Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholtz on Boomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 1: His name is Ron Williams, and he is the former
Speaker 1: chairman and CEO of healthcare giant Etna. He came in
Speaker 1: to turn the company around when it looked like it
Speaker 1: was sort of doing the circling the drain type of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not only did he turn the company around, he made
Speaker 1: it extremely profitable and it soon thereafter got purchased by CVS.
Speaker 1: This was about a year ago, a few years after
Speaker 1: he left h He has a really interesting new book
Speaker 1: out and he is quite the expert on leadership and
Speaker 1: the proper ways to to run a company and to
Speaker 1: really get buy ins from all the constituencies that a
Speaker 1: big entity like healthcare giant like ETNA has. So I
Speaker 1: think you'll find this to be a fascinating conversation with
Speaker 1: no further ado. Here's my interview with Ron Williams. This
Speaker 1: is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: My special guest today is Ron Williams. He is the
Speaker 1: former chairman and chief executive officer of Etna Healthcare, the
Speaker 1: giant company purchase last year by CVS. He is on
Speaker 1: the board of directors for such August companies as American Express, Boeing,
Speaker 1: and Johnson and Johnson. UH. He received his NBA from
Speaker 1: the M I. T. Sloan School of Management, and he
Speaker 1: is a newly published author. His book Learning to Lead
Speaker 1: By Leading Yourself, Others and an Organization UH is just
Speaker 1: out recently. Ron Williams, Welcome to Bloomberg. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be here. So let's start with
Speaker 1: your background. You have kind of an interesting background. You
Speaker 1: grow up the son of a bus drive ever and
Speaker 1: a manicurist on the South side of Chicago. That's not
Speaker 1: the typical background for a thirty billion dollar company CEO,
Speaker 1: is it. No, it's not. I was very fortunate in
Speaker 1: my life. UM. I went to public schools and UH
Speaker 1: went to a community college for two years, then went
Speaker 1: on to Roosevelt and started working and ultimately found my
Speaker 1: way to M I. T. So in the book, you
Speaker 1: tell this really interesting story in the beginning about working
Speaker 1: in the winters in a car wash in Chicago, and
Speaker 1: you found that to be quite an constructive experience. Tell
Speaker 1: us about that, Well, it was highly instructive in the
Speaker 1: sense that in Chicago there's snow and slush, and when
Speaker 1: there's a sunny, clear day in the day of winter
Speaker 1: and it is colder than you can imagine, everyone decides
Speaker 1: it's a great day to wash your car. Sure, I
Speaker 1: gotta get the salt and the mud off the car.
Speaker 1: And and when you wash cars and so end up
Speaker 1: soaking wet, you end up soaking wet. And my job
Speaker 1: was to uh wash the cars as they pulled up.
Speaker 1: I would um climb inside the car, clean the inside windows,
Speaker 1: wash the outside, then go down as the car moved
Speaker 1: to the line and dry the car off. On a
Speaker 1: very busy day, I would do that times. And the
Speaker 1: one thing I learned from that experience was I did
Speaker 1: not want to do that for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: That that was the clear takeaway. Hey, there's got to
Speaker 1: be a better way to earn a living than than this.
Speaker 1: So so you go to eventually end up an m
Speaker 1: I T. Where you graduate with an m b A.
Speaker 1: How did you find your way into the healthcare sector?
Speaker 1: You know? I uh. At m I T. There was
Speaker 1: a huge focus on entrepreneurial activity, and one of the
Speaker 1: areas I focused on was the um operational management of
Speaker 1: cervices businesses, which was a completely new area because everything
Speaker 1: that had been done in marketing up to that point
Speaker 1: was all about products as opposed to services. And in
Speaker 1: one of my entrepreneurial classes, we had a gentleman come
Speaker 1: in named Mitch Kapoor. Mitch was the founder and creator
Speaker 1: of Lotus one two three, which was the original eventually
Speaker 1: bought by IBM, eventually bought by BM, and he built
Speaker 1: Lotus one to three after he worked on the original
Speaker 1: spreadsheet called VisiCalc. And it was interesting to hear his
Speaker 1: story about how he created a company, and ultimately I
Speaker 1: was highly successful in selling the company, and so I
Speaker 1: became interested in entrepreneurial activity. So when I left m
Speaker 1: I T, I ended up joining some partners I met
Speaker 1: who were starting a healthcare company in California. I knew
Speaker 1: nothing about healthcare, but I knew a lot about the
Speaker 1: operational management services businesses. And this was a services business
Speaker 1: that was bringing the treatment for chemical dependency and substance
Speaker 1: abuse out of the hospital into an amiliatory center where
Speaker 1: people who had good family support and we're beginning to
Speaker 1: have problems could come in after work and get the
Speaker 1: care that they needed. It was a huge cost savings
Speaker 1: to the companies and for the families. It made care
Speaker 1: and treatment much more accessible. So that started me down
Speaker 1: the road of healthcare, and ultimately we sold the company
Speaker 1: and I looked around and I joined Blue Cross of California.
Speaker 1: So from entrepreneurship, you now join a fairly large company.
Speaker 1: What was that transition like, because it's obviously very different
Speaker 1: when it's just you and a handful of people running
Speaker 1: a startup, where there's no intrense way of doing things
Speaker 1: and a lot of freedom to experiment. Suddenly you're in
Speaker 1: a giant entity. Well, I think, Um, the experience that
Speaker 1: that I had actually before I went to graduate school
Speaker 1: was at a company called Control Data. Now Control Data
Speaker 1: had seventy thousand employees, so I had been in a
Speaker 1: company with seventy thousand. Then I started a company with
Speaker 1: three and I went to Blue Cross that had about
Speaker 1: five thousand employees. So um, I have to say the
Speaker 1: size didn't worry me as much as the culture. I
Speaker 1: jokingly and it was half humorous and a half not
Speaker 1: that the places I was interested in working at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the list was the federal government, state government,
Speaker 1: and then Blue Cross. Because I actually had had some
Speaker 1: experience in state government as well, and but I met
Speaker 1: the team. They were a really dynamic group of people
Speaker 1: who had a vision to transform the company, and I
Speaker 1: joined and that's really where I kind of did the
Speaker 1: apprenticeship of running all aspects of that company and ultimately
Speaker 1: really uh to develop a complete knowledge of the health
Speaker 1: care system. So did you aspire to the C suite
Speaker 1: or were you more interested in looking at companies that
Speaker 1: were um either in need of some assistance or in
Speaker 1: edness case a giant turnaround. What what was the motivation
Speaker 1: when you left Blue Cross and joined that now, Well,
Speaker 1: I think when I was at M I t one
Speaker 1: of the unique things I think they did was they
Speaker 1: brought in alumni who were CEOs, and we would have
Speaker 1: dinners maybe once a month, to be fourteen of us
Speaker 1: at a time who would sit down with the CEO
Speaker 1: and hear their story and hear their journey. And as
Speaker 1: I heard those stories and heard those journeys, somewhere in
Speaker 1: there the light went on and said, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I could do that. I could learn to do that.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it today, but I could see a
Speaker 1: path where with the right experience and the right opportunities
Speaker 1: I could learn to be a CEO. So for me,
Speaker 1: that was kind of the beginning of a distant light
Speaker 1: on the horizon that said, you know, I think maybe
Speaker 1: I could learn to do that. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the health care system in America. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, we have absolutely a fabulous level of medical care,
Speaker 1: just incredible innovations, incredible life saving techniques. On the other hands,
Speaker 1: the business side of healthcare you mentioned earlier, it's opaque.
Speaker 1: We have no idea about pricing, there's no transparency. Americans
Speaker 1: seem to pay the most amount for procedures, for for
Speaker 1: prescriptions for drugs. Is the system broken and how can
Speaker 1: it be fixed? If it is well, I would say
Speaker 1: that the system is not broken. The system is not
Speaker 1: optimized that if you need healthcare in America, if you
Speaker 1: have insurance, you get fabulous healthcare. But we do have
Speaker 1: a segment of the population that even today does not
Speaker 1: have insurance and where they're not getting access to the
Speaker 1: services that those of us who are insured would be. Now,
Speaker 1: when you think about the cost of the US healthcare system,
Speaker 1: it is more expensive and we spend more than other countries.
Speaker 1: But our system is uniquely American and by that I
Speaker 1: mean one of the ways that other countries control the
Speaker 1: rate of increase is they set a budget. We don't
Speaker 1: set a chit. They actually are have many, many instances
Speaker 1: a culture that accepts waiting. So if you need a
Speaker 1: hip replacement, and you may be uh needed, but you
Speaker 1: believe today in other countries, you might not get it
Speaker 1: for months or in some places years. Canada is probably
Speaker 1: the poster child has you have to wait for many,
Speaker 1: many services. You know, if someone were to be told
Speaker 1: to wait in the US, their answer would be, you're
Speaker 1: gonna hear from me, You're gonna hear from my congressmen,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear from my attorney. I want what I want.
Speaker 1: The other issue is that other countries really do ration
Speaker 1: care in the sense that's saying you may be eighty
Speaker 1: years old, you may be extremely fit, you may be
Speaker 1: in great shape, but we think you're too old for
Speaker 1: a hip replacement, and so that's not something that we
Speaker 1: uh endorse and encourage. I think there is an opportunity
Speaker 1: to create much more value in healthcare and make healthcare
Speaker 1: more affordable, and I think one of the secrets of
Speaker 1: that is to restore the primacy of the primary care
Speaker 1: physician as the person who really is the guide and
Speaker 1: coach to the patient to try to make certain that
Speaker 1: health care is looked at from end to end and
Speaker 1: also that patient preferences are taken into account so a
Speaker 1: patient can make an informed decision of is surgery better
Speaker 1: or should I try medication? What is the best course
Speaker 1: of action? And those are judgments the patients really need
Speaker 1: to make in consultation with their position. Can we make
Speaker 1: the personal physician the quarterback of somebody's health care? It
Speaker 1: seems like the way the cost structure has changed, they've
Speaker 1: become under pressure to see a lot more patients UM
Speaker 1: in a shorter period of time. I happen to be lucky.
Speaker 1: My personal physician UM coincidentally is a cardiac expert, and
Speaker 1: every time I have a physical with him, we sit
Speaker 1: down in the office and he spends twenty minutes UM
Speaker 1: going over everything. I think that sort of relationship is
Speaker 1: not the rule. That seems to be the exception. Most
Speaker 1: people aren't fortunate enough to have that sort of primary
Speaker 1: care physician. It's a much more assembly line type of situation.
Speaker 1: How can we create the financial incentives for those doctors
Speaker 1: to be focused on not just the billable procedure, but
Speaker 1: the overall um health of the patient, well, I think
Speaker 1: one of the answers that we're beginning to see is
Speaker 1: the use of what's called integrated care systems. And in
Speaker 1: those systems, one of the things that many health plans
Speaker 1: are doing is to take the premium dollar that's paid
Speaker 1: for insurance and instead of paying the physician on a
Speaker 1: piecework or activity basis, to pay the the the system
Speaker 1: on a percentage of the premium, and say eight of
Speaker 1: the premium is going to go to health care services.
Speaker 1: You don't have to try to figure out what's the
Speaker 1: code to put this patient in an uber or a
Speaker 1: lift bring them in for a visit, because if they
Speaker 1: can't get to your office for care, then it's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot more expensive. And so getting away
Speaker 1: from the piecemeal a lot of the kind of activity
Speaker 1: based care will pass those resources to the integrated delivery
Speaker 1: system and they can use those resources in ways that
Speaker 1: really manage the patient outside of the office and outside
Speaker 1: of the hospital. If you think about healthcare, most of
Speaker 1: the things that impact healthcare actually happen in the home,
Speaker 1: in the community, at work, and so we have to
Speaker 1: think about getting the healthcare system much more involved in
Speaker 1: those spaces by working with the patient. What about costs
Speaker 1: of various drugs? You know, when we pass them, what
Speaker 1: does it Medicare Section D for prescription drug costs, There
Speaker 1: was a lot of lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry and
Speaker 1: there is not only is there no cap on costs,
Speaker 1: but there is a prohibition on the government negotiating prices
Speaker 1: on on behalf of Medicaid Medicare, which is just outrageous.
Speaker 1: It makes Medicaid costs more. That has to trickle down
Speaker 1: to what private insurers are paying for drugs. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it does. I think we have to take a
Speaker 1: look at Uh, negotiating with the government is really not negotiating, right,
Speaker 1: government is not a negotiator, they are a price setter. Well,
Speaker 1: certain countries are more aggressive price setters than US, and
Speaker 1: their drugs costs much less than ours. Well, I think
Speaker 1: we have to look at the whole drug system on
Speaker 1: the global basis. And the one thing I believe is
Speaker 1: that the US is in fact doing an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of research for all countries in the US, and and
Speaker 1: it's fair to say I believe that the US patient
Speaker 1: population is in fact paying for the research, which is
Speaker 1: benefiting many countries who don't make the investment in pharmaceutical research.
Speaker 1: That makes no sense to it may not, but but
Speaker 1: but that's what we're doing now. The other thing I
Speaker 1: would say is that the innovations that pharmaceutical companies create
Speaker 1: are really spectacular, and it is an extremely expensive undertaking.
Speaker 1: I've seen companies spend two three billion dollars on a
Speaker 1: drug which cures a problem but creates a bigger problem,
Speaker 1: in which case that money has just gone down into flames.
Speaker 1: And so I think one of the things that we
Speaker 1: can do is to continue to emphasize generics, which is
Speaker 1: really a much lower cost way. Is the patent system
Speaker 1: kind of making that more difficult. They make a slight
Speaker 1: change that's irrelevant to a molecule and suddenly they had
Speaker 1: a few more years to a patent. How how can
Speaker 1: we work around that? Yeah? I think that um the
Speaker 1: the the whole question of making certain that drugs move
Speaker 1: through the proprietary patent UH process for a reasonable period
Speaker 1: of time for companies to recrup their costs, and then
Speaker 1: generics should be available. We also have situations where bugs
Speaker 1: that have been in use for quite some time have
Speaker 1: been purchased, and we've seen the prices go up dramatically
Speaker 1: three three, and I think that that's an example of
Speaker 1: something personally, I think that's inappropriate. We were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about um your transition from an entrepreneurial background to a
Speaker 1: larger corporate entity in your book Learning to Lead. How
Speaker 1: did you come about the idea of leading yourself and
Speaker 1: then others and then the organization. I'm kind of fascinated
Speaker 1: by the way you structured this well. I think it
Speaker 1: starts with the recognition that leadership is a journey, and
Speaker 1: that that journey has different phases. And given my unique
Speaker 1: background as an individual who started out very meager uh circumstances,
Speaker 1: one of the first things I had to figure out
Speaker 1: how to do was to lead myself into a place
Speaker 1: where I could have a profession career and have aspirations
Speaker 1: for greater opportunity. And then and then ultimately I had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to lead people. I needed to learn how
Speaker 1: to do that and then ultimately lead organizations. What I
Speaker 1: found was that after I ceased to be CEO, I
Speaker 1: got an enormous number of phone calls from other CEOs
Speaker 1: who were confronting issues of transformational change, issues of team building,
Speaker 1: human capital, all of the issues I confronted as a CEO.
Speaker 1: I also had a lot of phone calls from aspiring
Speaker 1: leaders who really were at that stage where they had
Speaker 1: been a very strong individual contributor but were now asked
Speaker 1: to lead a team. And then I also found lots
Speaker 1: of inquiries from my peers and colleagues whose children were
Speaker 1: at that very early stage. So it really was born
Speaker 1: out of both my own experience and I decided that
Speaker 1: I would write the book and I would also interview
Speaker 1: are executives who had taken journeys similar to me, and
Speaker 1: so I was able to interview kenchin Alt who ran
Speaker 1: American Express, Pat Russo who she ran CEO of Lucon
Speaker 1: and then CEO of Lucon, alcoateel Ursla Burns who ran Xerox,
Speaker 1: and Ian Davis, who was the person who ran mckenzy
Speaker 1: for quite some time mckensey. Consulting their stories, my stories,
Speaker 1: their insight, and the insights many people I work with
Speaker 1: are all in the book. So I was kind of
Speaker 1: fascinated by your discussion um failure early in the book
Speaker 1: about your background in psychology and how you came to
Speaker 1: recognize attribution theory as being very helpful in a leadership
Speaker 1: role in helping to figure out why people seem to
Speaker 1: blame others when it goes wrong, but they want to
Speaker 1: take credit for themselves, not when it goes right. Not
Speaker 1: the best attributes for a leader. Tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about attribution theory, well, I would would say that
Speaker 1: when my initial undergraduate was psychology, I then decided to
Speaker 1: study clinical psychology at at Roosevelt University and I found
Speaker 1: it very interesting, and I got UM and completed all
Speaker 1: my coursework, and then I had to do the internship
Speaker 1: UM and I discovered that you had to work for
Speaker 1: a year for free, and I joked that that was
Speaker 1: the day I realized I was a capitalist. But the
Speaker 1: benefit of that experience was exposure to social psychology and
Speaker 1: attribution theory, and it helped me begin to observe how
Speaker 1: people made decisions, how people made judgments about themselves and others.
Speaker 1: And I think the simplest way to think about it
Speaker 1: is that if people like you and things go wrong,
Speaker 1: they will very well blame the failure on external events.
Speaker 1: If they don't like you and things go wrong, they
Speaker 1: blame the all are on you. Now that's gross over simplification,
Speaker 1: but that's the essence of it. And what caused me
Speaker 1: to ask myself was what would people have to believe
Speaker 1: in order to make those judgments. So it always caused
Speaker 1: me not to look for motivation, which a lot of
Speaker 1: people do, but to look for logic and thinking that
Speaker 1: makes that decision makes sense to the individual doing it.
Speaker 1: A little cognitive dissonance goes a long way. You also
Speaker 1: reference in the book um the role of just chance
Speaker 1: and luck and how people so significantly under estimate how
Speaker 1: important just getting a little lucky every now and then is. Well,
Speaker 1: there's an expression which I learned early on with which
Speaker 1: is you can't win if you're not in the game.
Speaker 1: And what that means is when you're in the game,
Speaker 1: you expose yourself to more probability of luck. So if
Speaker 1: you want to be in business, you've got to get
Speaker 1: in business. Doesn't mean you'll be successful, but if you're
Speaker 1: in business and you're constantly working and broadening your contacts,
Speaker 1: you'll make connections. Things will happen. So luck luck favors
Speaker 1: are prepared. Lux favors those who are actually actively trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish their goals. Right, what's the old joke the
Speaker 1: harder I work, the luckier I get exactly absolutely uh interesting.
Speaker 1: So so let's talk a little bit about ETNA before
Speaker 1: we talk about UM. The rest of of the Fortune
Speaker 1: one thousand, your CEO from two thousand and six to
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven. You come in a few years
Speaker 1: before that, ETNA was really in a mess. It was
Speaker 1: potentially looking down the road and insolvency. It had not
Speaker 1: been well managed or well run for a long time,
Speaker 1: and you had to turn the company around. What was
Speaker 1: that experience like, Well, it was UM Really one of
Speaker 1: the most remarkable experiences that I've had. Was was really
Speaker 1: helping that company regain its stature in the industry. And
Speaker 1: I contributed really to the employees, the staff, their commitment,
Speaker 1: their engagement, and their desire to win. The company had
Speaker 1: been dramatically underlaid for some time under lad That's an
Speaker 1: interesting and when I joined that and I expected that
Speaker 1: I would meet a lot of incompetent people, and I
Speaker 1: was shocked and surprised and pleased at the level of
Speaker 1: competence that the organization had. But the company wasn't well organized,
Speaker 1: The company's strategy was unclear, the culture had lost its way,
Speaker 1: and so the company had to be disassembled and reassembled
Speaker 1: in order to be effective and contemporary. So so you're
Speaker 1: coming into a situation that's a little dysfunctional. How do
Speaker 1: you get buy in from the employees and the key
Speaker 1: management members when you're basically saying, Hey, everything you've been
Speaker 1: doing is wrong, let's let's start over. You know, I
Speaker 1: am remind did of very early in my tenure there.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of town hall meetings to go
Speaker 1: out on a listening tour, and I remember explaining what
Speaker 1: I hope to do and what I accomplish. And one
Speaker 1: woman stood up. She happened to be a physician who
Speaker 1: worked there, and she said, you seem like a very
Speaker 1: nice man. I'm sure you hope you can do all this.
Speaker 1: You're the fifth person we've seen in you know, five years,
Speaker 1: So why should we listen and engage and do what
Speaker 1: you're asking? And I paused for a minute, and I
Speaker 1: looked around the room and I said, I want everyone
Speaker 1: in his room to stand up and give that woman
Speaker 1: a round of applause for asking the question that was
Speaker 1: on everyone's mind. But only she had the courage to
Speaker 1: actually say. And we did that, and I think that
Speaker 1: was a beginning turning point and people understanding that I
Speaker 1: wanted a different kind of culture and environment. And I
Speaker 1: then went on to stress that we have to have
Speaker 1: authentic conversations with each other. There's no question you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to ask me. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: a direct answer. You may like the answer, you may
Speaker 1: not like the answer, but I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: an honest answer. So changing the culture and changing the
Speaker 1: dynamic really started with that one conversation which kind of
Speaker 1: spread across the organization that said, this is really different.
Speaker 1: I can I can imagine. And the turnaround was so
Speaker 1: successful that ETNA during your tenure gets named Fortune magazines
Speaker 1: most admired healthcare company in insurance for what three consecutive years,
Speaker 1: So that is quite the turnaround, both in how the
Speaker 1: company has perceived as well as the profitability. The company
Speaker 1: went from losing lots of money to being a billion
Speaker 1: plus profit maker. Um. How much of this was changing
Speaker 1: the culture and how much of this was just the
Speaker 1: blocking and tackling nuts and bolts of reorganizing a company
Speaker 1: and focusing it on its core competencies. Well, I would say, Um,
Speaker 1: I have an expression that great CEOs have their head
Speaker 1: in the clouds and feet on the ground and hid
Speaker 1: in the clouds means that you have a well tuned
Speaker 1: sense of the external reality. Spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: with customers, built a new strategy for the company, and
Speaker 1: it was the leadership team that that really helped build
Speaker 1: that strategy. Then we looked very deeply at the culture
Speaker 1: of the company and the values of the company, and
Speaker 1: we created something called the ETNA Way, And at the
Speaker 1: ETNA Way, we put the customer at the center of
Speaker 1: everything we do. Now we did a slight twist on
Speaker 1: what people think of as customer. Customer was not simply
Speaker 1: the person who paid the bills. The customer was whoever
Speaker 1: you serviced, and so if it was a planned sponsor
Speaker 1: who was buying, that was a customer. When a when
Speaker 1: a patient called, or a member call customer service, that
Speaker 1: was the customer. If you were in human resources, the
Speaker 1: employees were the customer. If you were in proposal preparation,
Speaker 1: the sales team was your customer. And so it created
Speaker 1: a dynamic in which we were externally focused on meeting
Speaker 1: customer expectations, and the strategy really was linked to the culture,
Speaker 1: and we spent an enormous amount of time talking about
Speaker 1: the culture. One year, I gave over two hundred talks
Speaker 1: and presentations inside the company. I started each and every
Speaker 1: time with the values of the company, making sure that
Speaker 1: people understood. And my experience is that when the CEO
Speaker 1: has said it so much they could scream, they probably
Speaker 1: have reached about a third of the people. Amazing you.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the customers you describe in the book early
Speaker 1: in your tenure as CEO, taking the corporate jet and
Speaker 1: really flying around to visit the two hundred top customers
Speaker 1: of ETNA. What was that experience like, especially coming off
Speaker 1: a bad couple of years. How do you convince everybody, no, no,
Speaker 1: the turnaround is real and you're gonna really like what
Speaker 1: you see. Well, it was a very revealing experience. Prior
Speaker 1: to my joining, ETNA had spent twelve billion dollars on
Speaker 1: acquiring a large number of other health health plans, but
Speaker 1: it failed to effectively integrate those plans, either operationally from
Speaker 1: an I T perspective and from a employee culture perspective,
Speaker 1: customers were suffering as a result. Customer service was bad,
Speaker 1: claim payments were bad, information provided to patients to customers
Speaker 1: were bad. To people calling customer service So when I
Speaker 1: visited those accounts who were Fortune one hundred companies, Fortune
Speaker 1: to fifty companies, Fortune five companies, I got a air
Speaker 1: full on what they expected and what they were getting.
Speaker 1: The one thing that I was able to do was
Speaker 1: to ask for time, and I asked them also about
Speaker 1: their most important pain points. What did they want to
Speaker 1: see in new innovations, new products, and new capabilities. And
Speaker 1: what made the difference really was a theme in the
Speaker 1: company of back to basics and defining very explicitly what
Speaker 1: we needed to do, and getting the organization engaged so
Speaker 1: that the commitments I had made for improved service, improved responsiveness,
Speaker 1: we're being met. And then the fact that we then
Speaker 1: simultaneously developed a strategy that represented a whole new generation
Speaker 1: of products and services. So you get all this feedback
Speaker 1: from these big customers and you promise, hey, give us
Speaker 1: six months to a year. I promise you'll be on people.
Speaker 1: But you see, how do you communicate the changes that
Speaker 1: are needed to accompany the size of that Now you
Speaker 1: have thousands and thousands of employees, How do you make
Speaker 1: sure everybody is on the same page, and that not
Speaker 1: just culturally, but those specific pain points you mentioned, How
Speaker 1: does that reach the rank and file employees? Well, I
Speaker 1: think what you have to do is you really have
Speaker 1: to be extremely visible. So I made it a goal
Speaker 1: to go to the customer service centers, to meet with
Speaker 1: the teams, to lay out the strategy, and to build
Speaker 1: a graphic model that define explicitly what back to basics meant.
Speaker 1: So if you were in claims, it said you're gonna
Speaker 1: pay claims accurately and timely. We're going to measure you
Speaker 1: on that, we're going to reward you on that, but
Speaker 1: we're going to make certain you have the resources to
Speaker 1: be able to do it, and we're gonna listen to
Speaker 1: you in terms of what are the things the organization
Speaker 1: has to do to enable you to accomplish that. And
Speaker 1: we did that area by area by area, And so
Speaker 1: while we were under enormous financial strain, we did not
Speaker 1: under invest in making certain that we got back to
Speaker 1: delivering the basic commitment for service. You mentioned the twelve
Speaker 1: billion dollars and acquisitions that proceeded your um period of
Speaker 1: time as CEO. What were the I T challenges like too,
Speaker 1: Because it sounds like you had a lot of technologies
Speaker 1: of of all different sorts. They didn't seem to communicate.
Speaker 1: You describe in here in the book and elsewhere that
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a challenge making all these disparate
Speaker 1: systems work together. How did you finally wrestle that into submission?
Speaker 1: How did you get again a giant company like ETNA
Speaker 1: with a modern, cutting edge UM technology infrastructure. Well, I think, uh,
Speaker 1: it was a really critical component of our success. And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, when I joined the company, I joined
Speaker 1: as UH shortly after that became president and the CEO
Speaker 1: was Jack Row, who was a great colleague and friend.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we identified was we
Speaker 1: needed a new head of i T. And there's a
Speaker 1: story in the book where I had that epiphany. Uh.
Speaker 1: After our planning process, what we did was we actually
Speaker 1: went out and we retained a company, retained IBM to
Speaker 1: completely update and retool the human capital. So we asked them,
Speaker 1: on our behalf, evaluate all of the i T staff,
Speaker 1: help us determine which ones are people who really are
Speaker 1: contributing and can help us get to where we need to,
Speaker 1: and then help us replace the others with the highest caliber,
Speaker 1: greatest expertise we can find. That process took a while.
Speaker 1: At the end of it, information technology digitalization, big data
Speaker 1: analytics became a huge part of the competitive strategy that
Speaker 1: helped the company win. We have been speaking to Ron Williams.
Speaker 1: He is the former CEO of ETNA and the author
Speaker 1: of Learning to Read. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll
Speaker 1: be sure and stick around for the podcast extras. Will
Speaker 1: we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things
Speaker 1: healthcare related. You can find that at iTunes, Overcast, SoundCloud, Stitcher,
Speaker 1: wherever your final podcasts are found. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m I be
Speaker 1: podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my
Speaker 1: daily column at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at rid Holts. I'm Barry Riholts. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Ron,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. I think you
Speaker 1: are the first Fortune one hundred uh company CEO I've
Speaker 1: had on and UM. Not only is at in the
Speaker 1: healthcare provider for my firm, UM, but I was intrigued
Speaker 1: by your book and found it quite fascinating, and I
Speaker 1: have to ask you, how did you come up with
Speaker 1: the idea of putting very succinct takeaways of each chapter.
Speaker 1: It really when I went back and because I first
Speaker 1: went through the book on PDF, when I got the
Speaker 1: physical copy, I started going through it and I found
Speaker 1: it tremendously helpful to when I'm looking for something to say, Oh,
Speaker 1: here are the chapter three takeaways. What what was the
Speaker 1: thinking process behind behind building the book that way? Well,
Speaker 1: it it goes back to one of the principles that
Speaker 1: I've always believed is that when you're communicating, you have
Speaker 1: an obligation to make what you know accessible to others
Speaker 1: in a way that is easy for them to absorb.
Speaker 1: And I think that's whether you're in a business meeting
Speaker 1: or whether you're writing or you're doing a report, that
Speaker 1: it's not enough to just put it in there from
Speaker 1: your point of view. You want to make certain that
Speaker 1: you've done the absolute best to make it accessible. And
Speaker 1: for many people, the way the book is structured seems
Speaker 1: it to be linear. First you lead yourself, then you
Speaker 1: lead others, and you lead organizations. The one thing I've
Speaker 1: learned in really talking about the book is that when
Speaker 1: you are leading an organization, the single most important thing
Speaker 1: turns out to be leading yourself and So these types
Speaker 1: of summaries at the end let anyone at whatever level
Speaker 1: real quickly revisit some of the key lessons that can
Speaker 1: help them be successful. And this is your first book,
Speaker 1: how did you find the uh, the writing process? Well,
Speaker 1: I think um, I found it challenging. I found it,
Speaker 1: um trying to write a book in which you are
Speaker 1: pleased with everything you say is a huge challenge, particularly
Speaker 1: if you are a bit of a perfectionist in what
Speaker 1: you do. I would say I am pleased with the experience. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna see another book from you anyway, so
Speaker 1: that I'll have to consider you have to talk to
Speaker 1: the life and see absolutely absolutely, let's do that. So
Speaker 1: there were a couple of questions we didn't get to
Speaker 1: that I wanted to ask about, um well, and they're
Speaker 1: both sort of political, so I'll ask it in a
Speaker 1: a delicate way. So first, there's actually a few questions
Speaker 1: we skipped. First, we were talking about Obamacare, UM, which
Speaker 1: ended up providing healthcare for thirty five million low income people.
Speaker 1: How did that impact your business and out? And then
Speaker 1: was this a positive for the insurance business? Was a negative?
Speaker 1: Wasn't mixed? What what was the impact when you're running
Speaker 1: a giant healthcare company. Well, I would say that UM.
Speaker 1: As the legislation was being prepared, and there was, I
Speaker 1: was very actively involved in it, and actually the President
Speaker 1: was kind enough to send me a personally signed copy
Speaker 1: of the bills. We still have ABIT on my wall
Speaker 1: as And like all legislation, it's imperfect. I think in
Speaker 1: terms of the industry, Uh, it's a mixed record. UM.
Speaker 1: The many parts of the of the legislation, I'd say
Speaker 1: UM create financial challenges for companies. But I think in
Speaker 1: terms of the overall good for society, I think it's
Speaker 1: a real plus. And it was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: work in progress, but once UM President Obama left office,
Speaker 1: works seem to have stopped on. It is a bipartisan
Speaker 1: healthcare bill even possible, despite how important it is, you know.
Speaker 1: I one of my regrets is that we couldn't get
Speaker 1: the initial legislation to be bipartisan because having it passed
Speaker 1: by one party made it a bit of a grudge
Speaker 1: match from each side of the perspective. And I think
Speaker 1: it does make it hard. And I think if we
Speaker 1: could get the kind of leadership I would like to see,
Speaker 1: we would come up with bipartisan fixes, no one side
Speaker 1: would win everything they wanted. But I just think as
Speaker 1: a country three we are better off with bipartisan solutions
Speaker 1: than we are with single party solutions. And then the
Speaker 1: other question I didn't get to um, but I think
Speaker 1: it's important to to discuss. When you were running at
Speaker 1: now you were one of the few African American CEOs
Speaker 1: in the SMP five hundred. Are we doing enough to
Speaker 1: improve diversity at the c suite? And are we doing
Speaker 1: enough to make sure the pool of all all employees
Speaker 1: are are given a fair shake, regardless of their background,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. Well, I think there is uh
Speaker 1: a lot of work to be done. I think we're
Speaker 1: doing better in terms of advancing women and making certain
Speaker 1: that we're equalizing on a gender basis, and I think
Speaker 1: that is a real plus. Now we're nowhere near where
Speaker 1: we need to be, but given where we were, we've
Speaker 1: made a lot of progress. I think in terms of
Speaker 1: other minorities, whether it's Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, whatever, I
Speaker 1: think we still have a lot of work to do.
Speaker 1: Most companies have one or two in the executive suite,
Speaker 1: and if you look at the next levels in the organization.
Speaker 1: Often it's pretty thin, and I believe that in order
Speaker 1: to win a you have to be reflective of your
Speaker 1: customer base because you'll make better decisions to serve that
Speaker 1: customer base. And two, there's an enormous amount of talent
Speaker 1: that we aren't tapping if we're not doing a better job.
Speaker 1: The companies that I work with are all highly focused
Speaker 1: on the issue, and what they find is when they
Speaker 1: broaden the candidates slate to reflect candidates from the full spectrum,
Speaker 1: and they pick the best person. Often they end up
Speaker 1: picking a woman, They may pick a person of color,
Speaker 1: or they may pick someone else. The object isn't to
Speaker 1: force a solution. The object is to broaden the field,
Speaker 1: and companies need to invest much more earlier in the toilet,
Speaker 1: in the talent pipeline to make certain that people are
Speaker 1: coming into the company and moving through the assignments and
Speaker 1: producing great results. You know, I work in finance and
Speaker 1: it is a notorious um lack of diversity sort of industry.
Speaker 1: It's gotten much better, but your point about the pipeline
Speaker 1: is well taken. You can't hire somebody at a C
Speaker 1: suite level if there aren't a lot of people working
Speaker 1: at at different stages below. I think I think Wall
Speaker 1: Street has improved in many ways, but like the rest
Speaker 1: of the country, it still has a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do. So so let's jump to my favorite questions.
Speaker 1: These are the ones we ask all of our guests
Speaker 1: and and they're the ones that I think, UM people
Speaker 1: are are most excited about. Let's uh, let's jump right
Speaker 1: into it. You mentioned you worked in in the car wash.
Speaker 1: What was the first car you ever owned? You're making model.
Speaker 1: The first car I own was a night teen sixty
Speaker 1: eight Chevrolet, and um it was. It had no air conditioning,
Speaker 1: which was not good, and it was a horrible green
Speaker 1: but it was the cheapest car on the lot, right, well, Chevallet,
Speaker 1: what what was it? A Nova? And Pala, It was
Speaker 1: a Nova, okay, which is when you said cheapest on
Speaker 1: a lot. Now, in later years those Nova's became muscle cars.
Speaker 1: You could get those with big, fat tires and a
Speaker 1: lot of horsepower. No, I think this was the smallest
Speaker 1: engine they had. Um, So, what's the most important thing
Speaker 1: we don't know about? Ron Williams? You know, I would say, um? Probably, Well,
Speaker 1: the most important is um makes it a difficult question?
Speaker 1: Probably one of the things you probably don't know. Is
Speaker 1: I'm actually a movie buff. I'm I'm a cinema fan, yes,
Speaker 1: and I enjoy actually own movies. And I actually am
Speaker 1: now building a collection of African American UH movies that
Speaker 1: were made in the twenties, thirties and forties, which many
Speaker 1: people don't know about. Really, I'm a film buff. I
Speaker 1: had no idea, what what are some of the movies
Speaker 1: we might have heard of from that era? Well, you
Speaker 1: probably UH wouldn't have heard of many of them. They
Speaker 1: were a lot of them were Westerns that had all
Speaker 1: black cast. Uh, and we're very similar to the westerns
Speaker 1: that were made in john Ford type of john Ford type,
Speaker 1: you know, budgets weren't as big, themes were the same.
Speaker 1: So I would say, uh, cinema is an area of interest.
Speaker 1: So so out of curiosity, who was funding those Was
Speaker 1: this through the studios? Was this in the that they
Speaker 1: were independent films, that that a company carved out the
Speaker 1: segment and recognized there was a business opportunity and UH
Speaker 1: put together cast and you see a lot of the
Speaker 1: same people participating in in the movies. And UH. One
Speaker 1: of the UH gifts that I I I got recently
Speaker 1: was a poster from one of those original movies that
Speaker 1: hangs in my home. Quite interesting. So who were your
Speaker 1: early mentors who helped shape your career? You know, I
Speaker 1: had clearly my parents were were instrumental. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of professors in school who in Pickleyan College and
Speaker 1: in high school it was very challenging. They had just
Speaker 1: begun to desegregate Chicago, and I went to a school
Speaker 1: where we were the really really truly minority, and there
Speaker 1: was no one ever talked to me about going to college.
Speaker 1: All the college conversations were held with other students. You
Speaker 1: you mentioned that in the book that was like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: when you're done, back to the car wash? Was you
Speaker 1: with you? Was the attitude exactly? Exactly and so um.
Speaker 1: But in college I met really great fact with that
Speaker 1: great experience at Roosevelt, great experience at M I T.
Speaker 1: And then I've worked for some really great executives Lyn
Speaker 1: Shaffer it Uh, blue Cross I would give high marks too, uh.
Speaker 1: And then Jack Roll was just a great, great colleague,
Speaker 1: great partner, and I've the other thing I would stress
Speaker 1: is I learned a lot from everyone. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be a professional. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be a CEO. Every person you meet you can learn
Speaker 1: something from you mentioned. So this is everybody's favorite question.
Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite books? And I have
Speaker 1: to mention that in the your book you reference you're
Speaker 1: a sci fi fan. So, so tell us some of
Speaker 1: your favorite books, be they fiction, non fiction, science fiction,
Speaker 1: or otherwise. Well, you know, I I read a lot
Speaker 1: of biographies, you know, Uh, books of the books on
Speaker 1: Lincoln that uh history which author most recently, Delores Kerwin?
Speaker 1: I like her books? Um, I it's sci fi. Actually,
Speaker 1: Isaac Asimanoff was a great UH love his whole collection. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the ones I read very early, which I
Speaker 1: was fascinated with, was a Foundation trilogy, which is a
Speaker 1: whole series on both combinations psychology and science fiction. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I read, um a lot of Jim Collins
Speaker 1: in the business Um. Very early. I focused a lot
Speaker 1: on management book Strucker read everything he ever wrote, UM,
Speaker 1: and UH a lot on leadership. Quite interesting. Uh. Tell
Speaker 1: us about a time you failed and what you learned
Speaker 1: from the experience. Well, I I my first business failed miserably, UM.
Speaker 1: And what I learned there is that I was a
Speaker 1: great salesman, but I knew absolutely nothing about running a business,
Speaker 1: and that prompted me to go seek what I'll call
Speaker 1: was a business apprenticeship and where you could learn, And
Speaker 1: that's when I joined Control Data and that took me
Speaker 1: from understanding how you sell things to actually learning how
Speaker 1: you actually run a business and what do you do
Speaker 1: outside of the office for fun? You mentioned film? What film?
Speaker 1: And Um? I of jazz? Uh? I visit New York
Speaker 1: and in great enjoy all the great jazz clubs here.
Speaker 1: Really tell us somebody you saw recently who you enjoying? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say recently I saw Herbie Hancock was just
Speaker 1: great chick Korea. Um, I'm kind of a sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: eighties jazz fan for obvious reasons. Well, fifties and sixties
Speaker 1: for sure. Um. Have you followed any of the Herbie
Speaker 1: Hancock albums where he takes like a pop artist and
Speaker 1: reworks one of their their albums? He I The last
Speaker 1: one I think I saw of his was Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 1: They're really quite actually have not heard that one out.
Speaker 1: He does some some really interesting, uh really interesting work,
Speaker 1: very good. Um. Oh, so what are you most excited
Speaker 1: about within the healthcare industry today? What? What changes are
Speaker 1: teat up that you think really are going to be impactful. Well,
Speaker 1: the changes that I'm most excited about center on a
Speaker 1: couple of the companies I'm involved with, one called agilean
Speaker 1: another one called have a Health. Agilan is a company
Speaker 1: that partners with primary care physicians who are interested in
Speaker 1: serving the Medicare advantage population. And what Agilan does is
Speaker 1: it brings a technical platform to support the physicians in
Speaker 1: terms of data, analytics, the clinical indicators, and it also
Speaker 1: then goes out and negotiates with health plans directly to
Speaker 1: shift those physicians from being paid on activity to receiving
Speaker 1: a capitated amount to take care of those patients. It's
Speaker 1: about a billion dollar company. We have about a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand Medicare Advantage members and we handle the business. The
Speaker 1: doctors handled the medicine, and we give them the data,
Speaker 1: the analytics, the decisions support to really look at their
Speaker 1: population and figure out how do we make certain every
Speaker 1: person is coming in and getting assessed and and getting
Speaker 1: the right preventive care throughout the year. And so it's
Speaker 1: really been a great partnership and it's growing about thirty
Speaker 1: a year. We're very excited about it. That's that's quite interesting.
Speaker 1: So if a millennial came to you and said they
Speaker 1: were interested in a career in healthcare, UH, what sort
Speaker 1: of advice might you give them? You know, I would
Speaker 1: give them the the ad advice to look at emerging companies, UH,
Speaker 1: that are finding new solutions. Some are empowering consumers and
Speaker 1: supporting consumer engagement. Some are shifting care from the hospital
Speaker 1: setting into the outpatient setting. I would say, look for
Speaker 1: companies that are inventing the future. There are many of them.
Speaker 1: Some are backed by hospital systems, some are private equity,
Speaker 1: some are venture But I would look into that space.
Speaker 1: And our final question, what is it that you know
Speaker 1: about leadership and running a company today that you wish
Speaker 1: you knew twenty years ago when you were first moving
Speaker 1: up the corporate ladder. Listen. That's the answer is when
Speaker 1: you when you're starting out, the mixture of talking to
Speaker 1: listening is not quite right for me at least, and
Speaker 1: I think one of the most important things is really
Speaker 1: listening to what people are telling you, being in the moment,
Speaker 1: absorbing it, digesting it, and figuring out how does it
Speaker 1: impact your customers, how does it impact what what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I'll give you just a quick example which I learned.
Speaker 1: I learned more about what we should be investing in
Speaker 1: by listening to our front line customer service people than
Speaker 1: all the strategists in the world. Because when you sit
Speaker 1: down with someone who's on the phone interacting with the customer,
Speaker 1: you're telling them to give that customer the best experience
Speaker 1: they've had in the best service. And yet they don't
Speaker 1: have the tools, they don't have the capabilities, the systems
Speaker 1: get in the way. When you really listen to them,
Speaker 1: it changes your priorities and you focus on giving them
Speaker 1: the capability to create a real service experience. And I
Speaker 1: think what we see great companies are doing that using
Speaker 1: now data algorithms and analysis quite quite interesting. We have
Speaker 1: been speaking to Ron Williams. He is the former CEO
Speaker 1: and chairman of ETNA and author of a new book,
Speaker 1: Learning to Lead. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll be
Speaker 1: sure and look up an Inch for Down an Inch
Speaker 1: on Apple iTunes or any of the other places where
Speaker 1: these podcasts are found, and you could see the rest
Speaker 1: of the two hundred and fifty or so such interviews
Speaker 1: that we've done over the past five years. We love
Speaker 1: you comments, feedback, and suggestions. You can write to us
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net, go to
Speaker 1: iTunes and give us a review. Be sure and check
Speaker 1: out my daily column at Bloomberg dot com. UM. I
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I did not thank the crack
Speaker 1: staff that helps put together this conversation each week. Michael
Speaker 1: Boyle is our booker Utica val Bron. Michael bat Nick
Speaker 1: is my head of research arch. I'm Barry Results. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio