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Why New Leaders Fail: Common Pitfalls to Avoid
From Amateur to Pro: Embracing the Path of a Practicing Leader
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
I had a, “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong,” moment the other week.
After reading and loving, The War of Art, I immediately read Steven Pressfield‘s next book, Turning Pro. In that book, Pressfield describes the difference between an amateur and a professional leader. Specifically, professionals have a practice. As part. of their practice, they get up, go to a set place, at a set time, and do their work.
He writes, “A practice may be defined as the dedicated daily exercise of commitment, will and focused attention, aimed on one level at the achievement of mastery in a field, but on a loftier level, intended to produce a communion with a power greater than ourselves.”
As he continued describing the elements of a practice for creating art, it occurred to me that leadership followed many of the same rules. The implications of this realization are that someone who practices leadership can be more successful in any leadership role than someone with technical or subject area expertise.
As we start to view leadership as its own discipline, requiring a practicing mindset, it means that most senior leadership roles are being filled incorrectly. Rather than looking at someone’s technical abilities, length of tenure, or other pre-requisites, perhaps we should be looking at their results, team engagement, and character.
The results we feel are ones that permeate so much of my LinkedIn field. Arrogant bosses, narcissists and egomaniacs in Senior Leadership roles at the top of large organizations cascade misery throughout their organizations. When this happens, employees stay in misery and low productivity, or leave looking for better organizations. When employee engagement and low and turnover is high, management in supervisory roles are almost always the reason.
Understanding leadership as a practice in itself means understanding the qualifications for senior leaders totally differently than we do today.
Characteristic #1: The Practicing Leader has Intention
In Turning Pro, Pressfield writes, “Our intention…is to get better, to go deeper, to work closer and closer to the bone.”
The Practicing Leader has a leadership philosophy, which serves as their intention. She proactively decides what her team needs from her to be successful and puts that into place. She wants to be a leader to make a difference or to improve something. The Practicing Leader understands that leadership is not about her, but about the people she leads.
Characteristic #2: The Practicing Leader has as a Warrior Mindset
Pressfield explains, “The Sword Master stepping onto the fighting floor knows he will be facing powerful opponents. Not the physical adversaries whom he will fight, though those indeed serve as standards for the enemy. The real enemy is inside himself.”
The Practicing Leader is self-aware. He solicits others for feedback. He has a thick skin and does not take feedback personally. The Practicing Leader knows who he is because he has defined his values. He meditates and takes care of himself to continue to practice leadership and service for years to come.
The Practicing Leader is not deterred by obstacles or failure. He looks for new ways to accomplish goals and protect his team. He leaves nobody behind.
Characteristic #3: The Practicing Leader is Humble
Steve Pressfield writes, “We come to a practice in humility. We may bring intention and intensity to our practice. In fact, we must. But not ego. Dedication, even ferocity, yes. But never arrogance. The space of the practice is sacred.”
One test I have come across to understand the humility of a leader is their motivation for leadership. If ego is motivation, then leadership is not the right fit for that person. You call tell this by learning if the leader wants to “Be something” or “Do something.” If they want to be something, it is probably more ego.
Being a “Boss” in business is about ego. Characteristics of most bosses is status (Do as I say!), arrogance (What can I learn from someone like you?), and a lack of self awareness (Everybody loves me!). The character Michael Scott from the sitcom The Office comes to mind.
Additionally, modern attention seeking politicians fall into this category as well. These are the people who enjoy the trappings of the job, seeking fame, not better policy.
Pressfield writes, “My beef with American culture is that almost every aspect, including the deliberations of the legislature and the judiciary, has been debased to pander to the culture of amateurism. The promise that our products and politicians proffer is the promise one might make to an infant or an addict. I will get you what you want and it will cost you nothing.”
Sadly, we do the same with some people in Senior Leadership roles. We promote bosses and politicians and then wonder why we get amateur results.
Characteristic #4: The Practicing Leader is a Student
According to Pressfield, “Even the peerless sword-master Miyamoto Musashi. Entered the fighting square to learn as much as to teach.”
The Practicing Leader always has more to learn. She approaches her team as a student and a servant, learning and synthesizing information to make life easier, more focused, and more productive. She goes to where the work is, and does not turn her office into an ivory tower.
The Practicing Leader is a voracious reader, getting her hands on all the information she can to be a better as a professional. She learns from everyone around her, regardless of title, and strives to nurture and develop more practicing leaders.
Characteristic #5: The Practicing Leader Practices for Life
Finally, Pressfield explains, “Once we turn pro, we’re like sharks who have tasted blood or renunciants who have glimpsed the face of God. For us there is no finish line. No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit. Life is the hunt. When our hearts burst then we’ll go out, and no sooner.”
The Practicing Leader views leadership as a lifelong endeavor. As long as there is a worthy cause requiring the power of collective thinking, the leader will answer the call.
Examples
To illustrate that practicing leaders exist and the benefits of approaching leadership this way, there are three case studies worth focusing on: Ted Lasso, Vince Lombardi, and Richard Branson.
Example #1: Ted Lasso
I’ve written in the past about Ted Lasso, one of my favorite television shows.
The Apple TV+ series is about a college football coach who is hired to manage a Premier League soccer team in England.
It is a running joke in the show that Lasso knows nothing about soccer. However, he knows about leadership.
Just look at Lasso’s first press conference and the question here gets from journalist Trent Crimm: “I just want to make sure I have this right: You’re an American, who has never set foot in England, whose success has only come at the amateur level, a second tier one at that and is now being charged with the leadership of a premier league football club, despite clearly possessing very little knowledge of the game…Is this a joke?”
Now, just 2 years later, Trent Crimm is writing a book about Ted Lasso’s coaching style. He describes Lasso’s leadership, which we witness him practicing throughout the series, like this: “Slowly but surely building a club wide culture of trust and support to thousands of imperceptible moments.”
SPOILER ALERT (Skip this paragraph if you haven’t watched the finale): At the end of the series, Lasso becomes a successful soccer coach.
If you looked at Lasso’s traditional resume, he had no business coaching in the Premier League. However, his success skyrocketed when he found a tactic that supported the culture he built as a leader.
While Ted Lasso is, of course, a hypothetical character, there are more examples of leaders who have excelled even in areas where they have no experience or expertise because they practice leadership.
Example #2: Vince Lombardi
In 2014, Ian O’Connor wrote a detailed article on Vince Lombardi for ESPN The Magazine called, The Gospel of St. Vince. O’Connor describes the legend of Vince Lombardi who is best known for winning Super Bowl’s I and II. In fact, professional football’s championship trophy is named for him.
But, it wasn’t only Lombardi’s accolades as a football coach that stood out. Lombardi’s first coaching job was at St. Cecilia’s High School in New Jersey. In addition to coaching football, Lombardi also coached basketball.
However, Lombardi didn’t know the first thing about basketball. As the story goes, he went to the library and read old manuals on basketball to become more familiar with the game.
In the documentary, Vince Lombardi a Football Life, we hear from Mickey Corcoran, one of his players on that team who said, “He didn’t know much about basketball but he knew about people. He was a master psychologist…He just made me want to play harder.”
Lombardi coached basketball at St. Cecilia’s for eight years. He finished 105-57 and he won the only state basketball championship in the high school’s history.
If leadership is technical, how did Lombardi pull it off? How did he post a 65% winning record and win a championship in a sport he learned overnight?
Lombardi on Being a Practicing Leader
In his own words, Lombardi said, “I think coaching is teaching, see? So I don’t think there is any difference whether you teach on the football field or whether you teach in the classroom, right? They are both exactly the same. It’s a question of a good teach puts across what he must put across to his pupils whether it is done on a football field or done in a classroom, it is one of the same thing.”
While Lombardi knew a lot about the technical side of football to the point of obsession, he still identified not as a football coach, but as a teacher. He too viewed leadership as a practice, which is why he was successful not only as a football coach, but as a basketball coach.
Example #3: Sir. Richard Branson
Sir Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group. Virgin now has business in entertainment, health and wellness, music, finance, technology, travel, and space travel.
Branson has been massively successful in almost all of these business areas, which at first glance seem to have nothing to do with one another.
All the while, Virgin has a global presence, but no central headquarters, no management hierarchy, and minimal bureaucracy. In his book Losing My Virginity, Branson discusses his leadership style and practice. He encourages his teams to have fun, not worry about failure, and always think about the customer.
One of my favorite of his quotes is “I’ve never gone into business to make money. Every Virgin product and service has been made into a reality to make a positive difference in people’s lives. And by focusing on the happiness of our customers, we have been able to build a successful group of companies.”
Conclusion – Becoming a Practicing Leader
There needs to be a fundamental shift in our understanding of leadership. Leadership is not defined as getting results via leadership, or simply as a means to an end. Instead, it is the idea that I understand leadership, so I get results.
Becoming a practicing leader is work. For some people, managing people is excruciating. For these folks and others that excel in vital technical areas, there should be a compensation ladder on-par with Senior Leadership that does not require them to manage people.
Today, leadership development is viewed as a series of tasks. We describe how to set an agenda for a meeting, how to conduct 1:1’s, and how to hire and fire. Those skills are all important, but they are not leadership skills. They are management skills. To take it to the next level, aspiring leaders must start and stick with a leadership practice. Leadership development and leadership coaching must rise to this calling and develop the programs to nurture practicing leaders.
If you are new to a leadership role, I encourage you to adopt the mindset of a practicing leader. Understand the characteristics of a practicing leader and develop yourself as one. Solicit the help of leaders you admire, mentors, and team members.
Key Takeaways
Leadership should be seen as a practice requiring commitment, intention, self-awareness, humility, and a continuous learning mindset. By shifting our focus from technical expertise to these qualities, we can cultivate effective leaders who achieve results, foster team engagement, and make a positive impact.
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Follow on LinkedInConquer Resistance with “The War of Art”: Unlock Your Creative Potential
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
From time to time I come across a book that is so powerful, it feeds my soul. These books speak to me in ways that simultaneously inspire, challenge, and validate my thinking about my sense of self. Recently, I read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield and the book did just that. It has become one of my four “Books of the Soul” that I will go back to and re-read for years to come.
The War of Art Starts with Resistance
Pressfield begins The War of Art with a shot right between the eyes.
He describes an evil, vindictive force he calls, “Resistance.” Resistance is essentially self-doubt and self-sabotage fueled by fear.
If you have ever heard that voice in your head try to talk you out of doing what you feel is your purpose, that thought process is resistance.
He describes the many forms that resistance takes, like procrastination, addiction, and distraction.
One of the reasons The War of Art speaks to me is that resistance is a force in my life. For example, starting this blog was an act in overcoming resistance. When I started, I was 30 years old and filled with self-doubt. I told myself that nobody would want to hear from me. I asked myself, what could little old me contribute to the idea of leadership? Everyone’s going to laugh at you!
Here I am, overcoming resistance 107 posts later. It wasn’t easy to do.
Jonathan Haidt, author of the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, explains why. He writes, “The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning-the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99% of mental processes-the ones that occur outside of awareness but actually govern most of our behavior.”
Said another way, the rider is the elephant’s press secretary, justifying its actions after a decision is made.
The elephant is all about resistance. The rider is resistance’s greatest ally, because it develops the logic to explain the elephant’s desire to maintain the status quo.
Pressfield discusses the many facets of resistance. The major benefit is that after looking for resistance, you become more aware of it as a force in your life.
The War of Art on Overcoming Resistance
So how do we overcome resistance?
Pressfield discusses that overcoming resistance involves transitioning from an amateur to a professional.
He describes it this way in The War of Art, “The word amateur comes from the Latin root meaning ‘to love.’ The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his ‘real’ vocation. The professional loves it so much, he dedicates his life to it. He commits full time.”
Pressfield then describes what it means to turn pro. Turning pro happens when we create a practice and a routine to do the work every day with focus. As you commit to this daily practice, you will know it is working if you get so lost in your work that you lose track of time.
He details the way to become a professional in the book Turning Pro.
The War of Art on Loving Being Miserable
One of my favorite ideas in the book was the idea of being in love with being miserable.
Pressfield describes how Marines love to be miserable and further explains how this applies to the “artist,” which includes the entrepreneur.
Pressfield writes, “The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.”
Elon Musk said it a slightly different way. He described running a start-up, “Like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. After a while, you stop staring, but the glass chewing never ends.” Musk is a billionaire who still chews glass. My guess is he’s a guy that loves being miserable!
I loved that description. I pull the covers up on cold mornings just as much as the next guy. Since reading this book, the idea of loving being miserable has helped me wake up earlier, run in the rain for exercise, and watch what I am eating more carefully. Sometimes the things you need most in life can make you miserable. Being in love with that feeling is a superpower I hope to develop.
The War of Art for Leaders
The implications for leaders are many. So much so, that I will be writing about them exclusively in next week’s post.
In short, The War of Art creates a distinction between amateurs and professionals. The hallmark of the professional is a dedicated practice. Some people in Senior Leadership roles are amateur leaders because they do not approach leadership as a practice and the consequences are severe.
Founders or senior leaders who are promoted because of politics or other social forces are rarely professional leaders. Meaning they made be technically or functionally professional, but that is different than what it means to be a professional leader. In next week’s post, I will describe what a professional leader looks like and how you can tell a professional from an amateur. You won’t want to miss it. Subscribe here to make sure you don’t.
Key Takeaways – The War of Art
“The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield is a powerful book that highlights the concept of resistance, which is fueled by self-doubt and fear, and inhibits us from pursuing our purpose.
Overcoming resistance involves transitioning from an amateur to a professional by dedicating ourselves fully to our calling, developing a daily practice and routine, and embracing the challenges and misery that come with it.
The book’s insights are applicable not only to artists and entrepreneurs but also to leaders, and the next post will delve deeper into the distinction between amateur and professional leaders.
The War of Art is available for purchase on Amazon
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Follow on LinkedInTransforming Meetings: From Agenda-driven to Perspective-focused
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Meetings.
The word itself probably sends a shiver up your spine.
Meetings are a ubiquitous part of life in the working world. It is an inevitable, yet often flawed, sharing and collaboration tool for any organization involving multiple people.
In this post, I am going to talk about one of my own pet peeves in meetings: Are the participants sharing their perspective or their agenda?
Sharing your perspective is almost always the intent of a meeting. On the other hand, pushing your agenda usually wastes time and distracts from the topic at hand.
Sharing your Perspective in a Meeting
Meetings exist to engage in a dialogue and to hear different perspectives in order to make the best possible decision.
It is for this reason that many successful organizations have regulated meetings to ensure there is more dialogue and perspective sharing.
For example, Amazon limits meetings to what founder Jeff Bezos referred to as the “Two pizza rule.” The rule states that he won’t attend a meeting if two pizzas won’t feed the number of attendees. Amazon also banned powerpoint presentations and uses a different tactic to level-set during a meeting.
At Amazon, the person who calls the meeting drafts a short memo that everyone attending the meeting reads independently in the first 10-minutes of the meeting. That allows more time for questions and dialogue and less for long dog-and-pony-show presentations.
Elon Musk is known for asking his employees to leave a meeting if they are not contributing to it, because it is wasting time where they could be doing other work.
These leaders understand that there is more to learn from the people they have hired to make the best decision.
In high functioning meetings, there is a high degree of trust, which allows the team to share their perspectives freely. Comments build off of each other and ideas come together with contributions from nearly everyone present. Both people who have a perspective in-favor and opposed are given space to share because the outcome of a better decision is an important goal.
I have found that meetings like this often give me energy rather than take it away. This is the exact opposite is true in a meeting where everyone is sharing their agenda.
Sharing your Agenda in a Meeting
Unfortunately, most of the time meetings exist to have, “One way conversations.”
This may look like the person leading the meeting occupying the majority of time with a powerpoint, suggesting a decision, and then leaving minimal time for input. This gives the impression that a decision has already been made.
It could also look like a participant interjecting a speech that is not relevant to the discussion but advances their role or project. They are not looking to contribute to the topic of the meeting, but rather solicit other attendees to help them with their work.
Sometimes it looks like a senior leader expressing his agenda and looking for the attendees to agree with him.
All of these examples are unhealthy dynamics.
In fact, many of these are “Simple Sabotage” tactics. These concept was advanced by the CIA in 1944 and they published a “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” used to train potential foreign saboteurs. It has since been declassified.
Some of the tactics in the Field Manual refer specifically to behaviors in meetings:
- Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
- When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.
- Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
Most people who bring their agenda to a meeting are sabotaging something – the decision, satisfaction, or morale – and they don’t even realize it. By bringing your agenda to a meeting to make a decision, you may be doing just that.
The Problem in Large Organizations
I’ve spent the majority of my career working in large organizations. This meeting problem is notoriously bad. Most of my days were spent in meetings, hearing the same message over and over again, but with slightly different combinations of other executives.
The problem at the root of this meeting misery is unclear authority. Many of the meetings take place because it is unclear who has the authority to make a final decision. This leads to meeting after meeting on the same topic, looking for who is willing to make the decision to move forward. I saw this particularly at the corporate level of an organization.
Senior leaders in large organizations are sometimes managing egos, politics, and the desire to avoid blame. That often leads to suboptimal decisions make through suboptimal processes, including suboptimal meetings.
Industry leaders of large organizations, like Bezos and Musk, understand this risk and have created systems to avoid it.
The role of a Leader in the Meeting
Fundamentally, a leader’s role in a meeting is to facilitate the conversation and then decide how a final
“Go or no go,” decision will be made.
Facilitating a conversation is an art. It involves setting the right goals, ground rules, and agenda. It also involves managing dominating voices and encouraging quieter participants.
A final decision can be made in a number of ways – majority, consensus, delegated authority, or a sole decision maker. Each one should be used in the appropriate situation. What is important for the leader to do is define how the decision is being made. That often prevents disappointment and frustration from the participants in the meeting.
Key Takeaways
Effective meetings prioritize perspective sharing, encourage open dialogue, and prevent personal agendas from hijacking the conversation. Leaders play a crucial role in facilitating discussions and defining decision-making processes to ensure productive outcomes.
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Follow on LinkedInNavigating Healthcare: The Importance of a Hospital Advocate
Working for the last decade in large hospitals, I get calls. Even though I am not a doctor or nurse, family and friends call when they get sick. All are experiencing some combination of being scared, stressed, and confused by how healthcare works in the United States. They generally ask for advice about how to navigate being a patient.
I always give them the same advice:
Make sure you have someone advocate for you while you are in the hospital.
I will share in this post why I absolutely hate having to give this advice and what can be done about it.
Why it is Important for Patients to Have a Hospital Advocate
Hospitals are busy places. They are designed to care for the sickest of the sick. A good rule of thumb is if you feel like you are not getting enough attention at a hospital, it means that your doctors do not consider you among the sickest patients in the hospital.
So that’s the good news.
With that said, it can also mean long wait times for simple tests, bumps in the operating room causing your surgery or procedure to be postponed, and limited face-time with your care team. Unfortunately, these delays are all patient dissatisfiers and the uncertainty involved can be stressful to anyone receiving care.
There are many reasons why hospitals operate this way, many of which are economic and operational, so I won’t get into that for this post. (Although if you want to know, just ask, I’d be happy to hear from you).
Because of these factors, navigating care at a hospital can be difficult. Furthermore, The patient in the hospital is usually in a compromised and vulnerable state. They are sick, medicated, in pain, anxious, bored, and sleep deprived, among other things.
That is why you need an advocate in the hospital.
The Best Hospital Advocates
The best advocate for a patient is generally a family member or a close friend. For more complex cases, there are for-hire patient advocates who are usually trained medical professionals.
Sometimes, there is an employee or volunteer affiliated with the hospital called a “Patient Advocate” or “Patient Representative.” These roles range in functions from risk (Dealing with the threat of legal action) to service recovery (Trying to fix a patient’s experience reactively) to ombudsman (Listening to patients and investigating issues to correct them for future patients).
Unfortunately, many hospitals cannot provide someone to advocate for your needs as a patient like a family member or friend can. The simple act of walking over to the nurse’s station, getting to know them, and asking questions about your loved one’s care can go a long way to helping to improve a patient’s care.
To check myself on this advice, I have asked former colleagues of mine what they think about it. Almost universally, doctors, nurses, and administrations I speak with agree with this advice.
The best thing you can do as a patient is to have someone with you to advocate for giving you care and attention while you are in a hospital.
The Downside to a Friend or Family Being a Hospital Advocate
Within the last 13 years, my father, mother, and sister have all been neurosurgery patients. Without exception, during any hospital stay, none of them were alone for any period of time. When my father had emergency surgery, my mother never left the hospital and vice versa. My mother stayed with my sister during the entirety of her multiple hospital stays as well.
At first, I thought they were crazy. But, having now worked in hospitals, it is clear to me that this had major benefits to each of them as patients. Furthermore, the nurses and physicians welcomed the help. My mother and father refilled water, brought up food, and helped to make sure the room was tidy. These responsibilities almost always fall to a nurse or another member of the care team.
In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we frequently heard from doctors and nurses that patient experience was worse when family members were restricted from visiting.
However, this schedule was not without cost. Both of my parents are self-employed and had to miss work and reschedule other life events. They often slept upright in an uncomfortable chair. They didn’t shower. The stress they felt was palpable. While they appreciated the people on their care team, they didn’t trust the hospital to take care of them.
It shouldn’t have to be like this.
I often say that my life’s work as a leader in healthcare is to create an environment where I wouldn’t have to give this advice.
In this reality, family and friends can stay with a patient, of course, but could feel confident that their love one is in good hands. That they can go home and shower, sleep in a bed, and work knowing that the people at the hospital care about their loved one.
What Can be Done?
Fundamentally, patients need an advocate in the hospital due to a lack of trust.
Hospitals generally don’t do a great job building trust. Hospitals are almost always running late and timelines get missed. Doctors and nurses are overworked, rushed, and often burned out. It is difficult for doctors and nurses to empathize with patients because of the mundanity effect, which happens when something extraordinary (like caring for patients and saving lives) becomes routine.
From my point of view, the solution here is three-pronged:
- Fix the aspects of the hospital operation that make doctors and nurses jobs unnecessarily difficult or that take them away from patient care.
- Create and enforce behavioral expectations for how doctors and nurses treat patients and family members.
- Create ways for patients to see more of their doctors and nurses.
While this list is pretty easy to type out, actually making these changes could take decades. Most hospitals are still operating under business strategies and process improvement models from the 1980s. Remember, healthcare is highly regulated and complex. Making change doesn’t take weeks, months, or years. It usually takes decades.
The issues in healthcare are systemic and ingrained. There are many large stakeholders involved in the system today including large care providers, insurance companies, health plan administrators, etc. Large players like Amazon and Walmart are even trying to disrupt this behemoth of an industry, which has been notoriously hard to do.
Trying to change or cure the underlying diseases of healthcare has too long of a time horizon to make meaningful change for struggling patients and families today.
The Role of Technology
Luckily, technology can help with #3 – Create ways for patients to see more of their doctors and nurses.
This is why I made a career change recently.
I recently joined a company called WUWTA (pronounced “What-ah”) as their CEO. I first met WUWTA co-founder and Chairman of the Board, Jock Putney, when I was Chief Experience Officer at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
On the WUWTA platform, physicians can guide patients through their healthcare journey personally from referral to discharge and follow up appointment. When I led Patient Experience, I spoke to patients every day. They desperately wanted more of their physician’s time and often were so excited when the physician spoke to them, they could not retain what the physician said!
WUWTA addresses this patient experience pain point simply. At each stage of the patient’s journey, the patient gets a video from their physician, explaining their next step in simple terms. The WUWTA platform enables doctors to hold a patients hand digitally and at scale.
Platforms like WUWTA are the necessary interim step to helping patients have a better experience without having to immediately address every systemic healthcare system disfunction.
After meeting with Jock, I felt so passionate that WUWTA represented a way forward to make healthcare better for patients, that I left RWJ to join the company.
What’s Next
We are far from my dream of a hospital system where having an advocate would not be necessary. Technology offers an important interim step to achieving this goal.
My belief is that it is a good thing that technology has enabled patients have access to more information. As the healthcare system continues to shift to be more consumer centric, patients will use that information to demand a better experience. That is when real change will happen faster. I am excited to be a part of it.
Key Takeaways
A hospital advocate is essential for patients navigating complex healthcare in the US, ensuring personalized attention and care in busy hospital settings. Technology platforms like WUWTA provide interim solutions by improving patient access to doctors, empowering them with information, and enhancing their healthcare experience.
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