United Healthcare CEO Tragic Death & Leadership Lessons

Welcome to SLN on the Strategic Leadership News Network podcast. Dr. Murray, our host, will extract strategic leadership do's and don'ts from news stories and current events to help business leaders accelerate their strategic implementation. Now here is Dr. Murray with today's episode with strategic leadership insights from today's hot news topics. To help you reach strategic goals and vision fast. Let's lock it in.

This is Walter Murray here. I'm back with another episode of Strategic Leadership News. News that you can use to help you accelerate your strategy implementation and your strategic leadership. You know what we do here on SLN, Strategic Leadership News. We look for news stories news events in the current news cycle, as current as possible. And we try to extract from it stories that have some type of connection or relationship to leaders or leadership strategy implementation, business corporate strategy. And we try to use that as a platform to discuss ways that you and I as business owners and business leaders could help to accelerate our own business strategy. And this past week, there was a news story that couldn't have been more directly related to leaders and leadership. You've heard the story, I'm sure, about Bryan Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth, and how he was gunned down on the streets of New York. Man, there's some cold streets up in that New York City, man. Some cold-blooded, I mean, he was just leaving, I think the way the news story video showed it. He was apparently early morning leaving his, you know, I guess getting his early morning coffee or whatever. And no doubt probably figuring out what his agenda was going to be for that day, what urgent matters needed to be handled. And so Dude's leaving there, maybe walking to his hotel or his office or whatever. And this assassin comes up behind them at a cold-blooded point-blank range. It blows him dead, man. That was some cold. That was some cold. You know what I'm talking about, right? You know, um, I mean, it's just, it just, it just kind of goes, and this is not necessarily a leadership, uh, I'm going to divert here for a minute. This is not really a leadership thing per se. But it just goes to show you, man, that life is uncertain, right? Everybody knows that they're going to die, right? Nobody knows when you're going to die. But the how, the how is so kind of unpredictable, man. I mean, I know I'm going to die. And I'm thinking in my mind, I'm probably going to die from some disease, old age, or something like that. But in my imaginations, I would never think that someone's going to blow me away from the back, point-blank range, right? Investigators, the authorities are working on this theory, right, that this assassination had something to do with UnitedHealthcare and other medical insurance companies, you know, their tendency and their pattern It's a well-documented pattern of denying claims that policyholders make. Now, hey, look, there was a study done, we'll put the information up on the screen here, but there was a study done that showed that within the last 12 months, a high percentage of Americans have had a claim denied, right? So there's an issue, there's an issue going on here, right? And as a leader of an organization that is making these clean denials, there's where that connection to leadership comes in, right? Now, absolutely no condoning of the assassin's methodology or strategy for resolving that issue, right? And that's what we're going to talk about a little bit later on is how do you resolve disagreements? So they're working on this theory, the authorities, that because they saw some shell casings with the words deny, depose, and defend on them, that the assassin was sending a message. And those words come from a book called Delay, Deny, Defend, which is a critique of insurance companies for allegedly profiting from policyholders by delaying and denying claims. And that's systemic, that's an established business model, right? I'll talk a little bit later about why that is a business model. But I mean, when a claim, when a medical claim is denied, I mean, it could put a person in dire straits, right? Either they get stuck with a medical bill the insurance company doesn't pay, And I've seen cases personally, you know, of cases where medical bills were so high that the person had to file bankruptcy, disrupted their entire financial agenda for themselves, et cetera. So either that happens or the claim is denied or, you know, it's what's called a preauthorization is denied. And so the patient, somebody's mom, somebody's son, daughter, husband, wife, that patient is denied medical care. And in some cases, they're in a terminal, terminally ill situation. People have died. Put it bluntly, people have died because insurance companies have not authorized claims or authorized treatments. Look, there is some angst there, right? Um, but even, even if this assassin, right, even if this assassin had such a desperate situation, I mean, this cold-blooded murder, that's not how civilized societies handle disagreements, right? I mean, that's, that's, that's barbaric. That's savagery, right? But then again, you kind of have to ask yourself, really, really, how civilized is our society anyway? And I'm talking about American society. And the same could probably be said across the board, globally, universally. But this event happened in America. And we just have to ask ourselves that question. You know, when savage things like this happen, people love to say, well, that's not who we are. We're not that uncivilized, but are we? Aren't we? I mean, violence seems to be the strategy of choice in our society for handling disagreements. Right? That's the strategy of choice in American society. Violence doesn't always involve cold-blooded, point-blank murder and assassination, right? Violence includes the violent vitriolic rhetoric on social media. I mean, you should see some of the social media posts about the assassination of the CEO. I mean, some of it was downright insensitive and verbally violent, verbal violence. I mean, this man has a wife and kids. And you know, yeah, so, and this is the whole eye for eye thing. Well, he caused people to die. So, you know, I don't get that. I think civilized societies find a way to hold people accountable without devolving into savagery and violence, right? And so, yeah, I mean, If the insurance companies are culpable of causing death and disease by their denial policies, yeah, they need to be held accountable. But to walk up behind somebody point blank and blow them away, I mean, that's savagery. And so, you know, so then, but it's dealing with disagreements in such a violent manner, whether it be physical violence or verbal violence. Has become so commonplace in our society, I've got to ask myself the question, really, are we civilized? Are we becoming more and more uncivilized the more technologically advanced we become? I don't know. Right? And the sad thing is that this rhetorical savagery and verbal violence is probably most practiced by our political leaders on both sides, the right and the left, maybe more on the right. I don't know. I'm going to get in trouble for saying this. I don't care really. But when you've got people in Congress and in the Senate just making outlandish statements simply to appease a particular demographic or whatever they do, whatever reason they do it for, Some of the stuff is just downright verbally violent and atrocious. And so, you know, as leaders, and here's a tie into leadership, right? As leaders, we set the tone for the way our team interacts with each other. So the citizens of the country, and to be truthful, you know, citizens Just because your leaders are acting the fool and engaging in violent rhetoric doesn't mean that you have to do it too. Make your own decisions. Choose your own path. Just because, you know, you got dim-witted politicians using verbal violence to get elected doesn't mean that you have to engage in that. But at the same time, The mandate, leaders have the mandate to set tone, right? For how people on their team handle disagreements. Sad to say, in this country, the state of politics is such that things like people shooting each other because they disagree on the way things should be done, that tone has been set, reinforced by the leadership of this country on both sides. And so, so, so that's one of the reasons I did extensive research and wrote this book called How to Disagree and Still Get Things Done. Now you could get a copy on Amazon or better yet, get a copy on my resource page. There's a link to my resource page here somewhere in this podcast because the book, How to Disagree and Still Get Things Done. Also comes with a masterclass on how to actually implement it as a leader, how to set the tone as a leader so that your organization, your stakeholders, your team members don't allow disagreements to devolve into assassinations, whether that be a physical assassination. And we've seen that in the workplace, right? I mean, you've seen all these workplace shootings that's happening. So you as a leader, you have some culpability in setting the tone Training your team and your stakeholders how to disagree, still get things done, and not allow disagreements to devolve into what I call dysfunctional disagreement, but rather to use that disagreement to evolve into what I call functional disagreement. And functional disagreements have been the incubator for so much of what's good in our society. Because people were able to disagree and still get things done, right? Um, yeah, man. So, so whatever this assassin's disagreement was with UnitedHealthcare or the insurance industry, there's absolutely no reason to escalate it to a tragic murder, right? I mean, what if we kill off everybody who disagrees with us, right? I mean, think about it. Think about it. I mean, we either kill them literally, right? Like happened with this news story, or we kill them with our violent, vitriolic verbal weapons. Yeah, just kill off everybody that disagrees with you. Pretty soon, there'll be nobody left to agree with, right? There'll be nobody left to agree with us, right? Because no matter how similar you are to someone, there's always something that you're going to disagree with them on. And if you kill them off because they disagree with you on that point, then what about the points and the times when they will agree with you? They will no longer be there to agree with you when you need an ally the most. Right? So as a leader, one thing that will absolutely derail your strategy implementation, I mean, and I've seen this happen so many times, the one thing that would absolutely derail and crash your strategy implementation is dysfunctional disagreement, right? I mean, I've seen it over and over again. And as you know, that's why in my book, I differentiate I'm not talking about trying to get rid of disagreements. That's a utopian dream, fantasy. It's never going to happen. But the key is this differentiation that I make between functional or dysfunctional disagreement. Dysfunctional disagreement leads to dissonance, divisiveness. We got a whole lot of that in this country today. Right? And I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of our leaders. Dissonance, divisiveness, demonizing people. I mean, you look at how the political discourse is in this country today, right? The other side is a demon, right? Disconnect. So these are things that dysfunctional disagreement creates dissonance, divisiveness, demonizing each other, disconnect, and ultimately death. Either literal death, as in the case with UnitedHealthcare CEO, or more often than not, it's the death of strategic leadership, the death of strategic vision, the death of your strategic initiatives and agendas. Nothing gets done. Everything dies. Because dysfunctional disagreement is allowed to fester, right? And leaders, as leaders, we have the ability, the power is in our hands. If we know what to do, and if you don't know what to do, get my book, take my masterclass. It is our mandate to ensure that disagreement does not devolve into dysfunctional disagreement. Because ultimately, dysfunctional disagreement leads to death. I've seen so many organizations die, split up and die. Even— this is crazy, right? Even with churches, where you think there's so much peace and love, right? I've seen churches split up, die. Fragment because they were not able to disagree and still get things done. They should have gotten my book, taken my class. They would have probably still been alive today. But see, the subtle nuance with disagreements comes down really to how, to different visions of how some problem gets solved. Right? See, the crazy thing is that usually combatants in a disagreement, they both want the problem to be solved. They both want the problem to be solved. A lot of times they agree on what the problem is. But here's a nuanced approach to the solution that the combatants usually take.

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The crazy thing is that usually combatants in a disagreement, they both want the problem to be solved. They both want the problem to be solved. A lot of times they agree on what the problem is. But, but here's a, here's a nuanced, here's a nuanced approach. Approach to the solution that the combatants usually take. More often than not, more often than not, people in a disagreement who have at least cleared the first hurdle, which is agreeing as to what the problem is, more often than not, these combatants take the approach that's summed up in these words. I want to solve problem. Instead of saying, which sounds like the same thing, instead of saying, I want the problem solved, they say, I want to solve the problem. Well, you got to think about it because it's a nuanced difference, but a critical one, right? Think about it. Now, if I want to solve the problem, What I'm really saying is that I have the only way to solve this problem. And I'm not really leaving any space for getting the problem solved, whether or not it's my way or your way, right? Because I have the solution. I have the solution. One of the things that we teach, you know, How to Disagree and Still Get Things Done masterclass is to divest yourself from your own solution. Because when people disagree with a solution, you take it too personally, right? And one of the things that leaders are really guilty of is that, you know, as a business owner, leader, You have a vision of how to get from point A to point B. That's the solution, right? Your organization's struggling. You have a vision of how to, how to rescue and save your organization, and that's your vision. So you, you come to your team and say, I have a vision to solve this problem, and we become so vested emotionally vested in our vision that we don't leave space for the possibility that the vision, the solution could be achieved minus, absent our vision in a totally different way than we see that the vision being achieved. You see what I'm saying? So part of the reason that disagreements become so dysfunctional and so toxic is because we want the problem solved with my solution. You know what I'm saying? Uh, but, but business owners, we have to be very careful on that, you know, because I think, I think it even borders on the abuse of power, leadership malpractice when we, when we give the impression directly or indirectly that I want to solve the problem, I want to reach the vision versus we need to solve the problem, right? This is all about strategically engaging your followers, right? And team members. It's another area that I've done a lot of research and writing on in my book entitled Followership: The Key to Better Leadership. We talk about how do you engage followers and make yourself vulnerable and accountable to followers to achieve vision. Right? And so, uh, yeah, yeah, you could grab that book on Amazon, by the way, or again, on my resource page. This whole thing about insurance companies denying claims, that's a problem, right? That's undeniably a problem. No doubt, no doubt, no doubt. Insurance companies and leadership are also very guilty of not using effective disagreement strategies when it comes to the agendas of the consumers, the policyholders, vis-à-vis the agendas of their stakeholders. I mean, there's a very long, deep-standing disagreement between insurance companies and policyholders when it comes to the issue of paying, approving, or denying claims. It's very systemic. It really is. It really is part of the operational business model, right? That insurance companies have used to make billions, maybe trillions of dollars for decades. I mean, think about it. Think about it, right? Health insurance companies are probably the only industry, maybe there are more, but this is the best example. Of an organization, a business where there's a direct link between profits and denying customers the product or service that the customer paid for. Now think about it. If you're a business and you're selling mugs, right? You're selling mugs. Customer pays you for the mug. You make more money and you make it be part of your business model to see How you could not give the customer what they paid for. Now, so we know that there are crooked business people that do that, right? They shortchange you. I'm talking about shortchanging on product. You know this thing called shrinkflation? People, we've been talking about the price of food increasing. In some cases, there's a literal dollar increase in the value of goods and services, but in some cases you pay the same, but you get less. Shrinkflation, right? The insurance industry is built on a legal model of shrinkflation. There's an entire department within insurance companies that is dedicated to determine how much can we get away with in terms of not giving the customer what they paid for. Here's the thing, right? Customer, you, policyholder, we pay to get covered for medical care. That's what we pay for. The actuarial departments of insurance companies conduct extensive analyses and studies and financial modeling to find out how much of that coverage that we paid for they could deny because when they deny that, it adds to the bottom line. That's crazy. That's the business model. And as a leader in an insurance company, you have to recognize the position of tension that you are in. And not only in insurance companies, right? But I'm going to use this as an example. The tension that leaders in the insurance industry have to recognize and proactively work to resolve is a tension between two of their major stakeholders. On the one hand, you have the stockholders. The stockholders want what? They want profit margins to increase, right? As far as they're concerned, a stockholder says, deny every claim. That's the extreme to illustrate the point. Stockholders want higher profits, so they don't care if denials are, you know, increase, if the company, you know, denies more claims because every claim that's denied means one more dollar to their stock portfolio. But policyholders, which is the other major stakeholder of an insurance company, They want service, they want claim coverage. So on the one hand, stockholders want claims to be denied. And of course, they're not going to say that, but indirectly, that's what they want because it's one of the most direct paths to profitability. So stakeholders want claims to be denied. On the other hand, policyholders want claims to be approved. You got these two opposing agendas. And as a leader, Brian Thompson, leaders of insurance companies, they're in the mix. But that's where leadership is tested. And it's tested on one of what we call one of the 6 core competencies of leadership, which is how to disagree and still get things done. How do you balance those competing agendas? That's leadership. Because what you don't want is you don't want that that tension, that disagreement between agendas, right? And see, a lot of times disagreements are not only between people. First of all, people are the ones that articulate the differences. Differences typically are differences of agenda, differences on methodology, differences on initiatives, right? That's the core of disagreements. People are the ones who yell and scream and and shoot people in the back, right? But, but as a leader in your organization, it's important that you are able to identify the tension between stakeholder agendas and find a way, maybe using my framework of how to disagree and still get things done, find a way to get those two agendas not to be, not to morph into one or the other. That's leadership malpractice, but how to get those two agendas to still achieve a common value, a common good that moves the company forward, that benefits both stakeholder groups. An interesting thing too, that, you know, we're talking about the business model The business model of insurance companies is to deny claims because claim denials lead to profitability. I'm very familiar with that because I'm the CFO of a medical clinic hospital. And so I deal with insurance companies denying claims on a daily basis. In fact, a couple of years ago, I do remember an insurance company, you know, we work with literally dozens of insurance companies. Just depending on wherever our patients are insured. But we had an insurance company where a sizable percentage of our patients were insured with, just denied a ton of claims. And we're talking about within a week, 2-week period, they denied well over $200,000 in claims. Our business model is we provide services, we bill insurance company, and the insurance company pays us so that we could pay our doctors, right? Our nurses. Well, listen, stuff hit the roof when we were denied over $200,000 in claims just before, in the week payroll was due. Geez, man, talk about tension, right? So I've lived this kind of foolishness with insurance companies denying claims. But sometimes policyholders can contribute to the paranoia that insurance companies have, which lead them to over-scrutinize claims. You would be amazed the number of fraudulent claims that gets submitted, which basically all it serves to do is put insurance companies on high alert and stuff that would normally just go through and get approved, they begin to nitpick because they're so paranoid, so afraid of getting caught with having to pay for fraudulent claims. There was a story in the AP News a couple weeks ago, and this is crazy, man, this is crazy. So these policyholders, there's like 3 or 4 of them, right? Filed a claim on their auto insurance, right? Now, this is auto insurance, not health insurance, but the same principle applies across the board, whether it's life insurance, auto insurance, health insurance, right? So they filed this claim that some bears had attacked and destroyed and damaged their luxury cars, a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes, right? They filed a claim for about $140,000 in damages. I mean, they even submitted videos and pictures of the bears breaking the windows and smashing the cars up, submitted the claim. So, I mean, it looks legit until one of the investigators smells something fishy. Well, maybe you smell something berry, right? I don't know, right? And so they did an investigation and here's what they found. This is crazy stuff, man. This is crazy stuff. These people who filed the claims, right? Listen, man, if this wasn't on the news, I wouldn't, you know, this is crazy stuff. These people who filed the claim, About bears damaging their Rolls-Royces and their Mercedes, right? $140,000 in damage. What they did was they bought some bear suits, bear suits, dressed up in the costume, attacked their own cars, took pictures of themselves damaging their cars, and sent it in as proof to file a claim. I have. Hey, look, look, dude, you think I'm kidding. I'm going to put the story up on the screen here for you to see. So these kinds of stunts, right, not only defrauds insurance companies, but makes them more suspicious on legitimate claims. Now, no excuse. For denying some of the blatantly approvable, obviously approvable claims that get denied, that cause, you know, death and financial hardship to the policyholders. You know what I'm saying? But that's some of the dynamics that drives this whole situation that makes it such a a test of leadership. You've got all these competing factors, policyholders wanting claims to be approved, insurance companies' stockholders wanting claims to be denied to increase profits. You have policyholders who try to defraud insurance companies by filing false claims. And you got all this thing creating a conflagration as it were, of a leadership dilemma. But that's why you are a leader. You are a leader because you are tasked with handling the tough situations. And how you deal with disagreement, how you deal with competing agendas among stakeholders is one of those tests of leadership. So listen, you, you may not be a CEO or a senior leader of a major multi-billion dollar company like UnitedHealth, right? I mean, what'd it say? 95% of businesses in America are small businesses with less than 20 employees, right? And that's probably where you are. You, you're probably a leader in a small to midsize business, just like I am. But this challenge of dealing with disagreements, this challenge to create a culture where stakeholders and team members could disagree and still get things done is no less critical in your small business as it is in, say, major multibillion-dollar companies like United. I mean, I'm sure in your time in leadership, you've had to referee tensions between, say, managers and staff, between vendors and suppliers, between customers and your marketing department. I mean, the list goes on, right? And you as the leader, you've gotta be insightful enough, intentionally enough so that you could prevent, so you could prevent that dysfunction from devolving into, remember what we talked about, from devolving into disruption, dissonance, disconnection, and death. That's what you stand in the gap, right? Between disagreement becoming dysfunctional or disagreement becoming the platform from which great opportunity is captured. Like I said, some of the greatest advancements in businesses, in inventions, in human civilization have come about because there was disagreement that was nurtured into functional disagreement as opposed to allowing it to devolve into dysfunctional. And that is the test of your leadership, right? So check out my resources and learn some more about, you know, how to disagree and still get things done. It's a critical skill competency that leaders must themselves be good at. You ought to be able to navigate disagreements where people disagree with you, But then again, you need to be able to create a culture in your team. One of the ways that we do this is, you know, bring us in to do a corporate training program, right? All your staff, not just your leadership, because, because, you know, every member on your team has an opinion one way or the other on every issue. And, and, and their level of commitment to whichever agenda you choose depends on their level of agreement or their ability to disagree and still get things done. There's some people in your team on the low end of the totem pole. If you, I mean, I hate to use that term, but there are people in the mailroom right now, right? Whose productivity will decline because they don't agree with a particular strategic initiative that's set by senior leadership. I mean, I've seen it. It's called apathy. Oh, I don't like what they're doing anyway. I'm not going to kill myself for this organization because I don't like what they're doing anyway. That's a prime example of disagreeing and not getting things done, right? What you want is you want your team at every level to be able to say, man, I don't really agree with what they're doing up front, man. You know, the big boys in the corporate office, man, I really don't like what they're doing, but I'm going to still do what I need to do to make sure the organization works well. That, that's the culture you're trying to create. Bring us in. We'll do some training. We could do it online, in person, onsite, or hybrid, and we could help you create a culture that knows how to disagree and still get things done. Right? Walter Murray here. Strategic Leadership News. News you can use to help you accelerate your strategy implementation and your strategic Leadership Fast. We'll see you next time.