📍 Today in health, it, Sarah Richardson joined the 2 29 project and this week health. As the president of executive development. And today I'm going to share with you what I'm thinking what's going on in bill Russell's head because number of people have texted me and asked that question. So I just figured I would answer it. My name is bill Russell.

I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this weak health set of channels and events dedicated, transform healthcare. One connection at a time. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, notable service now, enterprise health parlance, certified health and Panda health.

Check them out at this week. health.com. Slash today.

This story. And every story that we talk about on this show, you can find out on our website this week, health.com. This one's not on the new site. We usually tell you to go to this week. health.com/news. This one's actually on the homepage. And there is an article there about Sarah joining the organization.

We're going to cover some of the key points of that. And that's what we're going to talk about today. One last thing. Share this podcast with a friend or colleague use it as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you and the industry. We are committed to getting as many of you. To mentor someone as possible.

It's really simple. Start with the basics. Have them listen to the show. Get on a phone call for five, 10 minutes and talk about it. And that discussion is mentoring. They can describe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. Here we go. Sarah Richardson has joined this week health. The reality is Sarah Richardson has been with this week health , since its inception. Sarah and I connected well before this, we were both, , CEO's in Southern California. And I've been on her podcast before, if you didn't know, she had a podcast in Southern California. I think for hymns from not mistaken. And she interviewed me, , before I was even doing a podcast.

She interviewed me when I was at, , St. Joe's. As the CIO. And so we had a relationship dating way back. And we had a lot of things in common, a lot of shared passions, a lot of, common perceptions of the industry and what was needed. And ideas around what it would take to develop the next generation of healthcare leaders.

What that would mean a holistic approach to that, not just a piecemeal kind of things, maybe technology training, or. Or financial training or leadership training, but more of a holistic picture of what it takes to develop. A leader for healthcare. It is a very complex job. And it requires a pretty broad set of skills.

It requires, , significantly developed set of leadership and communication skills. To stand up governance in these complex organizations. , requires negotiation skills to, oversee the security framework and the architecture requires technology skills. And to oversee the people that are doing those things.

Cause you're in a lot of cases, not the one with your hands on the keyboard requires those same kinds of communications and management skills. And, to deal with the administration and to talk through budget requires financial acumen and we haven't even touched on the forward-leaning aspects of the job, which everyone seems to want to gravitate towards. But you have to do those other things really well in order to be considered the visionary for your organization. , And so when I started this week health. I decided I'm going to stand up an advisory board to help me with this.

Sarah was one of the first people I called. And we started talking about what I was trying to do at this week health. And back , the extent of my thought process was. We're going to start a podcast. And we're going to put them out on a website and we're going to, we're going to syndicate it through iTunes and the rest.

And I'm going to interview my peers. And in those conversations, people can listen in and they can become better leaders. And she is a phenomenal, , advisor and coach and she continually encouraged and said, that's great. There's not enough of that in the industry. Go ahead and do that. Obviously she came along as well as, , several of our other advisors who have been around since the gecko.

So then the pandemic hit and we started to recognize that there was something missing. And it was deep relationships. It was a deep network and it wasn't everybody there clearly were people who had , an established network within the industry. People they could call on when they had questions. But that was not pervasive. And some organizations function really well. During the pandemic and some did not function that well.

And so we started to have conversations around what was missing in the industry. And the word we came back with was community. And it's not that we don't get together. It's not that we don't get to go to events. It's that we are so busy. We don't have the time to develop relationships with people. And we started the 2 29 project. And said, we're going to start with events. Not that we needed more events on the calendar.

We don't need more events on the calendar. In fact, if we could take events off the calendar, we would. But with that being said, We recognize that. There's value in being face-to-face with one another. In fact, that's what we thought was missing in the events was the face-to-face. And so was Sarah at the table and many other CEOs and having conversations. We determined that the best format would be one in which we sat face-to-face with one another. And had discussions and conversations. And we were able to develop. Those deep relationships with each other through a common understanding of the problem sets. Through a common understanding of the challenges that we're all facing. And through getting to know one another, it's one of the reasons at our events, we decided to incorporate a spouses and plus ones to the event because we believe that nobody is an island. That everyone functions. As a team in their role, even if they are an individual themselves, when they go to work. There's a team behind them and we brought those people together and we take care of them at the 2 29 project.

And that's part of the influence of Sarah on the advisory board. For this week health and now we're moving forward from what we've been doing over the last couple of years with the 2 29 project.

So we asked ourselves what's next. What's the next thing we can do for the industry to develop people,

And it could be people that any aspect of their career could be people at their pinnacle of their career. Now people generally, who are at the pinnacle of their career, understand the need for continual development. So those people we don't have to convince, they know they understand that the technology is constantly changing.

The environment's constantly changing. , the people they're hiring are constantly changing. They come from different demographics and so they need to continue to fine tune and hone their leadership skills, their communication skills. And, technology skills for sure is constantly changing. , so people at the pinnacle of their career or people who are just starting out in their career and everything in between. And as we were talking, man, the ideas just started bouncing back and forth between Sarah and I. And in hiring drafts, the three of us having conversations of what we could potentially bring to the industry. And to individuals within the industry to help them develop as leaders. We got excited about it.

The next question, obviously you're going to ask is what does this look like? What's the form? What are we going to be looking at from this week health and the 2 29 project. And you're going to have to wait to find that out because. I've hired a great person. We have a great team over here. We have great ideas of what we're going to do. And, what we want to accomplish and we're going to work on the how are we going to do that?

Who do we partner with? Who do we talk to? How do we plug into what already exists in the industry? We try not to replicate things that already exist in the industry. We try to identify spaces where things aren't quite what they need to be, and that's the place that we enter into. And so that's what we're doing right now.

We're asking those questions with these ideas. Is someone already doing this as someone doing this really well? Is there some way we can partner with them? Is there something that's missing? And if there is something that's missing, that's where you're likely going to see us go. So we're working on it.

You will find out more. I would ask you to stay tuned. I'm excited. About what we're going to do in the meantime. Direct Sarah and I will be doing advisory services for in two directions. We're going to be doing advisory services for for partners. Who are looking for? For go to market strategies, looking for messaging strategies, looking for sales strategies. And we're going to be working with them on that. And if you're interested in that, you can go ahead and reach out to us. And we are already working with health systems. Who want us to come in and work with them on facilitating discussions? And potentially some training leadership development and those kinds of things.

So that's already happening. And if you're interested in that also reach out to us. But that's all for today, big day for us over here. And I'm glad you are a part of it. Don't forget, share this podcast with a friend or colleague, use it as a foundation for mentoring. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Notable service now, enterprise health parlance, certified health and 📍 Panda health.

Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.