Leadership in Healthcare

1. Leadership in Healthcare
Atiq Rehman, MD
Director for Minimally Invasive Cardiac & Transcatheter Valve Surgery
Director for Performance Improvement & Quality
Lourdes Health System

2. Why do we need Change?
Why do we need to talk about Change?

11. Need for change
To continue your
current success
To develop
the potential
you represent
today
Life is
dynamic

12. Change…..before you have to!

13. A grateful person a happy person

14. • Show me a grateful person and I will show a happy person
• Life-long pursuits which one ought to strive for
• Appreciation of common everyday things (flowers, nature,
fresh air), conscious differentiation between musts & wants
• Freddie Mercury: “I want to be happy, because it shows in
my work”!

15. Motivation defines success

16. • Internal motives would mean learning for a student, teaching for a
teacher, treating patients with empathy for a physician, serving the people
for a politician, serving the nation for a soldier etc.
• Instrumental motives would be studying for good grades for a student,
teaching for promotion for a teacher, treating patients for generating
more income for a physician, serving the people to be re-elected for a
politician, serving the nation for medals/promotions for a soldier.
• Concentrate as a doctor treat patients with empathy and skills fame and
income will come with time as a good byproduct. People who have internal
motives in their spheres of life are successful in the long run and many a
time in the short term as well!

17. Better Me

18. • The desire to achieve and to excel a self competition or with
someone else or a combination?
• Gore Vidal famously said “When a friend succeeds, a little
part of me dies”
• “I am in competition with no one…I am simply trying to be
better than the person I was yesterday”.
• Combination: we need to concentrate on our own inner
personal competition and that may alone bring happiness,
success and contentment!

19. Getting along with others

20. • The ability to get along with others will also determine the
diversity of your stakeholder network.
• Your success is dependent on others
• Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata once mentioned;
– “If I have any merit, it is getting along with individuals,
according to their ways and characteristics… At times it
involves suppressing yourself. It is painful but
necessary”.

21. Riding the Tide

22. • Tides and waves are part of anyone’s life
• A. Lincoln lost the Senate race to Lyman Trumbull. At that time he told a
friend, “I would never strive for office again”.
• Comments about Judge Stephen Douglas: “Twenty two years ago, Judge
Douglas and I first became acquainted; even though, we were both
ambitious; I perhaps quite as much so as he, what about today? With me,
the race of ambition has been a failure---a flat failure; with him it has
been one of splendid success”.
• Although devastated after losing the senate race to Douglas, that night he
said to himself, "It was a slip and not a fall"!

23. Survivor

24. • Erwin Rommel famously said “To become a hero, one must
above all SURVIVE”.
• One has to develop survival skills in private and professional
life.
• A culmination of emotional & social intelligence, focus &
energy, belief & inner strength, resolute & resilience
• Ability to bounce from downturns of life. Thus be a
SURVIVOR!

25. Aim High

26. • If the goals and objectives are very simple, they may be
achieved in a very short time and then one is wondering what
to do next.
• Although goals vary relative to the individual, aim so high
that you may not be able to achieve them in one life time. .
• You will retain your drive and gain more energy as you try to
catch on to your High goals!

27. Avoid distractions

28. • Two Boeing 747s (carrying a total of 1000 passengers) were
about to collide in mid air above Scotland. The collision
was averted when the alarms went off and the pilots had
a visual of the other plane, leading to immediate change of
the planes’ course of flight.
• The possibility of pilot’s distraction inside the cockpit.
• As they say, winning teams have the least distractions and
their members are focused on the common goal.
•

29. The Grit to Strive

30. • The one common factor in all those who
outshine (regardless of the IQ, EI, SI,
background) was GRIT.
• Inner tenacity, drive, passion, the marathon
spirit of life, staying focused on ones goals and
it comes from within.

31. Minor Factors are major factors

32. • STS 107:
• Smaller pieces of foam had come off one various shuttle flights, ignored
and with no consequence. Feb 1, 2003, STS 107 Space Shuttle Columbia
is on its reentry path and the 3000oc heat burns through the protective
shield since a bigger piece of foam (an amalgamation of multiple minors)
had come off during take off…… leading to the only second crash in the
shuttle history.
• Three Mile Island Meltdown:
• Multiple valves built in nuclear reactors and supposedly if one of them fails,
it may not have an untoward outcome. Thus a single valve malfunction was
ignored in the Dauphin County Nuclear Reactor……a bucket size leak led
to the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island Nuclear accident on March
28, 1979.
• B-52 H-bomb:
• In 1960s a B-52 bomber carrying a 24 megaton H-Bomb dropped in North
Carolina but did not explode because of a single safety mechanism that
held on (there were six interlocking safety mechanisms in place, but five
were set off by the fall except that one which held on).

33. Opportunity in Failure

34. • Sallie Krawcheck (ex Head of Smith Barney and CFO Citibank)
recently wrote (on being fired) ten points to learn from the
experience;and there is one which stands out: It is this time that one
needs to look into personal and self development.
• Nilofer Merchant was an assistant to Apple executives. In the same
week she lost her job and got divorced. She came back with voracity
and now runs a successful consultancy and a speaker at TED.
• Neil Pasricha was happily married for a few years. And one day his
wife told him that she no more loves him and they broke apart.
Within a month his friend from childhood (unfortunately struggling
with a mental illness) committed suicide. He was devastated; but he
made it an opportunity to write a tremendous blog which became a
bestseller book..."The book of Awesome".!

35. Responding to Errors

36. • 'To Err is human"...
• Nikki Giovanni said, "Mistakes are a fact of life,
it is the response to errors that counts".
• Thus our past experiences, behavior, attitude,
culture, circumstances all play a role in our
responses to errors.
• Errors could take two routes:
– the negative outcome situation will be where the error
is missed and is exacerbated
– the positive outcome will be when the error is
mitigated and controlledstill happen!

37. Gap Analysis

38. • A dream leads to a vision in our mind
• Need "Analysis of the Gap” to go from
point 'A' in life to point 'B‘
•
• Preparation for curve balls
• Identification of growth opportunities

39. Perseverance

40. • Challenges become major problems and we tend to stay in our comfort
zones. Our reactions remain reactive instead of being proactive! Failure
becomes an acceptable option.
• Edison said "Many of life's failure are people who did not realize how close
they were to success".
• Marie Curie said, "Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must
have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe
that we are gifted for something and that this must be attained"

41. Avoid Multitasking

42. • What is the truth about Multitasking.
• Loukopoulos at NASA's Human Cognition Lab very
elegantly demonstrated that Multitasking is a myth and in a
13 year review of the aviation accidents (where crew were
thought to have made an error), multitasking was one of the
key avoidable factor which could have prevented the
accidents.
• Multitasking increases ones vulnerability to error.
• Thus when doing something of importance, reduce the
number of tasks performed simultaneously, recognize
whenever interrupted and develop salient cues in your
system to avoid distractions

43. Don’t be about ypou

44. • The "Self" phenomenon is innate to all of us.
• However as Alfred Adler said, "It is the
individual who is not interested in his fellow
men who has the greatest difficulties in life."

45. Poise under pressure

46. • On Apil 29, 2011, I was with my family on the
grounds of Cape Ke...nnedy, part of a 700,000
crowd awaiting the 2nd to last launch in shuttle
historyi.e. STS 134- Endeavour.
• President Obama was visiting as well and millions
watching on TV. The payload was around $4.5
billion and 6 crew on board.
• Just in the last moments, launch director Mike
Leinbach called it a 'NO GO" and scrubbed the
launch. Later talking to a veteran astronaut, I was
told Leinbach followed standard protocols

47. Ship the product

48. •
We work on a project, build a product, do a
household chore, it is the last few moments
that drag us the most.
• To paraphrase Steve Jobs, a job is not done &
product not complete until it is shipped

49. Resilience of bouncing

50. • Ups & downs, troughs & valleys, that is what
they call LIFE.
• Essentially it is quality of being hit and
bouncing back which helps you tread through
the downturns of life.
• As Scarlett O'Hara (Gone with the Wind) said,
"...After all, tomorrow is another day!"

51. Man in the Arena

52. • So it is the one who takes the initiative who may
achieve the unthinkable.
• Ted Roosevelt put it at Sarbanne College, Paris, "The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
.....
• Eisonhower put it, "Must take the jump....whether the
bottom contains a nice feather bed or a pile of
brickbats".
• Thus analyze the task well and then just do it!

53. Empathy & Compassion

54. • Life long training
• Essential in our field
• Don’t be like CEO BP

56. Family

57. • It is essential to have:
– a friend
– family
– power group