In this episode of After the Chaos, Kandice and Angela reflect on their discussion with John Hill, emphasizing the importance of authenticity, clarity, and the balance between logistics and humanity in leadership. They explore how effective communication and a clear mission can drive success in organizations, particularly in healthcare. The conversation also touches on the potential for innovation that arises from chaotic situations, highlighting the need for leaders to navigate both the logistical and human aspects of their roles. Listen to the full John Hill episode.
Full Transcript
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Kandice Garcia, RN
Okay, welcome back to After the Chaos. Now, Angela, this is actually my favorite part because I have so many thoughts and feelings, like while we’re going through these conversations, I want to be like, but wait, but what about that? So I’m glad we get a moment to like sit and talk. Let’s process, you know, some of the things that we talked about with John today. ⁓ my gosh. he’s amazing, by the way. Amazing.
Angela Adams, RN
Amazing. Amazing.
Kandice
Like what’s like a great human, ⁓ so clear, so grounded. He talked about being your authentic self and like that just comes across so clearly with him. ⁓ Yeah, you get to work with him all the time. Is that just like how he is? Is that how he always is?
Angela
Yeah, in fact, like
from the very moment that we met, we met at like a CEO advisory round table. And I remember him speaking and thinking, this man just like knows how to communicate. And that was the first thing that I noticed about him. then hanging out during that meeting, he was talking about like all these adventures and he was asking really great questions in the meeting. So I just approached him and I was like, man, this is
this is phenomenal, like, can we speak about some of my goals? And he was like, well, actually, I’m just starting out my coaching and mentoring business. And he was like, why don’t we work together? And I was like, I would love that. As a new startup CEO, I was craving that. I don’t want to have to go to my board with every idea that pops in my head. I needed somebody to bounce ideas off of and figure out.
you know, strategy and things like that. So he became that person to me. And then I, our relationship has grown over the last three years substantially. ⁓ He’s amazing to work with. And I’m glad that you got to see like his authentic authenticity came and speak really comes through no matter who he’s speaking to or what he’s doing. ⁓ And so I loved and I, you know, we’ve spent
Kandice
Thanks.
Angela
years on this is just getting clarity. And I feel like so many leaders, if you ask them, like if you just put their people in a room and said, hey, what is the, what is the why behind your organization? Like, what is the mission? ⁓ And you just like had them go around,
Kandice
Yeah.
Angela
you know, would they say what the CEO says? Would they all say what each other said? Or would it just be a splash of like 12 different things? And I think
for most organizations, it would be a splash of like 12 different things. And most CEOs would be like, well, what do you mean? I thought you guys knew and understood like what we were trying to do here. And John has really instilled that into me through our coaching and mentoring is just this clarity of thought and the amount of times that you have to kind of distill that message down and into the team and have understanding like what is the problem that we are solving? Who are we? Why are we doing what we’re doing?
Kandice
Yeah.
Hmm. ⁓
Angela
and instilling that clarity into the team just over and over and over again, till you are sick of saying it, is really creates this success.
Kandice
Yeah.
You know that that leadership skill isn’t really taught right? So it’s like when you think of leaders you think of like the management you think of the budgeting you think of Resources, you know, ⁓ you know future where are we going and especially in health care, know We’re acquiring new hospitals and what’s growth and it’s you know Staffing and you know, there’s all these like logistical decisions that need to be made by leadership but
you know, to John’s point, it’s about the leader leading us to somewhere and like being able to really clearly articulate where we’re going. And then I think the other side is the feedback to say what you’re doing is getting us there. Yes, that’s what I mean. Yes, that is the direction. So when we talked about patient safety and we talked about budgeting and we talk about
you know, ⁓ staff satisfaction and wellness and all of the things that you have to kind of juggle and balance as your operations. If you can do it through the lens of your vision, I think then the people who work there can interpret what you mean. What does it mean for me to show up to work? And in these moments in the very minute details of my interactions with every patient, how is that fulfilling the vision? Actually, I think that communication, that understanding is really where some of the leadership thrives.
Angela
Yeah.
Kandice
and where
healthcare systems actually really go somewhere.
Angela
Even like if I give the example of inflow health and what we’ve done together, John and I just on our strategic work.
At the end of the day, if you asked a technology startup, like what is your goal? What is your mission? Most startups would be like, it’s growth, it’s revenue, it’s growth, it’s revenue, right? What you really realize at the end of the day is that is not the metric. The metric is client success. The metric is, we serving the need of these health system clinicians?
And are considered in the right metric. The metric is, we serving the need of these health system clinicians?
And are we saving patient lives? Like that is the mission. That is the goal. If you are doing those things well and your client success is sky high and you are serving the need and they have value and they love using your product and it creates efficiencies and it takes, you know, the manual processes out of their day and it’s saving patient lives and it’s doing all those things. And guess what? Everything else behind the scenes, as far as the
process measures all fall into place. And I think it’s the same with health systems. And yeah, I think that that’s what he instilled in me is like, focus on the right thing, like focus on the right metric, and everything else will kind of fall into place. then, yeah, will we have the growth numbers? Of course, because our clients are like screaming from the rooftops how amazing InfloHealth is like, what an easy product to sell. And will technology be
Kandice
Yeah.
Yeah.
Angela
efficient and effective? Well, of course, because they have to because client success is our main goal. So it really is kind of that what he said, it’s clarity. ⁓ One thing I loved, I wanted to get your comment on it. So he started at HCA and he said he learned like, what did he say the logistics of like,
Kandice
Hello. Yeah.
Angela
like the how to run a health system, and they do it well, right. ⁓ And then he went to PeaceHealth, a faith-based organization and he used
And he was like, and I learned the humanity of healthcare. And I think that is a beautiful thing to put those pieces together, but you’re right. You can have leaders that like are really good at the logistics of running a company and running a strategy. But if you don’t add the humanity and the authenticity and all of the like people skills and all of the leading of the teams and getting everybody kind of wrapped around the same initiative, then like all you have is somebody at the top, like trying to drive the metrics and nobody.
that feels connected to them.
Kandice
Yeah, yeah, I mean that balance of logistics and humanity, can we just say like, I think that is like the goal of my life just in general. Like I want to like be good at things, I to be efficient, I want to like get things done. And I like want to like experience my life and have connection with others. And I think that if you translate that to a leadership role, you know, we say this is work and it is right, we’re running businesses, but
These are our lives. The people who show up every day, this is their life’s work. These are our experiences. And if you have a leader who understands that those are two things that absolutely need to be developed and honed ⁓ and utilized, and they work best in interaction together, it’s kind of like what we’ve been talking about with ⁓ operations and technology. You can’t have…
just technology to solve your problem and you can’t run your operations without technology. It’s that both of those do things well and then when they come together, it’s the interaction between them. That’s the magic, right? And it’s a give and take. Humanity and logistics, it’s never one or the other and it’s an even balance at any moment. It’s kind of this, it’s this fluidity that needs to be understood. you know, I feel like you can feel it in a leader.
when they get that perspective, when they get that framing of their role. And I think one of the things he really kind of just highlighted to me is leaders are people, right? They’re not gonna do everything right. They’re not gonna know where to go. There are people like John out there who can help them and support them if they’re willing to ask for help. But at the end of the day, we’re all in this together and they’re trying just as hard as we are to maintain that.
and to do the right thing and to try to understand how we can better care for our patients, run businesses, all of us have jobs and do better for our communities. ⁓ It made me just feel the compassion for those with the big jobs ⁓ at top.
Angela
I agree. And a lot of people will sit here and listen to that and be like, ⁓ I feel so sorry for the CEO. But honestly, it is lonely at the top at times. And it is a struggle. ⁓ It is not as easy as people think it is. They think it’s just standing up there and telling people what to do. And that’s just not true. You’re many times. You have a burden on your shoulders, for sure. One thing that I loved, and I think we’ll just wrap it up with this, is
Kandice
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah.
Angela
his commentary about, because I honestly had never thought about it that way, he talked about COVID and the chaos that COVID experienced and what a beautiful thing he saw happen within his health system and how beauty can be found in chaos and that he saw his team come together in a new way and he saw innovation in a new way and he saw everybody come behind a mission in a way that he had never seen.
Kandice
Hmm
Yeah.
Yeah,
Angela
in an organization and sometimes we put such a negative connotation on chaos, but at end of the day, like there’s a lot of innovation that comes out of really stressful, you know, pressure testing and chaotic and complex situations that I think we don’t give enough credit to.
Kandice
think the pressure can sometimes be the clarity that we need to suss out what’s important and what’s not important.
You know, there’s so much to decipher and there’s so much to understand. And sometimes when you turn up the heat, you turn up the urgency, it allows us to really hone in on our values, our principles, and really be able to align what we’re doing with where we want to go. He just was such a gift. He laid it out so clearly. I just loved our conversation.
Angela
Yeah, that’s
Same.
All right, thank you guys. Thanks for attending and look forward to the next podcast together.
Kandice
Thanks Angela, bye.
