The CEO Swap (ft. Gil Peri)

But oftentimes people only tell you the good stuff. So you have to be really skilled at appropriately probing for the opportunities in areas where we're not good. You need to prioritize, but also encourage your teams to tell you their truth.

Yeah.

And understand that the only way we can improve with an improvement culture is for people to share where their opportunities are. People may not remember what you said or what you did, but they're always going to remember how you made them feel. Any leader realizing that how you make people feel, making sure they feel seen, making sure they feel like they belong, is 80% of the battle.

Welcome to Digital Voices, where healthcare and life science leaders explore the real work behind transformation. This podcast is about people, leadership, and the conversations that move healthcare forward. Now your host, Ed Marx. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. I'm with my friend Gil Perry, CEO of Wisconsin Children's. Gil, welcome to Digital Voices.

Thank you for having me.

This is actually the second time, and it's funny, I have to confess, The first time, we have 378 episodes, Gil, and we lost the episode that you and I did together.

It was— hey, this is a retake. It'll be better this time.

Thank you so much for indulging me and doing this a second time. I do remember the first time. It was amazing. We talked a lot about basketball, so we'll have to figure out how to weave that back in. But we met— it was actually a year ago today, and I had the honor of coming to Wisconsin Children's And I did a tour. And I was moved. I remember I was with probably 10 other people, some other local leaders in the community here in Milwaukee. And I remember we were crying. We saw the sacred work— I call it sacred work— that your team was doing. And we were just like, we're so moved. And what you do for the children, not just in Milwaukee, but your catchment area is much broader, is amazing. I wish we had a Gil Perry in Wisconsin children's— Thank you.

That's very kind of you.

Thanks again for your time. And, you know, the most important question we asked last time is the same this time, and that's songs on your playlist. Like, what kind of music do you like to listen to?

A little bit of everything. So, on the way here, it was Fleetwood Mac. Later, it's going to be probably a little bit of Jay-Z and Rihanna. But, depending on the mood, I have a little bit of everything.

Yeah. No, I love that. It's good to have a mix. What about life message and mantra? Are there words that you sort of live by that sort of guide you?

Yeah. a big passion for Maya Angelou, who really emphasized a big part of my leadership style, which is that people may not remember what you said or what you did, but they're always going to remember how you made them feel. And I think especially in healthcare, but any leader realizing that how you make people feel, making sure they feel seen, making sure they feel like they belong is 80% of the battle.

Yeah.

20% we'll figure out. And so I've tried to do that everywhere I've been.

Yeah. And I've seen some of it like on LinkedIn. I know that you spend time rounding and spend time with your teams in all aspects of the hospital. I remember, you know, when we were all starting out in our healthcare careers and to think that, you know, the CEO, let alone a manager or director, comes and engages with you, makes you feel special.

And yeah, it's that. And I do this thing called a CEO swap. And literally I just did it last week. And I got to be the manager of 10 West, which is one of our floors. And she got to run the health system. The only thing she couldn't do was sell the place, but otherwise it was hers. And the opportunity to literally feel, not just typical rounding, but in her shoes.

Yes.

And I got to see an angle that I never got to see, and hopefully she saw the same from my shoes. Every single time, I am amazed by how much teamwork it takes to do healthcare. Literally, that's a through line. I've done this now 15 times since I've been here, never miss a month. It's one of those things that you realize this concept of one team is not just a phrase. That's how we save lives. And so, important to be there.

Love it. Out of those 15 times, is there one memory that you have where someone made a decision that you're like, dang, that was a really good decision. I wish I would have thought of that.

Yeah. One was we had— I switched with the catering manager. And so, one of the caterers, Diane, was the CEO, and I went to go into her role. And then, during debrief, she made some really good suggestions of things that she would do differently. And I'm adopting one of them. One of them is to really listen to our are up-and-comers, first-year team members who are maybe under the age of 25 who think differently about social media and communication. And so it gives me a thought of how do I make sure I'm relevant to all 4 generations that we serve at Children's Wisconsin, not just the traditional.

Yeah, that's cool. I love that. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Gil. Like, what's your story? Like, where did you grow up? Let's start from the beginning.

Yeah, I have an identical twin, first of all. By the way, Ed's our point guard. My brother and I are 6'8. As long as we can throw the alley-oop, we're in good shape. We grew up in Colorado. I have a younger brother as well. First-generation graduates. Both my parents did not go to college. So I learned about hard work early on in my life and how treating people with respect and hard work is a big part of how success happens. And so moved to Florida in high school. My dad's job transferred him. And so we finished high school there and went to college. And as I've grown, I started off in adult health systems, but always knew I wanted to be in pediatrics. And so I had a personal family reason why that was important to us and haven't looked back. Again, nothing against adults, but kids are our future. It's going to be our next technologist, our next bus driver, our next lawyer, our next doctor. And so every single time we impact 7.2 million kids across the state, those are our future. And so honored to serve at this organization.

That's very cool. So let's not leave basketball so quickly though. So yeah, did you play in college?

So my brother and I both walked on for 2 years and realized that it wasn't going to be our future, but we still keep up with those 18-year-olds. As a matter of fact, we played about 6 months ago and it was the 2 of us. And we picked up 3 scrubs. We call them scrubs.

Yeah.

In other words, not really great players. We won 6 games in a row, not because we were better, but because we knew how to play together. So still try and have fun.

Yeah, that's a big key and all the teamwork that's involved. Yeah. So you alluded to the catalyst to choose healthcare. And so you had this catalyst, you had this experience that happened and you've gone to healthcare. And then how did you end up then focusing on children's? I mean, you mentioned already that they are the future. But was there a catalyst for working with children?

Yeah. So early on in my life, I'll give you the quick version. What happened was my brother, my twin, and I were in college. We went to the same school. My parents called and said, hey, you got to come home. Yeah. Your younger brother got pushed down the stairs. He has a spinal stenosis. He's literally in a halo, has shooting pains, withdrawn from school, etc. We didn't know anything what to do. Went to who we thought was the best, University of Miami, said there was going to be a surgery through the neck, 40% risk. Then we finally found an expert who literally sees thousands of these cases. He walks in, all of us are in the exam room really tight. We wanted to hear firsthand what was going on. He said, take off the halo. We're not doing surgery. This will resolve in 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years. I don't know, but we're not taking the risk.

Wow.

That was an early impression about what it means to have somebody who is an expert.

Yes.

And the confidence that he instilled. And so I knew that if I were ever to work in healthcare, it was going to be pediatrics because I want to do that for other families.

Yeah, no, that's super profound. So what are one or two things that you're most proud of so far? Obviously, you have a long ways to go still in your career, but to date, what would you look back on and say, oh, that was pretty cool?

I think I'll start off at Children's Wisconsin. I inherited a jewel. So Peggy Troy was here for 15 years before me, and before her, John Weiss was 26 years. So I'm the 3rd CEO in 45 years. So what I inherited is a jewel. My job is to make it shine even brighter. And so we have a very, very strong culture, and one One of the things I'm most proud of is we're taking steps even forward on that culture and creating a one-team culture where that's our secret sauce. They can work anywhere, but they choose to work at Children's. And our retention rates and the number of team members who've been here over 25 years is just unbelievable. I have a strategy background. And so we're developing a very robust strategy. It's going to be very, very focused on technology. It's going to really enable us. I think you like that.

Yeah.

It's going to enable us to think about being much more anticipatory instead of reactive. We've got the right team in place. Dr. Mansellis, who's our new Chief Information Digital Officer, is on board. His partnership with the physicians and the operators— we're not going to do a traditional model here. So I'm excited about that. And then historically, mental behavioral health has been really important to me as a leader. We know that unfortunately kids are suffering and we have to continue to be bold. And so I've built very aggressive plans on how we address that all the way from screening to inpatient care.

Very cool. I like that. What about hardest decision to date? I mean, as a leader, you have to make some tough decisions. What's one that comes to mind?

So, early in my career, we had to close a program that was just not sustainable. And the program didn't mean that it didn't have good intent, but it wasn't sustainable. And I'll never forget, it was early in my career, so it was really impactful for me. I sat down with a physician leader and he said, this is what I've dedicated my life to. And you're closing the program. And so that was the first time. Now you get tougher skin on explaining the why. But the lesson to me there was you always have to start with the why. When you give context, they may not like the outcome, but when you give context to why things happen, sharing the datasets and the thoughts behind it, they may not like it, but they'll respect the decision. And so I've grown from that, but that was probably the most difficult.

Yeah, that's a tough one. Gil, there's probably people listening or watching now. So, so that's the advantage. The fact that we lost the first take is that now we're doing visual. And people are probably watching thinking, man, I think I'd like to be a hospital CEO one day. What's, what's one word of advice that you might give someone who's thinking about, you know, maybe I should look at that as a career?

It's, I think, one of the most rewarding careers you can participate in. I think the advice I would give you is spend the hours really understanding a health system. Hospital administrators on TV and kind of in general seem to be kind of the business people.

Yes.

Yes, we have to have that skill set. You have to be people people. If you're not a people person, that means connecting with patients and families in a meaningful way, connecting with team members who report to you, really connecting with the community. I just got done meeting with a legislator. I have to connect with people. And so, um, it's very rewarding as long as you get energy from connecting with people and, uh, um, really creating a vision for what could potentially happen for kids.

Yeah, no, that's good. And the emphasis on the people part, because I think oftentimes we forget that, you know, and that is sort of the key, uh, to all success. We've talked around Wisconsin Children's a little bit. Let's, let's talk more in depth. Tell us one or two more things about the best part. You know, you mentioned 7.2 million kids that you impact. In the state. What else? What else is special about Wisconsin Children's?

So we have, we're the only children's health system in the state of Wisconsin. And that's unique. Ohio has 5, for example, that are freestanding dedicated. We're independent children's hospital, which means that we, I report right to the board and I can literally as an executive team make a decision on a Monday and execute on Tuesday.

Ah, nice.

All capital, 100% dedicated to kids. So you don't have to worry about arguing over who gets what capital. Yeah. And we can be as bullish and bold as possible on what kids need. The other thing I'm really proud of here at Children's is we don't only focus on inpatient care or outpatient care. So not just injury and disease, we try and prevent it. 800 of our 8,000 team members never walk into any of our inpatient or outpatient buildings. They're working on prevention. They're in the schools as nurses or athletic trainers, mental health professionals, working on housing insecurity. We run the social service agency for the state of Wisconsin.

Wow.

Adoptions all come through us. Foster care all comes through us. And so we are so much more than a hospital. And that's why we call it Children's Wisconsin, we're a health system. So I'm really proud on how we're trying to prevent injury and disease, not just treat it.

Yeah, no, I love that. That is very unique. Let's go back to being a hospital CEO again. So what is one thing most people wouldn't know about being— I think you already mentioned one really is the people, people part. But anything else that might be of interest to someone thinking about?

I would say in general, and this is not only in the hospital CEO, I think in general, as you grow in your career, it gets very lonely. And what I mean by that, not that I don't have friends and family, of course, but oftentimes people only tell you the good stuff. And so, you have to be really skilled at appropriately probing for the opportunities in the areas where we're not good. And I understand when I was growing in my career, I used to see the CEO and I used to get nervous.

Of course.

One time, I actually had a CEO tell me, Gil, what are you working on? And I literally listed 17 things, Ed. And he looked me square in the eye. He goes, you're working on nothing. I'll never forget, his name is Steve Allen. He's now, he's retired, but he's in Utah. And the lesson, I actually saw him a couple months ago, the lesson is you have to prioritize.

Yeah.

If you're not doing 3 or 4 things well and deep, you're not doing what kids need. And so I've taken that lesson from 25 years ago and continue to identify that you need to prioritize, but also encourage your teams to tell you their truth and understand that the only way we can improve with an improvement culture is for people to share where their opportunities are.

Yeah, that's great. You're a wonderful person to work with. I know because I have friends that work for you and are on your team. And to have a CEO who's that open and knows that they need the truth and want people to be very forthcoming and authentic, that's pretty special. So obviously, you have to balance many needs as a CEO. You have a staff, requirements, medical staff, you have patients, their families, you have the state, the legislature that you just met with. I think I already mentioned clinicians. How do you balance all those different needs and try to make everyone feel heard?

So I think the most important 2 roles of a CEO is to be a sensemaker and a culture influencer. And that's literally across industries. And so what I do is I just make sure that the right teams are in place to be able to take care of all 4 of our stakeholder groups. And we're very specific. We have 4 stakeholder groups. We don't apologize for them. Number 1 is team members. We call our employees team members. Number 2 is patients and families. Number 3 is referring physicians. 86% of what comes to a hospital, you can't just walk in. You actually have to be sent there. So that's a really important stakeholder group. And number 4 is the community, and that's government relations and donors and all those individuals. So if you really take those 4 stakeholder groups seriously, you put your structures and processes in place to make sure that you care for those populations. And so, I have a great team. All 4 of those groups are taken care of. And then I make sure that I round in a balanced approach. So, I'm not spending too much time with one and not the others. And of course, during crisis or during challenging times, you have to shift. But I very purposely make sure that my calendar allows me to be engaged and understand what's relevant to each of those stakeholder groups.

That's very cool. You need to write a book on all this stuff. You're giving a great handbook of lessons. For any leader. So you mentioned technology already. You talked about, hey, you're working on a strategy that's way differentiated, and a key component of that is technology. So what's your view on technology in healthcare, and where do you think we're headed?

Yeah, I'm really excited about where we're headed. We have now really strong leadership in this space, and so I'm excited to see what they do. The direction we're setting is that we're going to continue to write the book in pediatrics. Children's Wisconsin literally wrote the book in pediatrics. all the medical students across the country. There's 2 pediatric books that they use. 4 of the authors are from Children's Wisconsin.

Wow.

And so that's historical books. And now we're going to write the next book. And the idea is we can't be satisfied. We can't be satisfied that we have the same learnings or ability to care for kids the way we have today. Technology is going to do 2 things for us. One is it's going to enable some efficiencies so that I can allow my team members to get back to what they really want to do to bring joy to their life.

Yeah.

And it's not just at work where they can spend more time with their teams or the patients, but maybe they can go to a soccer game that they weren't able to go to because technology is now assisting them to be able to be more efficient. So efficiency is one area that I'm really excited. The bigger area that I'm most excited about is our ability to be more precise. And so one thing is efficiency. Another thing is precision. Radiology is an example, or any of our clinical domains. Technology is going to enable us to be much more thoughtful and spend time thinking about the more constructive and the more difficult questions versus the superficial questions. And so, with technology, we're going to be able to get deeper and ultimately patients benefit when you have a deeper answer and a more precise answer that's reliable. So, I'm excited for both efficiencies and then the depth of what technology is going to allow us to do.

No, I love that. And, you just gave me this idea. I'm just going to throw it out there right now kind of live on our channel. So I've done a series of books called Voices of Innovation. And one was focused on AI. One was focused on payers. 2 of them were generally focused. And now I've been asked to do focused on continents. So we did one for Europe, came out in May. We have Latin America in play. We have Canada. But I was just thinking, we need to do one on pediatrics. And we need you to be a forward— I'm in.

Author of that. I love that. Count us in.

All right.

We're writing the book here at Children's Wisconsin. So we'll do it together.

That's what I'm hearing. That's why I picked up on it in that history and that innovation and you being a progressive CEO. I definitely want you being, you know, front and center on it. And all the royalties for that book will be to Children's Wisconsin.

Oh, well, that's very kind of you.

So, all right, let's keep going. But I just had that thought and sense and I wanted to break it here. All right. So, let's talk about ideal relationship between CEO and CIO. Sometimes it's contentious and it can be a difficult relationship. So, I know a lot of my listeners that come from the CIO side, they're always asking, wow, Ed, how do you maintain a great relationship with CEO? But it's better to ask a CEO that in reverse.

So, how do you see that? Both have to come from a place of curiosity. That's the number one ingredient. If you have a CIO or a CEO who thinks they already know everything, you're done. You have to both be continuous learners, understanding that the field is moving in a very challenging direction and exciting direction at the same time. The second is you have to really make sure that you understand where the there there is. And what I mean by that is, as a CEO, oftentimes we can think of technology as a black hole. You don't know where does it start, where does it end, and when you hear the word, all you think of is black hole. And as a CIO, you want to make sure that you're You're applying technology wherever you can advance the mission. And so, just understanding what are the priorities. And in my experience, what I've learned is when you point technology at strategic and operational problems, you win.

Yes.

Versus just the technology for the sake of technology. And so, very, very focused on saying, these are the problems that we need to solve in the next 3 years. Now, let's point technology versus having an open ocean of technology that maybe you get an inch deep. So, really trying to focus and having a CIO who's also strategic is helpful.

Yeah. And a clinician and a great person.

Yeah, he is.

In your case specifically. Yeah. So, let's shift now this last third to talk about leadership. When was the moment you first realized you were a leader? Was there a time when you're in your youth, you're like, well, I might be a leader, or how did it happen?

I think early on, my father used to be— he started off as an entry-level mechanic in airline industry, ended up becoming vice president. And every Saturday, he would take us to work. And he would put us in a golf cart. And he would drive a little golf cart around to be able to show the mechanics that they also belong in their scene. And early on, I said, I want to be able to show people that they belong in their scene.

Yeah.

And so that was kind of an early impression. But then once I knew kind of the direction I wanted to head as far as being in healthcare, I knew I wanted to do more. pretty quickly once I started because I saw so much opportunity for efficiency, so much opportunity to set teams up for success. I'm a pretty solution-focused, optimistic guy. And so, I knew that I could potentially leverage those. I would not be sitting here without the mentors in my life.

Yeah.

Literally, I could spend 2 hours telling you exactly what each person has done to allow me. And so, having the humble expertise and knowing that we're not done learning, hopefully, I'll be a better CEO next year than I today. Yeah, because I'm gonna learn from people like you and others.

And speaking of which, what, what things did you learn recently, like in the last couple years, maybe since you've been at Children's Wisconsin, that you wish you had learned a lot earlier?

Yeah, I think one of the most important things is pace. It's been a challenge for me in my career. I like to go fast because I think there's opportunity that is waiting. And so again, making sure that you focus and be able to go deep versus wide is really important. It's something I still continue to work on. My team knows I've gotten a lot better, but I'm not where I need to be. In the last 5 years, I would say getting really good at third-level questions. And so, not the obvious question or even the second-variable question, third-level questions, which really bring in multiple variables to really come from a place of understanding. I think CEOs, any leader, should be able to ask that level of questions.

Yeah.

Not one that can be a yes/no answer, but one that's very thoughtful. That looks at a 360 view versus just one variable.

Yeah. It just reminds me of interactions I had with my CEO in the past. And he would ask those third-level questions. I was like, dang, that's a brilliant question. And I wanted to learn that same mindset, like how to ask that. How do you recharge and refresh your batteries? Obviously, you talked about pace, but you also have family. And you also know for your own personal wellness that you need time to rest. So how do you do that?

I just put parameters in place. And so I still work a 50, 60-hour week. Every week, never less than that. I like to share my parameters with my team. I'm not shy about them. And so, twice a week, I'm home eating dinner with my family by 5:45. Other 2 nights a week, my assistant knows she can have me out till 10 o'clock at night.

Yeah.

Tonight, I'll be out till 10. No problem. I'm always in the office between 7:00 and 7:30, never later than that. I work out at 5:15 in the morning. Saturdays, I don't work. And then, on Sundays, at 4 o'clock, my family knows I got to get And so, I have a purple folder. My assistant puts it together with all the items I need to review, anything I need to sign, my handwritten note file, 7 to 10 handwritten notes every Sunday.

Nice.

I hand it back to her on Monday and we're off and running. So, what I say is I was not always good at that and I almost burned out about 15 years ago. But, when you put parameters in, you can be good at work and at home. And so, and it doesn't mean you're cutting corners, it just means you're putting parameters in to be successful. Both places. Yeah.

Do you still shoot hoops?

I do. I'm a, I'm a lefty. I've got a decent 3-point shot. You wanna throw me the alley-oop?

I know. I was thinking about it. I was like looking around.

Do we bring a basket?

Let's do it. I think next time what we do, when we do our launch of the book, we'll definitely play. Okay.

There you go.

Yeah.

That's right.

I'll have to play you in, in horse or something. Maybe, maybe I have a chance.

I like that idea. All right.

We'll do it.

So, wow.

In the last about 30 minutes, we talked about so many things. We talked about how we first met and music We talked about Miangelo and how remembering how you make people feel is better than what you might say or do. And then we talked about your growth, your upbringing, how you got into healthcare, and some profound things that happened with your brother that led you down the path to pediatrics. And then we talked a lot about, hey, what is it? What do you need to do to become a hospital CEO such as yourself? And then what it's like being a hospital CEO. And then gave recommendations on leadership and the things that you learned along the way. And really covered a whole gamut of things. I mean, so much, like I have a whole page, couple of pages here of notes. What did we miss, Gil, or anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word.

Yeah, I think serving in healthcare is a privilege. We get to see patients and families at their most challenging time and ones oftentimes that they never expect to have. And so leading with heart and with mind is critical. And so, you know, to those who are working in healthcare now or who aspire to work in healthcare, it's a privilege. It's not a title. It's not a paycheck. It's not a job scope, it's a privilege. And so, continue to focus on leading with mind and heart, and you can't go wrong.

I love that. Great way to wrap up this edition of Digital Voices. Gil, thank you so much for being my guest. You're an amazing leader and person.

Thank you. I appreciate it very much.

Thank you for listening to Digital Voices. We hope today's conversation sparked ideas, reflection, and connection. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify Podcasts so you don't miss an episode.