April 20, 2021 • 37 mins
When it comes to working in healthcare, speed and accuracy can be the difference between life and death. From laboratory monitors and connected devices to secure backups and network infrastructure, making the right technology choices is critical to providing patients with the best possible care. With 5G connectivity enabling healthcare breakthroughs like seamless telemedicine and mobile medical imaging, staying on top of the latest potential tech solutions has never been more crucial. We’ll sit with one of the leading minds in the medical field, Marty Paslick, CIO of HCA Healthcare, to hear how the lives of his patients affect his outlook and approach towards technology in a company where his entire team considers themselves healthcare professionals first, and technologists second.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Five G has a big part of how do you
create a better experience, whether it's patient or our caregivers,
But it also has some behind the curtain ravications for us.
When you think of things like a backup, it starts
to open up lots of different new options for us
that just simply didn't exist before. So to me, I think,
you know, five G becomes one of those foundational technologies
(00:25):
of the future that once you get a little bit
to the other side of it, will reflect back and go,
how do we ever do this without five G? Because
I do think it's a paradigm shifting technology. Welcome to
the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than
a decade really learning about technology, what makes it tick,
(00:46):
and then describing and explaining that to my audience. But
it's the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the
leaders at the intersection of technology and business that fascinate
me the most. In part nership with T Mobile for Business,
I explore the unique set of challenges that see I
O S and C T O space, from advancements in
(01:07):
cloud and edge computing, software as a service, Internet of things,
and of course five G. We are often left wondering
how the leading minds and business continue to thrive. Let's
find out. Our guest today is Marty Paslick, the c
i O of h c A Healthcare, one of the
(01:28):
largest providers of healthcare services in the United States. H
c A Healthcare has a network of more than one
hospitals plus two thousand other care centers, from clinics to
emergency rooms to urgent care centers. The company's mission is
easily expressed above all else. We are committed to the
(01:48):
care and improvement of human life. That's a simple concept,
but it requires complicated approaches, not the least of which
is incorporating technology that supports that mission. That's Marty comes in.
As you will hear, Marty literally fits the definition of
a restless one. As the c i O for the
entire organization, Marty is at the top of a truly
(02:11):
massive I T force. He has been with h c
A Healthcare for more than three decades, giving him a
deep understanding of how h c A Healthcare leverages its
technology in order to carry out its mission. I sat
down with Marty to learn more about his background, his philosophy,
and approach to leadership and how hc A Healthcare created
(02:32):
an all new technological and process playbook to navigate through
the numerous issues that arose as a consequence of the
COVID nineteen outbreak. Marty, first of all, let me thank
you for your time in joining us for this podcast.
I very much appreciate it my pleasure, and I'd like
to get started by learning a bit more about you
(02:54):
and and what makes you tick before we dive into
all of the challenge is you face and your approach
to meeting those challenges. So to get started, what actually
drew you into the world of tech to begin with? Gosh,
I wish I had a really fancy answer for that.
(03:14):
When I was in high school, I had an opportunity
to take a computer programming class and I received an
extremely generous sea at the end of that class. Two
years later, my brother takes the same class, and he
doesn't realize that I was just, you know, just struggle
(03:36):
to get through the class, and so he reaches out
to me and seeks my help. And so I literally
took his textbook and I dove in and I said,
I'm gonna I'm gonna learn this. And I think most
people in technology would say there's a moment where you know,
the puzzle pieces kind of come together, and for me,
(03:59):
all a sudden it clicked and I was able to
help my brother get through the class. But all of
a sudden, I said, you know, I think I'm pretty
good at this. I went on to college and initially
to study in the business school, but I eventually went
back and I said, look, you remember how good you
were at that. So I went back into the engineering
(04:21):
school after that, and uh, and that's what really got
everything started. I think you might have hit on a
new educational tool where, uh, in order to get better
at any particular of course, you are given the the
the burden of making sure someone else's understanding it, so
you have to. Uh. That is fascinating to me. I
(04:45):
love that answer. So what was what was your first
job in the tech field? I applied for a software
developers position and really had, you know, my estimation a
pretty marginal marginal res may and I couldn't believe it
when they offered me the job, and I got in
(05:05):
and started work in the clinical development area. My first
job was to construct laboratory interfaces, so you know, there's
instruments that test your blood and things like that, and
they have to talk to information system. So I built
the interfaces between those two things. But but I was
just a young guy just out of school, and in
six months into the job, I get an opportunity to
(05:28):
go to a hospital for the first time. I walked
into the laboratory and I go to the lab manager
and I said, what's a laboratory instrument? She had to,
you know, this big smile on her face, and she said,
follow me. And for the next ninety minutes, she walked
me through that laboratory and I got one of the
(05:49):
most important lessons of my career. I saw firsthand and
how my work impacted a patient. I've been doing this
for thirty five years and I still remember that moment
that it not just clicked technologically, but it clicked to
the mission. This job was bigger than other jobs, and
(06:09):
and it had a responsibility that all in an instant,
in a ninety minute tour, just all came together for me.
That is a really remarkable story as well, and a
powerful one, I think, because it's something that sounds like
it really helps drive you in your work, that you
have this connection between what it is you do and
(06:31):
the fact that a large portion of that work is
all going towards keeping people healthy and saving lives. Correct.
But the bomb line is, and when I talked to
either our colleagues here in h c A or I
talked to our vendor community, you know, I remind them
our mission is to take care of people in their
(06:52):
most vulnerable moments of life, and that responsibility has a
high degree of accountability. And that's why this is a
fabulous industry to be in and a great company to
work for. Well, I almost feel like you've you've kind
of answered this question already, but I'm curious. Can you
tell us about a memorable project you worked on earlier
(07:15):
in your career, something that really helped shape your philosophy
towards your work today. Yes, you know, I was just
a software developer, right and I was asked if I
would facilitate the selection process for a new UM system
(07:35):
wide clinical system, and oh gosh, I wanted to do this.
I wanted to do this project so bad because he's
going to really stretch out beyond my my skill set
as a developer. And I got the assignment and literally
I was working, you know, twelve thirteen hours a day
for about six or eight months, and there was no
(07:57):
doubt I was the expert. My ball comes in my
cubicle and he says, we have the opportunity to present
to the Board of Directors tomorrow to get their approval.
So we can get going. If you can just provide
us the data, we'll be ready to go. I look
at the template and I go, I can do this.
I can do this. But there was something inside of me.
(08:17):
I looked at my boss and I said, but I
think there's a better way to present this information to them. Why.
Boss looks at me and he goes, you see, you
don't understand. We're at three o'clock in the afternoon. The
board meeting is at nine o'clock tomorrow. We just got
to follow the plan. So I go, okay. So they
walk out of my cuicle and I sit there and
(08:38):
I was like, what I do. I know there's a
better way. So I thought to myself, well, how long
will it take me to complete their template? And I
thought how long is it gonna take me to do
how I would go about it? And then I just
sat there and I went, I'm doing them both, and
so I did. There. As you know, I finished it,
came back and did mine and finished it about four
(08:59):
in the morning, and just sat in my cube. There's
no point going home, just sat my cuicle. My boss
comes in next morning, goes, hey, hey, how to go?
And I show him the template and he goes, thank you.
I am sorry to put you in this situation. And
I go, hey, but would you look at this other deck?
And he looked at and he goes, you got the
same clothes on. I go, oh yeah, and he goes,
(09:20):
why why did you do that? We we said just
to do it this way. And while he's giving me
a little bit of grief, his boss comes in and
and I say, well, I'm going to get right back
into batter's box and try again. And I try again
and same answered. They're like, we don't have time for
discussion here. We have a board meeting in two hours.
(09:41):
So ironic it is this their boss was in. So
I've got three levels of management in my cubicle and
and quickly I get it that this is the author
of the template. And I just said, I am trying
it one more time, and I showed my presentation deck
and he just looked at me and goes, can you
get fifty copies of that to the boardroom and I go,
(10:02):
I can, and you know, I high tell it over there.
And actually on the way over I run into the
c I O and I'm so many, I'm so far
down the ORC chart, you know. And he sees me
with a stack of papers and he goes, hey, are
you already bazzic? And I go, I am. He goes,
you have no idea how easy you've made my job today.
He goes, I want you to sit in the back
(10:22):
of the room and watch how this happens. And I
won't go into the details, but that nonetheless, it all
gets approved in twenty minutes. In the board meeting on Monday,
I have a note to come see my boss and
I walk in and uh, he just looks at me
and goes, congratulations, you've just been promoted. Here's sixteen blank
requisitions to create your team. And so the lesson there
(10:42):
is when you believe in something that is good for
the mission, pursue and don't give up and actually has
an introvert a little bit. It really it gave me
confidence that I knew I had the subject matter of
expertise and I had the eviction to do things that
were meaningful. Well, Marty, I gotta thank you because that
(11:06):
story literally sums up the spirit of this podcast about
having the conviction and courage to push forward with a
new way that ends up being of benefit to an organization.
On top of that, your story literally included restlessness in
an all nighter, So fantastic job. If there's one thing
(11:37):
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as c i O of h C, a healthcare Marty
overseason organization of about six thousand professionals with c i
(13:04):
os of various divisions reporting to him. Given such a
large responsibility, I wanted to understand his approach to leadership,
his philosophy towards his position, and the challenges that naturally
come with the role. This is a very mission driven company,
you know, as founded by physicians, and our mission of
(13:25):
of caring for for people just really matters. Our technologists
would tell you that they view themselves as healthcare professionals
first and technologists second, and so to me, that's the
real distinguishing mark, and I think it's why we believe
(13:46):
we have such a strong culture. I think it all
begins with what do you believe in and if there's
a shared belief across an organization, then good things happen.
I think the pandemic is a good example of where. Boy,
I'm sure happy we had a strong mission because it's
what held us together. And we'll definitely talk a lot
(14:07):
more about the pandemics effect. Because in technology the word
disruption is used a lot. I don't think any event
in the last century has been as disruptive as the
pandemic has on the way all companies, but specifically companies
in the tech sector, have had to approach things. What
(14:28):
would you say would be the biggest challenges you typically
face as c I, Oh, what are the things that
you identify as being the issues you really have to
to dedicate a lot of your time and expertise on. Well,
you know, I think they're I think I think different
leaders um try to play to their strengths. I focus
(14:50):
a lot on this. Keeping the organization well connected sounds
a little clish, I guess, but but it's it takes
a lot of effort. To me. You have to have
not just communication channels, but you have a have to
have some certain degree of diversity of how you're connecting
with people. And if again, you know, linking it back
(15:11):
to the whole mission. If you're communicating well, and you're
and you're drawing people in uh to that type of commitment,
then really good things happen. And so you know, I
spend probably more than than a normal c I O
on just whether it is M my direct reports, or
it is how I find methods and strategies to connect
(15:36):
to the individual contributor and the work that they're doing.
I think there's some leaders that I think that's not
part of their job and that they might send a
newsletter or something like that, and I just think there's, um,
there's just tremendous value and just being an excellent communicator
or at least having high intent to be a communicator.
And I probably fit the little ladder than the former.
(15:58):
There your model see is really coming through, Marty. I
imagine that there must be a lot of high need
for for flexibility and communication skills because you're speaking to
very different audiences at any given time, whether it might
be physicians or people on the medical staff, or people
on the administration side, or people within the I T departments,
(16:22):
and all of these different groups have different ways of communicating,
and they may have different perspectives on a particular project,
for example, And I would imagine that coordinating all of
that and keeping those communication lines open and getting by
in an understanding among all those different parties can be
(16:47):
a challenge worth doing, but still a challenge. You make
just an excellent point, you know, I think most organizations
count on their c i O to be the the objective,
the impartial person, because you're right there, there are a
lot of strategies that are competing against each other. Sometimes
there's different perspectives on the strategy itself, and I do
(17:10):
think the company counts on me to away in in
a way that shows no territorial reasoning, no bias, but
just hey, what do I think is really right for
the company. And I do think the c i O
road many times gets that unique opportunity to do that.
And now to kind of touch back on the pandemic,
(17:32):
I am curious before the pandemic typically, how many projects
would your department be kind of overseeing at any given time.
I understand it's a lot. Yeah, And first of all,
you know, I think any c i O would say
you have all the documented projects and who knows how
many undocumented ones that are going on right, But prior
(17:54):
to the pandemic, we had I guess somewhere between three
fifty and four hundred projects. How did your department react
to keep the company on track while responding to COVID nineteen,
I mean we had to shift fast. Well, first of all,
we had to ensure that work from home environment would
(18:15):
be productive. We have a few thousand people that before
the pandemic that would work remotely. We had at one
time forty five thousand people working from home, and you
can imagine we didn't have the infrastructure at the onset
and how quickly you know, our network engineers put us
in a position to provide that type of work environment
(18:37):
was kind of blew me away to start off with.
But if you think about at the very beginning of
the pandemic, what was the big issue? It was all
about testing lab testing. You know, how quickly could you
turn a COVID test and gosh, our supply chain organization
is terrific. And they were making new contracts and new
deals with lots of different reference labs to just try
(19:00):
to create greater and greater throughput. Well back to my
old lab interface days, Hey, you got to put the
connection points in there. And the teams were working around
the clock, and we were doing interfaces that in a
traditional at pace kind of environment would have taken about
nine months. We were taking nine days. Now, some of
that was just high focus, but a lot of it
(19:22):
was just work ethic. And I usually get this report
that shows any staff colleague that has worked more than
sixty hours a week for three weeks in a row
because something's going on right. Well, there was a time
and I don't know if it's April or May, but
it's in that early time frame that I had a
list of a dozen to two dozen names of individuals
(19:45):
that we're working eighty plus hours a week, and I
scheduled fifteen minute phone calls with him, and it was
like a rerun. It was like Groundhog Day. Every conversation
was exactly the same. They would ay, look, this is
my moment. You know, I joined this company to be
(20:07):
part of healthcare, and here I am, and it's up
to me to make this happen. So you had the
laboratory interfaces first, you had the hotel healthy space with
no visitors into our hospitals, we had to quickly put
together away for patients and care teams to talk to
family and friends. We acquired more than three thousand iPads
(20:29):
to distribute across the company. We even here at the end,
you know, we we had to create a vaccination system.
We had literally six weeks to create a vaccination system
that we built from scratch. That last time I checked,
we vaccinated thousand people. And so all of that. It
ended up being about fifty projects that we had that
(20:52):
were directly assisting COVID response. It was the hardest of
years and it was the most memorable of years. The
work effort in the dedication and execution was just amazing
to me. Are there lessons you've learned through HCA Healthcare
is response to COVID nineteen that you believe will be
(21:13):
relevant beyond the pandemic? Absolutely. I tell our team all
the time, I'm not going back. I'm not going I'm
not going back to how things were before. And I
think I think one of the important things for us
as an organization, and maybe others already were doing this
before the pandemic. But I mentioned, you know, the three
(21:33):
to four hundred projects. Everything to some degree has some
sort of constraint, money constraint, resource constraint, whatever. And I
think one of the things as a company we discovered
was that, hey, there are technology projects that we need
to say fast as possible. You know what is that portfolio?
(21:56):
What is those initiatives that we're not going to limit ourselves.
Now we may say no to some other things, but
what is the subset of that portfolio that we have
to move at lightning speed? And I think that is
the most important thing for our organization is that now
we have an agenda that says these dozen projects, go
(22:18):
as quickly as you can. And I love it. I
love it because we get to see the impact and
so you're just moving and you're making progress. But this
way boy the top priorities, and it gives you a
better connection to senior leadership too, because they are extremely
well aware of that tight portfolio. They want to know
about it, they see it, they feel it in their operations.
(22:39):
We are are going to stay operating at COVID speed
for those top priorities. I wanted to learn more about
the sorts of technologies h c A Healthcare views as
fundamentally important in order to achieve its mission. Marty did
(23:02):
not disappoint. We decided before the pandemic, and this sounds
so common sense now, but it required such a significant investment.
Was Hey, we're a mobile industry. We may be one
of the most mobile industries. You know, you think of
(23:23):
physicians rounding in a hospital, to nursing, the respiratory therapist.
The full bottom is everybody's moving all the time, and
we were supporting them with desktops and laptops and and
so the company's commitment to going mobile was really important. Today.
You know, we have more than eighty thousand iPhones across
(23:47):
our our organization that are shared by nurses and other
caregivers to just to lift up the communication that needs
to happen around a patient. And it's really changed how
we do a lot of things in the company, not
just communication, but now we have this mechanism that allows
us to get alerts right into the nurses pocket instead
(24:09):
of walking back to a nursing station and looking at
a dashboard, are waiting for an alert from a closet somewhere.
It's now all of a a sudden buzzing in their pockets
and they can take action really quickly. And so mobility
has just been a huge area and we always I
think had a great depth in data. We would probably
(24:31):
argue that our clinical data warehouse is the largest in
the provider world, you know, so and that's that's a
reference of our size as well. But we get some
interesting insights and those insights helped us in COVID, you know,
it helped us see things that were happening to patients
that I'm not sure we would have had the same
opportunity without that capability. UM. Before the before the pandemic,
(24:57):
we had made UM I think some really solid investments
in telemessin and we were we were using telemens and
primarily to make sure that we placed experts in the
place of need as fast as possible, so neurology, so
stroke management, you know, making sure we had a core
(25:17):
set of physicians that could assess a stroke uh any
moment of the day, so tell them Esson was a
big deal. Psychiatry is another thing. You know, people chopin
into an emergency department and it's obvious that they need
an assessment, and sometimes psychiatrists are difficult to get and
and and that's a moment a patient really needs somebody. Now,
(25:38):
they can't wait eight hours for psychiatrists to be available.
And so we had a number of these programs have
already available. That that set a foundation that went nuts
in the pandemic. They've been extremely critical to our clinical
outcomes and to just our overall operations. Yeah, I would
argue that telemedicine, the fact that you had a foundation
(26:02):
in place before the pandemic was of critical importance not
just to to hc A Healthcare, but obviously to all
the patients that h c A Healthcare serves. Well, here's
the crazy number about it. So those programs we put
in place was more about making sure a corset of
experts were available. Well, the pandemic really was about my
(26:24):
family doctor connecting to me, right, and so in twenty nineteen,
these numbers will just they blow me away. But in
twenty nine we did about thirty five hundred telehealth visits
physician the patient, you know, like a primary care physician,
you know, I mean we did in more than a million.
(26:45):
That's a big increase, three thousand two over a million televisits.
It's just it's it's it's hard to imagine. In the pandemic,
you know, we scrambled a little bit, there's no doubt
about it. And and I think that experience is really
going to accelerate the space and and now we're trying
(27:06):
to say, hey, we've gotten through the tough part of that.
Now how do we lift it up? How do we
lift up the experience for the patient and the caregiver,
make sure that it's as seamless and in as to
it as as possible, and making sure that in behind
the curtain that we have the right structure, the right
a scale to do it appropriately, and with technologies like mobility,
(27:30):
with the various devices, whether they're smartphones, tablets, that sort
of thing. Obviously you have lab equipment that connects to
various communication systems, the presence of telemedicine being a big
part of the future. Does HCA Healthcare have specific plans
when it comes to things like five G connectivity? I
would imagine something that has very high throughput, very low
(27:54):
latency could have numerous applications in the medical field. You're
absolutely right. Now, I think we're still at a place
of evaluating a pretty wide range of use cases. So
the obvious ones that people would see is to take
clinical imaging. So you know, the clinical imaging continues to
evolve to provide a radiologists and other physicians much clear,
(28:20):
much more high fidelity types of of images. But as
you might imagine, the more fidelity you get, the more
dense these images become, and so the storage requirements are significant.
That part we don't worry about. But the problem has been, Hey,
I'm a physician and I'm on the move and I
(28:40):
need to see this image. How do I do it?
And with five G the ability to quickly download an
image is going to be a big deal. And you
think about the number of images that are just taking
every day. I'm thinking, off the top of my head,
just in h c A alone, we produce eleven million
(29:01):
images a day and one and a half million are
viewed every day. Now you think about how many of those,
percentage wise, would be much quicker response if it was
available through cell. Five G has a big part of
how do you create a better experience, whether it's patient
or our caregivers, But it also has some behind the
(29:21):
curtain ravications for us. When you think of things like
a backup, it starts to open up lots of different
new options for us that just simply didn't exist before.
So to me, I think, you know, five G becomes
one of those foundational technologies of the future that once
you get a little bit to the other side of
it will reflect back and go, how do we ever
(29:43):
do this without five G? Because I do think it's
a paradigm shifting technology. I agree entirely and uh when
it comes to different applications, it's the medical field that
leaps out to me because of things like tele medicine,
and as you point out, the ability need to send
very large files very quickly without having to have a
(30:05):
dedicated like fiber connection where you can be mobile. You
could be in the field somewhere and still get that
information back very quickly. That's invaluable, especially when you're talking
about cases where response time can literally turn into a
life or death situation for someone. I'm also curious about
(30:26):
your use of the Internet of things world. It's something
that I would say ten years ago people would think
of as again just a buzz term, but now we
live in a reality where billions of devices connect to networks,
and in fact there's an entire subcategory of Internet of things,
of Internet of medical things. Does your department oversee a
lot of projects that involve various IoT solutions. If you
(30:50):
think about some of the types of technologies, anything that
can provide us more data, maybe The first thing more
streaming data. So just take patient vitals for instance. You know,
traditionally a nurse comes in every hour and takes your
vitals right, and we attach something to you and we
are getting a continuous stream, which also means continuous trending
(31:14):
of those vital signs and and so just from a
care perspective, you know, streaming data that was traditionally taken
in a sample size is a big deal. The second
thing is that many of the technologies provide some freedom
you monitor different things that before was tethered at a cable,
(31:37):
and so that patient in a recovery mode always needs
some assistance. And now the Internet of Things has you know,
emerging devices that look, if I'm uncleared to get up
and get up because everything's moving with me right, and
I think it's fascinating. It's where the puck is obviously moving.
I think one of the areas that we are researching
(31:58):
right now is how do we look at commercial based
medical devices. You know, I carry this little strip band
that if I put it on my my knee, it
gives a six line. He gave you. That's amazing. So
the question though, is is I've got a non medical
person me applying this medical device that is really commercial,
(32:19):
not medical grade, And so what do we do with
that data? And I think it's obvious we're heading in
that direction, but how we as an industry, not just
a c A, how do we view it? How do
we use it? How do we care for people with it?
I think is it's going to be an interesting frontier
for not just h c A, but the whole industry.
(32:41):
What's a big challenge you want to tackle? Given all
you've learned throughout your career, Well, how do we move
to a place where decision making is done in the
moment and it's not done based on retrospective analysis? You
know how many decisions are company or made on what
happened eight hours ago or a day go or seven
days ago. And how do we get a place where
(33:04):
the elements of the decision are present as soon as
they're available? And I believe in healthcare UM that could
be a game changer, and so the investments we need
to make. You would instantly believe machine learning. I think
carefully deployed artificial intelligence can help us reduced variation on
(33:28):
decisions that have traditionally been made by humans. I'm not
crazy about removing decisions from physicians, right, Uh, that's not
a good idea. What we want to do is inform
in a way that provides insight to a caregiver in
the moment they needed. And I think that's what really
excites me about the future. Yeah, Marty, I think that
(33:51):
we we could call that augmented intelligence, as opposed to
relying on artificial intelligence, where people assume immediately that that
means you're a placing people with machines. We're really talking
about augmenting very talented people with even more resources and
assets that make them step up to that next, almost
(34:12):
superhuman level of performance in whatever role they might be doing.
And Uh, I really like your vision of the future
and I can't wait to see it become the present.
And of course we've got our one more thing. I
asked Marty if he could answer one last quick question,
and he was happy to oblige. What is the best
(34:35):
piece of advice you have ever received in your career?
Best advice was if of your decisions aren't disagreed with,
then you're not making enough decisions. And there's so many
leaders that would love to have a consensus on everything
they decide on and if you do that, you're not
(34:56):
pressing hard enough. And I love that as a guid line.
So whenever I make it, I'm getting ready to make
a decision and I know it's going to be controversial,
I remind myself, Look, this is why you're in this role,
and if you think this is the right thing, you're
just gonna have to work with that that doesn't agree
with you. Marty, thank you so much for your time.
(35:18):
This conversation has been a genuine pleasure for me as well.
I really enjoyed talking to you today. What I took
away from my talk with Marty is that a CEO
really needs to keep the company's mission at the front
(35:38):
of mine, while also embracing the need to be flexible
and adaptable. The last year has made it apparent that
companies and leaders can't aim for maintaining a status quo,
and Marty made it clear that communication is absolutely key
to effective leadership, particularly during times when we see normal
operations disrupted because of a christ is like a pandemic.
(36:04):
Thank you for listening to the restless ones. We will
have many more conversations with leaders of tech divisions across
all industries and upcoming episodes and we look forward to
sharing those stories with you. I'm Jonathan Strickland. These days,
(36:26):
new ways of working have become the norm, and the
status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to
helping businesses evolve and grow. That's why T Mobile for
Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses sees innovation only.
T Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network,
which makes their new WFX solutions possible, letting businesses stay
(36:48):
connected and productive where work happens. See what T Mobile
for Business can do for you at t mobile dot com.
Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded T mobile fastest five gen
network based on average speeds. You s a five g
User Experience Report January. Capable device required coverages not available
in some areas. Some users may require certain plann or
feature set Mobile dot Com m
Five G has a big part of how do you
create a better experience, whether it's patient or our caregivers,
But it also has some behind the curtain ravications for us.
When you think of things like a backup, it starts
to open up lots of different new options for us
that just simply didn't exist before. So to me, I think,
you know, five G becomes one of those foundational technologies
(00:25):
of the future that once you get a little bit
to the other side of it, will reflect back and go,
how do we ever do this without five G? Because
I do think it's a paradigm shifting technology. Welcome to
the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than
a decade really learning about technology, what makes it tick,
(00:46):
and then describing and explaining that to my audience. But
it's the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the
leaders at the intersection of technology and business that fascinate
me the most. In part nership with T Mobile for Business,
I explore the unique set of challenges that see I
O S and C T O space, from advancements in
(01:07):
cloud and edge computing, software as a service, Internet of things,
and of course five G. We are often left wondering
how the leading minds and business continue to thrive. Let's
find out. Our guest today is Marty Paslick, the c
i O of h c A Healthcare, one of the
(01:28):
largest providers of healthcare services in the United States. H
c A Healthcare has a network of more than one
hospitals plus two thousand other care centers, from clinics to
emergency rooms to urgent care centers. The company's mission is
easily expressed above all else. We are committed to the
(01:48):
care and improvement of human life. That's a simple concept,
but it requires complicated approaches, not the least of which
is incorporating technology that supports that mission. That's Marty comes in.
As you will hear, Marty literally fits the definition of
a restless one. As the c i O for the
entire organization, Marty is at the top of a truly
(02:11):
massive I T force. He has been with h c
A Healthcare for more than three decades, giving him a
deep understanding of how h c A Healthcare leverages its
technology in order to carry out its mission. I sat
down with Marty to learn more about his background, his philosophy,
and approach to leadership and how hc A Healthcare created
(02:32):
an all new technological and process playbook to navigate through
the numerous issues that arose as a consequence of the
COVID nineteen outbreak. Marty, first of all, let me thank
you for your time in joining us for this podcast.
I very much appreciate it my pleasure, and I'd like
to get started by learning a bit more about you
(02:54):
and and what makes you tick before we dive into
all of the challenge is you face and your approach
to meeting those challenges. So to get started, what actually
drew you into the world of tech to begin with? Gosh,
I wish I had a really fancy answer for that.
(03:14):
When I was in high school, I had an opportunity
to take a computer programming class and I received an
extremely generous sea at the end of that class. Two
years later, my brother takes the same class, and he
doesn't realize that I was just, you know, just struggle
(03:36):
to get through the class, and so he reaches out
to me and seeks my help. And so I literally
took his textbook and I dove in and I said,
I'm gonna I'm gonna learn this. And I think most
people in technology would say there's a moment where you know,
the puzzle pieces kind of come together, and for me,
(03:59):
all a sudden it clicked and I was able to
help my brother get through the class. But all of
a sudden, I said, you know, I think I'm pretty
good at this. I went on to college and initially
to study in the business school, but I eventually went
back and I said, look, you remember how good you
were at that. So I went back into the engineering
(04:21):
school after that, and uh, and that's what really got
everything started. I think you might have hit on a
new educational tool where, uh, in order to get better
at any particular of course, you are given the the
the burden of making sure someone else's understanding it, so
you have to. Uh. That is fascinating to me. I
(04:45):
love that answer. So what was what was your first
job in the tech field? I applied for a software
developers position and really had, you know, my estimation a
pretty marginal marginal res may and I couldn't believe it
when they offered me the job, and I got in
(05:05):
and started work in the clinical development area. My first
job was to construct laboratory interfaces, so you know, there's
instruments that test your blood and things like that, and
they have to talk to information system. So I built
the interfaces between those two things. But but I was
just a young guy just out of school, and in
six months into the job, I get an opportunity to
(05:28):
go to a hospital for the first time. I walked
into the laboratory and I go to the lab manager
and I said, what's a laboratory instrument? She had to,
you know, this big smile on her face, and she said,
follow me. And for the next ninety minutes, she walked
me through that laboratory and I got one of the
(05:49):
most important lessons of my career. I saw firsthand and
how my work impacted a patient. I've been doing this
for thirty five years and I still remember that moment
that it not just clicked technologically, but it clicked to
the mission. This job was bigger than other jobs, and
(06:09):
and it had a responsibility that all in an instant,
in a ninety minute tour, just all came together for me.
That is a really remarkable story as well, and a
powerful one, I think, because it's something that sounds like
it really helps drive you in your work, that you
have this connection between what it is you do and
(06:31):
the fact that a large portion of that work is
all going towards keeping people healthy and saving lives. Correct.
But the bomb line is, and when I talked to
either our colleagues here in h c A or I
talked to our vendor community, you know, I remind them
our mission is to take care of people in their
(06:52):
most vulnerable moments of life, and that responsibility has a
high degree of accountability. And that's why this is a
fabulous industry to be in and a great company to
work for. Well, I almost feel like you've you've kind
of answered this question already, but I'm curious. Can you
tell us about a memorable project you worked on earlier
(07:15):
in your career, something that really helped shape your philosophy
towards your work today. Yes, you know, I was just
a software developer, right and I was asked if I
would facilitate the selection process for a new UM system
(07:35):
wide clinical system, and oh gosh, I wanted to do this.
I wanted to do this project so bad because he's
going to really stretch out beyond my my skill set
as a developer. And I got the assignment and literally
I was working, you know, twelve thirteen hours a day
for about six or eight months, and there was no
(07:57):
doubt I was the expert. My ball comes in my
cubicle and he says, we have the opportunity to present
to the Board of Directors tomorrow to get their approval.
So we can get going. If you can just provide
us the data, we'll be ready to go. I look
at the template and I go, I can do this.
I can do this. But there was something inside of me.
(08:17):
I looked at my boss and I said, but I
think there's a better way to present this information to them. Why.
Boss looks at me and he goes, you see, you
don't understand. We're at three o'clock in the afternoon. The
board meeting is at nine o'clock tomorrow. We just got
to follow the plan. So I go, okay. So they
walk out of my cuicle and I sit there and
(08:38):
I was like, what I do. I know there's a
better way. So I thought to myself, well, how long
will it take me to complete their template? And I
thought how long is it gonna take me to do
how I would go about it? And then I just
sat there and I went, I'm doing them both, and
so I did. There. As you know, I finished it,
came back and did mine and finished it about four
(08:59):
in the morning, and just sat in my cube. There's
no point going home, just sat my cuicle. My boss
comes in next morning, goes, hey, hey, how to go?
And I show him the template and he goes, thank you.
I am sorry to put you in this situation. And
I go, hey, but would you look at this other deck?
And he looked at and he goes, you got the
same clothes on. I go, oh yeah, and he goes,
(09:20):
why why did you do that? We we said just
to do it this way. And while he's giving me
a little bit of grief, his boss comes in and
and I say, well, I'm going to get right back
into batter's box and try again. And I try again
and same answered. They're like, we don't have time for
discussion here. We have a board meeting in two hours.
(09:41):
So ironic it is this their boss was in. So
I've got three levels of management in my cubicle and
and quickly I get it that this is the author
of the template. And I just said, I am trying
it one more time, and I showed my presentation deck
and he just looked at me and goes, can you
get fifty copies of that to the boardroom and I go,
(10:02):
I can, and you know, I high tell it over there.
And actually on the way over I run into the
c I O and I'm so many, I'm so far
down the ORC chart, you know. And he sees me
with a stack of papers and he goes, hey, are
you already bazzic? And I go, I am. He goes,
you have no idea how easy you've made my job today.
He goes, I want you to sit in the back
(10:22):
of the room and watch how this happens. And I
won't go into the details, but that nonetheless, it all
gets approved in twenty minutes. In the board meeting on Monday,
I have a note to come see my boss and
I walk in and uh, he just looks at me
and goes, congratulations, you've just been promoted. Here's sixteen blank
requisitions to create your team. And so the lesson there
(10:42):
is when you believe in something that is good for
the mission, pursue and don't give up and actually has
an introvert a little bit. It really it gave me
confidence that I knew I had the subject matter of
expertise and I had the eviction to do things that
were meaningful. Well, Marty, I gotta thank you because that
(11:06):
story literally sums up the spirit of this podcast about
having the conviction and courage to push forward with a
new way that ends up being of benefit to an organization.
On top of that, your story literally included restlessness in
an all nighter, So fantastic job. If there's one thing
(11:37):
most businesses can agree on these days, it's that change
has never come about so quickly. New ways of working
have become the norm. As a result, the status quo
no longer cuts it when it comes to helping businesses
adapt and innovate. That's why T Mobile for Business uses
unconventional thinking to help businesses work smarter and grow faster. Only.
(11:58):
T Mobile offers america US largest and fastest five gen network.
It's just one reason they're better able to help businesses
solve the real world challenges they face as they evolve.
For instance, their new WFX solutions help team members stay
connected and productive where work happens. With nearly two and
a half times the network coverage of a T and T,
(12:20):
nearly four times more than Verizon, and forty billion dollars
invested in network and business improvements over the next three years.
T Mobile for Business is better for your business right
now and into the future. See what they can do
for your organization at t mobile dot Com. Slash Unconventional
Open Signal awarded T Mobile Fastest five G network based
(12:41):
on average speeds USA five G User Experience Report January.
Capable device required coverage not available in some areas. Some
users may require certain planner features. Set mobile dot Com
as c i O of h C, a healthcare Marty
overseason organization of about six thousand professionals with c i
(13:04):
os of various divisions reporting to him. Given such a
large responsibility, I wanted to understand his approach to leadership,
his philosophy towards his position, and the challenges that naturally
come with the role. This is a very mission driven company,
you know, as founded by physicians, and our mission of
(13:25):
of caring for for people just really matters. Our technologists
would tell you that they view themselves as healthcare professionals
first and technologists second, and so to me, that's the
real distinguishing mark, and I think it's why we believe
(13:46):
we have such a strong culture. I think it all
begins with what do you believe in and if there's
a shared belief across an organization, then good things happen.
I think the pandemic is a good example of where. Boy,
I'm sure happy we had a strong mission because it's
what held us together. And we'll definitely talk a lot
(14:07):
more about the pandemics effect. Because in technology the word
disruption is used a lot. I don't think any event
in the last century has been as disruptive as the
pandemic has on the way all companies, but specifically companies
in the tech sector, have had to approach things. What
(14:28):
would you say would be the biggest challenges you typically
face as c I, Oh, what are the things that
you identify as being the issues you really have to
to dedicate a lot of your time and expertise on. Well,
you know, I think they're I think I think different
leaders um try to play to their strengths. I focus
(14:50):
a lot on this. Keeping the organization well connected sounds
a little clish, I guess, but but it's it takes
a lot of effort. To me. You have to have
not just communication channels, but you have a have to
have some certain degree of diversity of how you're connecting
with people. And if again, you know, linking it back
(15:11):
to the whole mission. If you're communicating well, and you're
and you're drawing people in uh to that type of commitment,
then really good things happen. And so you know, I
spend probably more than than a normal c I O
on just whether it is M my direct reports, or
it is how I find methods and strategies to connect
(15:36):
to the individual contributor and the work that they're doing.
I think there's some leaders that I think that's not
part of their job and that they might send a
newsletter or something like that, and I just think there's, um,
there's just tremendous value and just being an excellent communicator
or at least having high intent to be a communicator.
And I probably fit the little ladder than the former.
(15:58):
There your model see is really coming through, Marty. I
imagine that there must be a lot of high need
for for flexibility and communication skills because you're speaking to
very different audiences at any given time, whether it might
be physicians or people on the medical staff, or people
on the administration side, or people within the I T departments,
(16:22):
and all of these different groups have different ways of communicating,
and they may have different perspectives on a particular project,
for example, And I would imagine that coordinating all of
that and keeping those communication lines open and getting by
in an understanding among all those different parties can be
(16:47):
a challenge worth doing, but still a challenge. You make
just an excellent point, you know, I think most organizations
count on their c i O to be the the objective,
the impartial person, because you're right there, there are a
lot of strategies that are competing against each other. Sometimes
there's different perspectives on the strategy itself, and I do
(17:10):
think the company counts on me to away in in
a way that shows no territorial reasoning, no bias, but
just hey, what do I think is really right for
the company. And I do think the c i O
road many times gets that unique opportunity to do that.
And now to kind of touch back on the pandemic,
(17:32):
I am curious before the pandemic typically, how many projects
would your department be kind of overseeing at any given time.
I understand it's a lot. Yeah, And first of all,
you know, I think any c i O would say
you have all the documented projects and who knows how
many undocumented ones that are going on right, But prior
(17:54):
to the pandemic, we had I guess somewhere between three
fifty and four hundred projects. How did your department react
to keep the company on track while responding to COVID nineteen,
I mean we had to shift fast. Well, first of all,
we had to ensure that work from home environment would
(18:15):
be productive. We have a few thousand people that before
the pandemic that would work remotely. We had at one
time forty five thousand people working from home, and you
can imagine we didn't have the infrastructure at the onset
and how quickly you know, our network engineers put us
in a position to provide that type of work environment
(18:37):
was kind of blew me away to start off with.
But if you think about at the very beginning of
the pandemic, what was the big issue? It was all
about testing lab testing. You know, how quickly could you
turn a COVID test and gosh, our supply chain organization
is terrific. And they were making new contracts and new
deals with lots of different reference labs to just try
(19:00):
to create greater and greater throughput. Well back to my
old lab interface days, Hey, you got to put the
connection points in there. And the teams were working around
the clock, and we were doing interfaces that in a
traditional at pace kind of environment would have taken about
nine months. We were taking nine days. Now, some of
that was just high focus, but a lot of it
(19:22):
was just work ethic. And I usually get this report
that shows any staff colleague that has worked more than
sixty hours a week for three weeks in a row
because something's going on right. Well, there was a time
and I don't know if it's April or May, but
it's in that early time frame that I had a
list of a dozen to two dozen names of individuals
(19:45):
that we're working eighty plus hours a week, and I
scheduled fifteen minute phone calls with him, and it was
like a rerun. It was like Groundhog Day. Every conversation
was exactly the same. They would ay, look, this is
my moment. You know, I joined this company to be
(20:07):
part of healthcare, and here I am, and it's up
to me to make this happen. So you had the
laboratory interfaces first, you had the hotel healthy space with
no visitors into our hospitals, we had to quickly put
together away for patients and care teams to talk to
family and friends. We acquired more than three thousand iPads
(20:29):
to distribute across the company. We even here at the end,
you know, we we had to create a vaccination system.
We had literally six weeks to create a vaccination system
that we built from scratch. That last time I checked,
we vaccinated thousand people. And so all of that. It
ended up being about fifty projects that we had that
(20:52):
were directly assisting COVID response. It was the hardest of
years and it was the most memorable of years. The
work effort in the dedication and execution was just amazing
to me. Are there lessons you've learned through HCA Healthcare
is response to COVID nineteen that you believe will be
(21:13):
relevant beyond the pandemic? Absolutely. I tell our team all
the time, I'm not going back. I'm not going I'm
not going back to how things were before. And I
think I think one of the important things for us
as an organization, and maybe others already were doing this
before the pandemic. But I mentioned, you know, the three
(21:33):
to four hundred projects. Everything to some degree has some
sort of constraint, money constraint, resource constraint, whatever. And I
think one of the things as a company we discovered
was that, hey, there are technology projects that we need
to say fast as possible. You know what is that portfolio?
(21:56):
What is those initiatives that we're not going to limit ourselves.
Now we may say no to some other things, but
what is the subset of that portfolio that we have
to move at lightning speed? And I think that is
the most important thing for our organization is that now
we have an agenda that says these dozen projects, go
(22:18):
as quickly as you can. And I love it. I
love it because we get to see the impact and
so you're just moving and you're making progress. But this
way boy the top priorities, and it gives you a
better connection to senior leadership too, because they are extremely
well aware of that tight portfolio. They want to know
about it, they see it, they feel it in their operations.
(22:39):
We are are going to stay operating at COVID speed
for those top priorities. I wanted to learn more about
the sorts of technologies h c A Healthcare views as
fundamentally important in order to achieve its mission. Marty did
(23:02):
not disappoint. We decided before the pandemic, and this sounds
so common sense now, but it required such a significant investment.
Was Hey, we're a mobile industry. We may be one
of the most mobile industries. You know, you think of
(23:23):
physicians rounding in a hospital, to nursing, the respiratory therapist.
The full bottom is everybody's moving all the time, and
we were supporting them with desktops and laptops and and
so the company's commitment to going mobile was really important. Today.
You know, we have more than eighty thousand iPhones across
(23:47):
our our organization that are shared by nurses and other
caregivers to just to lift up the communication that needs
to happen around a patient. And it's really changed how
we do a lot of things in the company, not
just communication, but now we have this mechanism that allows
us to get alerts right into the nurses pocket instead
(24:09):
of walking back to a nursing station and looking at
a dashboard, are waiting for an alert from a closet somewhere.
It's now all of a a sudden buzzing in their pockets
and they can take action really quickly. And so mobility
has just been a huge area and we always I
think had a great depth in data. We would probably
(24:31):
argue that our clinical data warehouse is the largest in
the provider world, you know, so and that's that's a
reference of our size as well. But we get some
interesting insights and those insights helped us in COVID, you know,
it helped us see things that were happening to patients
that I'm not sure we would have had the same
opportunity without that capability. UM. Before the before the pandemic,
(24:57):
we had made UM I think some really solid investments
in telemessin and we were we were using telemens and
primarily to make sure that we placed experts in the
place of need as fast as possible, so neurology, so
stroke management, you know, making sure we had a core
(25:17):
set of physicians that could assess a stroke uh any
moment of the day, so tell them Esson was a
big deal. Psychiatry is another thing. You know, people chopin
into an emergency department and it's obvious that they need
an assessment, and sometimes psychiatrists are difficult to get and
and and that's a moment a patient really needs somebody. Now,
(25:38):
they can't wait eight hours for psychiatrists to be available.
And so we had a number of these programs have
already available. That that set a foundation that went nuts
in the pandemic. They've been extremely critical to our clinical
outcomes and to just our overall operations. Yeah, I would
argue that telemedicine, the fact that you had a foundation
(26:02):
in place before the pandemic was of critical importance not
just to to hc A Healthcare, but obviously to all
the patients that h c A Healthcare serves. Well, here's
the crazy number about it. So those programs we put
in place was more about making sure a corset of
experts were available. Well, the pandemic really was about my
(26:24):
family doctor connecting to me, right, and so in twenty nineteen,
these numbers will just they blow me away. But in
twenty nine we did about thirty five hundred telehealth visits
physician the patient, you know, like a primary care physician,
you know, I mean we did in more than a million.
(26:45):
That's a big increase, three thousand two over a million televisits.
It's just it's it's it's hard to imagine. In the pandemic,
you know, we scrambled a little bit, there's no doubt
about it. And and I think that experience is really
going to accelerate the space and and now we're trying
(27:06):
to say, hey, we've gotten through the tough part of that.
Now how do we lift it up? How do we
lift up the experience for the patient and the caregiver,
make sure that it's as seamless and in as to
it as as possible, and making sure that in behind
the curtain that we have the right structure, the right
a scale to do it appropriately, and with technologies like mobility,
(27:30):
with the various devices, whether they're smartphones, tablets, that sort
of thing. Obviously you have lab equipment that connects to
various communication systems, the presence of telemedicine being a big
part of the future. Does HCA Healthcare have specific plans
when it comes to things like five G connectivity? I
would imagine something that has very high throughput, very low
(27:54):
latency could have numerous applications in the medical field. You're
absolutely right. Now, I think we're still at a place
of evaluating a pretty wide range of use cases. So
the obvious ones that people would see is to take
clinical imaging. So you know, the clinical imaging continues to
evolve to provide a radiologists and other physicians much clear,
(28:20):
much more high fidelity types of of images. But as
you might imagine, the more fidelity you get, the more
dense these images become, and so the storage requirements are significant.
That part we don't worry about. But the problem has been, Hey,
I'm a physician and I'm on the move and I
(28:40):
need to see this image. How do I do it?
And with five G the ability to quickly download an
image is going to be a big deal. And you
think about the number of images that are just taking
every day. I'm thinking, off the top of my head,
just in h c A alone, we produce eleven million
(29:01):
images a day and one and a half million are
viewed every day. Now you think about how many of those,
percentage wise, would be much quicker response if it was
available through cell. Five G has a big part of
how do you create a better experience, whether it's patient
or our caregivers, But it also has some behind the
(29:21):
curtain ravications for us. When you think of things like
a backup, it starts to open up lots of different
new options for us that just simply didn't exist before.
So to me, I think, you know, five G becomes
one of those foundational technologies of the future that once
you get a little bit to the other side of
it will reflect back and go, how do we ever
(29:43):
do this without five G? Because I do think it's
a paradigm shifting technology. I agree entirely and uh when
it comes to different applications, it's the medical field that
leaps out to me because of things like tele medicine,
and as you point out, the ability need to send
very large files very quickly without having to have a
(30:05):
dedicated like fiber connection where you can be mobile. You
could be in the field somewhere and still get that
information back very quickly. That's invaluable, especially when you're talking
about cases where response time can literally turn into a
life or death situation for someone. I'm also curious about
(30:26):
your use of the Internet of things world. It's something
that I would say ten years ago people would think
of as again just a buzz term, but now we
live in a reality where billions of devices connect to networks,
and in fact there's an entire subcategory of Internet of things,
of Internet of medical things. Does your department oversee a
lot of projects that involve various IoT solutions. If you
(30:50):
think about some of the types of technologies, anything that
can provide us more data, maybe The first thing more
streaming data. So just take patient vitals for instance. You know,
traditionally a nurse comes in every hour and takes your
vitals right, and we attach something to you and we
are getting a continuous stream, which also means continuous trending
(31:14):
of those vital signs and and so just from a
care perspective, you know, streaming data that was traditionally taken
in a sample size is a big deal. The second
thing is that many of the technologies provide some freedom
you monitor different things that before was tethered at a cable,
(31:37):
and so that patient in a recovery mode always needs
some assistance. And now the Internet of Things has you know,
emerging devices that look, if I'm uncleared to get up
and get up because everything's moving with me right, and
I think it's fascinating. It's where the puck is obviously moving.
I think one of the areas that we are researching
(31:58):
right now is how do we look at commercial based
medical devices. You know, I carry this little strip band
that if I put it on my my knee, it
gives a six line. He gave you. That's amazing. So
the question though, is is I've got a non medical
person me applying this medical device that is really commercial,
(32:19):
not medical grade, And so what do we do with
that data? And I think it's obvious we're heading in
that direction, but how we as an industry, not just
a c A, how do we view it? How do
we use it? How do we care for people with it?
I think is it's going to be an interesting frontier
for not just h c A, but the whole industry.
(32:41):
What's a big challenge you want to tackle? Given all
you've learned throughout your career, Well, how do we move
to a place where decision making is done in the
moment and it's not done based on retrospective analysis? You
know how many decisions are company or made on what
happened eight hours ago or a day go or seven
days ago. And how do we get a place where
(33:04):
the elements of the decision are present as soon as
they're available? And I believe in healthcare UM that could
be a game changer, and so the investments we need
to make. You would instantly believe machine learning. I think
carefully deployed artificial intelligence can help us reduced variation on
(33:28):
decisions that have traditionally been made by humans. I'm not
crazy about removing decisions from physicians, right, Uh, that's not
a good idea. What we want to do is inform
in a way that provides insight to a caregiver in
the moment they needed. And I think that's what really
excites me about the future. Yeah, Marty, I think that
(33:51):
we we could call that augmented intelligence, as opposed to
relying on artificial intelligence, where people assume immediately that that
means you're a placing people with machines. We're really talking
about augmenting very talented people with even more resources and
assets that make them step up to that next, almost
(34:12):
superhuman level of performance in whatever role they might be doing.
And Uh, I really like your vision of the future
and I can't wait to see it become the present.
And of course we've got our one more thing. I
asked Marty if he could answer one last quick question,
and he was happy to oblige. What is the best
(34:35):
piece of advice you have ever received in your career?
Best advice was if of your decisions aren't disagreed with,
then you're not making enough decisions. And there's so many
leaders that would love to have a consensus on everything
they decide on and if you do that, you're not
(34:56):
pressing hard enough. And I love that as a guid line.
So whenever I make it, I'm getting ready to make
a decision and I know it's going to be controversial,
I remind myself, Look, this is why you're in this role,
and if you think this is the right thing, you're
just gonna have to work with that that doesn't agree
with you. Marty, thank you so much for your time.
(35:18):
This conversation has been a genuine pleasure for me as well.
I really enjoyed talking to you today. What I took
away from my talk with Marty is that a CEO
really needs to keep the company's mission at the front
(35:38):
of mine, while also embracing the need to be flexible
and adaptable. The last year has made it apparent that
companies and leaders can't aim for maintaining a status quo,
and Marty made it clear that communication is absolutely key
to effective leadership, particularly during times when we see normal
operations disrupted because of a christ is like a pandemic.
(36:04):
Thank you for listening to the restless ones. We will
have many more conversations with leaders of tech divisions across
all industries and upcoming episodes and we look forward to
sharing those stories with you. I'm Jonathan Strickland. These days,
(36:26):
new ways of working have become the norm, and the
status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to
helping businesses evolve and grow. That's why T Mobile for
Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses sees innovation only.
T Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network,
which makes their new WFX solutions possible, letting businesses stay
(36:48):
connected and productive where work happens. See what T Mobile
for Business can do for you at t mobile dot com.
Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded T mobile fastest five gen
network based on average speeds. You s a five g
User Experience Report January. Capable device required coverages not available
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feature set Mobile dot Com m
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