Outcomes Rocket_John Couris: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey, Outcomes Rocket Nation! It’s Saul Marquez, and welcome back to the podcast. We are in such an interesting time right now in this macro environment where there’s a lot of challenges, all angles from customers wanting different experiences to what are we doing about this inflation and clinician fatigue, and so I wanted to invite a very influential and amazing guest to the podcast today to help us talk about some of those things. My guest today, his name is John Couris. He’s the president and CEO of Tampa General Hospital, a nationally recognized, not-for-profit academic and research health system, partnered with the University of South Florida. As a visionary leader, John has had continued success in building healthcare companies throughout the country by driving innovation, operational excellence, and strategic collaborations. He’s best known for creating an organizational culture that drives and thrives on authenticity, kindness, vulnerability, and transparency. He believes that focusing on his team’s well-being drives positive experiences for healthcare consumers, and I couldn’t agree more. Since taking the helm of Tampa General in 2017, John has championed innovation in many forms that include industry partnerships, innovative initiatives like the Venture Capital Fund he started, Innoventures, and groundbreaking research initiatives, among many others. Today, John is in the midst of executing Tampa General Hospital’s largest master facilities plan in the hospital’s history, a $550 Million capital commitment to bring the most advanced technological, innovative care to patients through the creation of a growing medical district in downtown Tampa. We’re going to cover a lot of these things, including what he’s doing with TGH-at-Home, providing patients with hospital-level care in the comfort of their home. And with all the things that he’s up to and the things that he’s done, you can imagine John’s received many awards recognizing his efforts from modern healthcare to Tampa Bay Chamber, Becker’s hospital, among the many others that include Power 100 lists and 25 people to Watch in 2020. With that introduction, John, I want to welcome you to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us.
John Couris:
Oh, it’s great to be here.
Saul Marquez:
So, John, there’s a lot that we’re going to cover today and the medical district in Tampa. Also, this concept of internal design, which is core to your leadership and also customer experience. But before we dive into all of that, we want to get to know you a little bit better. Tell us about what inspires your work in healthcare.
John Couris:
Well, thanks very much for having me, and I appreciate your interest in TGH and really my perspectives on the industry across the country. I love, I like the whole idea and notion of healthcare because it’s about helping, supporting, probably our most valuable asset, and that’s our human capital, right? I mean, that’s, if you have a healthy and balanced community, you have, you tend to have a very productive one, and that helps drive prosperity from an economic perspective and all sorts of other perspectives. And so that idea of being part of that journey, supporting our society in general when it comes to health and wellness, is something that I just have always been interested in. The other reason I love healthcare is, I would tell you that it’s probably one of the most complicated, if not the most complicated industry in the world. The regulatory environment, the policy environment, the reimbursement environment, just the whole notion and idea of what we do every day adds to the complexity of the industry itself, and I’m just somebody who enjoys working in that complexity, and it’s a highly nuanced industry. And so when you take the mission and the fact that what we do is more like a vocation than it is like a job or even a profession, and then you take the fact that it’s a highly complicated industry and a highly nuanced industry that’s just very attractive to me, and I’ve always, it’s always something I’ve wanted to do, and I’ve been doing it for almost 30 years. And so that’s why I really like healthcare.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great. Yeah, you know what? Being able to handle the complexity and the challenges is critical, right? Especially when the basis of even economic health does start with the health of communities. So really appreciate you sharing that. And the environment that we’re in is a challenging one. So in light of all the things that are happening, what do you see coming in the future for healthcare, and how do we get there?
John Couris:
You know, it’s a great question, actually. So I think here’s the shift that I think healthcare as an industry needs to sort of contemplate. I think 20 years ago we were told that we were in the health and wellness business, and all the health systems across the country started to talk about health and wellness. And if you remember back then, a lot of health systems. One of the first things we did is we started to change the names of our companies, right? So instead of calling ourselves a hospital or a healthcare delivery system, people were like, we’re in the health business, so let’s call ourselves, instead of being, although we didn’t do this at Tampa General, but it’s no longer was Tampa General Hospital, it was Tampa Health or Tampa healthcare. It just, we got into this, like, notion that we’re the health and wellness business, and if we keep people healthy and well, we’ll keep them out of the hospital and we’ll improve quality and we’ll lower costs. I mean, that was like the general thesis of the whole thing, and that hasn’t worked. I would submit to you that we as an industry have struggled, that we’re not in the health and wellness business, we’re in the care coordination business. Now, health and wellness is a component of care coordination, but we as an industry have to do a better job at coordinating the consumer’s journey and experiences when they engage in the healthcare system across the country. And we don’t do a great job at that right now. We’re still very fragmented as an industry. We’re still a highly siloed industry. We are not frictionless. There’s lots of friction within the system, and anybody listening to this can relate to what I’m saying because most people can think of a story or an experience that either they personally had with the healthcare system or one of their friends or family members had with the healthcare system, and they’re usually not great stories. We need to be very real with ourselves. They’re not usually the best stories. So I think a primary driver to that, and I think what the future of healthcare holds is this notion from pivoting, from being sort of like we’re in the health and wellness business to, no, we’re in the care coordination business. A component of what we do is health and wellness-oriented, but we really, our job is to coordinate care, is to create a frictionless system for the consumer that drives quality, it lowers cost, and then we are able to pass some of that value on to the patient, the payer, or the employer. And that’s what I think the future of healthcare has got to be.
Saul Marquez:
John, that is such an interesting distinction. And so if you had to summarize the core of that differentiated approach, coordination versus care delivery, right? I mean, that’s basically what it is. Or would you summarize it a different way?
John Couris:
I think you’re on to something. I think coordination, I think care delivery is part of coordination, just like I think health and wellness is part of coordination. But I think no, you’re summarizing it correctly. I mean, think about, let me, I’ll offer this to the listeners. Most listeners probably have Apple products. Most of us have some Apple product, and a lot of us, like my family, are completely integrated with Apple. So our whole platform in our home, our children, my wife and I, our phones, our tablets, our televisions, our infrastructure’s Apple. And the reason most people enjoy Apple is not really because Apple might have the best phone or the best tablet. One might argue that there is a better phone out there, okay, for example, but Apple doesn’t really compete on the device side of the equation. What they have done is they’ve built an ecosystem and an operating system that’s basically frictionless, it’s reliable, it’s intuitive, it’s secure, it’s fun to use as a designer and as a user, and it’s completely integrated. And when you ask people to describe their experiences with Apple, you hear things like, it’s fun to use, it’s easy to understand, it’s highly reliable, it’s intuitive, the service is really good when we have problems. You wouldn’t describe healthcare like that at all, right? You would not describe healthcare like that. Care coordination basically draws on all of the parts and pieces of healthcare, but builds it into an operating system akin to Apple, and what we want to be at TGH is the Apple of healthcare for our region and our state. Why shouldn’t people describe healthcare the same way they describe their experiences with Apple or Amazon or Starbucks or Dunkin, whoever it might be, you know what I’m saying? Like, why shouldn’t people have the same kind of experience in healthcare? And I believe that care, coordination, creating a frictionless system, leveraging technology and people, and building something akin to Apple is the future of healthcare. I think it will improve quality, I think it will lower cost, I think it will do it in a sustainable, reproducible way, and I think we’ll be able to pass on that value to the consumer. And that’s the journey that we’re on at TGH and at USF.
Saul Marquez:
I love that. Thank you for that, John. I love that, and that certainly brought it home, folks. I know it brought it home for you too, I’m imagining, because I mean, that’s so clear. And if you’re in the business of care coordination, a lot of things funnel in there and your job is to become more efficient, less costly. I’m thinking Amazon, you mentioned Amazon, John, right? Like, let’s be the Amazon of healthcare. I love that, and then as a result of approaching the problem or the opportunity that way is, hey, as a partner of Tampa General Healthcare or any hospital, how are you approaching the care coordination problem, right? That becomes the question we all have to ask ourselves, right, John?
John Couris:
Exactly, I mean, quite frankly, how can you help organizations like TGH and how can you help the industry on the provider side move towards becoming better care coordinators, better navigators? And if you’re a company in the healthcare space who wants to sell into health systems and hospital chains, the question you have, in my opinion, the question, one of the questions you have to ask yourself is well, if TGH is on this journey on becoming a better care coordinator and navigator for patients and employers and payers, I might add, how can you as a company help support our journey and accelerate the work? That’s really how you have to think about it.
Saul Marquez:
Beautiful. Man, I love that idea. And so this parlays well, John, to this concept of internal design. Talk to us about what that is. I understand this is core to the way you’re doing things and your team, your leadership team there is doing things.
John Couris:
Yeah, so this is actually, you know, it’s an interesting story. So I was at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas this past spring or late winter, I can’t remember, but it was early, I think probably early spring. And I was there with a team of people. We were participating in the conference, it’s a wonderful conference. And I was listening to a handful of different people talk about design work in healthcare, or actually design work in general terms, and then design work and how it could benefit healthcare. So I was in one session with two women, one was the head of design for IBM, and the other one was one of the heads of design for Ford Motor Company, and they weren’t talking about design and healthcare in this particular class. They were just talking about design work in industry, and why that’s important, and what’s the significance of it. And then in my mind, sort of this light bulb went off for me. I said, you know, I said, one of the challenges we have with healthcare is I’m not so sure we’re organized as an industry to really drive meaningful and thoughtful design. And what I mean by that is, typically when we want to redesign the care that we’re delivering, we either give it to a team of people that’s on the strategy side, or we give it to a team of people that’s on the operational side, or we give it to a team of people that’s on the clinical side. And we basically say to these groups, hey, why don’t you come together and let’s start working on a project related to how we’re going to redesign our work around a particular activity, it really doesn’t matter for this story, but what happens in our industry is it becomes like an extra set of duties and responsibilities because we tend to give it to people that are already, that already have a full-time job. I’m a strategy person, I’m an ops person, I’m a clinician, and now I get told I’m going to give you another project, and this project is like oriented around design work and how we’re going to redo the way we do a particular activity. And what happens a lot of times is that that work gets sub-optimized because it tends to be like the last thing someone focuses on after they get their normal day job done. Private industry, which I think we can learn a lot from, and I love learning from private industry. Private industry like IBM, like Ford Motor Company, is two examples because I went to that session, they have designed shops that are built into their organizational structure, meaning they have people that have full-time jobs that do nothing but design the future products and services of their businesses and their business units. I mean, it’s different, but the principles are generally the same. And typically, my sense was that the design teams of these companies sit sort of in between strategy and operations. So I went back to my organization and said, I want to try something, I want to do something different. I want to build a design organization inside TGH, and I want that design organization to sit in between strategy and operations, and I want it to be a Venn diagram of sorts because they overlap each other, but I want the design team to be a team of people that focus on the next, what does healthcare look like three, five, seven, and ten years from now? I want them to build towards that future state, and I want them to take the best of strategy and the best of operations, but we have a design group that’s very intentional, very focused, and all they do is design work for the healthcare system, and we started that. And two big projects that come to mind to really crystallize what I mean is, one is care coordination, and we already talked about that. I have a physician who is vice president of our healthcare design group. He, people have been assigned to his design team from around the organization, and to help him build the care coordination model out, that’s an example. Another example we have not talked about, is we launched three weeks ago a TGH Hospital-At-Home. We have a, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid gave us a waiver so we can care for patients in their homes. Well, the design team is the team that built this out with a company called Shields Capital, and they built out a model for caring for patients, a subset of patients, at home. But, so these are patients that otherwise would have been in a hospital but are now being cared for in their homes, and it’s hospital-level care. And we’re leveraging technology, and we’re leveraging our people to care for folks. And it’s actually starting off really well. I mean, things are going quite well for us, but that’s an example of the design team’s power. The hospital-at-home wasn’t a strategy project, it wasn’t an operations project, it was a design team project. And when they build it, and they get it up and running and when it gets, when it’s ready to go to scale, they hand the keys over to the operations people to run it. The strategy people try to figure out how we’re going to market and communicate it to the community at large and how are we going to sell it, and then the design team goes on to the next big initiative. So I really think that this could be transformational for the industry, having dedicated full-time people focused on the design of healthcare into the future. They’re not re-engineering people, they’re not project management people, they’re not sitting there trying to fix a problem that we’re experiencing today. They’re building solutions for the future. Like I said, they’re looking three, five, seven, and ten years out and building products and services accordingly, like hospital-at-home, like care coordination as two examples. That’s going to be transformational, in my opinion, and I hope that the industry catches on to this and starts bringing in design teams into their work. That’s my hope anyway.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great, John. I appreciate that, and two great examples with the hospital-at-home as well as the Care Coordination Project and this idea of having somebody that it’s not, they don’t have a full-time job, and they have to do something else, they’re actually embedded within the organization to do these design projects. There’s something to be said about continuity as well, right? Because you could go hire a consultancy like a Deloitte or somebody else to help you. They’re there and then they’re gone. In this example, you have the internal expertise that helps with the continuity, the growth, and the initiatives that matter most, right?
John Couris:
That’s exactly right.
Saul Marquez:
Great. Well, thank you for sharing that. And so we highlighted a couple of things at the beginning, you know, supply chain issues, burnout. From a CEO perspective, what kind of leadership is needed to navigate today’s turbulence, John?
John Couris:
Oh, it’s a really good question. I think we as leaders need to lead very differently today than we probably did even five years ago. I think leaders need to lead authentically. I think leaders need to lead with a great deal of transparency. I think leaders need to lead with a great deal of kindness and show a significant amount of vulnerability. So as you think about the challenges that we have in front of us as an industry, I think these challenges will continue to be challenges for the next 2 to 3 years. I don’t think this is going to fix itself in the next six months to a year. I think we’re, this is a two or three-year kind of space that we’re in. And the industry is adjusting and learning how to coexist with COVID-19, learning how to deal with inflation, a looming recession, staff shortages, escalations in salary and wages. I mean, the sands are shifting in the industry, and health systems like TGH are sort of regaining their equilibrium and sort of learning how to coexist in this new world with COVID and all of these other things. But I think what you need to be able to do as a leader is you need to be able to lead in a very thoughtful way. And the way I define it, and there’s lots of great ways to lead, right? And I’m not suggesting that what I’m sharing with you is the only way, I’m not suggesting it’s the best way. I am suggesting that it is a very effective way to lead, because what we’ve seen in our own world, and we’re about 10,000 people, is that when you lead authentically when you’re transparent when you’re kind, and when you’re vulnerable, you tend to improve trust in the organization, you improve engagement in the organization by your team members, and you improve psychological safety in the organization. And then what happens is as you increase trust, increase engagement, increase psychological safety, people start to perform differently. They start to challenge the status quo. They start to ask tougher questions and think deeper about issues. They tend to achieve things in a very different way. And we’ve seen that in our own world. We’ve seen improvements strategically, we’ve seen improvements operationally, and we’ve seen improvements clinically at TGH, and we’re no different than any other health system in the country or chain of hospitals in the country. But leading authentically, being your real self, not trying to be something you think your organization wants you to be, but being comfortable with who you are and meeting people where they are in a very genuine way, and presenting yourself as a person is really important, right? That, it creates deep connections in the organization. Transparency can be difficult for some people. You have to be very intentional about it. I share everything with my team the good, the bad, and the ugly. We lay it out for everyone, okay, to see. We talk about exactly how the organization is performing. We talk about the why behind every decision we make. Explaining the why behind your decisions is critically important as a leader, but it sort of fits nicely in the transparency bucket. Kindness is critically important. Understanding that people are human beings. Understanding that everybody brings their idiosyncrasies and their uniquenesses to work is really important. Seeing a person as a person, showing them real kindness, is incredibly important. This notion I remember growing up where I had people say to me, when you come to the organization and you cross the threshold, you need to leave your problems at the front door. Well, that’s impossible. We carry our problems and our issues with us wherever we go. Shouldn’t we as leaders understand that we need to be there for our people? And we need to show them kindness and gratitude and understanding and flexibility and support and love when we lead them? And then finally, the notion of sort of vulnerability, the idea that leaders always have to have the answer is ridiculous. Admitting when you’re wrong, admitting when you don’t know an answer. Sharing personal experiences with people about your own frustrations and challenges is really powerful. It can be transformational, and that takes a lot of confidence in yourself, but it’s very, very powerful. So when you package all of these up and you lead this way, you not only increase trust and psychological safety and engagement, but you drive organizational performance upward in a sustainable and reproducible way. And that’s what I think we have in front of us as leaders in the healthcare industry. We are challenged, there’s no question about it. But we all know with lots of challenge comes lots of opportunity. And I think we should look at this as a way, is sort of like, yes, there’s challenges, yes, we’re tired, we’re frustrated, but it’s exhilarating, it’s fun, it’s challenging. It should get people pumped up to meet these challenges because if we don’t have a healthy and well society, we will not have a healthy and well economy. We will not be able to maintain the vibrance across the country. Even with our challenges, we will not be able to do the things we need to do for this country if we can’t care for the health and wellness of this country in a way that’s affordable, in a way that promotes world-class quality, but that comes with not only great processes and systems, and we’ve talked a lot about it, but it comes with great leadership. It comes with a strong culture, it comes with a strong organizational climate. Those are the things that drive the improvements, and that’s what I think we have in front of us.
Saul Marquez:
John, that’s fantastic. A lot of valuable leadership advice there. Folks, if you’re listening to this, you’re going to want to hit rewind on that. Take some notes down, because that was damn good, John. And I think about, most recently some of the feedback I got from my leadership team, hey, you know, in particular, one mentor, he said, hey, you know, you don’t always have to have an answer, it’s okay. And actually, you can create trust by admitting that you don’t, and people will share more with you if you admit that you don’t, and you don’t have an answer. And that really, it shattered my brain because I was like, okay, well, I’m the leader. I need to have an answer. But that’s not always the case, and so there’s vulnerability.
John Couris:
You know what, you’re absolutely right. Your mentor gave you great advice. I had a mentor once that said something similar. He said, John, people that feel like they, people that have all the answers, they either don’t know what they’re doing or they’re full of it because no one can have all the answers, right? And so admitting when you don’t have an answer, you don’t know, or you’re wrong, is very powerful. Now, your job as a leader is to find out the answer.
Saul Marquez:
Of course.
John Couris:
And it’s to follow up with the person who’s looking for the answer, but admitting you don’t know something’s not a weakness. It’s quite frankly, to your point, it’s a strength.
Saul Marquez:
Wow, well, folks, I, thank you, John. I know I’m going to re-listen to this and take more notes than I have already, and I hope you do, too, because this is valuable stuff, lots of nuggets here. John, I understand that you’re a key player in the creation of the medical district in Tampa. Tell me about that.
John Couris:
Well, we just, like most great cities, whether it’s Chicago or Houston or Boston or San Francisco or Baltimore, just to name a few, well, all of those cities have medical districts, and in some cases, they have more than one district. We’re building a medical district in the city of Tampa. It encompasses about 1500 acres. It’s got the USF Morsani College of Medicine in it. It’s got our main campus, which is 30 acres, three-and-a-half million square feet, almost 100-bed academic medical center. And we’re building a concentration of services and programs and facilities inside the city. And the whole idea, general thesis, is if you can concentrate and build a constellation of services around the medical industry, you attract physician-scientists, you attract private equity, venture capital, biotech, basic science organizations of all sorts of shapes and sizes, the related to healthcare, to come to a city like Tampa because there’s a concentration of medical excellence, which then creates a concentration of patients, which then creates a concentration of all sorts of other organizations who want access to the intellectual capital, the clinical capital, and all of that activity, and you build this nucleus, it’s sort of a hub and spoke. And then around the hub, you have all these spokes, and these spokes feed the hub, and that’s what we’re doing here in Tampa. We are building a medical district, it’s called the Tampa Medical and Research District, and it’s designed to attract the very best clinicians and scientists, and organizations that are dedicated to identifying and eradicating disease and illness, and we are well on our way. We are well on our way building that, and we’re excited about it. And, you know, and Tampa is a great place to live, it’s a great place to have a business, Florida is very pro-business. The cost of living is increasing in Florida, but it pales in comparison to places like New York City, or Boston, or San Francisco. It’s a wonderful place to raise a family, and to have a business, and to have your life both professionally and personally. And so we’re capitalizing on all of that, one of the best places in the country, and we’re excited. We’re really excited about it, and it’s working. You know, we’ve got, I think, I’d be happy we, can over time, we can share with you sort of the journey that we’re on, and you can see the map and how it’s laying out, but it’s really exciting.
Saul Marquez:
Hey, John, that’s a great idea. We should do an episode on the medical district and what you guys are doing there. I love that, great idea. Folks, so you’ll hear more about it, but what an incredible idea. What a great opportunity for not only the community but the state and the country to have another option that strives on this medical excellence. Brilliant and huge moves being made there. You know, and these things can’t be done without partnerships. You’re a big believer in partnerships. What’s your view on getting things done with partners?
John Couris:
Oh, I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s extremely important. We cannot, as healthcare providers, we can’t be experts in everything. We have to recognize what our strengths are. We have to recognize where we need help and where our weaknesses might be, and partners play a significant role in making us better. A good example for us would be we just opened up an 80-bed state-of-the-art acute care rehabilitation hospital. We did that in partnership with Kindred and LifePoint. We’re also building a 120-bed psych hospital, and we’re doing that in partnership with LifePoint. They have a core competency and expertise that we don’t have. We have a set of skills that they don’t have. We’ve come together in this space and partnered. And what better way to show the community how to bring our very best out to them than bringing together people that are experts in their chosen field in what they do within the industry? So we love partnerships. What I want to also say, what I would recommend to people to consider is, have fewer partnerships but have deeper relationships with the people you’re partnering with. I mean, that’s going to be critically important as we continue to navigate a very difficult topography in healthcare. Have fewer relationships, or consider having fewer relationships, but have those relationships be a lot deeper in the work that you do. That’s what we’re doing. We’ve done it with Philips, we’ve done it with General Electric, just to name a few, and it’s been wonderfully successful for us.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great, John, thank you so much for that. Some great advice in how we approach our partnerships as we build our organizations and businesses. Thank you for that. John, what are you most excited about today?
John Couris:
You know, I’m most excited about the future. So I’m a, my wife will tell you, I can be overly optimistic, but I’m an internal optimist. I feel like, as tough as our industry is, the challenges that we have present real opportunity. But it’s going to require us to think differently, behave differently, partner differently. It’s going to require us to challenge the status quo. We’re going to have to kind of get comfortable with being uncomfortable, but I think the future is bright. It’s going to be different. We’re going to have to think and behave and perform differently, but that’s the fun stuff. I don’t think that, like, healthcare is in a freefall now, like a lot of people do think. I don’t think that at all. I think healthcare has a very bright future. It’s clearly very important in our national economy. I think that entrepreneurs and venture capital and private equity and these partnerships are going to be critically important for all of us to engage in, to get us out of the places that we’re in. I understand there’s lots of people smarter than me that think that healthcare is this horrible, broken industry. I don’t completely agree with that. I think those people that simply say we can’t fix healthcare, healthcare is broken and it’s going to be forever broken, and it’s, I’ve heard it described as a large tapeworm in our economy and in our society, and I don’t completely agree with that. Now, do I think it’s going to be, is it complicated business? It’s very complicated. So I think a lot of people that are, that have been wildly successful outside the healthcare industry try to apply their knowledge to the healthcare industry. And do I think that healthcare is different? I do. I think it’s very different. I think there’s a ton of lessons learned from private industry, but I also think people have underestimated how complex healthcare is. But even with the challenges that we have, the future is bright. There is a ton of innovation happening in healthcare. There’s a ton of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and private equity people doing really important, meaningful work, that over time will change the way we deliver care in a very thoughtful way. We will bend the quality curve. We will bend the cost curve. It’s happening, but like I told you before, we’re 20 years into probably a 70-year transformation in healthcare, or 30 years in a 70-year transformation. It’s going to take time, but I’m very optimistic about where healthcare is going. It’s challenged, no question about it. But I’m excited about those challenges and I’m excited about building a delivery system for the future, and that’s exactly what we’re doing at TGH. We’re not really building for today, we’re building for tomorrow, and that’s the exciting work.
Saul Marquez:
John, I love that. I agree fully with what you said, and folks, you’re on the Rocket with John Couris and myself, get on it, and let’s shoot up high. Let’s achieve some of this vision together because it’s not going to happen alone. Thank you for sharing that, John. What an incredible opportunity. Before we conclude here, John, just give us one closing thought, and then the best place that the listeners on the Outcomes Rocket could get in touch with you and follow your work.
John Couris:
My one closing thought would be, people that are in this industry and maybe feeling a little anxious, I’d give you some advice, just something to think about. And because football season is a couple of weeks away from starting, this is, I think, a good analogy. When you think about world-class quarterbacks in the NFL, one of the quarterbacks you clearly have to think about is Tom Brady. Now, as a guy who grew up in New England, I followed Tom Brady, and now a guy that’s in Tampa, I clearly follow our quarterback, Tom Brady. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is when you look at a world-class quarterback versus a really good quarterback, the world-class quarterback when the ball is hiked, the play starts, and the defense starts to close in, world-class quarterbacks never leave the pocket. They never leave the pocket. They stay in the pocket. They rarely scramble, right? And so as the play starts to evolve and the defense starts to collapse on the play, they don’t freak out and scramble and leave the pocket. They stay in the pocket, work the play, look for the alternatives, and they make the play happen, right? And they march their teams down the field. Same thing in healthcare. The leaders that are listening to this are the quarterbacks of their teams. Don’t leave the pocket when the pressure is on. Don’t knee-jerk, don’t overcorrect, don’t scramble unnecessarily. Stay in the pocket, stay focused and execute, very easy right now in our industry to get yourself nervous, to get yourself anxious, and to knee-jerk, and to overcorrect. Don’t do it. You need to trim the sails, you need to adjust, totally get that. But stay in the pocket because that is the difference, one of the biggest differences between a world-class quarterback and just a good quarterback. And I’m telling you, there’s a lot to be learned about that and it’s kind of, it’s appropriate, the timing’s good anyway.
Saul Marquez:
Great analogy.
John Couris:
Football season is right around the corner. And the way to get in touch with me is LinkedIn. Just, you can punch in John Couris Tampa General, and you can press, click follow and that’s all you have to do, is go on LinkedIn, grab my name, click follow and that’s it.
Saul Marquez:
Love it. John, what a great note to leave on. Folks, do not leave the pocket. And John, do not drop the mic because you got to keep talking about this. This is fantastic stuff. We appreciate you. Thanks for jumping on.
John Couris:
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for your time.
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