working on many different types of algorithms. We sub groups of my students. So I thought in order for them to not feel isolated and so forth, it would be great to create community and see how we can do something.

Good. Everything we were doing that where, for example, for the retail space or somewhere for basically other healthcare applications, and that’s how this journey actually got started. Um, we, we tried to basically find data sources and. And actually there was an MBA student at the time, at the time, uh, that also was involved in the team because he talk to me and she told me, Hey, uh, I would like to be involved as well.

Um, so that’s how the discussions got started. The next step it happened. And since we were doing this, uh, and we then got contacted by MIT quest for intelligence, which is sort of the air over my. That sits, you know, it brings together many parts of MIT as it comes to AI. And they notice that we were starting to do this work.

And so they said, well, maybe you can help us because we are trying to understand how cases, how deaths and so forth will evolve. And that will also help us to reopen them. So now, you know, what was just about community building and about let’s make our work mean something, it became something that was sort of more tangible.

It was like, okay, let’s see how we can have on it. Understand how the evolution of cases, the evolution of deaths in different states and counties in the United States and in particular, Massachusetts. Because if we understand what’s happening in Massachusetts and my ticket now make decisions about different measures they could impose in order to make things work.

Because as you know, MIT believed that we in-person experience is something very important. Everybody knew that this is not going to be perfect, but it’s better than just being all virtual with no in-person component. And so we thought it would be great to basically help them do. It was a lot of hard work.

And again, I give all the credit to the students because they work tirelessly and very excited. They had ownership of this. This was their baby, and I was lucky to be part of that conversation. And then we decided, well, we actually maybe can help a little bit more at the national level. So, um, Contacted Fox from the CB CBC.

And then we started actually submitting our models. We are still doing this every week, uh, for predicting for the next week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks ahead, how cases and deaths are going to evolve. So that’s kind of the summary of a long journey.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, well, wow. And again, like it’s, uh, you, you always told us data is better than nothing.

And then the ultimate objective is making decisions, right? So it’s, it’s really impressive. And w before going to data machine learning, I want to ask a question on this, but before that, I really want to summarize, you said things that are super powerful. You, you started by, uh, creating a company. Doing something for good.

Right? And then you go into ownership, empowerment of your team, enabling them to be at their best. And honestly, what a humble leader you are, because again, you say it’s your team, but I’m sure without her leadership, you wouldn’t have, they wouldn’t have achieved what you guys have achieved. So, yeah. Thanks for giving all those dealerships tips for all of us.

Georgia Perakis: I think of my team, some amazing students. I honestly believe that at all. And I consider myself very lucky to be part of that environment. Uh, and so I believe success of people is by understanding the abilities of others and helping bringing them out. So, and then we all look good. They do. And actually, so do I find it a bit selfish?

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. I so agree with this. Um, well you mentioned words, right? Data models, machine learning, it’s such trendy words, right? So I would love to get your take on this. I had the opportunity to hear you about it for many hours that I enjoyed. I would love to hear your take on those and the most important advice you would give us for leaders who either are talking about it or dealing with it and our organizations.

What are your, what is your take about all

Georgia Perakis: those strategies? Right. So, first of all, understanding what data we each have in our organization, how we can use them in a good way, how we can use them to have a competitive edge. Or realizing the limitations of our data, maybe what we do not have and we could have, uh, and how, what we don’t have, we can actually collect and use it to do better things.

That’s sort of the first step, basically, uh, understand what is your data environment? Where can you get it and what can you not get? But you could potentially. The second, also an important thing is to understand what you could do with it, potentially what are some areas where analytics and in analytics, I put machine learning, AI optimization, how analytics could actually improve the way you are doing things in your organization and recognizing those opportunities.

And recognizing areas that my lead picks can have a first order effect as I call it. It’s not just a small parentheses. Uh, and so, you know, recognizing what are these areas also extremely important. And then flowed that I wanted to do with the class that I was teaching is to make sure. And I’m not sure if I should use this word, but, and maybe I have not used it, but that nobody can, uh, talk another person.

Nobody can be as you.

And that, you know, and so I’m proud whenever I hear, uh, people, uh, who took my class, that they go in meetings and they recognize, and they ask questions and, you know, people, don’t not trying to pull a fast one over them and that’s extremely satisfying.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. Yeah, you definitely, you definitely helped us see this for your, you know, for those of us who deal with data constantly and those who don’t, but it’s important to kind of think of it that

Georgia Perakis: way.

And I would say that this past month I was contacted by two former students of mine that graduated one maybe three years ago. And the other two years ago, Sort of talking to me about problems that they had in their organizations and recognizing how some particular tools that I taught them was useful.

And so that happened to me twice in the last month. And, um, even asking me to, to remind them of what software had I recommended back then and so forth, and that’s extremely satisfying, then I feel okay. Yeah, I did something.

Naji Gehchan: Oh yeah, no, definitely. And there are many who don’t come back to what are actually doing it.

So that is for sure. What is the last question on this? Uh, since you’ve worked a lot in academia, but you obviously work it out with companies, right? You mentioned retail and healthcare and many others. Uh, what is the most challenging? When we touch those, you know, machine learning, AI, all those concepts and organization, what is for you?

The most challenging piece a leader should start with if we’re launching this type of projects or transformation.

Georgia Perakis: So I would say first understanding what are the problems that the organization have? What are the right questions and what are the limitations also that they have? What are they capable of?

And then they towel. So because, you know, everybody talks about big data and I say a far more important thing is what happens when I have little data. When I have missing data, actually I would say this is hard there. I’ll talk about big data. Let’s talk first about little data missing data. So I would say those three and in that order first.

Okay. What is that? I problem for me, is it. But maybe by using ethics, I could make a difference for somebody.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. I will always take this. As you mentioned that many times, right? What is the problem you’re trying to fix? And this is usually the toughest question to ask because yeah, we can have data, but you know, what are we trying to fix and which type of data we need, and then try to deal with this.

So I, I would, uh, I would be moving into giving you one word and I would love to have your reaction to this word, uh, in a sentence or more, right? So the first one is leadership.

Georgia Perakis: So, um, my action is empowering others actions.

Oh, my God. The extremely important having diversity in an organization is what brings power to the organization.

Naji Gehchan: Okay. Can you share it a little bit more because I know you’re passionate about it, then you’ve done a lot of work within MIT on DNI. Can you share with us a little bit more, you know, from beta to auctions and thoughts on,

Georgia Perakis: right.

So a couple of things, the first is that by recognizing that if you bring a lot of different voices, You know, my analogy to data would be if you have different and diverse sources of data and even methods that you can buy, you will actually have a much more powerful outcome. In fact, what we did in our algorithms to predict was exactly the principle of diversity.

We basically developed a lot of different and diverse. Algorithms that capture different aspects. If you like, we brought different voices and by ensembling them together, we created a much more powerful. So it’s almost like taking the model of diversity and putting it in an algorithmic setting. And that’s one example, but I believe it in everything I do and I see it in my group and I see that MIT and I know now.

And in general, MIT takes this very seriously. We can do much better, but you know, recognizing this is the first step to success, I would say.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah, no, I love it. Well, recognizing the problem right

Georgia Perakis: then,

Naji Gehchan: uh, I have to ask this many of the listeners won’t know where it is.

Georgia Perakis: Data models and decisions, how you go from data to recommending good decisions that will bring value and value. Doesn’t have to be just revenue profit. It can be improving the world in some way.

Naji Gehchan: Awesome. This is one of the best courses in this ever programs.

Uh, the last one I’d love your reaction on is spread love and organizations.

Georgia Perakis: So do you need one word or Western, whatever

Naji Gehchan: you want,

Georgia Perakis: you don’t spend? I would say basically feeling compassionate and trying to understand. Other people in your organization so that you can embrace others and you can embrace the diversity or the lack thereof of an organization, and then bring diversity to the organization.

And by sort of having that empathy and compassion with others and spreading it is what would make the organization successful. So, as I said before, in a way it’s kind of understanding and enabling and embracing others.

Naji Gehchan: Awesome. Uh, Georgia, any final word of wisdom for all the leaders around the world.

Georgia Perakis: So I would say one thing, which is extremely important to me and I will put it in mathematical terms, what I call the law of large numbers and what I mean by that is persist and look at the long-term goal.

That’s what I learned in my career. And, you know, things didn’t just come on my plate as I went along in my career, but, you know, uh, I try to focus on the end. I’d rather have a look at the failures that I had right in front of me. And I call that the law of large numbers that if you persist and look at the future, long-term it will work out eventually

Naji Gehchan: the “Love of large number.” I love it. Thank you so much for your time today.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to spread love and organization’s 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.

Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to spread love in organizations, the 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 podcast joined today by Paul Hartung, a longtime life sciences and technology executive with a proven track record in launching successful startup businesses and leading Fortune 500 organizations. Paul currently serves on several Board of Directors including Leuko and Verisense, he mentors at MIT VMS, MassBio MassCONNECT, and The Capital Network, and serves as a judge for MassChallenge. He served as President & CEO through successful Phase II of Cognoptix, which has developed an innovative eye scan for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. Paul also founded Sonivance, and has held senior management roles at 3Com, Summit (LASIK), Trumpf, Laser Fare and GE.  Paul graduated with honors from MIT with an MS Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He is an active speaker, author and inventor on a number of patents.

Paul – it is an honor to have you with me today!

Paul Hartung: Well, thank you very much, Naji. I really appreciate the invitation.

Naji Gehchan: Can you first share with us, uh, Paul, your personal story from mechanical engineering to life sciences and impressive entrepreneurial track record?

What’s, what’s behind this inspiring journey you have? Yeah.

Paul Hartung: You know, I, I guess I like to categorize myself as an engineer who loves to make things right. So early on, uh, my research at m i t was at, uh, lab for Manufacturing and Product. . So I got involved in all kinds of manufacturing processes and advanced materials.

And actually some of my work is being taught today at M I T and my research. Um, so I started in the aerospace industry, which is a manufacturing industry. And then I looked around and I, I realized that, um, you know, manufacturing was really changing and I wanted to do something. So one of the things that caught my interest was lasers, and there’s lots of different things you can do with lasers and, and photonics.

I I started looking at, um, industrial lasers, high power lasers, and got a whole taste of, um, the whole process of, uh, mergers and acquisitions of companies. . I, and I had a crash course, uh, in that I, I went from GE to a, a small company. . Um, then another small company that was acquired by a bigger company and merged with another company all in a period of years.

And that’s what ended up being described on my resume as as Trump. But it started as a spin out of combustion engineering, which is an energy company. Um, , but then I, I got exposed to, uh, medical technology first using lasers as a manufacturing tool cuz you know, they’re used to make pacemakers and things like that.

Um, there’s things you can do with lasers that you can’t do with other manufacturing processes. So, um, I went to, I, I spoke at an M D D I conference, which is on medical devices, uh, using lasers and manufacturing tool and. Lo and behold, uh, after a little bit of a journey, you know, through these mergers and acquisitions, I ended up getting a call from a friend of mine who was working for a medical laser company and a startup that was called Summit Technologies.

And, uh, that was a company that developed lasik. So, um, I, you know, made this huge pivot in my. To, to do that. Um, and at the same time as, as developing skills sort of across business, rather than doing an m mba, again, I haven’t, you know, a couple of engineering degrees. Um, I decided to learn different aspects of the business.

So I actually applied to a manufacturing job and this, this startup was sort of expanding. They, uh, wanted to do manufacturing in, uh, in, uh, Ireland. and take advantage of some, some tax breaks and what have you. So, um, I came in to kind of run manufacturing locally and we didn’t have f d a approval yet, so had to go through the whole process of, of, um, getting f d a approval and learned that firsthand and.

You know, I, uh, then got distracted. Uh, I, I ended up doing that for several years and I got a call, um, you know, sort of the whole internet of things industry was starting to blossom. And I got a call from a company called Threecom Corporation, which I hadn’t even heard of at the time, but at, at that time, its bread and butter was connecting everybody to the internet.

I mean, there were basically devices that you plugged in to every laptop to connect to the internet, but the company grew, grew through acquisitions. So every month the company was acquiring another company. So now what our smartphones kind of evolved from something that was called the Palm Pilot. I dunno if anybody remembers that, but, um, these, these, uh, PDA.

We’re, uh, kind of a precursor to smartphones and, uh, Threecom bought the company that makes those. Um, I, I learned, oh, I’m a mechanical engineer by training. I learned all about, uh, kind of software intensive businesses and uh, uh, electrical hardware done at very low cost. And, um, I learned partnering as well, uh, the global supply chain because we had three internal factories.

um, like four subcontractors that we worked with on the outside. And I ended up with this global operations role, figuring out how to make new product, how to design new products anywhere and make them anywhere. So in concept, um, And then I got back into, um, startups. Uh, I, I joined a company called Win Foria that was acquired by Motorola and developed, uh, another mobile technology called Push to Talk.

Um, so after that little diversion into Into Tech, okay, I decided I was gonna do a medical device. And I, um, ended up being in the right place at the right time. I, um, started researching how to kind of raise funny first for startups and went to a little conference put on by a law firm. And, uh, I enjoyed one of the speakers, spoke to him in the hallway and he said, oh, you need to meet.

Scientists who are putting together this, that made this great discovery of amyloid in the eye that, uh, kind of parallels what goes on in the brain with Alzheimer’s disease and, um, you know, your photonics background, you know, working with the eye with lasik. Um, my business background, I ended up at my kind of first, uh, founding c e O job.

and, uh, that was initially named Neurotics, uh, changed its name to Cog Optics at one point due to a trademark thing with another company. But, um, we, it was quite a journey. Um, you know, I, coming from a very successful tech startup that had raised a lot of money from venture capital, , uh, I thought I could, you know, raise money quickly through vent venture capital instead.

Um, I found myself being introduced to Angel financing and cuz it was Alzheimer’s disease was too scary. It, the market at that time was, was very tough. So, by accident I syndicated the first, uh, angel deal in the Northeast because I couldn’t make enough money through, you know, Uh, angel Group. I put four together and, you know, did of financing.

So, you know, I ultimately raised 3 million in angel financing and, um, did the development that was needed to sort of get ready for, uh, venture financing. And, um, what happened? The economy crashed. This was back in 2008. and luckily I was, I was kind of searching internationally for, uh, venture venture funding.

I had a lead investor in, uh, Europe. Uh, and we closed a, a financing in September when the whole US economy had shut down that year already no one was getting financing. So, um, that, uh, helped hurdle me forward and. . Yeah. You know, that that was a wonderful journey for me, uh, that that company, um, you know, we were one of the four leading inventions by, you know, the Alzheimer’s Association.

I do an international conference in, in, uh, 2015. And, uh, really positioned for success. Uh, a real issue was no company had a treatment. And that ended up being a real kinda barrier to, uh, you know,

Naji Gehchan: Well, well, thank you so much for sharing. This is really inspiring and incredible journey, and you shared so many times the word learning, uh, and it seems every, everything job you took was based out of curiosity learning.

So I’d love to double click on this a as you were taking those job, and obviously it’s, it’s risky, right? Like you’re jumping, I imagine what you felt. Also kind of constantly move to jobs, uh, you know, new jobs that I don’t know about. Right. What, what was your backbone, is there like a backbone capability or something within your core or leadership signature that you always kind of relied on or something else that made you, you know, go learn fast

Paul Hartung: and?

Well, something that’s great about m i t is, uh, they teach you problem solving skills. So that’s one thing at the core, you know, uh, kind of being able to kind of step back, be humble, learn as much as you can about a situation before jumping to conclusions and, and, and jumping to the solution space. So, um, again, problem solving is a process.

And I also look at, um, product development, uh, as a process that, uh, translates across industries actually. Um, you know, a lot of people and, you know, a lot of people are very successful kind of choosing, uh, sort of an industry segment and, and role even sometimes, so you know that they’re very effective.

and going very deep. Well, I’ve found that, um, you know, I, I talked about, um, working for a company like ge. Well, guess what? They, they did some military business. It was, uh, it was, um, uh, military helicopter engines was one of the things that they made, you know, where, where we were, which is a regulated industry.

Right? Um, and there were some. Grants associated with the kind of work I was doing, you know, writing and, and supporting grants is kind of a general skill. Um, I, I found that, um, the process of, of, uh, team building. Um, one thing I’m, I’m passionate about is, is developing cross-functional teams and starting having an interest in manufacturing.

there’s this traditional wall between engineering and manufacturing where they used to say that, uh, you know, ideas would be kind of thrown over the wall and manufacturing people would have to figure out how to make it. Well. Over time, we’ve all learned that it’s most effective to, um, bring pe, bring all the stakeholders in early, you know, in, in the process, and, uh, create these cross-functional teams that are very effecti.

So, um, I’ve done that on the level of job functions and more recently done it on the level of complex things like drug delivery, where, you know, you need to have people who understand the pharma side and you also have people who understand the sort of mechanics of, of, of, of drug delivery or, or understand advanced materials.

and, um, you know, it, it, it’s interesting getting a diverse team together in, in the same room and trying to figure out how to move forward to a common cause. Love, and that’s, I love they developed over time. And I, I

Naji Gehchan: wanna go there because I love what you said about the wall, you know, between engineering and or tech and then manufacturing.

And I’m sure you’ve seen another wall once. This is, you know, produced like a wall for marketing and sales to figure out how to sell it, right?

Paul Hartung: Yeah, absolutely.

Naji Gehchan: So as you are building and working those with diverse teams, uh, as the leader of all those teams, what, what, what do you practically do? You said like, put people together in a room.

Uh, in today’s world, it’s. Possible physically. Sometimes our teams are remote, I’m sure. And,

Paul Hartung: and you were the same. So I can be done remotely.

Naji Gehchan: Yeah. So I’d love to learn more from you, like what are the tips, how have you done it to build really this cross-functional team that is going towards a purpose, as you said, a common purpose, uh, to deliver on the mission they had.

So how, how have you, how have you done this?

Paul Hartung: Well, I think, um, part of it is effective meeting management. Um, everybody. Gets quickly sick of too many meetings. But if you have, uh, a structure where there’s a periodic team meeting, say weekly, and um, you know, you have to have a manageable number of people.

And that partly has to do with, with, uh, how big the project is and the structure of the team. But if you have, you know, 10 people in the room, let’s. , you give everybody the opportunity to give a quick update from their perspective. And um, also they may have an ask. And, um, at first when you know people are, um, hearing something that’s very foreign to them, they think it, maybe it’s a waste of time or they don’t understand it or whatever, but it starts to sink in.

They start to get an appreci. of all of the pieces of the puzzle. You don’t have to become an expert in everything. But knowing a little bit about, and, and understanding what impacts your fellow team members, um, it’s those intersections, you know, that are, are, that are most important and someone from a completely different discipline may have a great idea or, or great solution for, for one of their team.

So that’s, that’s part of it. I think another part of it is just having really good project management. You know, I’m, I’m a believer in, uh, project plans and, and Gant charts and those sorts of things. And, you know, trying to work to a schedule and if there are delays, figuring out what, you know, what things can be done independently, what what can be done to mitigate, um, um, issues with the.

Um, but yeah, I mean, usually with a complex project, um, the, the solutions may come from anywhere. You know, they, there’s different facets to the project and to work around a delay in one area, um, someone may need to step up in another area.

Naji Gehchan: It’s reminding me of what we also at m i t learned, right? Like all this dynamic work design and, and how to do this.

Have you seen a difference between doing it in startups? So you’ve done like all. all scales of companies, right? Like upside up to, to large corporations. Yeah. Is there any difference, uh, doing it through those? And I, I’d love to hear the cultural perspective as you’re managing those teams and building those effective high

Paul Hartung: performing teams.

Sure, sure. Well, you know, I’ve, I’ve seen, um, speed come from. Almost like, you know, volume. You know, I have a, have, have a big team. Uh, one example was Win Foria. We, we were actually a, a startup, but a very well funded, you know, VC back startup. We had 120 software engineers in three countries. And, you know, having Boston effectively, Madrid and Bangalore, India, we could have software development 24 by.

and, you know, because people are in different time zones and the challenge was kind of knitting together all this work, but, um, you know, in, in contrast and, and that that’s more difficult than it may seem. Right. You know, knitting together work of software engineers, but they’re tools. , right? They’re, um, these, uh, configuration management systems that, uh, knit the software together.

And, um, you can, you know, you set up the proper processes and, um, you can be effective and have good leadership. You know, that’s communicating a across the teams. But, um, I would say that, uh, startups these days and, and. Tics, the example I gave you before the Alzheimer’s thing, that was a complex project cuz we were doing, um, we weren’t doing a treatment, we were doing, uh, a diagnostic, but it did involve a reagent with, which was formulated into an ophthalmic ointment.

So it’s like a, like a drug development project. Not for treatment, for diagnosis in parallel with a complex optical system. You know, the system had, um, six ax axis of motion and um, you know, did a, a, um, measurement in milliseconds and, you know, it was, uh, a fluorescent spectroscopy measurement. It was, you know, quite sophisticated.

We had, um, five people in the. I mean, you know, our, our team was tiny. And how did we do it? We did it through, uh, partnering and we chose really good partners and, and, and the top-notch team. But a lot of it was, um, in a way, you know, project management, it was realizing that we weren’t gonna be the manufacturer, so we had to have a manufacturer that had all the certifications.

Proven track record of doing this kind of complex product on the device side, and we had to separate, right then we had to find, um, someone to make the a p i. We ended up, um, uh, moving that manufacturing to India for cost. , we ended up, um, having a complex formulation. We had searched the world, you know, found a partner in the United States that was one of the only ones that could handle the formulation of our product.

We even, uh, created patents for some of the formulation steps because it was so complicated. And I won’t get into the details, but, you know, um, but we wouldn’t have been able to do it ourselves. We wouldn’t have been able to create our own bricks and mortar and, and, uh, do that. on the development side, it’s, it’s trickier, you know, um, there’s a range of possibilities you can hire, in some cases, one company to do your development for you to do your design work for you, right?

Um, I haven’t been so successful at that. You know, what I’ve done is, uh, tended to. , um, kind of break things into pieces and use a company that’s really good on software development. Use a company that’s really good on, um, you know, say mechanical design. Um, maybe another company that’s really good at, uh, electrical design.

And then, uh, kind of have them work together as, as a team, you know, and, and, and bring everybody.

So Paul, you are heavily

Naji Gehchan: involved in, um, helping ventures, helping startups, founders through the different Yeah. The different work you do. Uh, what, what is the number one device, uh, advice that you would give for founders of startups

Paul Hartung: and healthcare?

Um, number one, I would say,

one, make sure that you’re addressing an unmet need and that people at the end of the day will really care, you know, identify who, who will care, care enough to pay, care enough to utilize care enough. So that exploratory process. Um, and it, it, it, you know, took me some time to learn this. Um, But I’m seeing it more and more.

It’s been formalized in programs like icor, which you may have heard of that. Um, you know, to get an S B I R grant, you have a 40% better chance if you go through this ICOR program. And the principle is you have a great idea. Reach out to about a hundred stakeholders, potential stakeholders, and explore the idea and make sure you’re addressing so.

that’s really a pain point out there because, um, sometimes current treatments or, um, cur current methods aren’t optimal, but they’re kind of like good enough that, uh, having something that’s a little bit better doesn’t move. The bar doesn’t, you know, for one, it’s hard to raise money, but at the end of the day, you can go through all the work and.

you know, it, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s quite a journey. You know, you put blood, sweat, and tears into a, into a program and after several years find out, you know, you’re basically done, but there’s no real market for what you’re doing, or you can’t find a commercialization partner because there just isn’t a strategic fit.

So I’m a believer in working on those issues very. , you also have to make sure that, um, your science is really solid. So I think there are some spinouts that are premature that, um, really need to, um, make sure their, their, their science is very solid. That, um, uh, the way I look at it, data is your currency, right?

You, you, you can tell people that it’s gonna work, but really have to show them data that’s, um, that it’s gonna work because you have to have something that works, that, again, people will care about right’s. Those two pieces,

and too often that, that, that second one of, you know, well, people really care about it. It’s not an easy thing to get to. You care exactly. The, the entrepreneur, the founder, you know, feels passionately about it and maybe thinks everybody else is stupid because they don’t get it. They don’t. , but it’s really important to sort out.

Yeah. And, and you mentioned care

Naji Gehchan: about and willing to pay, like there’s this value, right? At the end of the day, value creation and capture that you need to figure out.

Paul Hartung: Right.

Naji Gehchan: Uh, Paul, I’ll give you now a word and I’d love your reaction to it.

Paul Hartung: So the first one is leadership.

Uh, leadership. Okay. It’s, it’s, um, to me it’s, it’s, it’s keeping a team motivated through the tough times. It’s always easy to, um, stand up and, um, give praise for alls all the successes. But the real challenge, particularly in, in, uh, in a startup. and even, you know, in companies, uh, that are working on, on, on programs that are difficult programs, it’s the hard times in figuring out the Plan Bs and, and, um, I’ve even been in situation where, um, my whole team went off salary for several months because we were kind of between financings and that takes more than just kind of the, the traditional.

Carrots that you hand out in, in, in business, it takes developing a, a passion as a team for what you’re

Naji Gehchan: doing. Can I double click on that and if you can tell us the story and how you develop this passion to make sure that people keep on coming.

Paul Hartung: Yeah. Well, um, I can expand on that particular story. Um, and that that was, um, it was a, a point in, in, uh, Cognos life actually.

I, I, I had mentioned that, um, we were trying to raise money, uh, when the economy collapsed. Well, just before the economy collapsed, I actually had a syndicate of investors ready to invest. And, you know, your board becomes part of. Expanded team of a company. Well, um, the particular group of investors sort of became, in my mind, toxic.

They weren’t working well together and one of the investors was sort of becoming very manipulative. And, um, we thought that we were ready to close a financing. And then at the last minute terms were. . So finally I had to make the tough decision based on the fact that, uh, I would need to live with these people.

You know, they’re not only, you know, giving us money, but you know, the, the next few years of the company, we’d be tied to these people. I, I realized that it wa it just wasn’t gonna work, and, uh, took a big, took a big gamble and tested loyalty of my earliest investors. They came back and did a, a small bridge to keep us going while I pivoted to find a different set of investors.

That’s when I went to international, you know, and, and, and found, uh, um, you know, an inter international lead investor. But, um, the team, uh, had a choice. You know, we, we either continue working. Effectively, we, you know, had to kind of mothball the company. Everyone wanted to keep going. Um, I had actually one, one person leave, but it was actually right before I closed the next financing.

And you know what? Everybody was made whole. Uh, you know, we ended up for that time that people took off. They, they all get. For that time in the end, once, once we, once we closed the financing. Um, so it was scary, but we just kind of put our heads down and, and, um, carried out our mission.

Naji Gehchan: Oh, and I’m sure it talks to the culture you created for people to keep on Yeah. Showing up and, and being here. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Hartung: The second word is innovation. innovation. Yeah. One of those words that, uh, I love, but, you know, may, may be overused, uh, . Um, you know, I, I guess, um,

there are lots and lots of good ideas that merge every day. Right. Um, and unfortunately a lot of innovations never. Polite of day, you know, people may file a patent. I know that, uh, all of the major institutions have piles of patents that they, they can’t even license out. They, you know, they don’t know what to do with.

So, um, you know, it’s, it’s an issue of, of, um, finding ideas. that actually can make a difference, that can have an impact. Um, and that gets back to some of the things we were saying before, of, of really exploring the landscape, understanding, um, if it’s in a treatment space, understanding the kind of landscape of treatments that are available today.

Really understanding, you know, the, the unmet need, um, before putting a lot of. Effort into your particular in innovation? Um, again, building off something I said before, um, I think some of the more important innovations are, um, based on, um, kind of a combination of things. It’s like a convergence of technologies.

another, you know, overused one is ai, for instance, right? Um, a, you know, ai, ai, everything. But the, um, if you look at, um, you know, advances in materials, you look at, at advances in, uh, nanotech, you know, being able to get down to a, you know, much smaller scale, um, you look at. All of the discoveries around d n a and r n a and and uh, and gene editing and you know where that can possibly go.

Um, and you, you think about the problems of, you know, treating the right individual in the right location in their body that’s affected without creating toxic effects on the re on the rest of the body in an um, , you know, effectively say, monitoring their dosing. Uh, it takes a village, it takes, you know, kind of a combination of technologies.

So I’m a great believer in kind of innovation in these systems that, um, can solve the bigger problems.

What about board of directors? Board of director? , um, you know, board of directors. Uh, I’ve been on some, you know, very effective ones, um, to a certain extent. Uh, you know, that they’re for support and, um, and guidance and, and it kind of depends on the maturity of the, of the management team. Um, you know, sometimes it comes down to kind of advice.

There’s some formalities around, uh, you know, governance and responsibility, fiduciary responsibilities to, to, um, the shareholders and that sort of thing that are kind of the basics of, of, uh, business structure. Um, and, you know, being, being incorporated that, um, you know, you have to maintain. But I’m a believer in, in making sure that.

Management team, uh, feels supported that they have a structure in place for, um, being rewarded and incentivized, you know, and, um, things like stock options and, and things like, uh, uh, periodic review of, of, of, um, the overall, you know, cash compensation plan and making sure that there’s some sort of bonus structure in place.

and, um, giving them support as they’re looking at, um, partnering possibilities, you know, leveraging connections and giving them, you know, some, some guidance on how to even approach that process. Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I kind of wear both the ad advisor and, um, you know, there’s a bit of over. , you know, in the role of, of director and as an independent director, I, I really enjoy kind of helping bridge the gap.

Sometimes there’s tension between investors that may, um, have their own timelines, you know, um, get a little, I impatient about return on investment and the management team that’s doing the best they can to, you know, to deal with some difficult problems and. , I can help kind of moderate a bit there.

Naji Gehchan: And the last word is spread love in organizations.

Paul Hartung: Well, uh, I try to spread a lot of love with my, with the teams I work with. Um, I think it’s maybe part of, part of developing that, um, passion across the organization, if you will, for what we’re doing together, you know, so, , um, I kinda, I kinda lead by doing and, and I try to lead, lead with my behavior as well.

Naji Gehchan: Any final word of wisdom for healthcare leaders around the world?

Paul Hartung: You’re doing important work, you know, keep it up. The, there, there are lots of, uh, big healthcare challenges out there and, um, we all need to be thinking of novel ways to approach them and, and get them to everybody.

Naji Gehchan: Thank you so much, Paul, for being with me today.

Paul Hartung: You’re very welcome. I appreciate it. Thanks

Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to spread love and organization’s 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.