Creating a Culture of Success (ft. Lou Shapiro)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation challenges and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now your host, Ed Marx.

Hey everyone, it's Ed. I'm super, super excited. I know I say that a lot, but wow, you're in for a treat. We have Lou Shapiro on Digital Voices. Lou, welcome to Digital Voices.

Hey, Ed, how are you?

Lou, I'm doing great because you are a big influencer of mine. So I've watched you from afar for many years, your leadership and what you did at Hospital for Special Surgery and other places, and just the way that you interact with your teams, your staff, medical staff, how you view the future and how you embrace technology. I've always been a big fan, so this is gonna be a lot of fun to talk to you.

I feel the same way about you.

Oh yeah, um, and I've been a patient. I was a patient there while while you were the CEO, and I had a fabulous experience. Fabulous.

Awesome.

So the first question we ask, Lou, of all of our guests, and maybe why this is the number 9 show on Apple for technology, is what songs are on your playlist? What kind of music do you like to listen to?

So whenever the family's together, my playlist is never, never allowed to be used. So you gotta, that's important context. So I was born in '59. I made it, I just made it right before the '60s. So I grew up in the '70s and '80s. So, you know, I'm a rock and roll guy, big Bruce Springsteen fan. I used to love the Doors, you know, the Rolling Stones, sort of that, that genre. But my son-in-law and my daughter are big country fans. In fact, that's all they listen to is country. So there's a lot of country. There's a lot of, um, uh, country music that's made my playlist, uh, names that you would know and names that you may not know. Uh, there's a new guy that we saw in concert down here in Charlotte, Nika Moon, who's awesome. My wife loves, loves, uh, Chris Stapleton. So he's on, he's on my playlist. And my nephew loves this guy called Shaboozy that I have, um, if it was a vinyl record, it would have been worn out the number of times I've listened to it. So it's eclectic.

Yeah. No, I'm going to look that one up. And we do have a playlist. We do have a Digital Voices playlist on Spotify and we'll add, you dropped a couple of new ones on us that we will—

Yeah, you've definitely got it. Nika Moon is amazing.

Yeah, gonna gonna add them to it. What about life message or mantra? Are there words that sort of you live by or guide you?

Um, not this. Not that many people know this unless they're playing golf with me and I'm wearing shorts. But I have a tattoo on my left calf, and my brother has the same tattoo. And the background, it says get to two words: get G E T to get to dot dot dot. And the background is, uh, he created a foundation to raise money for kids who have cancer for research. He and I created a foundation to fulfill the bucket list of a young woman who passed away several years ago at the age of 19. She had Ewing's sarcoma, went through 5 or 6 courses of treatment and remission, and finally, you know, gave up the battle. But she was a larger than life person and The name of the foundation was Move Mountains, and you can imagine what that means. Her name was Kyla. If my brother and I were complaining about something, like for example, I have to go to Chicago or wherever tomorrow, she would say, Paul or Lou, you don't have to, you get to.

Yeah.

I think what it's done for me is place a new emphasis on gratitude. You look at what you should be grateful for.

Yeah.

And you have the privilege to have experiences, big or small, good or bad. Get to— it's easy to forget, but it's important to remember because it doesn't— you only need to think about it for a minute or a second and it changes your frame of reference. So, yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's been, um, The tattoo needs touched up. It probably, it's probably been on my leg for a decade or so.

Yeah, that's, that's great. I love that. That's a new one also for Digital Voices. So thank you for sharing. Well, I want to ask, who are you and what your story is? We've heard a little bit already, Lou, but take us back to the beginning. Where were you born? And then sort of take us up to the present.

If anyone's listening, make sure you have coffee because this is not very exciting. So, um, I was, uh, I was actually born in Akron. Ohio. I lived there for 6 weeks and then we moved to Pittsburgh. I was the first person in the family to go to college. You know, the most my father ever made income-wise was $17,000 a year. But we, that was before he was diagnosed with MS and became disabled, which was the beginning of a very long journey down. Uh, to, you know, when he passed away in 2006. He was younger than me when he was diagnosed. But yeah, we, it was, you know, one of those childhoods where you didn't have much, but you didn't really know that you didn't have much.

Yeah.

It wasn't relevant because, you know, you know the phrase, it is what it is. You just didn't, you just didn't know. And there was nothing, nothing bad, but, you know, it was very exposed to Um, the healthcare industry, because when I was very young, my mother was always sick. And then when I was a little bit older, like I'd say, you know, 14 through, you know, 2006, how, 20 years. So I was in my 40s when my father passed away. You know, he was sick. And then my mother got sick again and she's still, she's still alive at 93. So I was always sort of exposed to. That, um, industry, uh, that was just part of, you know, that was just, you know, part of growing up, you know, being in that kind of environment, not having much, not a lot of, you know, guidance. So whatever you did, you sort of did on your own.

Yeah.

Was I going to be able to go to college or not? Was I smart enough to go to college or not? How was I going to pay for it? Um, you know, all of the, all of those things. And it turned out, it turned out okay. It could have turned out another way. But I think growing up in that environment and then having the experiences that I had successively after that, including the get-to mantra, when I look back, I don't think I knew that until recently, that some of the things that I valued in terms of gratitude and helping people without expecting anything in return kind of thing. It goes back to, you know, that those, those years, and you realize that, wow, it was actually pretty, pretty rough times, but you're probably stronger for it as a result. Yeah.

How did you therefore raise— I know you have a daughter. I don't know if you have any other children.

One daughter.

How did you raise her knowing that you grew up, you know, in a less well-to-do environment, and now your daughter's growing up in a better, um, at least material environment. Did you ever think with your wife, like, how to raise her so that she still has those sort of learnings that you had being raised in, uh, the environment that you were raised in?

I, I don't think so. Um, I don't think so. I mean, she did everything with us. So we went on vacation with friends, she went with us. We went out with friends, she went with us. She was probably in environments that maybe she shouldn't have been in when she was 5 or 6. Uh, but, you know, she just grew up in an environment of, of love. And, you know, our values, whether you don't have any stuff or you have a lot of stuff, it doesn't really matter if your values are the, are the same.

Yes.

And, you know, we're, and, you know, the values, the values of being grateful, in helping people. I think that's like the foundation of it. You know, she's a role model for that. When I grew up, I aspired to be like her.

That's great.

And I think, I just think that comes out of, you know, never being confused about what's important.

Yes. Yeah. That's why I asked the question. That was a brilliant answer, which I expected. And I was very thoughtful with my wife too, our kids growing up, you know, Started off really poor and over time as my career grew, we grew more affluent. And but yeah, it's a focus on the values.

Yeah. In my brother's basement, there's boxes with hundreds of Beanie Babies and American Girls. And she had all the stuff that we could give her. But more importantly, she had the values that we, I don't know that we intentionally taught them, but they were You're basically how we lived. Yeah.

Values are caught, not taught.

Love that. Love that.

So how, okay. Amazing background. How did you get into healthcare?

I grew up in a city neighborhood in Pittsburgh. I contemplated the military, not because I wanted to go to the military, because I literally had no idea what I wanted to do.

Yeah.

Um, I went, was fortunate enough to be able to navigate my way to get accepted to the University of Pittsburgh. I was fortunate enough not to, um, get kicked out after my first year for really, really bad grades. Forgot about, forgot about the studying part. Just didn't, didn't know. I went to the library and looked at, you know, the career library and stumbled upon this field of healthcare. And by the way, I digress. This was after organic chemistry. So I was like headed towards medical. organic chemistry and got rid of that. I don't remember. I remember the book. I remember where I sat. I can't imagine that I finished the course because it was just, it was beyond me. So career library, stumbled upon this field. Turns out my parents knew the executive secretary. Her name was Dottie of Irv Goldberg. Irv Goldberg is an iconic CEO. If you know Tom Perleszek from Cedars.

Yeah.

Tom was trained by Irv Goldberg, a generation after me. Tom's a little bit older than me. So, uh, when, when Tom was working for Irv, I was a kid. And by the time I worked for Irv, an undergraduate, Tom was off doing amazing things. And, um, I met Donnie. Donnie got me a meeting with Irv. Irv let me spend the summer with him. And I was a sophomore in college. I spent a summer doing nothing important. Nothing important, um, obviously. And I was like, oh, okay, this is what I'm going to do. And I decided then, and I didn't stop until a year and a half ago. It was just, it was like a 40, you know, there was obviously finishing undergrad, meeting my wife, getting married, or going to graduate school, getting married, 41 years. But it was that moment in the career library to stumble upon this field.

Nice.

Dottie, I forget Dottie's last name, meeting Irv. That's it.

Yeah. The rest is just—

I, I, I sort of picked something and then I just, I don't spend a lot of time, you know, debating or analyzing things. I can be pretty decisive at times. And just so happens that I was with that.

I like that. So we'll skip a few years. Now you're CEO of Hospital for Special Surgery and you were there for many years. And many people would say that because of your leadership, That you really transformed Hospital for Special Surgery from what it was to what it is today. What would you say are 2 or 3 keys to success for any leader, but specifically you in this case, how you transformed, obviously with a team and such, how you transformed the organization?

I don't know. Maybe it may be 2 or 3, it may be 4 or 5. So these are going to be building blocks. First is culture as strategy. What's his name? Peter Drucker, right? Culture eats strategy. Culture eats strategy for lunch. Not true. That's completely false. Culture is a strategy that if you deploy it the right way in the organization, it's like adding jet fuel to how far and how fast you could go. And it is a major driver of performance. So no, no different than having a technology strategy, as robust as that would be. Culture as strategy. That's number one.

Next.

Number 2, purpose with aspiration. And what I mean by that is like, why does the organization exist? And what are your aspirations? Aspiration that's achievable, that inspires people. So you take the culture. So you have, you have a great culture. It's a strategy. And that means people are excited to be there. They feel like they're valued and they're contributing. Now they're working towards something that's aspirational and inspiring. That's number 2. And I think you could do that in any kind of organization. Number 3 is a roadmap to get from A to B. And A to B is where's the organization today? Where do you want to take it? A to B. And We did that when I was there 6 times in the form of having a strategic roadmap. This is, so this is our aspiration. Now we want to go from A to B. So this is a roadmap to 2010 or a roadmap to 2020 or '25 or 2030, all that we had. And it's just taking that aspir— you know, future back. This is where we're going to go. Here's where we are today. Here's how we're going to get there. He called, I called it strategic roadmap. It's a strategic plan that goes along with your financial plan and your operating plan and your leadership plan. So roadmap for A to B, number 3. Number 4 is lead with your heart, your brain, and your soul. And leading with your heart is really about, you know, caring.

Mm-hmm.

You're leading with your brain is being smart in terms of how you are managing and leading and allocating resources. And leading with your soul is really about Being all in, like all, like all in. The 5th, which may be, may be a little bit unique for me because of the nature of HSS. Imagine 300 orthopedic surgeons in the same room, right? If you want to get anywhere, you have to share leadership with them. So this notion of shared leadership, which I don't know, honestly, I wouldn't declare success on this, but certainly tried. Um, repeatedly. But I think, I think that, I think that contributed as well. So, so 5 things: culture, purpose, roadmap, how you lead, and then share— sharing that leadership.

No, I, I love that. And it's very succinct. And because to me it's very clear, but why do many sort of struggle? So what you just laid out, like you could write that down and we have the ability to execute, right? We, we've got our MBAs, those sort of things, got smart people and we can execute that. But some hospitals, health systems, or any organization, Struggle. What do you think might be one challenge that people have despite having a good plan and how do you protect against it? So this, so we're speaking to our audience, Lou, like they hear this and they're like, oh yeah, it makes total sense. And I tried that. Or how do they overcome, you know, what are obstacles that they face?

I don't know. I think that there are unlimited number of amazing organizations out there that have had amazing success and they're led by amazing leaders. And everyone sort of has their, their own way to do it. So I don't know. So for me, this culture thing is, is very important because I was in an organization early in career that had it and lost it. So I was able, I was able to like see it up close and personal.

Yeah.

Then I was in an organization that the only thing that it had was the integrity and capacity of People, right? So how it took care of people, right? That was that was McKinsey. The first one was Allegheny that had a you know famous you know bankruptcy. Allegheny General Hospital. Have being in an organization that had it and lost it, and then being in an organization that's that's all they had to sell. I said whenever I'm you know in charge, that's going to be foundational. So you have to believe that. It's not something that you should believe it's important. You just have to believe.

Right. Yeah.

I'm looking at a sticker of Ted Lasso with believe on there. You just have to believe that's important. And, you know, different strokes for different folks in terms of how they get, get the job done. Yeah.

No, those are really good insights. Tell us about what you're working on today. Obviously you have so much wisdom to impart. And so I know you're doing, you're still doing something. So tell us a little bit about it.

Yeah, I, you know, I decided to retire for a variety of reasons. The catalyst was more personal than professional. Post-COVID, my wife, during the pandemic, you know, the view of New York at the time was New York was on fire. And my daughter made my wife come back to Pittsburgh and I was commuting a lot. I just didn't want to do that anymore.

Yeah.

So I thought that was the time and we were ready from a succession planning point of view. And then later I realized that 17 years, I don't think anything was wrong, but 17 years is too long, right? No matter how great things may be, things get a little stale. So I was ready to retire, but I wasn't ready to, I was ready to retire from HSS, but I wasn't ready to retire from making a contribution to the industry. That is, you're filled with problems. So I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do and more importantly, what I didn't want to do. And I decided to create an objective for myself, which is I wanted to be a helper, but I didn't want to be a helper from the seat of a CEO because that's stressful and that's hard work. And I just did enough of that. I don't need— I just don't need to do it again. So how can I help people and companies and communities grow and be better? So I actually wrote that down as an objective. And the way my portfolio ended is with, you know, sort of a collection of board positions where I feel like I can attach myself to an organization in one way or another and help them.

Help them.

So I put I put what I'm doing into 2 buckets. One bucket is working with organizations, and these are all like board— these are all board roles, right? 3 of the boards are private companies that I chair the board of. And 2 buckets. One is how can this company help health systems be successful as opposed to— I'll use a word that we used at, I think, McKinsey a lot— As opposed to disintermediating the thing out of the health system. So I'm on the board of PT Solutions, which is a retail physical therapy company that partners with health systems to grow their PT footprint, which is great for being a front door. It's great for value-based care. It's great for increasing market share. I'm on the board of a home care company that's entire go-to-market strategy is joint ventures with health systems. who may be challenged running their home care department, which is critical to solving the challenges health systems face. On the board of a medtech company, Zimmer Biomet, which is also helping doctors and health systems take better care of their patients through the use of sophisticated technology. And then the other bucket is, I don't know if we really can fix the healthcare system by the way we're doing it. I think that there needs to be— a new healthcare system created alongside the old one and have it grow over time and then pull along into it the pieces that should be pulled into it from the old system and leave behind the pieces that aren't. And that's a primary care company that I'm on the board of. It's called PeopleOne Health. So primary care, physical therapy, home care, medtech, board roles, helping, spending a lot of time. Yeah, there's the fiduciary part of the board roles, which is Not as much fun as the helping part where you get to spend time with the CEOs and time with the leadership team, talk about culture, talk about leadership, talk about strategy, and, you know, take advantage of whatever I accidentally happened to learn over the course of 41 years that you can bear on the environment.

Yeah, no, that's great. I love the fact that you're continuing to giving back in such a way. I wanna spend the last couple minutes. I wish we had more time 'cause I, I wanna delve, uh, deep into leadership with you, but we'll have to have you back a second time. But let's talk about the role of the chief digital officer slash chief information officer and the CEO. So a lot of our audience is comprised of people that work in digital IT space, and they're always wondering like how, what are the secrets to work— having a great relationship with the CEO? So can you share maybe one or two things that you think make for a good Relationship? Like, how would you like best for your tech leadership to work with you?

Yeah. What's the strategic direction of the organization? What's the role technology plays in getting there? What resources are available to allocate to it? What is the risk tolerance associated with those investments? And I've seen when there's a disconnect Even a little one, even a little one. Because for a CIO or CDO to be successful, they need to spend money. They need resources. And maybe it's getting more efficient now with how AI and access of data has become— there's, it's easier to do now than it was 5 or 10 years ago. That's less of an issue. But if you hire a CIO or CDO to accomplish something and You're not allocating resources to it in the right way because there's not— it seems like there's alignment, but there's not. It creates, it just creates unnecessary stress and friction in the organization. So just like anything else, when you've got 2 people who are different, make sure you're on the same page with what you want to accomplish and that the preconditions for success are aligned. There is no health system that's going to go anywhere without a digital technology strategy, whether that's to just keep the lights on, whether that's to make the organization more efficient, or whether that's to innovate and being a, either a fast follower or a leader. Every health system needs it. The CEO and that person need to be on the same page.

Last question. Regarding advice for CDO, CIO type person working with the board. So presumably they might present the strategy or some concepts at a board meeting. Are there any words of advice that you gave your CIO or any generic advice that you would give for other executives, direct reports who were presenting to the board maybe for the first time?

You know, you hear a lot out there with startups and Technology enabled. So it's not about the technology, it's about what the technology enables. So don't lose sight of the North Star of the organization and be very clear on how, again, whatever that organization is focused on under the rubric of digital technology, how that is going to contribute. Just no different than a human resource strategy or a building strategy or a, how, or a governance strategy. It's just, it's, it's the same. The difference is the pace of change is so fast. It's very hard for anyone to be as fluent about where technology is going than the CIO or CDO. So there's a lot of education that needs to take place. The first question you always ask is, do you have ChatGPT? If the answer is no, then you know you have a challenge.

Right.

Yeah, that's a good point.

This has been a super fascinating conversation, especially, uh, the tattoo that you get to. So I get to spend time, uh, with Lou on Digital Voices. And then we talk about how you were raised and how that formed and shaped you. And with your parents being sick, sort of gave you this heart and empathy, and you pursued your healthcare career. And we talked About what makes for successful leadership. And you gave us 5 strategies or 5 tactics of a strategy to ensure success. And then we talked about how you work effectively with a board, how you work effectively with a CEO, just a lot of different, what I call golden nuggets along the way. I took a bunch of copious notes. I'm sure our listeners are pulling over right now to write some of these things down as well. What did we miss or anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word.

You know, I think there's just too much division everywhere. And I mean, you can start in the world, then you could narrow down to the country, and then you could go to an industry and then go to an organization and then go down to a department. I think that, you know, people need to This isn't Pollyannish. This is just, people need to be able to see the forest through the trees and develop a little bit more of a helper's mindset. I don't care. I don't care what your title is. I don't care how much money you make.

Yeah.

The mindset is, how do I help whoever I'm focused on to be successful? the greater good. And, um, I think if we could just, you know, it's like having your gratitude catch on and spread, or you're paying it forward, catch on and spread. This is developing a helper's mindset. Um, I think, I think, um, I think we'll move the needle more on all of our challenges.

Yeah. Well said. Well, very well said. Lou, thank you for being a guest on Digital Voices.

Thanks, Ed. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices Podcast with Ed Marx. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.