Annette M. Walker, President City of Hope Orange County
Combine a global pandemic with a long-overdue national reckoning with our history of racial injustice, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a crisis that is simultaneously more universal and more personal than the one we’re in now here in the United States.
For over a decade I’ve been studying our society’s shift from an age of standardization to an age of personalization and its implications for leadership and institutional strategies. I’ve witnessed the impact that shift has on how people feel about the work they do and their place within the hierarchies that usually stifle their capacity to contribute at their highest levels.
While we’ve been in this cycle for years, there’s never been a time like now when we’re seeing the possibility for so much change unfold before our very eyes.
It’s unfortunate that it has taken these massive crises to push change forward. We’ve had challenges in the past, so why have we reached this breaking point now?
Undoubtedly, there are many nuanced reasons steeped in our history. I’ll leave that part of the analysis to the historians and political theorists.
But as someone who has worked closely over years with leaders from the C-level on down, I believe one thing about the pandemic in particular has made its impact on our workplaces profound: it’s global, but it’s also personal. And it’s personal on a massive scale: meaning, it affects every single person in one way or another. It’s forced many to reflect upon their beliefs, what they stand for and the value of their individual contribution.
This has led many leaders to rethink the ways they’ve done things in the past and find new ways to best serve others.
To explore this further, I spoke with Annette M. Walker, MHA, President of City of Hope, Orange County. City of Hope is one of the most prestigious cancer institutions in the world. Walker and I spoke, about the challenge of keeping people connected and cultures intact during a time of such uncertainty and isolation.
Named one of the 100 most influential people in U.S. healthcare and one of the 25 most influential women leaders by Modern Healthcare magazine, Walker is building City of Hope’s health network and world-class cancer campus in Orange County, California, a region that has been her home for 40 years.
We acknowledged the personal level of this pandemic.
“I miss my family tremendously,” she said. “My husband and I are in the house with our 19-year-old college student and a 16-year-old Sudanese refugee we’ve welcomed into our family. We have five other children who live outside the house, four are married, and between them we have 12 grandchildren. In addition, my mother-in-law is in an assisted living home by herself and not permitted visitors. It's unusual for our family to not be together for birthdays and big things like Easter.”
She was also forthcoming about her personal response as a leader of so many people.
“I've reflected on how our organization interacts with the community and my role within that,” said Walker. “What is the most important thing that I should be doing? I think about my staff a lot. What do they need? I think about the patients at City of Hope and is there anything I can do? I worry about our clinical teams and support personnel. I do not have a clinical role, but I think a lot about the people who are caring for patients and that the stress and the challenges they have. Not just treating cancer but trying to keep these extremely vulnerable patients safe. It's humbling. It's humbling to know what I can and cannot influence.”
Creating Community
Leaders today have an especially difficult challenge in bringing people together who can’t actually be together. Walker told me what keeps coming into her mind is the importance of community within the team. People in a community care and look out for each other. From the earliest days of the stay-at-home order, she and her teams have stayed close. They started with a ritual of daily huddles. Early on this was extremely important as one of her team members was in the ICU with Covid-19. The team needed each other, and they needed to hear about their colleague. These huddles started with a reflection that allowed people to express their thoughts – sometimes this was philosophical, sometimes just an observation. At all times, these shared experiences taught the team about each other – the person, not the position. These interactions set the stage for virtual support and culture development.
After the reflection the attention would turn to the work and objectives of the day. The routine was important, especially early on.
“The team found the routine comforting,” she explained. “The routine was purposeful. The routine kept people from getting too distracted with the craziness and the things they could not control.”
The team now operates on two huddles a week – one that is focused on the business at hand, and one that is reserved for celebration. Sometimes the celebration might be a birthday, and sometimes it might be the favorite places team members have traveled but in all cases it is a personal and meaningful part of their lives – the things that make us whole people.
A Message of Care
One of the most important things a leader can do is be open and honest about the things that really matter to people in that moment. That requires that leaders know their people and listen to them. Walker said her own boss set a great example of how to do that.
“It’s important for leaders not to believe they have all the answers, but still retain a vision of the future they want to achieve. One of the best health care leaders with this combination of realism and inspiration is Robert Stone, president and chief executive of City of Hope. “When the COVID-19 outbreak began and we realized we’d need to change course from usual operations, he told us, ‘In a crisis it’s more important to have the right people than it is to have the right plan.’ That motivated us to act swiftly and, yes, the right people will have the ability to adjust and adapt for new and changing circumstances.”
When your organization shifts to working from home, but your own home environment is not conducive to that for whatever reason, it would be easy to start worrying that you won’t have a job for long – especially for those who work for organizations still trapped in standardization.
Walker said they made sure people knew: if you can't work from home, you're not going to be laid off.
“I realize that every company cannot guarantee there won’t be economic consequences from COVID-19,” said Walker. “But wow, wouldn’t it be different if people felt like you cared? How is that news perceived when you feel that your boss cares? That they've been honest with you? They've done everything they can? I hope every leader is doing that right now.”
I hope so, too. Don’t get me wrong, I believe many leaders want to be caring and honest in a time like this. But too many haven’t done the foundational work that makes an environment of caring possible. If they haven’t enforced the mindsets and behaviors centered on inclusion and individuality in the past, or designed the systems that allow for that level of personalization – they won’t be able to just suddenly create that level of intimacy out of thin air during a time of crisis. Caring requires leading dignity at scale.
Walker shared her thoughts on how she feels the weight of that responsibility: “Leadership is not a right, it's a responsibility. And this goes back to a previous job I had. The first time I walked into the office of the CEO and I was the one in charge, I felt the weight of it. My thought was: ‘Okay, this is not your office. This is a legacy that you are responsible for. You are a steward. This office belongs to the mission of the organization and the 25,000 people you have responsibility for. Don't be fooled by the corner office.’"
So, when you feel the weight of that responsibility, what do you do when the world insists on a grand reset?
“This is an opportunity to rise to the occasion if there ever was one,” said Walker.
She described three different ways our workplace cultures will change permanently as a result.
1. Adapting to Our New Work-From-Home Culture
“First of all, this remote working – we'll never go back to the way it was,” said Walker. “Now that we’ve become proficient and effective working this way, some portion of the workforce will stick with it. That will challenge leadership because it's one thing when your whole workforce is remote. It's another thing when 30% of them are home and the other 70% are in the office. It's a challenge to keep the culture together.”
This new dynamic will change the way we work with our teams and colleagues, and also the way we serve our clients and customers. Or, in the case of healthcare: the way we serve patients.
“Take telemedicine,” said Walker. “We did more telemedicine visits in the past month than we did in the last year. It's going to change those relationships. People are comfortable with it, and they’ll want more.”
It will be more important than ever for leaders to develop their own skills at knowing how to create organizational cultures that allow the influence of multiple individuals who have become used to having more control over the way they do their work.
“Culture is so important to an organization's success,” said Walker. “I think how we as leaders approach culture is going to be tested and it's going to take some hard work on our part to keep cultures cohesive.”
2. Adapting to a New Culture of Intimacy
Whether working from the office or from home, there will be a need from employees to have a greater level of intimacy in the relationship with their leaders. Leaders will need to be much more open about what they're thinking. And we’ll all be better for it.
“For years, people have wanted to bring their whole selves to work but they’ve been discouraged,” said Walker. “Instead they were met with leaders who told them, ‘Oh, that's too personal. Don't bring that here.’ But this situation has opened things up in that regard, and once you have that experience, you don't go back. When you've achieved that knowledge of a person at a deeper level, that doesn't go away. And I think with it comes a different level of trust and appreciation.”
Walker provided an example that demonstrates leadership in today’s age of personalization. No matter what you’re trying to achieve, you need people at their fullest capacities connecting with and elevating each other as they individually and collectively contribute to a shared mission. People reach their fullest capacities when they’re given the room to be and express themselves – even the parts of themselves that aren’t directly related to their work title.
“Getting to know people at that level not only broadens our understanding of the complexities of someone’s personal life, but also builds an appreciation for their different talents. For example, we were doing something for a coworker and we asked people to record a short video and send it. And oh my gosh, I found out that several of the people on my team are hilarious! They had this talent and this sense of humor that they had kept in check. I was dying laughing. I'm never going to forget that about additional talents. I'm going to ask them to bring that to work because it's a delightful part of their personality that enriches the group.”
The last part of that quote is key. Seeing someone for the first time is one thing. A true leader then lets their own vision and methods be influenced by what they’ve learned about the people they lead. And a true leader goes one step further – to make sure there are more opportunities for people to share their true selves with each other.
3. Redefining the Value Each Individual Brings to their Work
As we learn to discover people’s full capacities during this pandemic – and give people ways to elevate, activate, realize and exceed those capacities – that’s when someone can really own their function and reinvent it so the individual, the function and the organization can evolve.
As Walker said: “The standardization of the workforce has given 99% of the value to the functional piece you hold. But people can provide a great deal of value through their wisdom and perspective. Just being able to weigh in on something, or to add humor to a situation, are tremendous gifts that perhaps were not invited as much in the past as they should have been.”
When you let people break free from the standards of the past and attack challenges in their own way, you open up new possibilities. In the midst of this grand reset, we have a responsibility as leaders to do the work of breaking free.
“Adversity sometimes forges capabilities that you didn't know you had,” said Walker. “When we go through something like this, if it doesn't make us stronger, it's the biggest loss of opportunity ever. Whatever adversity or pain you go through – you always hope to learn from it or use it to reconfigure the way you operate or think. This is the biggest opportunity ever to rethink how we work, how we see our people, how we see the services we provide to our community, and the value of our place in the community.”
How Will this Crisis Impact Healthcare?
Walker said there’s no doubt that telemedicine will be forever on a different trajectory.
But beyond the specifics of how care is delivered, she talked about a new mindset around care in general and the importance of providers working together and providing access.
“There is no doubt that we are living in incredibly challenging times,” said Walker. “Our world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequences of longstanding social injustice. “If any part of the community is not well, the entire community is not well. My mother's generation understood this, but it is not well understood in our modern world. So, I think it will very much affect our nation's perspective about community health. As leaders, we must commit to making structural, programmatic and personal changes to improve the health of our communities.”
An Overdue Awakening
As Walker said: “Leadership is such a privilege. The part of my job I like the most is leading people, whether it's at home or at work, there's something about using your influence to make the world a better place in whatever way you can.”
If your organization is still stuck in standardization and not prepared to lead in a way that honors our age of personalization, you’re vulnerable right now. You won’t have the agility to withstand the changes that are coming.
People have been waiting for a moment like this, to restart and reinvent. Don’t squander your opportunity.
Learn more at: www.ageofpersonalization.com.
Interested in learning more about how empathy and personalization are transforming healthcare? Register now for the Healthcare in the Age of Personalization Virtual Summit on May 3-4.
