Making an Impact at Scale (ft. Greg Aaron)

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. Welcome to Digital Voices. We're a voice for everyone in the healthcare continuum from payers, providers, retail, pharma, Biotech. I always want to make sure I don't miss anyone, anyone, but it's— we're here for everyone who wants to learn more, go deeper. And we're going to have a great time with this drop because not only is it someone who has great insights, but also a friend of mine, Greg Aaron. Greg, welcome to Digital Voices.

Thanks for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

Greg, you are the Global Vice President, General Manager, Investor-Owned and Emerging Markets of Oracle.

Group Vice President. But yes, thank you for giving me the global scope.

Yeah, I wanted to give you a promotion, you know, because it's gonna be so awesome. The people at Oracle are gonna be like, yes, definitely global. But, you know, when I think about you, you're really, you know, when I think about your career, it's really all about innovation, you know, healthcare-specific cloud leadership, disruptor, doing cool things, and just a generally nice guy. So super thrilled to have you. And I was thinking back, Greg, when we first met, I'm thinking it goes back to your Microsoft days, maybe. Is it 20 years?

Maybe. I think it's been every bit of 20 years. Yeah, we were both a lot younger, a little more hair, certainly less gray.

Yeah. Yeah. And I remember that because you were doing a lot of leadership things at Microsoft and I was on an advisory board and we got to know each other and then we would see each other at conferences and we just kept up to date. over the years. We got together recently and just got reconnected. It was really cool. So I was like, I got to have Greg on Digital Voices given, you know, everything that he does. So thanks for being with us. And Greg, the first question we ask is, what are the songs on your playlist? And everyone wants to know, you know, like, what kind of music do you like to listen to?

You know, I read a quote once that said music is what feelings sound like.

Mm-hmm.

And I think, you know, for me personally, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a hacky musician. I'm an audio engineer, you know, so, so my playlist is pretty highly dependent on how I feel or how I choose to feel, frankly. So I'm— but I'm always looking for things that are interesting mixes. You know, I love good drums. I love great guitar. I love piano. Honestly, genre-wise, I can go from, you know, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller in the '40s up through, you know, Bob Dylan and the Beatles in the '60s or Elton John. Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard. You know, honestly, this will sound a bit patronizing, but, you know, some of the music that Austin has dropped recently is just— I mean, it speaks to you, the storytelling.

Yeah.

He seems to have a desire to drop a lot of drums in his mixes as well. And so, you know, just, I love listening to Bailey Zimmerman and some of the music that Austin's put out as well. But yeah, I'm kind of— I go with the moment. If I had to pick, It would probably be just a, you know, modern country mix.

Yeah.

With a little bit of blues, a little bit of '70s. You know, honestly, what I love to do— I have so much music on my, on my device that I just hit play. And it may be a '70s song that pops out, maybe a '90s song. You can't go wrong with, let's just say, Bob Dylan.

Right. No, no, that's cool. But you mentioned that you were fiddling around a little bit with, uh, instruments. What kind of, uh, instruments do you like to play with the most?

Well, so I played, um, brass growing up, so trumpet, uh, French horn, baritone. Um, I, I played guitar most of my life, give or take. Play is a, you know, cowboy chord kind of stuff, you know, for myself. Uh, I picked up piano during COVID So that was my, my treat for myself. I'm going to be home, I'm going to have time to practice. I became a piano player. And then probably my favorite thing the last 10 years or so is I've learned to play the soundboard. And so yes, I know what all the knobs and dials and buttons do. And I just, I enjoy mixing a band now.

Yeah. So you go down to Nashville, hook up with my son Austin, and you'll be producing some modern country.

Oh, I don't think I'm anywhere in the league of Austin. But I'd love to spend some time with him and learn.

Yeah, that'd be— that is fun spending a day in a studio. Uh, what about your life message or mantra? Are there words that sort of guide you?

You know, I— so like, we recently had, um, New Year's, and I'm not a big resolutions kind of guy, um, but, but I do try to pick a word each year that sort of defines me. And, you know, I've used words like intentional, I've used words like integrity, uh, faith, family. So, those are probably the ones. If I had to kind of nail one thing down for today, I would say that I'm going to have a good day today because I choose to. That's my choice.

Yeah.

You can't control what's going to happen to you, but you can control how you're going to react to it. So, I'll go with that.

Yeah, I love that. You've mentioned that a couple of times already, and I think it's a great reminder that we are not victims, right? We can make choices even in difficult situations that might happen to us. We can be resilient and make some good choices. Greg, you're a fascinating person. We've just touched the surface. I want to go a little deeper. Can you share a little bit about your story, personal, professional? You know, I know I forgot to say on top, you know, you're a great dad, you're a husband, you and your wife have been married a long time. Tell us a little bit about your story.

Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, so if I leaned into the professional side a little bit, I sort of break my career down into 4 phases. So I started off, I call it the foundation. So military. So I had the, the honor to serve in both the Army Reserves and the U.S. Air Force active duty. In the Army Reserves, I was an OR tech, 91 Delta, Fort Sam Houston.

Yep.

You know, climb the hill. But in the Air Force, they moved me into an electronics and technology kind of role. And so it sort of became the foundation of all that I am today. Once I completed my service period, I got a role working in a busy retina practice. And so I became an ophthalmic ultrasonographer. I became a first assistant in surgery, and that kind of moved me through phase 1 of my career. Phase 2, I had an opportunity to take my surgery and technology experience and move into consulting. For a company called Atwork Corporation back in the day, Per Se Technologies, on to be a part of the McKesson family today, I believe. And so, I got to travel the world. I got to implement systems, scheduling and surgery, perioperative charting, those types of things were sort of my core implementation. And that's sort of where I grew up into leadership roles. I became a VP of implementation, got a chance to try my hand at product management, and then ultimately got the call. We were acquired by Harvey Wilson over at Eclipsys. And so I moved over to the Eclipsys team initially to try to figure out how to put all of these applications together under the Sunrise family, ultimately becoming their CTO. So, that was sort of the end of phase 2. Phase 3 was sort of a shift to big tech. You know, we mentioned Microsoft earlier, and, you know, even though that's 20 years ago, so I've dated myself pretty strongly already. But I've had the opportunities to work for a couple of big techs. So, Microsoft for a number of years in their healthcare business, Cisco, and then, you know, most recently here at Oracle where I've been the last few years. You know, across this whole part of my career, Phase 4 is sort of where we're today, so I'll come there. But I've really been just blessed with the opportunity to work with some of the guys that— guys and gals that really built the industry that we are all in today. You know, guys like John Holton, Michael Warner, Walter Huff, the H in HBOC.

Yeah.

Bill Childs, who, you know, with Technicon Data Systems kind of got it all started back in the '60s. And of course, Harvey over at Eclipsys. I had opportunities to work with Gates and Ballmer at Microsoft. I had the chance to work with Peter Neupert, who is just a fascinating man, even still today with his vision and what we were trying to do with Microsoft, with HealthVault and Amalga and some of those things. John Chambers over at Cisco, just great passion and vision for healthcare. So, that sort of took me to today. So, here at Oracle, you know, I get a tap on the shoulder that says, hey, we've got some big stuff coming and, you know, you've got some unique skills to help out. So I got the opportunity to kind of be on the inside of the decision to acquire Cerner. I got to be part of that acquisition integration team and sort of bring those 2 organizations together, which led to this opportunity that I have now today here as part of the the Oracle Health team, as we call it now, running the investor-owned business.

No, that's awesome. And then, yeah, on the personal side, you've been married for quite some time and have a daughter. And yeah, you just—

Yeah, son and daughter. My wife and I have been together for 23 years. Well, we've been married 23, together a little longer than that. She is amazing. I'll probably talk about her a little bit later when you talk about work-life balance and stuff.

Yeah, for sure.

And, you know, I have an amazing daughter, Kayla, that we adopted from China going on 17 years ago now, and a 20-year-old, almost 21-year-old son that has also started his career in tech. So, yeah, I'm very fortunate on the family side for sure.

Yeah. We'll definitely come back to that when we talk a little bit about blending it all in. So, what role— you described all these different roles, the 4 phases very well. Was there a particular role a while back that sort of set the tone for the future? You know, because you mentioned all these great leaders, amazing resume of leaders that you had an opportunity to serve with. But was there one in particular that helped shape who you are today?

You know, it honestly was probably— I go way back to John Holton. He really recognized, you know, this kid because I really was literally a kid at the time. I couldn't rent a car when I first started traveling and doing implementations. And sort of gave me that chance and said, you know, you get the big picture in a very unique way, and that'll serve you well across your career. So, you know, John probably was the guy that really helped me get my start and launched my confidence and my opportunity to grow. But I think just serving in the implementation capacity, you know, there's nothing better than, you know, I could probably name hundreds of individual company customers that I've worked with hospital systems around the globe where I've learned so much from the doctors and nurses and CFOs and, you know, other parts of the business to how healthcare runs today and where some of the gaps are. So, I've been very blessed to have gotten exposed to a lot of the industry. It's been helpful.

Yeah. What about your job title? So, I mentioned your job title. You know, well, instead of global, we made it group. But tell us a little bit about your role today. So what, you know, you talk about how you, what you've been doing and helped with the Cerner acquisition. But today, generally, like, what are some of the things that you're responsible for? Yeah.

So in the context of the vendor, right? So we're sitting on the vendor side of, you know, the healthcare equation. We will segment out our organizations to to be better aligned with our clients or our customers. And so I lead a group called the Investor-Owned Segment. So I have the client relationship leaders, consulting, sales, etc., as part of that piece. Investor-owned, it's probably self-explanatory. You know, back in the old days, we might have said, you know, it's the for-profits.

Yeah.

I don't love that because I, as I've gotten to know this segment, while profit is certainly a part of what they do. It's really still primarily focused on delivering good care.

Right.

And taking care of the people under their charge. But it's sort of, it's large IDNs. It is big labs. It is dialysis. It's big behavioral health, inpatient rehab. Now with the acquisition by Oracle and as part of Oracle Health, You know, we're exploring what this looks like for us in the payer segment and retail healthcare and some of those things. Oracle brings a lot of assets to the table. They do member enrollment, premium billing, claims management for payers. We do about half the premium billing today in the US. So, we have a lot more assets to sort of bring to the conversation. And in the investor-owned space, They seem to sort of get it right now that we're no longer just the EMR conversation. This is about helping the entire system. So whether it's your financials in the backend, the supply chain, the human capital side of this, you know, or certainly core clinicals, revenue cycle, all of these elements sort of coming together under a single umbrella gives us a great opportunity to make a difference.

Yeah, it makes total sense. You know, I always think about sort of the big platforms. I'm all about the platform. And, you know, there's an ERP, which of course Oracle, fabulous history. There's a CRM, again, Oracle. Now you have the EMR, Oracle. And then I would argue that there's a virtual care platform coming. Today it's bifurcated or in many, many different pieces. I think a platform is coming. Yeah, so it is nice that there's an organization, you know, that has the assets, as you say, and put it all together. I imagine your Eclipsys experience, you know, as a CTO, Greg, probably came in pretty handy, and maybe one of the reasons you were tapped for your role was, hey, we have someone here who's got a lot of this EMR experience.

Yeah, we have a lot of people here at Oracle, and there was an Oracle Health division prior to the Cerner acquisition as well. That's where we learned a lot about our potential to make a difference. You know, COVID hit. We have a moral obligation to go do something. We launched the v-safe application through our legacy Oracle Health team where we, you know, essentially gave the world an opportunity to track vaccine registration and track how things are going at a global scale across, in the US, 59 or so jurisdictions. of vaccine registry today. So that sort of got us really interested in what we could do if we didn't just dip our toe in. You know, other companies, we— and I've been part of those other companies, you would try to tackle one thing, consumer health, or the data problem or something.

Yeah.

And it generally was difficult because you weren't— you couldn't kind of wrap your head around the entirety of the problem. We were given the opportunity to really just jump in all the way with this acquisition. And what a wonderful company. But yeah, my time at Cerner, it's interesting because in this role, I've gone out and met with all of my customers that are sort of under my charter. And a lot of them I already knew.

Yeah, right.

There were people, maybe it was a CIO at a different health system that's now over at this health system. And, you know, you kind of walk in and go, oh my gosh, what are you doing here?

Yeah.

They say the same. So it certainly was familiar ground. And I've had a ton of respect for just— I think for me, it was easy because of my appreciation for what it took for Neil Patterson, for example, here at Cerner to take the company to where it is.

Yeah.

Or Neil Popalardo and what he's done with Meditech or what Judy's done with Epic.

Yeah.

And so I kind of come in with a healthy respect for the for the scope of the issue, but also an understanding of what big tech can do when they really put their energy behind it.

Yeah.

So that's what made this kind of come together for me anyway.

Yeah, yeah. And you're a great person and leader, and I'm so glad that you're in the role that you are in. So let's shift a little bit about life as a senior executive. So you do have this amazing career that we've gone through. And I know you on a personal basis and you're equally successful on the personal side. How do you do it? What advice do you have for people who might be struggling?

Well, I mean, for me, the best advice was to marry well. So, I put it on Jessica. I give her credit for just both my career success as well as my personal life. She keeps me anchored in humility in a good way.

Yeah.

She's been the champion of our family. She's our CFO, she's our marketing VP, she's our event planner. She sacrifices herself every day. But probably the most important thing— pardon me— the most important thing is just that she keeps us anchored in serving a greater thing than us. And so whether it's our work with the with homeless or addiction recovery folks, just bringing a meal or going to a camp and helping out, or whether it's our work with the Miracle League, which is, you know, serves— I coach a baseball team, or my wife and I coach a baseball team for kids with disabilities. And, you know, it just keeps us anchored in what's really important.

Yeah.

And I think that makes me more successful as a whole person.

Yeah. No, that sounds good. And what about any techniques that you use to ensure the elusive work-life balance or life integration? Because you got a super big job, you always have had those, and there's got to be some techniques that you do utilize that help you with that, manage that.

They say if you love what you do, it's not really work.

Yeah.

And so, there's a bit of that for me. I mean, we do have the challenges of travel and being away from home and the occasional missed event. So, I think for me, part of the balance is intentionality. And so, when I'm home, I'm home. I remember a Christmas gift one year from my wife was 52 dates. And I didn't just say, hey, here's 52 dates.

Yeah.

I looked at the calendar and for a year I said, oh, in this December we're going to Biltmore for Christmas. You know, we're going to go to the CMA Fest in Nashville. We're going to, you know, do this cooking class in September. We're going to do this and just trying to— sometimes it was just a movie night. Sometimes it was stay at home and cook at home. But just creating that intentionality sort of gives me You know, a good balance overall.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, my— what's funny with, uh, Simran and I, we speak whenever I'm traveling. We speak for an hour on the phone, you know, each evening. And, uh, and then when I'm at home, you know, I sort of count up the time that we actually spend together together, and I think it's less, you know. So, so in some ways you could, you can make it into a strength that, you know, if you, if you use techniques, you know, like your 52-date techniques, there's, there's different things. But I found it really interesting. In terms of like how much time do you spend together, like quality time, even when you're together physically?

Right.

And what about advice for mid-level leaders who are looking to reach sort of that next level? I mean, like you, I mean, look at you, Greg. Yeah, I know you're a very humble person, but, you know, you have these very esteemed roles in these very esteemed companies. There's a lot of people listening that are like, I'd like to be like Greg someday in your type of role. Are there one or two pieces of advice you would give someone?

Yeah, I've always heard you dress for the role you want to be in. Yeah, I actually think that there's— call it a dress rehearsal, and that's maybe a little bit of a better truth. If I want to be a general manager or a vice president, then work like you are, at least wherever possible. You know, if you're part of a matrix organization and you want to be a people leader, or a people manager, then be a leader in your matrix organization. And when you demonstrate the ability where folks are going to follow you, even though they don't report to you, then it becomes sort of a natural next step for, you know, the direct reports to come and then all the other things that go with it. So I think you just, you have a vision of where you want to be and you go execute that against that. Think about it like you're in that role. So when my leaders on my team today bring me an issue, they try to bring me the answer key as well.

Yeah.

To say, look, I'm thinking about this like you are, and here's what's going to impact the P&L. Here's what's going to impact employee satisfaction. Here's what's going to impact customer satisfaction. And really think through it at that level.

Greg, I asked for 1 or 2. You just dropped like 5 or 6. Oh, really good things there. And you're right. You know, in fact, I had lunch today with a couple of individuals in my organization and I gave them something very similar. And I was like, you know, go out and make a plan like if you were the CEO and then deliver that plan and show us the plan and then execute, you know, execute on things and have that vision, all that kind of stuff. It's really important that people do it because it's really easy to complain. And I like what you said. You didn't say it in quite these words, but you basically said you have the culture where you bring solutions, not problems. So, people, yeah, that's the way to do it. That's awesome. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about leadership. What is one or two of the most important pieces of advice someone gave you?

You know, this will sound a little cheeky, but the phrase was, be brief, Be brilliant, be gone.

Nice.

And it's really about brevity. So I remember I was getting ready to brief Steve Ballmer. I was briefing Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft at the time, on a customer one-on-one. So I'm standing in his office. We're gonna do a quick, you know, stand-up 5-minute pre-brief and then walk over to the customer. And I had my briefing document and it was in his hands, you know, that I had painstakingly prepared, you know, 9 pages of, you know, And I asked him, I said, you know, so you have the briefing document, do you have any questions? And he said, do you not know what the word brief means? And that really kind of stuck with me. It actually worked because I think we overexplain.

Yeah.

And how can we just figure out what's the most important outcome of this interaction and focus on that?

Yeah, no, I love it. I learned the same thing as a mid-level Army leader. We were both in the military. I mean, when I was an officer, to get to company grade, which is like a lieutenant captain, to a field grade like major or lieutenant colonel, you had to go through these leadership courses. And one thing we learned was the BLUF, bottom line up front. And we learned how to brief generals and, you know, in the department, DOD and everything. And basically, if you could be very succinct and brief, You might only have to brief for 30 seconds, for 1 minute. But if they detected, like, you know, your brief, you weren't prepared, the briefing wasn't brief, you were going way too long, they're going to keep finding holes and holes and holes in it. So, it really meant a lot if you could learn that art. So, that's really good advice. I like that a lot. How do you recharge your batteries and remain fresh? You kind of alluded to some of this already, I think, you know, with music and with your family. But is there anything else that you do? Even though you enjoy your work, you know, there's things that everyone needs a little bit of downtime.

What are—

how do you do it?

Yeah, so I have the opportunity to run front of house, which is kind of the main sound guy at my church. And so I do that 2 or 3 times a month, and it sort of makes me think with a whole different part of my brain. Right? So I come in and it's about art. It's about worship. For in my case, it's about worship. It's about musicality. And so I'm listening for all of these different instruments and how does the mix fit together? And if the guitar player's off, what can I balance in, you know, this week for those types of things?

Yeah.

And so it's sort of— I come out of those times like renewed and focused to tackle another issue that maybe I'm having in the office or Or what have you. And then just that delight of being able to make a room, uh, sound, you know, I would say amazing, but that would be, you know, I don't, I don't know if it's amazing, uh, but it at least, uh, passes by. Yeah, right.

Or it creates that worship environment that you're really trying to get. Um, so that's cool, Greg. We talked about a lot of things, everything from how long we've known each other, but we talked a lot about music and Your family. We talked a lot about, you know, your new role in Oracle, specifically related to Cerner and how that all makes sense and came together. Talk a lot about your sort of your maturation as a leader. It was very interesting just the way that you had it organized and the different things that you learned. And then you gave us a lot of good ideas about our own leadership and how to grow and help others. And then how you yourself sort of have that integrated life, try to balance things out a little bit. Is there something that we missed talking about or something that we did talk about that you'd like to double down on?

You know, I think we're at an inflection point in our industry, right? So, we're just coming off of a global pandemic and humanity, you know, the memory of humanity is pretty short-lived. And so, I also think we're at an inflection point in technology. You know, I read, you know, ChatGPT passed the medical licensure exam.

Yeah.

And so there seems to be this great opportunity for technology to finally make an impact at scale. And I think for us, that's our mission, is to really You know, how do we improve health globally? How do we reduce costs? How do we unleash innovation for the good of the patients, the caregivers, for public health, for mental health? We could do a whole segment on, you know, the second pandemic around mental health. And, you know, we've got some great customers doing some wonderful things in that space. And, you know, so for me, this is sort of the mission is, you know, it is what it's always been, which is how do we apply technology to make the system better? But I think the focus is different for us now. It's not about charge capture. It's not, you know, I'm so disappointed when we hear that physicians spend, you know, 2 hours charting for every hour of patient care and things like that.

Totally.

So, how do we take all of the good that technology has brought to the consumer space and AI/ML and all those things? And let's just advance healthcare with better information. Let's improve health globally. Let's reduce costs. Let's unleash innovation in a way that we've never seen before. So, we're really excited about this opportunity, and I feel like it's different this time.

Yeah. Hey, Greg, thanks for being our guest. That's a great call to action. I really appreciate your friendship over all these years and your leadership. Thank you so much.

Likewise, Ed. It's great to be here. Thanks again.

Hey, that wraps up Digital Voices.

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