Building Communities in Healthcare (ft. Renee DeSilva)

Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Super excited about this episode because it's someone that I've worked with in my past, and it's Renee De Silva. She is now the CEO of the Health Management Academy. Welcome to Digital Voices. Thank you, Ed. Very happy to be here with you. Yeah, this is really exciting because we both have this shared experience from our past, which was really great, I think. I'm sure you do as well with the advisory board. And so that was sort of where we first met and first interacted. And I always look back with fondness of that experience, and I learned a lot. And I've always been actually an admirer of the advisory board. And so it was kind of fun. All of a sudden, I'm part of the team. And so that was pretty cool. And it's the same with the Health Management Academy. So when I was part of Texas Health, we had a membership with the Health Management Academy, and it was fabulous. Everyone loved it. They'd always come back. And so it would always come back with a to-do list for me and other members of our C-suite. And they got a lot out of it. I know what organization did. And so, yeah, I really want to unpack that. But Renee, enough about that background. The most important question I have for you this entire episode is, what songs are on your playlist? I love that question. Okay, so I am an old school, 1990s, R&B, and hip-hop fan. And so it'll be a wide variety of music. Mary J. Blyde, Jay-Z. I sort of skew very old school in my musical taste. Yeah, I love it. Well, what do you think about Snoop Dogg and his resurgence just through the Olympics? I know. Well, he's definitely reinvented himself. I think it's pretty interesting to watch that unfold. I'm learning a lot watching him. Yeah, that's really cool how he's done that. What about life message or mantra? Are there sort of words that you live by? I think so. I mean, I'm a big fan of sort of stoic principles, which, you know, at the very core is you don't control what happens, but you do control your response to what happens. And so I always am animated by this notion of just make it happen, control your response, and you have more agency than you often think you do. So I really live by that. You know, what can I do to make it happen for myself, for my family, for my teams? That is one of my core principles. Yeah, I love that a lot. That's very cool. What about yourself? So let's start in the very beginning and go back as far as you want. Like, where did you grow up? Tell us about who you are. All right, I'm from the smallest state in the union, Rhode Island, which is a very small community. I grew up as the youngest of four, three older brothers. And so I grew up in a household where you had to have a pretty loud voice to be heard in that crowd. There was a very big age difference between my youngest brother and myself, something like 14 years. So it was this interesting experience of being part of a big family for part of my life, but then almost feeling like an only child for the second half of my life. And so I think I show up both in first child ways and little sister ways, depending on the environment, but really tighten it, community. And I think those early days certainly shaped how I show up today. Yeah, that's super cool. Is there a pivotal moment in growing up in your life that fundamentally changed the trajectory? Yeah. I mean, for me, without a doubt, is I had my oldest daughter very young. I had her in the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I was 19 when she was born. She's now getting married in three months, if that's any indication. When that happened, it was sort of a transformative moment for me in terms of really honing in on my focus, honing my resilience, really being focused on continuing to graduate in four years. And so I think having Jasmine was a moment that I don't know that I would have accomplished as much as I have had that not happened because it really locked me in and gave me a level of just wanting to do well by her and as a result, really pushing myself quite hard. Yeah, that's pretty phenomenal. And I bet she has three great uncles, right? Yes, yes. She's very well loved and protected, yes. I can only imagine. That's a pretty cool situation. Going into your career now, how did you choose healthcare? It's actually sort of a funny story. My first job out of school was, I worked at Accenture and I was in their consumer products division. I wanted to relocate from Rhode Island because it's sort of sleepy for a then 21, 22-year-old and came to the D.C. Metro area and was just sent by a headhunter to a company that they said, I'm going to send you to this company. I sent a lot of folks, they'd never hire anyone. I don't ever know what they're looking for. And so I went and that company was the advisory board and I interviewed for a role there and got that position. And my career, they were at the time had just sort of separated their corporate functions so they were solely healthcare. And my healthcare career grew as that company grew. So I think I sort of had more of an accidental arrival in healthcare, but I love the mission-based work that you get to do here. I spent now more than 30 years of my time spent in this space, but I think I was an accidental healthcare leader. And you went from sort of this Accenture to sales and marketing and then into talent. Tell us a little bit more, like just kind of that evolution because we want to get into the fact that you're the CEO today. But yeah, tell us about all these other roles you had. Yeah, I don't think it's that common of a career path, right? So I started out as an individual contributor role, which is an often, you know, a decent place to start. And then I took on various commercial responsibilities over time. And when you think about for any organization, what really moves the needle on performance, it's your growth, it's your strategy, it's your ability to attract and retain talent. And when I was in that sort of commercial org, I was given an additive responsibility for designing, onboarding, hiring, training compensation plans for just the commercial org. And that was my first taste at talent management. And what I really found was for any organization, a good talent strategy is either an unlock for the organization or it's a or your handcuffed by it. And so that is sort of what gave me the entryway into talent. And from there, I took a Chief Talent Officer role. Someone was willing to make a bet on me. I had no real formal talent structure other than this, this sort of commercial talent management. And I loved that Chief Talent Officer position would have intended to stay in that had I not gotten the call for the CEO role at the Academy. And I have found that the combination of growth orientation and talent management is a very good combination for a CEO path. Yeah. Because you don't find that very often someone with that very diverse background that you have. So kind of along that line of thinking that you were just sharing, how have all these different positions sort of helped you flourish as a CEO? Obviously, the talent which you spoke about, but you've also had these other sort of operational roles. Yeah. You know, I think careers are not linear. And I have really tried to be less focused on what title I'm trying to achieve. And I've been focused on what skills do I try to build, what relationships do I try to create. And the Academy when I joined it now almost eight years ago had been managed by a founder who was very beloved. There were two co-founders and they were very beloved. And I sort of had this opportunity to take this platform and keep all that was great about it and then figure out ways to extend our reach and our impact. And so I think my ability to think in a very member-centric way, which I'd learned earlier in my career, my ability to listen to what the market needs, my ability to think through how do you organize teams and functions just was a very nice compliment. And I knew healthcare well from having spent at that point probably 20 years in the space and it was just a great combination. I feel like the Academy was just a perfect fit for me in a first time CEO role. And I still get a ton of energy from the work that I do here. Yeah. You can tell for sure. Now, what are your maxims that you're known for is running to criticism. Can you unpack that a little bit? Like how does that work? Yeah. And now that was one of the advisory board's core values, like run to criticism. And I now reframe that for our team here and it is to say that feedback is a gift, even if it's hard to hear. And I just feel like growth is always on the other side of your comfort zone. And if you think about, when I think about my career and maybe even in yours, Ed too, because when you get someone who's willing to give you the perspective that maybe you don't want to hear, help you understand your blind spots, you just open up a really broad aperture for yourself. And so I do feel like feedback is a gift. And my hope is that I'm open to receiving it from people and then I can give it with empathy and in a way that doesn't break people down. But I feel like if you are not open to the feedback, you really will languish in whatever position you find yourself in. Yeah, I love that because I don't know about you. I found that as I rose in my career and had further titles that I received less feedback. Yeah. And that's the worst thing. It is the worst combination. And also the way that you show up when you have ostensibly higher title or influence in an organization needs to shift. And so if you have created for yourself a zone of silence where you're not getting the feedback, that can be really challenging. You have to actively seek it out and not just from your board or from your executive team, but even trying to go deeper into the... And so I really tried to build that muscle into the approach that I take. Yeah, that's great. I always just remember at my annual reviews, like, please give me something. Tell me something I could do to get better. I imagine it's a great culture that you've built or added to at the Academy. Was there a specific person, Renee, as you're going through your career that really sort of helped you see who you could be? Yeah, I'm fortunate in that I have several examples of that. When I think early in my career, during my Accenture days, I had a really savvy engagement manager and he was so keen on detail. He just gave me this job of having to sit and write like, Vizio process flows for manufacturing processes and he was exacting on it and was very... He was very generous with his feedback and that honed my ability to just think clearly and present things in a way. I think about my early career days. I have always been surrounded by people who were willing to let me shadow them, watch me, give me feedback. Then I think one of the more pivotal moments was maybe in my middle management career, I had someone who was really in the trenches with me that would... I think maybe one of the best messages that I received from him was that in order to take the next level of advancement, I need to be comfortable being more vulnerable in my approach and not showing up in a way where I was armored or appeared to have all the answers. I needed to be a little bit more open and relatable. I feel like if I had not gotten that feedback, that may have been... I don't know that I would have used that word to describe my way of showing up. I've been very fortunate that I've been surrounded by people who cared enough about my development to really show up as a sponsor for me and to be willing to help me think through how to navigate my next steps. Yeah, that is really keen. We talked about the Academy a little bit when we started and I mentioned my experience at Texas Health where we were very, very tightly connected with the Academy. For those who might not know, can you share a little bit about the mission and vision of the Academy? Sure. And I feel like many probably would not know because I still believe that we're kind of a good secret in healthcare. But at the core of who we are, we believe in the power of community to drive health forward. And we do that principally through our convening. So we have a set of peer forums where we bring together leaders either by role or by topic across health systems and then industry companies who have a point of view into those health systems or into the problems that health systems need to solve. So that's sort of our convening platform. And I think that the Academy has a very dense representation of health systems and we do that in a way that we have significant breadth. So everything from the boardroom to the bedside, we have a way of engaging leaders in that stead. And then we also believe that there's more to be done that can't just be done inside of our convening events, which happened by annually. So we have a number of ways to activate those insights through our catalyst offerings. You do a lot of advocacy. We have a co-investment arm. So we really are an engagement platform for health system and healthcare leaders that are really committed to the art of the possible and driving health forward. What I really appreciate and maybe you could touch on it a little bit is that at some of these forums that are co-located, the forum sometimes with, like I think one coming up if I remember, he serves me correct is the CIOs are also going to be adjacent to maybe CFOs or chief strategy officers. And so it'll be a shared sort of session so that you get some of this cross-pollinization. That's right. And that's very much by design. Every year we look and see what are the right mashups to create. You might have a CIO with a strategy officer. How are those? And they will meet amongst their own peer group, but then we will do some crossover topics. And I think that can be really interesting. It allows to connect the lines of any executive role these days is quite blurred. You don't have a siloed approach. It's really happening in a broader organizational context. And we really try to work to serve up the issues that are pertinent by role, but then figure out the right ways to connect across multiple constituencies. That's sort of the core of what we do. Yeah, I love that because when I was like a CIO, maybe I was struggling a little bit with my CFO, so I couldn't really necessarily go to him or her. But when I went to some of these events and talked to some other CFOs and get a better understanding that I could come back to my own and sort of, you know, really hone in on the relationship, develop a little bit because I got this other insight sort of externally. So that's really keen. What are one or two objectives of the Academy that are coming up in the next one to three years? Yeah. So I think we want to just become more of who we are. And then by that, I mean, we have done a really great job. If you think about the health system space, we've worked really closely with the largest 150 health systems. There's a part of the market that is very committed to staying independent and thriving. And so we want to do more to serve the independent health systems. And there needs to be different than other segments, but we think that we could have a way to serve both of these constituencies in distinct ways. And so showing up for the broader parts of health care, we increasingly feel like we can shape where things are heading. And so just two weeks ago, we were on the hill with nine CEOs meeting with Dr. Oz. We met with several congressional leaders, and we have really been trying to shape policy in advance of it being determined. So this notion of how do you begin to shift markets and have a greater impact beyond one individual organization? Abe Sutton was part of that meeting where we want to continue to engage in ways that are not just about individual systems, but the collective ecosystem performing and having greater impact. Yeah. Now, that's fabulous. What about life as a CEO? Because that's something all the listeners always ask me about afterwards, or, hey, you should ask this question, because everyone looks up to you and, wow, what does it like to be, Renee? What would it be like to operate something like the Academy? I know there's probably not a typical day, Renee, but if you were to kind of paint a typical day or a typical week, what would it look like? Yeah. So I think the way that CEOs spend their time depends on the organization. The CEO of the Academy, and this predates me, is very externally facing. So I probably spend 40% of my time with our members, and that can take a few different forms. It can be our own gathering. So I personally still produce three of our own events. We have two CEO groups and a trustee group, and I'm very involved in programming and content for that. And it's quite bespoke, and we try to make it highly curated. So I spend a lot of time just listening and having conversations with members. I had two CEO calls today with HealthSystem CEOs and two with Industry Company CEOs. So a lot of time with other CEOs shaping conversations. That's sort of one, maybe that's like 40% of my time spent. I think the other piece I'm spending time on is just my other key stakeholder, which is my own board. And this notion of how do you stay connected with your board? Are you aligned? Are you continuing to understand what their point of view is? Are you finding ways to ensure that you're getting your point of view across? So I really invest in board level relationships for myself. And then just all the internal operations. Because we are not a manufacturing plant, like everything that we do requires human capital and IP. A lot of time operationally with our teams. And I have a really solid teams here. But we've spent a fair amount of time just intentionally planning what we want to continue to create for our members and our team. So I would say it's those buckets, 40% externally facing significant amount of time on board relationships and then the internal operation stuff. And I try to learn from other CEOs of larger companies, like how to not fall into the trap of CEO time spend, which is don't just spend time on the things that you love to do, Renee. Like spend time on the other things that really matter. And so I'm constantly calibrating my time spent and ensuring that it's going in the right direction. Yeah, that's very cool. Before we leave the academy and your role, is there maybe one or two things that you can think of that most people don't know about the academy? We already talked quite a bit about the mission and vision of the academy and some of the different things you do. But if you ever thought about, what's one thing, even if people who attend regularly may not know, is there any such thing? Yeah. Well, we're definitely connoisseurs of event spaces. I mean, because we are doing 60 events in any given year. We're tracking the price of a gallon of coffee as a big indicator as to which way the market's built. So I've learned a lot about the travel industry. And then I think the other thing that might surprise people is we have a co-investment arm where we are deploying capital alongside our health systems. I think we've deployed something like 230 million of capital in the last five years, so our strategic partnership arm, not academy capital, sort of advising our members on that. And that's been super interesting too around where is the market going? How can health systems influence the way that product is being created? Where can you find synergies if you think about utilities that all health systems need? So maybe the academy as an alliance of co-investment would be surprising for people to know. Yeah. Actually, that was one thing I was unaware of myself. So let me put you on the spot a little bit. So what's one place that you showed up in your schedule like you're going to have to go and you're kind of like not really feeling it, but once you got there, you're like, this is pretty cool. Like I'd bring my family here. Oh, yeah. I might take a little liberty with that question, which is the place that I think everyone should get on their calendar if they haven't already is the montage looking at beach. That is by far one of my favorite properties. You walk into the lobby, you can see the ocean from the window and you can feel your heart rate dropping pretty significantly. That would be one. And then I'm not a big skier, so I've not traditionally done ski resorts, but we did a meeting in Vale. We've done one in Deer Valley and I don't know that I want to be a skier, but I will definitely engage in the eproski culture. Yes. And that was through some Academy exposure as well. Yeah. I'm definitely a mountain person. So I would have been all about the male experience that you spoke about. Let's talk about leadership because well, we've already, it's already been woven into everything we've already spoke about because Renee, when you speak, it just exudes your leadership. What are one or two skills that when you look back in your career to date have really been key that, and the reason I asked this question is for again, listeners, they'll be like, I want to be like Renee, I want to become a CEO. And so they'll be thinking, okay, what skills does she have that helped her be so successful? Yeah. So it's interesting. Thank you for that. I never imagined myself in this position. I wasn't necessarily striving. I wasn't necessarily striving for it. So I feel incredibly grateful that someone took a bet on me and I think it was a good bet that they made, but I'm grateful for it. I think skill-wise, I would say a few things. I would just say if I have one superpower, it's that I can read talent and I know how to build really effective teams. And I know what my gifts are and I know how to build. I don't feel pressure to be able to do all of the things. I just put a lot of emphasis on the team that you built around you and what I would need as a team around me as a CEO would be very different than what someone else would need. So I would say building the right teams is key to it. I think I am also confident. I feel like I can figure things out. And I build a lot of relationships and I will leverage those to help me problem-solve. And then the third, I talk about this a lot with my own team is I don't fall in love with my own ideas. So we can try something and I'm not afraid to take an outside view and to say, you know, that's not working and have a little bit of willingness to start anew. Like having some distance between how you view yourself is super helpful, meaning you're going to get some things right and that's not because you're perfect. You're going to get some things wrong and it's not because you're terrible. Like this equanimity theme has been really this emotional current. I've really tried to cultivate so that I can show up as steady and have a point of view, but also be willing to make pivots when, you know, didn't get it right. Yeah. That's great. What about something you learned the hard way? You already mentioned vulnerability that you learned earlier in your career and the importance of that. Is there anything else that sort of someone, I don't know, it may have come through a mentor that you were describing or some other way that you just discovered, hey, I got to make this change or pivot? Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I think a previous employer did really well is like an executive 360. I've had several over time and just this awareness that the way people receive you or perceive you, whether you agree or not, is a set of facts that you have to contend with. And the way that you show up, depending upon, you know, you may be my peer, so you may have a view of me, you may be my direct report, you may be lateral in the organization, just taking stock of the 360 view of your perspective. And I think earlier in my career, I had to sort of reconcile the fact that if you worked with me, you had a very high opinion. If you worked laterally in the organization, you just weren't sure. You couldn't quite figure me out. And I guess that doesn't really matter unless you want to ascend in your career, like would people want to work with you or for you? And so this notion of how do you just be mindful of the way that you show up to different people in the organization and try to have a deliberate approach around that? I think that was one of the lessons I learned pretty early on that I still take with me. Yeah. I like that. Now we talked in the beginning about growing up in Rhode Island. Is there something that your parents made you do when you were a kid and you sort of rolled your eyes, maybe not in front of it, but in your mind, you're rolling your eyes, that you look back today and you're like, man, I'm glad they made me do that. Yeah. So I'm tall and I seemingly looked athletic when I was younger. So every high school coach would want to recruit me for their sports team, but I didn't really love sports all that much. But the track and field coach was very compelling. And so he got me to commit to joining the team. And after my first meet and running the 400, which is terrible, I'm like, okay, that was great. I'm done. I'm never running again. Okay. That was a terrible race. I'm going to quit the track team. And she just said very calmly, sure, you can quit the track team, but you'll just need to be grounded for the duration of the season, which was eight or 10 weeks, right? And so, but she didn't really get too hot under the collar. She said, sure, you can quit, but here's the impact. And so I think what, and of course I'm like not wanting to take that, I stuck it out and finished the season. But I think that was a great lesson. And you can do hard things. If you start something, you have to finish it. You're accountable. Like that, that has definitely stayed with me. Yeah. And it was an early lesson. What about today? Do you run today at all? No, I hate, if you ever see me running, you should run too, because somebody is facing. So no, but I do, I feel like I am a corporate athlete and I have raised three very athletic children, all of whom have played college sports. So I have a little athlete in me, but it comes out in my children's volleyball and their own track and field performance. That's what I would say. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Wow. Renee, this has been a lot of fun. We talked a lot about a lot of different things, our time together at the advisory board and then songs on your playlist, Mary J. Blyse. We do have a playlist on Spotify called Digital Voices and we'll add your selections to that. And then we talked about life message and mantra and kind of coming from the world of stoicism. You can control your response. You can make things happen. And we talked a lot about your growing up and your pivotal moment was having your first child so young in life and then how you got into healthcare and throughout your career, all the different roles and how those roles helped shape you to who you are today as a CEO. And, you know, some of the things that really helped along the way was this concept of feedback as a gift and that there's growth after, I call it trauma. There's always growth after a little bit of trauma and things like that. So you shouldn't be afraid of it. And then just being open to feedback, having great mentors that helped you and including becoming more vulnerable, but being more open. And then we talked a lot about the Academy and just that it develops this community and what the benefits are for the members. And again, I'm a big proponent given my past experience and I know the benefit of being part of those communities, what it is like. And then we talked about daily life as a CEO and then some of the key objectives over the next couple of years and continue to develop these communities and all the different things that you're doing, not only 60 events per year, but you also have this investment arm. I mean, it's just a lot. The Academy is like a lot of stuff going on. It's pretty incredible. And that's why we ended with leadership because how important leadership is and you really talked about people. And that was an emphasis throughout your career that I was picking up on is like, it's all about the people. You rise and fall based upon the people you have, the teams that you're developing, but you also learn to know your limitations. You can't do everything, but you have the confidence to know what you know, what you don't know. And then you're not in love with your own ideas. I love that whole concept. And then how B60s helped you and then how some of the things that your parents taught you just through the sports analogy to help you become more resilient and confident and those sort of things. What did I miss? Or what did we miss? You are a good active listener. That's quite cool. So I'm going to give you the last word over there. I may have missed something. No. I mean, I guess what I would say, one thing that I'm spending time thinking about is, what does that then mean in terms of the future of work? What's the culture that all of us as leaders need to cultivate in the next decade ahead? I think the compact that employees have with employers is radically shifting for all the reasons that we know. And I just want to be super thoughtful about what does that mean we can create that may look different than the past. The way that I was groomed and the way that I developed might look very different than my 20 year old who's graduating from college in a couple of years. And so what is the future culture of the workforce need to look like? And how do we just constructively build that in collaboration with our teams? Yeah, that's a very good point to end with. Renee, you're an amazing leader. I'm a more amazing human. I'm so happy for the Academy to have someone like you as their leader for such a long time now and continuing to lead so well. Thank you for being my guests on Digital Voices. My pleasure.