Leadership

Today's blog post is an assigned topic dealing with leadership. The topic in particular is below:

How do you interact with others? What is your leadership style? How does that affect the team around you?

How Do You Interact With Others?
In my professional life I have always striven to embody the traits I most admire in others. Politeness, helpfulness, openness, analysis/thoughtfulness, and confidence are the attributes that I strive to emanate in professional settings. These attributes are applicable to every level of enterprise and would be the foundation for my leadership style.

What is Your Leadership Style?
To answer this question, the optimal approach going to be one that breaks down the aforementioned attributes and applies them to potential future leadership positions.

Politeness:
While this should go without saying, in my somewhat brief career I have already witnessed firsthand rude/boorish behavior from people in positions of leadership. The best leaders do not make subordinates feel like subordinates. A glowing example of this is my current CFO. This guy is basically the 2nd most powerful person in a gigantic corporation and he always says "hello" and makes you feel like a valued employee/contributor/person instead of a peon. If he can be polite there is no reason why anyone up and down the ladder in this company or other companies can not manage it as well.

Helpfulness and Openness:
I combined these two because they kind of go hand in hand as one typically needs to be open in order to be helpful and vice versa. I can see helpfulness being less prominent as one ascends the proverbial corporate ladder as actually helping individual people becomes harder to do as more people end up under your leadership umbrella. Openness however never has to have its role diminished. Being transparent with decisions and thought processes, being approachable, and willing to engage with others are all forms of openness that can permeate all levels of leadership. Again, I must cite my current CFO as a beacon of openness. First he opened himself up to email questions about finance, then he not only answered my specific email question but also invited me into his office for a brief meeting to go over the answer in more detail and give me the proverbial bird's eye view of the financial machinations of my company.

Confidence:
Genuine confidence is the confluence of several factors which give a good leader that intangible "leader" quality, as opposed to simply being an excellent worker/team member. When the confidence is derived from having qualities, experience, knowledge, and skill that surpasses one's peers, then the confidence is justified and the leader belongs in his position of authority. When the confidence is derived from being in a position of authority, then it is a hollow and unfounded arrogance and one of the most poisonous traits a leader can possess. A confident leader will own what he says, confident that his prior work, experience, and knowledge  helps ensure that what he says is correct. An arrogant leader waffles on what he says or outright disowns it in an effort to save face. Confidence begets another "virtue" and that is accountability. If you are confident in your words or your work, you will hold yourself accountable for them, if you lack confidence you will attempt to shield yourself from accountability.

Analyses/Thoughtfulness:
The other attributes are probably universal and applicable to any good leader. Where my personal style originates, or in other words, how I differentiate myself as a potential leader is through my analytical approach to the world. I essentially operate under following assumptions; first, there always is an answer and second, the answer can be known through analysis. Data mining, statistics, big data, predictive modeling, Monte Carlo Simulation, and any other unmentioned analytical and mathematical tool all form the basis for my decision making processes. Analysis (breaking things down) allows for synthesis (building things up) which allows for innovation. My innovative contributions to my current employer have all come from combining disparate analytical tools to create new processes and methods.

How Do These Attributes Affect The Team Around Me?
While it would be tempting to align myself with like-minded individuals who placed emphasis on analysis, I think the best team members would be light on analytical affinity. The best team would bring other talents and disciplines to the table so that we all serve in a complementary role to each other. So my ideal team would have me and perhaps another one or two members handling the heavy lifting on analytical and technical endeavors while the deferring to our counterparts on less analytical tasks. While there is a cliche that analytical and intuitive mentalities tend to clash, I counter that apprehension with the other tenants of leadership. Clashes/conflicts can be very productive when the engaged parties work together to resolve issues and make forward progress. This is best brought about though openness, politeness, helpfulness, and confidence.

One Goal Console Value Story

Recently the class was tasked with creating a story for our products that demonstrated their value proposition. This is my rendition of two stories. The first is from the perspective of two medical providers. The doctor, who was unaware of the OGC and the nurse, who was intimately familiar with it. This little clip tries to demonstrate the value of the One Goal Console to medical providers as a way to consolidate and monitor medical device data in real time. The second video is from the perspective of a patient that was hooked up to the OGC but did not know what it was. This is to show how the quality of care is improved for patients as a result of hospitals adopting this technology.

I hope you enjoy the videos (they are a little silly, but I'm not a marketer...).

Market Cuts and One Goal Console

This blog assignment deals with market cuts and how they may pertain to my group project, The One Goal Console.

Demand
The impetus for this project/product was two fold. The first was to make nurses' and doctors' lives easier by aggregating real time medical data on patients. The second was to improve clinical outcomes for patients by reducing response time, errors, and anxiety. Conceivably, the demand for this product would be any medical care facility that needs to monitor vitals. This would include day surgery centers (outpatient/ambulatory surgery, extended care centers (hospice, nursing homes), and inpatient medical centers and emergency rooms (hospitals). The technology could help but would probably be less useful to clinics, urgent care facilities, Minute Clinics, pharmacies, case managers, and specialist offices (e.g. dermatologists).

Using a conservative estimate, this would probably give us one-third to about half of medical care providers in a perfect world. It could conceivably be more, but given the push by plan sponsors to early intervention through office visits and other lower cost health delivery settings like Minute Clinic and urgent care centers, I think my estimate is in tune with future developments in how care is provided in America.

Addressable Market:
The addressable market is going to be very close to the maximum demand, since there is no reason to believe that any one center or hospital is dramatically different than another. In other words, there is no reason to believe that once the product successfully gains a foothold in the ambulatory surgery center market that it can not spread out across the USA and reach all ambulatory surgery centers. The only subsets of the maximal demand that would probably be considered unaddressable are markets where Kaiser Permanente has a strong presence. The reason for this assessment is Kaiser's dedication to technology and innovation. They may wish to buy this product and become a customer, but the smart money is on them competing or already having their own similar product for their own facilities. This severely limits TOGC's ability to target the California, Georgia, Maryland, and D.C. markets, for example. Kaiser only has a significant presence in about 10 or so states, but it would have to be monitored as each state it "takes over" becomes a market that the TOGC may not be able to penetrate and win.

Realistically, as a start up, the most viable addressable market to get the product launched successfully would be outpatient surgery centers in the northeast region of the USA. This would allow our team to interact in person with prospects and customers while slowly growing our foothold in the healthcare industry.

Realistic Opportunities vs Competition:
To the best of my knowledge there is no serious player with this objective. That does not mean that we are immune to competition. The following would be the biggest threats as competitors:

1.  Kaiser Permanente - This medical system could conceivably grow into more states, which makes us getting a foothold an almost insurmountable challenge, in addition to growing oraganically, Kaiser's embracing of technology and clinical outcomes could lead to it building and marketing its own version of TOGC, which could also provide formidable competitive challenges as they would be a major name in the industry with a significant clout and bankroll.
2. Medical Device Manufacturers - Assuming TOGC begins to get adopted, what would prevent device makers, especially larger ones that cover a wide range of devices, from developing their own fully integrated device data solution? This seems more strongly tied to whether or not they would want to branch out of their core competency than anything we could do but this could be a downstream threat as device makers compete with each other rendering TOGC a casualty of war.

Given the two challenges above, I think the realistic outcome would be as follows:

1. Regarding Kasier - As I stated above it given the colossal challenge that would come with selling a solution like this to Kaiser coupled with their almost uncanny ability to create new technology themselves it just does not make sense to try to engage Kaiser directly in any of their markets. We may be able to co-exist peacefully in adjacent but non-overlapping markets, but until TOGC has the clout and the resources to try to compete any attempt to compete with Kaiser would be foolish. I would fully expect Kaiser to have their own proprietary analog to TOGC, however, as far as I know they do not typically sell their proprietary solutions to other medical systems so while they most likely would not attempt to muscle us out of any markets we enter I truly believe any market they have is theirs to keep. This is not all doom and gloom as resistance to HMO models exists in many states so it is not as if Kaiser could take all 50 states into their network.
2. Medical Device Manufacturers - While a big manufacturer could attempt sell complete solutions, I do not see them attempting to leave their core competency to compete on this axis with each other. This could perhaps lead to a small handful of competitors but not a huge market where each entrant has approximately no influence on the whole market. Where I see this type of competitor being a real headache is when TOGC tries to penetrate hospitals and hospital networks (e.g. Lifespan in RI). The big device manufacturers would have working relationships with hospitals and may be slightly faster at coming to market with a comprehensive device data solution as they would have all or almost all of the necessary devices in house for R&D purposes. Considering we would be growing up from the ambulatory and hospice segments of the healthcare market prior to attempting to enter hospitals we may end up becoming the "gold standard" for these facilities but also end up being the "proof of concept" that helps huge established device manufacturers beat us into getting entrenched in the hospital market. However, hospitals are a long long term goal and emergent competition hinges upon these companies taking a step out of their comfort zone, which can be very difficult for large companies.

Winnable Market Segments
As stated above, the most "winnable" market segment is probably the ambulatory or outpatient surgical centers. These facilities have many of the same concerns that inpatient facilities face but tend to deal with, on average, far less intensive cases with far fewer devices. This market allows us to reduce the number of devices we would have to consider for compatibility issues while also being able to penetrate a growing medical care delivery market. As inpatient care continues to become more expensive and as more and more surgeries become outpatient the number of outpatient surgical centers in the USA is only going to rise. By targeting these less complex but integral settings we establish a customer base that will grow as we grow.

The smaller size of these operations also dramatically shortens the sales cycle which would allow us to get established more quickly as the longer sales pitches to hospitals and hospital systems could only create more opportunities for deals to fall through.

In terms of geography, since the team is based in the northeast region of the USA, the ideal winnable target market would thus be outpatient surgery facilities in MA, CT, RI, VT, ME, NY, NJ, and NH, with a special emphasis on MA due to its population density and ease of access for our team.

In or Out? (Marketing)

Today's blog seeks to dig into two marketing paradigms; inbound and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is marketing that is designed to cause potential customers to reach in to you. This can be done with search engine optimization, blogging, or other methods that entail giving potential customers information or samples that get them excited about your product or service. In a way, it is advertisement via providing value to prospects. Outbound advertising is more disruptive in that it reaches out to customers and attempts to get their attention and move them through the prospect to customer life cycle.

So Why Not Inbound Only?
Just as man can not live on bread alone, a company can not successfully market itself with a marketing strategy that is solely inbound. The reason that inbound marketing alone is flawed is that it lacks outreach. Compare a venus flytrap with a cheetah,the flytrap has to make itself attractive to insects and wait for one foolish enough to land on its maw. A flytrap's success is predicated on a chain of events in which it is only a passive participant, it must bait its trap and then it must successful capture flies that choose to land upon it. Contrast this with a cheetah. Cheetahs have to go out and capture their prey, cheetahs are active participants in the chain of events that determines their success. A company with the best site, the more interesting articles, the most fascinating videos, the most informative white papers, and so on can not draw in the prospects unless they somehow become aware of them. A company that that is solely dedicated to inbound is like the flytrap that makes itself irresistible to flies, the problem is, the plant is located in one room and the flies are in another. The flytrap is unable to move into position to capture the flies' attention, it has to wait passively and hope that some curious flies happen to fly by and notice the irresistible trap. A company that heavily leverages outbound marketing, like the cheetah, would bolt from room to room until it found its prey. In this animal example, the cheetah is much more likely to feed, even if it has to go through a ton of rooms to do so.

Taking a step out of the animal kingdom, the drawback to inbound marketing is its core appeal, and that is the passivity. Success does not come knocking, and if it does, it may take a long time to get there. While the upsides of inbound marketing are numerous, e.g. less cost per acquisition, it is the passive nature that makes those acquisitions take longer and renders them less predictable. If the average mail campaign converts 2% of recipients, then you know for certain that you can print 100,000 mailers and convert 2,000 customers on average. You can also observe that a blog converts approximately 5% of its viewers into customers, thus you would only need 40,000 viewers, but how do you get those viewers? Sure you could try to use search engine optimization, but so can your competitors. Mean while the outbound direct mail approach has concrete metrics, you just need addresses. With databases and "big data" the failure rate of outbound marketing is going to improve, again this is proactive research and refinement that is much harder to accomplish with inbound marketing since the customers are not necessarily identified until they are already at the mouth of your "customer funnel", since by definition any effort to lure people towards the funnel starts to become outbound marketing.

Why Outbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing is proactive. A huge outbound campaign can function on its own with a best estimate success rate or it can catalyze your inbound marketing's prospect awareness. Imagine our hypothetical company above that has the perfect inbound marketing campaign but does no outreach. Now imagine this company doing something aggressive like a billboard in Time Square. This outreach immediately forces an awareness, this awareness allows the inbound marketing elements to "go viral". Word of mouth is the most critical element of marketing, you need a way to get your brand, your "word" into some mouths, outbound marketing is a critical element of this.

Just as Inception dealt with injecting ideas into people's subconscious so too can your outbound marketing inject an awareness of your company into the masses' collective subconscious. Once your foothold is established, then the inbound elements can lure people in and convert them.

Alternatively, outbound marketing can be utilized as a closer. The metaphor of the customer "funnel" is particularly apt here. The inbound elements provide value to prospects, they come to learn from your site/blog/etc and these lessons cultivate a rapport, a trust, and a curiosity. These three elements help get your prospect to enter the funnel. Once in the funnel there are two outcomes, conversion or non-conversion, falling through the funnel or escaping the funnel. Why not grease the walls of the funnel with outbound marketing once a prospect has willfully entered? There is a difference between being passive and appearing apathetic. How many potential customers are really going to climb down the funnel intentionally? How many are that desperate to buy your product or service that you can sit there and wait for them to wave their check books in your face? Is your product or service that special? Is your value proposition that powerful? Chances are there is nothing that is so good that passivity as a primary strategy can work in perpetuity, so why continue to be passive? Once a prospect reaches in, e.g. signs up for an email list, they are signalling a willingness to consider your product. Chase them down! This is like a gazelle sauntering up to a cheetah, it wants to be eaten but it certainly is not going to put its neck in the cheetah's mouth.

It's The Combination!
In another class I had to view a lecture series by Dr. Ackoff who stressed the importance of managing interactions, not actions. This is a perfect way to encapsulate the role of both outbound and inbound marketing. A company that solely focuses on one and not the other is losing out on the synergy, on the interaction. Further applying this lesson, a company that does both but does not integrate the two is also wasting resources. The ideal marketing strategy combines both inbound and outbound, not as two disparate entities, but as a cohesive one-two punch at both ends of the prospect-customer spectrum. Lure them in and close the deal, inject yourself into their subconscious and get them to wander up to your funnel, and so on.