Leadership [is an Action] (ft. LaShonda Anderson-Williams)

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.

Ed Marx here. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Super stoked again because we have just one of the most fabulous people I know, uh, LaShonda Anderson-Williams. With Salesforce. LaShonda, welcome to Digital Voices.

Ed, it is absolutely a pleasure to have time with you today and looking forward to a fun conversation.

Yeah, this is gonna be so good. I've been, you know, when I first met you, I think it was at a HIMS event, or could have been Live. I can't remember, one of those events. And you were everything I was told, just this awesome person and power-packed and just super charismatic. And I just like fell in love with you.

Awesome. Power-packed. That's a word. We're gonna talk about some Power-packed conversation. I know you are always one with the greatest level of insight, so hopefully we can have a thoughtful conversation this morning.

Yeah, I think it'll be good. So before we jump right in, I'm not gonna leave DJ and Megan out. DJ, what's your experience with Salesforce? You ever use a CRM or anything like that?

Yeah, we use it a lot in the MarCom department. We, we use Salesforce and HubSpot. They communicate with each other and they help us to keep in touch with all of our current clients and our prospective leads.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's what it's supposed to help Divergent with.

So that's super, super awesome. Oh yeah, it's great.

All right. So LaShonda, one of the first things everyone wants to know of all of our guests on Digital Voices is songs on our playlist.

Oh my gosh, Ed. I've got some favorites that I just keep with me that power my energy. Anything from Tina Turner. Like, I mean, how do you not love Tina? Um, I'm also an old-school, um, you know, artist. I love Aretha Franklin. Um, I also have, you know, a little bit of fun with people like Pitbull. So I have a lot of different, um, I think, artists that give me energy depending on the day of the week. But Tina Turner is, um, just a staple. And one of her songs I love is Simply the Best. Like, as you're going through the day and you're getting through it, Very high energy, and Aretha's also. So 2 females, if that says anything. I'm all about the girl power. But also Pitbull, I mean, talk about energy. You cannot not move when you hear him on stage jamming.

Yeah, I had the privilege of seeing him once or twice in concert, and it was just continuous movement, continuous energy. It's amazing. That's pretty cool. What about life message or mantra? Are there sort of words that guide you in your life?

What guides you? There's probably 2 things that guide me and myself. I'd also say my kids, my family. We believe that if you believe you can, you can. If you believe you can't, you can't. It is all about your mental game. And the other thing I have is I've learned over the years is leadership is an action and not a title. And I fully believe that as a person, you have— each of us has purpose. impact the lives of our, not only our families, but our communities. So if you believe you can, I believe you absolutely will. And it doesn't take a title to be incredible and to be inspirational.

Yeah, I love it. That's right on. That resonates. So tell us a little bit about your story personally, professionally, like who is LaShonda and how did you arrive, you know, at Salesforce today?

Well, if I were to tell you this interesting story, back in the day when the newspaper was a thing, My dad would get the Houston Chronicle where I lived at the time every day. And when I was graduating high school, there was an advertisement in the classifieds. And for those who don't know what that is, that's a place where people would post jobs. And so I would look through the classifieds. I was getting ready to graduate high school. And there was this article about registered nurses and the fact that there were so many registered nurses needed. And I lived in Houston near the medical center. And they were giving $5,000 sign-on bonuses. And I decided at that point I wanted to be a nurse. They were giving away $5,000 sign-on bonuses. So I went to a nursing school, Texas Woman's University, and decided, declared I wanted to be a nurse ed and went and met with the— got accepted, went and met with the advisor and had one little problem. I was very transparent that I'll do whatever they need me to do because I was after this $5,000 sign-on bonus. sign-on bonus. I'll do everything but deal with needles. Because I shared that I had a fear of needles. And very quickly, the advisor shared, what else do you like to do? And walked me over to the business school. So I, I got very close to becoming a nurse. However, I still ended up in healthcare. So I started my career graduating from a nursing school. I also started as an intern at IBM back in the day doing tech support. And my career started with IBM back in the Dallas area, Dallas-Fort Worth area. Worked 10 years at IBM, all in tech sales and leadership roles, and moved from IBM to Microsoft for about 15 years, and then moved over to Salesforce a little over 2 years ago. But it's been quite the journey of moving to very large tech organizations. But I sort of found myself back in healthcare, but still without the needles, thankfully, by happenstance at my time at Microsoft. And that's when I truly fell in love with where I saw tech and health intersect and really believe that while a technology company really has the possibility of affecting how care gets delivered, not in just a macro level, but just making it personal in our communities and just have been just passionate about making sure that we're using tech for good and we're making tech that makes healthcare more accessible, making sure that tech is more equitable. But also, as we know now, that it is all about personalization and democratization of care. And so I've enjoyed this journey, but I would have never thought the person who thought she wanted to be a nurse had a fear of needles. And I end up at the end of my career, if you will, as I've gone down this journey, still back in health, but not having to deal with the thing that I fear the most. But I'm loving everything we do, and I'm really excited about What's more to come as we look at where opportunities still exist for all of us in improving care and equitable care across the world.

No, that's great. And I love it when leaders cross over from other industries into healthcare, bringing all that passion and knowledge and then, yeah, seeing the— and you had it already. You had the vision already because of part of your story in terms of the early interest in nursing, but bringing that tech together with healthcare. and really, you know, helping save lives and, you know, the democratization that you talked about, the equity and all those sorts of things. So that's awesome. What might be one or two differences that you notice? So you come into healthcare and were there one or two things that immediately jumped out that are different and then maybe helpful for us to adopt in healthcare?

Yeah, I think that the thing that's been very fascinating to me is Probably 2 things. One, every healthcare professional really wants to deliver the best possible care. And it's kind of easy to say, but it's hard to do because if you're on the other side of it, you feel like potentially you're going in to see your doctor and you might have 5 minutes of quality time.

Mm-hmm.

You waited potentially an hour or more in some cases. You see the nurse and the doc comes in. It's a very quick process. And then you're gone. And when I think about, you know, my experience, what I get excited about is there's been so many new innovative healthcare organizations that are trying to really bridge the gap between the healthcare professional and the work that needs to get done in creating a personalized experience pre, during, and post point of care. And so that's the first thing I think is just healthcare professionals really want to do what they went to school to do, which is spend more time with the patient.

Yeah.

The other thing that has just been extremely fascinating, um, because I get to sit in this world of covering healthcare, but I also get the privilege and honor of working with my peers who at Salesforce are responsible for retail or consumer packaged goods companies, financial services companies. And every healthcare organization is trying to do, if you will, what retail has done, which is create these consumer-like journeys and experiences, which kind of seem a little oxymoron to the average person. Well, why do we want to be like retailers, or why do we want to personalize experiences? It's because all of us, as we learned through COVID, have so many different needs. And we as consumers are demanding that experience we get from an Amazon Prime—

Yeah.

The same way we get our care delivered in that we want control. We want it to be delivered at the point in time when it matters most to us. But more importantly, we want it to be personalized and digital and modern. But I will put a caveat on that, Ed. That's me. My mother and father, they want to go into the doctor's office and look at the whites of the eyes of their physician. My daughter, who is in medical school, she wants everything to be done in a virtual way. So I'm of the hybrid sort of version of what I think care should be. My parents on the other end, remember the people who had the newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, they would still get it if they could. And I have a new generation who want something different. And so I think the second part of my answer is there is so much personalization that needs to be done and the personalization really will vary by person and technology can help democratize and simplify some of the disparate systems and tools that all of us are trying to navigate through when all we want to do is get great care.

Yeah, that's very, very well put. So let's shift a little bit and talk about CRM a little bit in the context of healthcare, and from my observation, you know I've been watching CRM for quite some time, and I think it's super important goes to the personalization that you've been speaking about and the journeys, and it's it's been it's starting to. I'm sure you have better statistics than I do, but it's starting to become more relevant. You hear people talk about customer relationship management, consumer relationships. So we're getting you're hearing you're seeing it adopted. Why do you think it's taken a little while longer? in healthcare than maybe some other industries?

You know, I think it's taken a while because of a couple of reasons why. One, one is I think part of the challenge is if you ask any physician today or clinician, do you need CRM? Absolutely not. I don't know who anybody is going to call, you know, a doctor and say, hey, I have some CRM I want to sell you. That is probably one of the biggest things is most companies, most healthcare organizations don't believe that they need a CRM and they actually don't. They don't need a customer relationship management. What I would challenge is we need a physician. So there needs to be 2 levels of this. There needs to be a physician relationship management. So take the C out of it and put P and put physician, put patient. You need to form relationships across the ecosystem. So we at Salesforce look at this as a level of an engagement platform, a level of opportunity for physicians, clinicians, anyone touching the patient, medical or clinical or not administrative, needs to find a way to at point of engagement with a new patient that you are meeting them where they are. And I think back to my prior point, we are now demanding as consumers a different experience. Why? Because you have very niche organizations of created models where it exists today where I can schedule an appointment virtually. I can see my physician. And if I schedule 30 minutes, I get my entire 30 minutes, not 5 with them. And they put me then with Folks may not realize, they put me on a marketing journey. They put me on a journey of checking in. LaShonda, it's now— you're now due for this next appointment. Would you like me to automatically schedule that for you based on your preferences? And then I get a text message and then I get information around medications I'm taking or some of the things that might be aligned to some of the challenges I may have mentioned to my daughter— my doctor. So I think CRM in its just current state is not necessarily how I would describe it. I think it's more of a patient relationship management, along with what Salesforce does, Ed, is we started with CRM. That's what 20, almost 24 years ago, the company was established and founded at. But we also along the way have created a whole new ecosystem of capabilities. When you think about data that's at the core of health, there's so much data across your EMR, EHR systems. You've got data across your rev cycle. You've got all this data sitting around. How do we harmonize it, democratize it, and then operationalize it to personalize it. There's a lot of I's, but point is, you get it. We are looking at finding a way to create those engagement moments. And that includes our products like Health Cloud, which may be seen as the PRM, patient relationship management tool, but you don't stop there. We have our cloud data platform, which is about taking all of your data and aggregating it across the entire organization to create these moments of point of care and harmonizing how you can engage with your patients, you know, pre, during, and post. And then you got all this data to create analytics, which gives you insights of not just having a patient, describing a patient for what cases that they may be dealing with, but what are the next best actions and how do you get— and we start adding things like social determinants of health. How do you affect certain communities? And so I think for us, CRM was the start, but today where we are, it's more than CRM. It is an entire ecosystem of capabilities, which Salesforce likes to call our customer 360 or patient 360, so that a physician, a clinician can have a full 360 view of their entire patient experience and that that patient feels like they are connected in a much more personalized way with their physician or medical staff.

That makes a whole lot of sense because, you know, I was always thinking part of the barrier was for those who— some people get offended in healthcare when you say, Anything but patient. But then other people will say, no, they're not patients, they're consumers. And so you never know which way to go. But I like this whole concept of the patient 360, the health cloud. And that way people don't get stuck on, you know, some other acronym, you know, that keeps them from adopting this type of system that really helps to do all the things that you were talking about. So super insightful. I want to, shift over to leadership, 'cause I love, LaShawn, whenever we have persons such as you, very gifted leaders, love to talk about leadership and try to mine out any golden nuggets for our audience that I can. And you know, you're in innovation, you're an innovator, you're in tech, obviously. So many things going on in the industry, not just healthcare, but other areas, you know, that Salesforce helps with. How do you stay current?

How do you stay current? Oh my gosh, is there, is it even possible to stay current? I try to keep up. I think I spend a bit of time in 3 ways, Ed. One, our customers, like that's where I get the real visibility into what the challenges are and how people are thinking about solving. And the fact that I get the honor of talking to some of the world's most innovative leaders in this industry, I get an opportunity to sort of get some perspective and bring that back to my team, bring that back to our customers and their peers. That's the first first thing. Um, the second thing is, um, I'm— I spend a fair amount on different, you know, uh, publications such as Becker's and Modern Healthcare and kind of figure out what's happening around the industry. And, um, the last thing I would say I do is I kind of roll my sleeves up. Um, I don't know about you, but I went and got me an account on ai.org, and I'm using ChatGPT, and I'm checking it out. Salesforce has Einstein GPT, and we're all using it. So the current to me is about application. So as we're looking and hearing about different technologies, one of the best things we can do is to get smart on it and figure out, you know, how do we apply some of those capabilities and innovation to healthcare? And, you know, ChatGPT has been across— generative AI is not a new thing, but it is now taking off in every customer, every industry, every size organization, every leader is wondering, well, how do I think about this technology in my current organization? So, you know, being smart about spending time with our customers, you know, reading about what's happening in the industry and then looking at the innovation that's being just sort of front and center, using it and just trying to use, you know, my own perspective of how might I bring this type of technology and future to our customers to think about back in health, back to the point of how do we help physicians, clinicians in this space spend more time with patients. And I think generative AI is having a huge opportunity right now to help really reduce some of the inadequacies, the friction, and the less-than-modern-like experiences we have. And so that's how I stay current. And then my kids, like, I have 3 kids who remind me that they want to know how I was feeling when the Titanic sank, which I kind of remind them I wasn't that— I'm not that old. I read the newspaper. Give me some credit. But those are things I try to stay current on to get a sense for what's happening. And then How do we bring perspective and value back to our customers and the community?

Yeah. And of course, the most important one too is listening to Digital Voices podcast.

Is there any other podcast? I mean, I don't know of anyone, Ed. It's just you. You've had some incredible, incredible guests on this show. And I'm again honored to have an opportunity to spend a few minutes with you this morning.

That's funny. I just So I thought I'd throw it in there. But yeah, you're absolutely right. People used to ask me about innovation a lot. So how do you be innovative? Well, it's the things that you talked about, you know, hanging out with your customers, learning from them, you know, the reading that you do and keeping track on different platforms. But the most important to me is the third one you mentioned, which is the application of. And so I would always tell them, yes, to be innovative, you must be innovative. So start playing with stuff.

That's right.

And I did the same thing. Yeah, I did all sorts of Playing around, learning it, and, you know, and then that's, that's what it takes. And, and unfortunately, some people, once they graduate, they don't really spend a lot of time, and then they wonder why they may not be as relevant, you know, going forward. So anyways, that's really good.

Yeah.

What would you say, and maybe it's the same answer, but what would you say to recent grads? Because I could see you now, you know, speaking at, you know, one of your kids' graduation ceremonies. And, you know, what is what? And maybe there's one other thing that you would tell them. You already dropped a bunch on us, you know, so I don't want to put too much pressure. You know, believe you can, leadership's action, not title, and then all the things you shared. But is there one other thing you would say?

I think it goes into what you just said. Be curious. Be a lifelong learner. I consider myself a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all. So learn as much as you can, soak it up. But the curiosity of why or how is really, really important. More so than just— we go through these formalized education systems, which are great, but you never stop learning. There is always something more to learn and to apply. So curiosity, being curious. And when I think about my career, the things I've been able to do, Again, I never thought I would end up in healthcare after I was told, you know, I had to deal with needles. But my ability to kind of be curious around tech, um, you know, industry, looking at how do businesses build different ecosystems around different channels, different go-to-markets, it all came because I was this, you know, young version of me back in the day saying, well, I'm curious, how does this all work and, and how do I, you know, help improve how customers and businesses and entrepreneurs can improve their business. And now I'm all about how do, how do we help healthcare and life science professionals save more lives? That is all about being curious. So that lifelong learner for me is what I would give the advice to is once you get your degree as a graduate, that doesn't mean you stop learning. That is when you actually increase the pace of learning and you get it in real life. You can still obviously go back and get, you know, higher education, but The real life on the ground is some of the most important inspirational moments I've had because even in the moments when I was most challenged, I learned about myself. I learned about how to lead differently. And I learned how to inspire and bring others along the journey.

Is there one thing that you wish you would've known then that you know now? So when you started your career and, you know, you were working with IBM and then Microsoft. Is there something that way back when you would have loved to have known ahead of time?

I've kind of come to terms with it, but not quite yet, that growth is when you are most uncomfortable. And boy, I was one of those kids, you know, in my career. I wanted to have— I wanted to know everything exactly how it was going to work so that I could be best prepared, Ed. And what I learned was the times I grew the most is when I had the least control, quote unquote. When I sort of just like lived in the moment and, um, sort of let the moment live in me. And so that uncomfortableness is called growth, and it's okay, and it will come back to pay its dividends down the line. Um, and your experiences— probably there's 2 things. Um, your experiences are just that. You take them with you along this journey. Nothing's ever a destination. It's a journey. But you live those experiences and you take them with you. And it's been a fun ride. I would have never, ever thought I would be where I am today in terms of focusing on healthcare and in a company who has done an incredible job of building a portfolio to where I can literally see how our technology can affect myself, my family, my community when applied in a healthcare system. And so that to me is not only the job I do, but it's personal because it's the family I have. And so I'm grateful for that.

Yeah, that's very cool. I wanna end our time together talking about another one of your passions, which is diversity and inclusion. And what words of wisdom would you have for those listening when it comes to D&I? And, you know, what can we do to create a more helpful, healthy, environment, however you might describe it? Because I'm always trying to figure it out myself too. It's like, how do I be part of the solution? And so I would love to hear your perspective.

I think we all have an opportunity to improve. But the one thing I would say is when we look around the table in a meeting or we look around our organizations, we have all hands, making sure that everyone is representative of your customers. If you look in the audience or you look in your team and your organization and you don't feel like your customers, if you will, can be represented in the teams that you have that support those customers, you got to go back and find out why. And then as a leader, you have to take personal accountability to change that because you can. You have the power to do that. As an example, I'm a pretty hard stickler in that we have a diverse interview team. And a diverse interview loop. And if people tell me, well, we can't find diverse candidates, I want to understand where you're looking because I've got a network, my team has a network. And if you're struggling with finding a network of diverse candidates of perspectives, race, gender, backgrounds, all you have to do is ask a friend or ask me or ask someone. But we have an accountability to do that. And if your audience and your, in your all-hands or your Town halls or your team doesn't reflect your customers, it's going to show up in your results. And I take my results pretty seriously.

Yeah. No, I love that. Very, very practical and straightforward. And there's definitely— there's no excuse to not do anything. We all, like you said—

You said it best, Ed. No excuse. I love it.

All right. Well, we talked about so many things from some awesome topics. I'm going to I'm gonna get my workout later. I'm gonna have to, uh, put on my— I love Aretha Franklin. Uh, I like some, uh, Tina Turner as well. And, uh, and so that's good stuff. And your, your, uh, you know, believe you can, the messaging that you were sending and your life story is just super, super interesting. And, and then all the things that you dropped on us, I have a whole page that I'm referencing of just different wisdom. So we talk a lot about, you know, we talk about Salesforce in health and life sciences. We talked about CRM in general and healthcare. And then we focused a lot of attention just now on leadership. Is there something that you want to double down on, or is there something I missed that you want to share with our audience? I give you the last word.

The only thing I would share, some people may not know. So part of my journey into health, albeit a little unorthodox, the one thing I do enjoy doing is my husband and I picked up professional bodybuilding. As a side hobby, so not only do I lead the healthcare and life sciences business, and I have a passion for what we do, I'm also one that living my values out loud. And so I've competed as a bodybuilder, and that is something that I find that you know back to the mental grit and focus on health and wellness. That's something I have a lot of passion about, and. Gives me energy. It's a lot of work, physical, but more mental than anything. But that's how I knew I belonged in healthcare is because I couldn't let that go. And I love— I get to do this my day job. I believe I have the best job in the world.

That is so awesome. And I love the fact that you do it with your husband, you know, because it gives you that shared experience and time together. And then you can like, you know, pose.

You can arm wrestle a little bit. Pose with each other.

That's awesome. That does not surprise me. Did not know it, but not at all surprising. And now, that's fantastic. So, I'll have to be careful if we're ever at HIMSS together or something. If you're in the gym, I'm leaving because you'll definitely—

No, I'm bringing you back in, Ed. We're going to do this together. We're going to have some fun and get a little training cardio in, lift a couple of weights, and we're going to power the floor when we get to these conferences. But listen, I want to just say thank you again for having me as a guest. I am absolutely honored. I love what you're doing, which is really connecting, being that intersection for all of healthcare leaders and innovators and influencers and having thoughtful conversations. And we're all focused on the same thing, which is improving healthcare around the world. And I'm loving what you're doing, but more importantly, I'm appreciative of your leadership and making it happen every day around the world. So thank you for having me on your show today.

Thank you, LaShonda. You're so kind. And that's a great way to end. So thank you so much. I will definitely see you around the world someplace. So that wraps up Digital Voices. Thank you so much.

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.