16. Building on Success

Promising to share the fifth and final practice of high-purpose–high-performance organizations, Quinn had picked Alex up for a ride in his restored 1968 black Chevy Corvette. After a cruise through the East End, making their way to the downtown freeway interchanges, Quinn and Alex were soon roaring up the wide-open interstate between Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

“I actually talked to you about this next organization way back when I first met you. You are going to love it! By the way, Alex, I hear that you got John J. Williams an interview at Beckley. Good idea.”

Alex noted the small curve of a smile on Quinn’s face as the Corvette accelerated with a deep rumble. “You like driving this, don’t you?” Alex asked the obvious.

“Oh yeah,” Quinn responded, mimicking an American accent and response. “I love the drive over to my client, the Cleveland Wellness Network—it gives me a chance to get out the ‘Vette.” He grinned. “It’s classic American muscle.

“Driving is one of my favorite things to do. When I was growing up in Scotland, my dad was a traveling minister. He had a red MG-B convertible. I loved our time in the car, just the two of us being buddies. Mom said it was a questionable car for a preacher, but I think she really loved how much he enjoyed it. And on those drives my dad listened to me, really gave me all his attention. Maybe that’s why I love to drive.”

The two men sat quietly for a while, enjoying the ride. Alex broke the spell. “What am I going to see at the Wellness Network?”

“The fifth practice,” said Quinn, “is to build on success.” He handed Alex a card from his shirt pocket.

“You’re getting alignment of goal and purpose in the organization. Now you can rev up performance.” He punched the accelerator a little to make his point. “You do this by spotting and building on the success you are achieving throughout the company.”

“Cool,” said Alex, holding on to his seat.

Quinn continued. “Anyway, it starts with looking for what is already going well in your organization, looking for even the faintest signals of success.

“I like the saying ‘Future high performance is already here; it is just unevenly distributed.’ Significant success is already quietly happening at Beckley Medical. This fifth practice is about identifying potential breakthroughs and reinforcing those quiet successes. Napoleon did this, you know. At the beginning of a battle, he would deploy a group of drummers along the front line. When a breakthrough in the enemy’s lines occurred anywhere along the battlefront, the nearest drummer was instructed to beat his drum loudly, and the rest of the troops were taught to wheel around and pour into the breakthrough—capitalizing on success.”

“Will I see this at the Cleveland Wellness Network?” Alex asked.

“Yes,” Quinn said. “Today you’re going to meet with Dr. Tony Phillips, the CEO. He will show you how the Wellness Network makes rapid progress all across the enterprise toward its strategic goals. The Wellness Network is an impressive $9 billion a year hospital system, as well as a world-class research and teaching enterprise.”

“Tell me about Tony.”

“He is not easily defined. He says he’s not just leading a company; he’s leading a cause. This man won a medal for heroism, completed over twenty thousand heart surgeries, and is acknowledged by peers and patients as one of the finest surgeons in the world.”

“Must have been an interesting journey from surgeon to CEO,” mused Alex.

“Definitely,” Quinn said emphatically. “Ahead of healthcare reform, the people of the Wellness Network saw the need to change themselves earlier than most. They went through a top-to-bottom conversion to shared leadership, called here ‘Serving Leadership.’”

“I read it on the website,” Alex said.

“Good,” replied Quinn. “But then they also decided that if they really were committed to the Greater Goal, they were going to change from an already successful model to something new.”

Quinn flipped his signal light on, easing the Corvette onto an Interstate 480 exit ramp.

“So, Alex, what you’re also going to see at the Wellness Network is an amazing organization that has reinvented itself by building on success.”

They pulled into an ultramodern parking structure in the midst of dozens of medical buildings. It was a stunning campus—a mini medical city. Within minutes, they were through a walkway tunnel and outside Tony’s office. While Alex was still admiring the art in an outer office, Quinn rapped on the slightly open door to Tony’s office.

“This is where I leave you, Alex. We’ll meet up again after lunch. I’m involved with several different groups of entrepreneurs and other individuals in pursuit of their own Greater Goals. One such group is right here in the city. See you after lunch.”

Tony’s door opened, and the man himself stood before Alex. His handshake was powerful. “So, Alex, Quinn put us together. He’s a good man.” Quinn acknowledged the compliment and waved good-bye. “I also knew your father—he was a friend and a good leader. I hear you are like him.” Alex blushed and wondered if he would meet Tony’s standards too.

Like the exterior of the hospital grounds, the office’s interior was cutting-edge contemporary in design and sparse. Very Zen-like, Alex thought. The office was undoubtedly high-tech, but the centerpiece of Tony’s table contained dozens of sharpened pencils. A touch of old school.

“Thank you for your time,” Alex started.

Tony waved his hand as if to say the time was not a sacrifice. “Glad to show you what we have here,” he said. “I can’t claim a lot of credit. I’m still learning on the job. They don’t exactly teach you how to lead a large enterprise in medical school, you know.”

“Quinn says you’re pretty good at building on success.”

Tony sat back. “As clinicians, we have all trained to be problem solvers. But this is not about problem solving. This is about innovation, opportunity, and possibility. Let me show you what I mean,” Tony said and stood up. “We’re going to have to walk for you to see what’s happening here. Are you up for a walk?” Before Alex had a chance to respond, Tony was out the door—fast. He barely slowed his pace for Alex’s cane-supported hobble. They entered a maze of halls and corridors, Tony confidently guiding them through.

Tony was talking the whole time. “When I reflect back on my surgical career, it is clear to me that from operation number one to operation twenty-some thousand, my team and I were constantly learning and innovating. Here, every day at the Network, we have thousands of innovations occurring simultaneously all over the place. If I could identify and capture the genuine breakthroughs that were occurring across the enterprise, amplify them, reinforce them, and do that every day, then we would have a success machine on our hands.”

Tony’s enthusiasm and confidence in the organization were unfaltering. “We encourage our leaders to scan across the entire organization for signs of unexpected success that advance us toward our Greater Goal.”

Tony pulled a small notepad from his suit pocket and began to sketch, just like Quinn was always doing. He showed his picture to Alex.

Scan for Signs of Success

“Our leaders constantly scan for successes anywhere in the Network,” said Tony. “When we find something that works, we advertise it and encourage others to adopt it. We are focused on scaling up methods that make a difference.”

Alex pulled out his own pen and notepad. “Can you give me your steps?”

“Sure,” Tony replied. “I keep it all on a card. Got the habit from Quinn. Have one.” He handed a printed card to Alex.

Alex asked, “You said ‘unexpected successes’?”

“Yes. We expect projects to be successful and we look to build on that success. But there is also a subtle little bump in margin, an improvement in a patient’s experience, more engagement in a unit, or better clinical results. The observant leader spots faint signals of success that indicate something new. The leader goes after the root cause of that success, replicates the new thinking and the practice, and tries to increase the scope and scale.”

Tony resumed their tour and eventually led Alex into a room where an executive sat behind a forest of computer screens. “Yuan, tell Alex what you are up to, why, and what you’re going to do next.”

Dr. Yuan Lee didn’t even hesitate at the multipart question. He stood up and shook Alex’s hand.

“We noticed something about our patients,” he said. “Many of them were coming to us armed with their own stacks of Internet articles on their disease, paper medical records, and lots of other disorganized information. And when they left, they wanted even more information and the latest research on their disease state, and in general wanted to stay in touch with the Wellness Network.

“A couple of our IT staff built something on their own to help with this. They built the coolest, next-generation, consumer-friendly, electronic medical record ‘lite’ system from scratch in a skunk-works operation. We did some inexpensive pilot testing, starting small. We had good success on a small scale. Next we partnered with a very well-known electronic medical records company to scale up the system and integrate it into that company’s own platform. We made it secure and accessible. It’s even available on iPhones and that BlackBerry of yours.”

“Yes,” Alex acknowledged, “I love my little ‘Berry. You could say it changed my life.”

Yuan didn’t pick up on the subtext behind Alex’s statement but smiled anyway. He then gave Alex a ten-minute tutorial, with Tony standing by and looking satisfied, on the approaches his department was testing online. “We could use this,” Alex noted. “Do you need a distribution partner?” he asked Tony.

“We can look into it,” Tony promised. “Yuan, could you follow up? And now, Alex, there’s more to see. Let’s go.” Tony was a man comfortable with being in charge and charging people up.

As they headed down a new corridor, Tony prepared Alex for the next stop. “There is another venture that illustrates our commitment to building on success particularly well,” Tony said. “I asked two of the principal innovators to meet with us today.”

As they entered an elevator to ascend to another floor, Tony said, “Part of building on success is taking what works for you internally and offering it to others externally. The case in point is with our wellness initiative in our employee health plan. We had great results improving the health of our own employees and families through our own innovative methods. We now hope to offer this model to the world.”

With that, the group entered into the office of the chief human resources executive, Joe Paternuski, and the head of the employee health plan, Dr. Paul Tolinsky—or “Joe P. and Dr. T.,” as Tony introduced them. “These two are leaders responsible for building on the success of our wellness initiative. Guys, Alex wants to hear our story about the Wellness Venture.”

Joe P. shared first. Alex noted that this powerfully built executive looked more like a linebacker than an HR guy. “We didn’t start out to commercialize a wellness offering. We started out several years back to do something good for our sixty thousand employees and their families. We are self-insured. We wanted to do something extra special for our own.”

Dr. T. chimed in then. “So we took a deep dive into the best practices for keeping people well and preventing disease. We offered free access to exercise clubs and dieting groups, disease management, financial incentives, behavioral counseling, web links to resources, and we seriously addressed diabetes and obesity. And it all worked! Collectively we lost tens of thousands of pounds and people got healthier. Our employees and their families loved it. We got better clinical results and reduced total cost.”

With every comment, Alex’s eyes grew wider. “Wow!” he said when Dr. T. paused.

Joe P. picked back up again. “In keeping with our commitment to build on success, it became clear to us that we had something too good to keep to ourselves. We had something that could help people get healthier. Not what you would expect from an HR guy, huh?”

Dr. T. stepped in. “We now hope to offer all of this to companies, insurers, government health plans, and consumers.”

“And I couldn’t be happier,” Tony broke in.

“Thanks,” Alex said, “for sharing that with me. I’m completely impressed.”

“You bet,” Joe P. said, “Come see us anytime. By the way, I hear you have Kevin Jordan on your team. He was a great pro, but I think I took a few chunks out of him in college. Ask him about ‘meeting’ Joe P.”

On the way back to Tony’s office, they made a dozen detours. Tony stopped by various offices and workstations to hear about innovations and the latest successes. Purposefully wandering through the maze-like lab (Alex was lost), Tony observed and commented: “We are getting 20 percent off turnaround time on these lab tests. Can we scale that up across other tests? Show me how—run it through the screens, see if it scales, and don’t give up if this can be big.”

As Tony engaged with different people and ideas, Alex tried to give him confidential distance. Tony continued to draw him back in, asking for his opinions on issues and topics that Alex would be familiar with.

When they neared Tony’s office again at last, Alex sighed, “Phew! Do you do that sort of thing a lot? We must have talked with a dozen people!”

“Yes,” Tony said. “I love it! We all do this—not just me.” Tony pulled out what looked like large family photo albums. He pointed to pictures of housekeepers, nurses, physicians, security guards, construction workers, and scores of other employees. “These are all ‘Building on Success’ champions. Because of them, we have one of the most patient-safe, innovative, and healing environments in the world. We aim to bend the healthcare cost curve and deliver world-class care. We are all caregivers here, you know.” Alex was startled by this familiar phrase.

Tony looked up from the album at Alex. “By the way, we have a few ideas on how you could build on the success we are having using your own products. Care to hear?”

“Oh, yes,” Alex responded, his excitement hard to repress.

“Then let’s meet again,” said Tony, “and bring some of your new-product-development people. And here—Quinn asked me to give you this card.” Tony handed over a card with a smile and another crushing handshake.