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Happy Thursday, Hospitalogists! Today concludes my series on Baylor and my conversation with Pete McCanna. It's generated a good amount of rapport so I appreciate you guys all responding and tuning in. I think I'm going to do more of these CEO type interviews, so let me know if there's anything specifically you'd like to see within these in the future. You can read the full post now on the Hospitalogy site here! |
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The "Why" Behind Pete's Leadership |
When I initially sat down with Pete, our first conversation was around why he became a leader in healthcare. For Pete, leadership is deeply personal. He believes healthcare has a huge potential to impact social justice positively, making a real difference in people's lives. This sense of purpose grew even stronger through his personal experiences - his mother struggled with chronic disease, and his father battled Parkinson's. These close encounters showed him just how fragmented and difficult navigating healthcare can be, especially for families managing multiple health conditions.
Pete vividly remembers how his dad started giving him lists of issues to address, a habit that slowly transformed into Pete's own life mission - a list he's determined Baylor will tackle head-on. For Pete, healthcare's brokenness is something leaders must actively fix, and he's committed to making that happen.
Throughout these personal experiences, Pet was exposed to how broken our healthcare system is. He always knew it, but it's hard to know how much so when you're on the outside looking in. But when Pete was thrust into the balkanization of healthcare, he saw how really healthcare inflicts suffering on patients during the times between appointments, particularly for people with multiple conditions and the ability for family members to navigate the system on their loved ones' behalf.
He strongly believes we now have the tools needed to shift healthcare from a reactive, paternalistic model to one that's proactive and patient-centered, empowering individuals to manage their own health.
Pete sees leadership in healthcare as an opportunity to significantly impact community well-being, building strong, responsive organizations that truly improve people's lives. In general, healthcare is in sore need of strong leadership from the front calling out the issues described above, and more. |
How to Lead People at a Health System |
Moving on to the "how" of leadership, Pete gave some great practical advice. Clarity is essential when leading people in a complex organization like Baylor Scott & White. Be crystal clear on the "what" - the outcomes you want to get. For instance, ask yourself - what is the object and mission of all the activity of Baylor Scott & White? Defining precise outcomes and aligning every action with delivering measurable benefits to patients and consumers is equally important in developing a consumer-centric, agile model. According to Pete, it's crucial to adopt a rigorous, analytic approach supported by customer insights and scientific methodologies. - Be radically customer-centric and constantly ask questions for the team: "what did we do for the customer that's tangible and addresses their pain points?"
Create a framework or operating model for how your team operates. Then, within that framework, give teammates freedom to innovate with tools. This framework allows teams to innovate and proactively respond to patient needs, transforming healthcare from a reactive, paternalistic model to one that empowers individual participation. |
Building an Effective Team |
Pete candidly shared how his approach to team-building evolved over time. Initially, he thought simply hiring top talent and giving them autonomy would ensure success. "I thought all you needed to do was hire the Blake Madden's and Jonny Cantwell's of the world, and we'd get it done." (really tooting my horn there, thanks Pete). But this thinking fell apart, and there's way more nuance involved with team building than pure talent. Just ask any football coach. Pete came to realize that while talent is essential, cultural fit and alignment are equally, if not MORE critical. In thinking of potential leaders and team members on an axis, you need to put together teammates who have both (1) excellent performance and a great track record, and (2) the right fit and behavior. A high-performing team member who doesn't mesh well culturally severely impacts team effectiveness. As Kevin Durant and many others put it, "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard." Today, Pete prioritizes team members who not only meet performance benchmarks but also align deeply with organizational values and culture, fostering cohesive teamwork. He'd take a mediocre (but still adequate from a benchmark perspective) performer with high fit over a good performer with bad fit for the team. That's how important fit, culture, and behavior is to any organization's success. |
Leadership Cultivation at Baylor |
In Part 2 I mentioned already how Baylor's physician alignment and leadership development strategy has led to fantastic physician leaders throughout the organization. Here's a few more thoughts on how Baylor identifies and develops leadership organization-wide.
In cultivating leadership at Baylor Scott & White, Pete focuses on intangible qualities such as energy, enthusiasm, and alignment with the organization's vision. He explained the importance of finding leaders who see their roles as contributing to something genuinely meaningful and impactful beyond financial rewards. Money isn't a primary motivator - there's an additional push there in the sense that you believe in what you're set out to do - and it's on Pete to set that vision toward a true purpose of consequence. That they see their jobs as contributing to something of consequence is extremely important to accomplish in healthcare.
Intriguingly, Baylor also seeks talent outside the healthcare industry, particularly individuals experienced in digital innovation, to bring fresh perspectives. Pete firmly believes that effective leaders are driven by a deeper sense of purpose, knowing that their work directly contributes to significant, meaningful change. |
Wrapping up with Pete McCanna and Baylor |
While I don't cover intangible elements of healthcare often, nor am I an expert in leadership and management, I always find the topic fascinating given how much work and effort goes into setting the vision for an entire organization like Baylor Scott & White.
I learned a lot from my conversation with Pete across leadership, Baylor's consumer-centric strategy, and the economics at play in their various markets. Pete's leadership philosophy integrates personal purpose, clarity of vision, strategic team-building, and cultivating a culture of purpose-driven leaders to create lasting improvements in healthcare. I hope Baylor succeeds in their health system transformation journey to a consumer-centric future. |
Pete McCanna is chief executive officer (CEO) at Baylor Scott & White Health, the largest not-for-profit health system in Texas. The system's integrated delivery network includes Baylor Scott & White Health Plan, Baylor Scott & White Research Institute, Baylor Scott & White Quality Alliance, and its leading digital health platform, MyBSWHealth. Through 52 hospitals and more than 1,200 access points, including flagship academic medical centers in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Temple, the system offers the full continuum of care, from primary to award-winning specialty care, as well as an array of virtual and in-home services. As CEO, McCanna leads the health system's transformation to deliver experiences that go beyond customers' traditional expectations of healthcare. Before becoming CEO, he served as Baylor Scott & White's president, where he advanced clinical alignment, accelerated the development of its digital health strategy, and expanded academic affiliations to help address the critical need for clinicians in Texas. Previously, McCanna served as executive vice president and chief operating officer at Northwestern Medicine. During his tenure, operating revenue, quality, patient experience, and employee engagement exceeded targets. He was instrumental in Northwestern's expansion as it maintained its AA+ bond rating. McCanna has nearly 40 years of experience in healthcare management and consulting. Prior to Northwestern, he served as chief financial officer (CFO) at Presbyterian Healthcare Services and CFO at the University of Colorado Hospital. Earlier in his career, he worked for Denver Health and as a healthcare consultant for The Lewin Group. Named by Modern Healthcare as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Healthcare" in 2024, he is the inaugural board chairman of Longitude Health, an innovative healthcare collaborative. McCanna also serves on the boards of University of Michigan Health, the Texas Hospital Association, and Catholic Extension. He holds a master's degree from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Michigan. |
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Have a great Easter weekend, fam. It may rain out all the egg hunts in Dallas. Children everywhere devastated. I hope not, though!! |
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Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email. — Blake |
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