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How to Ensure Innovation Efforts Deliver True Value · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

0:00
Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
0:02
Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
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the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's fantastic to
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have you. Today, we're talking about how to
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ensure innovation efforts and deliver meaningful measurable value
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without sacrificing
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creativity or
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momentum.
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And joining me for today's discussion, I'm so
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excited to have him, is doctor William Rees.
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He's the president and CEO of Mayo Clinic
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Laboratories. Doctor Rees, thanks so much for being
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here today and taking some time for us.
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It's great to have you.
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Yeah. It's great to be here. And, you
0:32
know, you mentioned my current role, just for
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the audience that might not know me. I'm
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actually, been on staff at Mayo Clinic since
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2000
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in a variety of leadership roles, including most
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recently department chair for lab medicine and pathology.
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And I've been really passionate about innovation from
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at all levels, so from first going on
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staff all the way to where I am
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today. So I'm really pleased to be joining
0:52
you for this conversation. It's an important one.
0:54
It's great to have you. And you already
0:56
mentioned the I word, which I like to
0:58
call innovation the I word.
1:00
Everybody talks about it. Everybody wants to innovate.
1:03
It's certainly important.
1:05
And I'd love to ask you,
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how do you actually ensure
1:09
that the innovation
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you're part of and organization is part
1:14
of delivers value?
1:16
Yeah. It's a it what a great way
1:18
to start. And I think the way you
1:19
even introduced
1:20
it kind of is
1:22
the call to action, particularly from a leadership
1:24
perspective. So innovation is sort of the buzzword,
1:26
right, in in business, in health care, in
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society.
1:30
It's but I think as a leader, the
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first thing you will have to be clear
1:34
about is what is the value you expect
1:36
innovation to create for your organization. Right? So
1:39
innovation is about solving a problem or, you
1:41
know, creating a solution. So so what what
1:44
really do where do you see the value
1:46
the innovation creating value for your organization and
1:49
being clear about that and validating that? And
1:52
then once you have that, then you need
1:53
to put a strategy in place to achieve
1:55
that value, right, that that incorporates innovation. So
1:58
it's really I think the first thing is
2:00
not to just be doing innovation for innovation's
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sake and get caught in the buzzword of
2:04
innovation, but to really think about what's the
2:06
problem you're trying to solve with innovation, what
2:08
are you trying to create anew with innovation,
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because if you don't have that, then you're
2:13
not gonna be able to formulate a strategy
2:15
to achieve it.
2:16
Based on that approach then, once folks are
2:19
understanding this and taking this approach,
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what would your advice be to then actually
2:26
resourcing this innovation and making sure that, okay.
2:28
Great. We have a strategy. Now it needs
2:30
to be in place. It needs to be
2:32
scalable.
2:32
What advice do you have for organizations to
2:34
actually achieve that?
2:36
Yeah. Well, my my advice might be from
2:38
from missteps that I've learned from as much
2:40
of things I've actually accomplished. But it's, you
2:43
know, it's really interesting because then it gets
2:44
really to the heart of the other way
2:46
that you kinda set up this topic, and
2:48
that is, okay. You're talking a lot about
2:50
strategic intent, which seems top down. But on
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the flip side, you know, innovation often happens
2:56
very much at the local level. You know,
2:57
I go back to the story about three
2:59
m and how three m was really founded
3:01
on sandpaper. Where did sandpaper come from? A
3:03
guy that had some mind grit and some
3:06
glue and some water resistant paper and decide,
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what if I put these three together? Right?
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And that's so so how do you balance
3:12
both of those? And I think one of
3:14
the first things is a clear dedication of
3:16
resources. So early on, you know, at in
3:19
in when I was running the department of
3:20
lab medicine and pathology, we had a lot
3:22
of focus on
3:24
productivity
3:25
to get tests out to the to the
3:26
patients that were waiting for them, which is
3:28
super important.
3:29
But we resource that as well as our
3:31
innovation efforts out of the same pool of
3:33
resources. And if you do that, you're gonna
3:36
always be prone to starving re innovation
3:38
at for the sake of production because that's
3:40
the most pressing need that you often feel
3:42
in the day to day, whereas innovation, you're
3:44
playing more of the long game. So having
3:46
a dedication of resources are that that are
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pointed towards innovation is number one.
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Number two is really if you're once you
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do that and you have to be accountable
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for that as a leader, you need to
3:56
have some centralized oversight
3:58
and also transparency
3:59
of utilization.
4:00
And that's for a lot of different reasons.
4:02
It gets to equitability.
4:03
It gets to to to ensuring that the
4:06
resources are being applied
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to achieve the strategy that you that you
4:10
want to
4:11
achieve, but also trying to create enough autonomy
4:14
that the innovators
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can actually
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that, you know, have the have the the
4:19
the freedom to create around the solutions that
4:21
you're looking for. And so, you know, to
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balance that then,
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the last thing that you need is you
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need a common set of expectations
4:28
for all the stakeholders about how those resources
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are gonna be utilized and how you're gonna
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really be crisp in your decision making. Because
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the reality is with innovation, you're trying to
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do something that's new, you know, a priori.
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Right? So that means that sometimes even though
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the the effort has value and the solution
4:46
that you're seeking
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would create value,
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you might not be able to achieve it
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with the current technologies or the current conditions
4:53
or whatever. And so once you recognize that,
4:55
you have to have a stringent
4:57
decision making process that that says we are
5:00
really invested in this, but the reality is
5:02
we need to stop and we need to
5:03
pivot to something else. Because then you start
5:05
throwing good resources after bad, if you will,
5:07
good money after bad. Right? So and that
5:10
my own personal experience with that, just to
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so you know, I think I learned that
5:13
the hard way actually when I was in
5:14
graduate school because I also have a PhD.
5:16
My first research thesis failed after three years,
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and I was just like, I had to
5:21
I kept going after it because I I
5:23
know that I wanted to get done with
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my PhD.
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I had to I actually wasted probably a
5:27
couple years, and I had to pivot. And
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that's true at the individual level, but it's
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definitely true at the organizational level as well.
5:32
Yeah. It's it's a great analogy, I think,
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and a lot of us can can relate
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to that, I feel like.
5:37
You mentioned one important thing here, which is
5:40
autonomy. And I think what's really connected to
5:43
that too is the creativity piece. Right? Autonomy
5:46
and creativity, they generally go in hand. People
5:48
like to work on on things that their
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own way in their own way.
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And I'm wondering with this structured approach that
5:57
you have in place, that some organizations already
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have in place,
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how do you approach this
6:03
without negatively impacting
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creativity? So we have structure, but we also
6:07
want creativity. How can we do that?
6:10
Yeah. It's not easily done. Right? I mean,
6:12
what the the the glib answer is you
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try and connect the grasstops with the grassroots.
6:17
Meaning that, you know, at the grasstops level,
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you have to be understanding what is the
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what's the value you're trying to create, you
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know, what's which is your strategy need to
6:25
be pointed towards. And at the grassroots level,
6:27
it's like the ability of the that's Bill
6:29
Morris, the department chair. What about Bill Maurice,
6:31
the guy that's running the laboratory and and
6:33
what he sees as an how do you
6:34
start to connect those two? Right? And where
6:36
where he sees an opportunity with his colleagues
6:39
to create to solve a patient need.
6:41
Easier said than done. I think what it
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requires really then is a lot of is
6:45
a lot of balancing of of the need
6:47
for the you know, getting the right people
6:49
in place to to really go after the
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what you're going after, to have that creative
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bet,
6:54
marrying that with real transparency around what needs
6:57
to happen, what the strategy needs to achieve.
6:59
And then that's how you start to get
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the alignment because you have to have a
7:02
high trust environment. Right? The person that's that
7:04
wants some autonomy and that then they need
7:07
some autonomy to be create,
7:09
they have to trust that the strategic alignment
7:11
that they're working towards is gonna create that
7:13
value, which is gonna solve their overarching need
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to, to
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do
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something
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new. And, conversely, you need enough trust from
7:20
a leader that I don't have to micromanage.
7:21
There's a difference between clarity
7:23
and and oversight and micromanaging. So I'm not
7:25
gonna micromanage the innovation process because I trust
7:28
that that innovator,
7:30
it it sees where we need to create
7:32
value for the organization through the resources that
7:34
are being allocated to the innovation efforts. So
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it really is ultimately becomes marrying the grasstops
7:39
with the grassroots through a high trust environment
7:42
bidirectionally.
7:43
Yeah. I wanna dig into this a little
7:44
bit deeper because here's another buzzword for you,
7:47
change management.
7:48
Right? Everybody's talking about change management as well.
7:51
It's really, really crucial. You've just touched on
7:53
it, in terms of the trust, the buy
7:56
in itself. And I'd love to talk a
7:57
little bit more about the buy in in
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itself. Right? When there are strategic approaches,
8:02
we know change is hard for people when
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things are changing.
8:06
How do you get that buy in? What
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are some of the strategies that you've implemented
8:09
that you've seen work really well
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to be able to enable innovation instead of
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just stopping it?
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Yeah. That's a great question, and it's the
8:18
one that, again, I have a lot But
8:20
my own personal experiences all the way through
8:22
my career. Right? Because when I stepped into
8:24
my role as department chair, I really I
8:27
the system in place was the one I
8:29
that I had grown up in, if you
8:30
will, and that is where really resources were
8:32
managed and time was managed and projects were
8:34
managed very much at the local lab level.
8:37
Right? And
8:38
so the big change to say, hey. We
8:40
need this you know, that was all well
8:41
and good, but these days now we have
8:43
to think differently about how we're aligning those
8:45
efforts across the organization, right, up and down.
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And so the probably the most important piece
8:50
of state of change management
8:52
is on the stakeholder engagement. Right? And for
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me, that meant actually engaging my CEO
8:58
at the time, doctor John Noseworthy, to say,
9:00
you know, what do you expect out of
9:02
innovation from the Department of Lab Medicine and
9:04
Pathology, which, you know, touches every department at
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Mayo Clinic? What where do you see you
9:08
know, what did how does my CEO
9:11
or whoever I'm reporting to, you know, even
9:13
if I'm the CEO of a publicly traded
9:16
company, that means I have shareholders that have
9:18
expectations around what my innovation is gonna achieve.
9:21
Right? And so getting that buy in at
9:23
the very top to know, okay. I need
9:25
to create value in this context. Right? And
9:27
then translating that with your own internal team,
9:30
your leadership team, and then your the the
9:32
those reporting to your leadership team, and then
9:35
really use through them,
9:37
engaging down into the work units. It has
9:39
to be real a lot of stakeholder engagement,
9:41
which means it's a it's a lot of
9:43
in person,
9:44
kind of, you know, you have to be
9:46
really intentional. It might not be in person,
9:47
but you had a lot of intentionality around
9:49
your communication.
9:50
For me, what that meant as department chair
9:52
was spending a lot of time with the
9:53
division chairs. The divisions reported into the department
9:56
chair to with their leadership to say, okay.
9:58
This is how about this is how our
10:00
organization is seeing us needing to create value
10:01
with innovation.
10:03
Here's we need to think together about what
10:04
this means for all of us. I can
10:06
give you some guidance in terms of the
10:08
things we talked about with centralization of oversight
10:10
and other things. And then then a lot
10:12
of back and forth about what that means,
10:13
right, and how we're gonna execute. And that
10:15
communication has to be ongoing. Because you know
10:18
what? The the real challenge with trying to
10:19
be strategic with innovation is you can end
10:22
up with one of two things. Either
10:24
disproportionate allocation of resources towards something that's of
10:27
of, quote, pet project or specific interest of
10:29
the leadership team, and you're gonna miss the
10:31
boat. Right? Or you're gonna have a one
10:33
size fits none
10:34
where you're trying to put a system in
10:36
place that might apply great for one area
10:38
of the organization but not for the other.
10:40
So so I think having that communication about
10:42
what's working and what's not and making that
10:44
clear and creating those forums for that to
10:47
happen, which is gets into governance. Right? That
10:50
those are that's kind of the change management.
10:53
And and that that's that's the path that
10:54
we took. I I don't know that I
10:56
think it was reasonably successful, you know, and
10:58
it's, I think those are kind of the
11:00
build building blocks, at least from my perspective.
11:02
And it comes back to the analogy that
11:04
you use the grassroots. Right? The picture of
11:05
the the roots and the the connection of
11:07
of both, which is so is so key
11:09
for for this to work, really.
11:11
I hosted a conversation with, several leaders last
11:15
week, and, we talked about all of the
11:17
change that's happening in health care, specifically health
11:19
care technology, but all across the space. And
11:22
a lot of them said it's
11:24
incredibly
11:24
fast and it's hard to keep up, which
11:27
was one of the main talking points in
11:28
that conversation.
11:30
I I'd love to ask you here too
11:31
as we close out our our our conversation
11:34
here today,
11:35
how does this accelerating pace of change that
11:37
we're seeing, there's something new almost every single
11:40
day,
11:41
impact
11:42
your approach
11:44
to actually innovating?
11:46
Yeah. Wow. You
11:48
you did your homework. These are all really
11:50
good questions. So,
11:51
and challenging ones. And so, you know, I
11:53
I you take me back to, again,
11:56
leverage my experience when I was department
11:58
chair of stepping in. Right? And and and
12:00
it's sort of the why the the why
12:02
why do we need to even think differently
12:04
about things, right, when you get back to
12:05
change management? And I'm and I started to
12:07
look outside of of even our health, our
12:10
organization. And I had the good fortune to
12:11
do that because we have, members of the
12:13
Mayo Clinic board of trustees like Bill George
12:16
who have been innovators in other industries or
12:18
health care adjacent industries, not necessarily in the
12:20
lab.
12:21
One of the things that that became clear
12:23
that I came across as I did that
12:24
that work is that, you know, how often
12:26
do you need to rethink strategy? If you're
12:28
in an industry where the barriers to entry
12:30
are high and the pace of technological innovation
12:32
is relatively low, you might be able to
12:34
put a strategy in place for, like, five
12:36
years. Right? And that's kind of that that
12:38
you don't really have to revisit. That you
12:40
can just say, this is our, you know,
12:41
this is our guidepost, and this is what
12:42
we're working towards. And on the contrary, I
12:45
should say, if you're in an industry where
12:47
the pace of change is is
12:49
is high, right, the case of in of
12:51
technological innovation in this case is high, and
12:54
the barriers to entry are low, you have
12:56
to be rethinking strategy
12:58
regularly and frequently. Right? And and where I
13:00
saw the lab at that time was exactly
13:03
on that journey. Right? So if if this
13:05
was now, like, ten years ago,
13:07
and so we were just transitioning from a
13:09
a period of time where a piece of
13:11
equipment in a lab
13:12
pay maybe changed every ten years,
13:15
to changing every two years. Right? And all
13:17
sorts of new kind of companies and and
13:19
entrance into the diagnostic space. And so that
13:22
was my kind of back to my team
13:23
was like, we need to we need to
13:25
really be able to rethink our strategy. We
13:27
can't just have things tethering yon.
13:29
And and
13:30
to do that kind of counterintuitively,
13:33
you need more structure around your innovation. If
13:35
you're gonna be rethinking strategy more frequently
13:37
around innovation, you actually need more frameworks in
13:40
place to keep you from just drifting. Because
13:42
the danger with innovation is it can become
13:43
directionless really and rudderless really quickly if you
13:46
don't have some kind of framework to balance
13:48
decisions on. Right? And to balance when you
13:50
need to change, what needs to change, what
13:51
doesn't. Right? And it really gets back to
13:54
the other key question for all of us
13:55
in health care, and that is the resources.
13:58
Right? It's you know, all of us are
14:00
strapped. There's downward pressure on reimbursement. There's increasing
14:03
expectations of us creating value for patients and
14:05
for our payers and for other stakeholders in
14:07
health care. So it really gets down to,
14:10
a, the acknowledgment that all these things that
14:13
you described mean that we need to be
14:14
rethinking strategies as health care organizations.
14:16
B, if we're gonna do that, we really
14:18
need frameworks in place to help us go
14:20
go through that change process.
14:22
And then last but not least, we need
14:23
to align the resource allocations to those changes
14:26
and be honest about what resources we have
14:29
available to us.
14:30
And, again, it also means that you can
14:32
have
14:33
structure without sacrificing creativity
14:36
and momentum at the same time.
14:38
Lucas, thank you for the opportunity. And one
14:40
thing I wanted to just add on append
14:41
on to that whole structure because of the
14:43
pace change being so fast is it allows
14:45
us as health organizations to form deeper partnerships.
14:48
I think that's the other call to action.
14:49
There's a lot of the changes happening outside.
14:51
I mean, Anthropic, I didn't even know what
14:53
Anthropic was, you know, two years ago. Now
14:55
it's made a big you know, we wanna
14:56
change health care. So the other thing that
14:58
frameworks give us as health care organizations, it
15:00
actually increases our ability to form partnerships with
15:03
new entrants into our space. So anyway so
15:05
that's that's where I'll close. But thank you
15:06
so much for the time, Lucas, and the
15:08
opportunity to to come and join you today.
15:10
Absolutely. It's so great to have you. And
15:12
we also want to thank our podcast sponsor,
15:13
Mayo Clinic Laboratories.
15:15
You could tune into more podcasts from Becker's
15:17
Healthcare by visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.