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The New Future of Work Podcast

Creating a More Compassionate Workplace with Kami Norland, MA, ATR – The New Future of Work Podcast, Episode 2

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Creating a More Compassionate Workplace with Kami Norland

Episode trigger warning: brief mention of the loss of a child.

Kami Norland is not only a dear friend and former colleague, but she’s also an amazing national and international speaker and facilitator with over 20 years of experience in healthcare, specifically rural and mental health. After years of traveling across the US working with state and federal governments, small rural hospitals, rural health clinics and networks, and numerous community-led initiatives on needs assessments, strategic planning, and policy development/translation, Kami identified a systemic need to prioritize mental wellbeing and resilience practices into organizational cultures as she observed too many people compromising their health for their job.  The need was so strong, Kami founded Integrative Re-Sources, LLC combining her expertise in strategic planning and community development with her knowledge and education of resilience, positive psychology and mind-body medicine. She also co-founded the global Elevate Compassion Coalition.

Kami joins us on The New Future of Work (TM) Podcast today to talk about creating a more compassionate workplace. We discuss her journey as a therapist and then working in rural healthcare, and now as a leader in creating compassionate communities of care. Kami shares an especially compelling story of a mother who lost a child at birth and how her employer created a compassionate network to support her through her time of loss.

To learn more about Kami’s work, visit ResiliencySource.org, or ElevateCompassion.org, and on LinkedIn.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you usually find your podcasts.

Listen on: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

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Show Transcript (Transcribed using AI – please excuse any errors):

Monica (00:04):

Okay, thanks for being here today Kami. I wanted to just take a moment to introduce a very special guest that we have with us here today. My dear friend and colleague Kami Norland, she is the compassionate experiences organizer of Integrative Resources, LLC. And is the co-founder of the global Elevate Compassion Coalition. Kami has stood on many international stages, delivering dynamic keynote presentations and facilitating workshops that are uplifting, insightful and affirming. With more than 20 years of experience, working in healthcare at local state national and international levels from direct care to administrator to trusted advisor, Kami is recognized as a thought leader who is passionate about helping individuals, organizations, and communities recognize their own resilience and co-create a culture of mental wellbeing. Audiences love how she weaves the latest scientific research into relatable stories and practical tips that help reframe rediscover and redesign quality of life and workplace experiences. So awesome. Kami, I’m so glad that you’re here today and your background is such an ideal fit for talking about the new future of work and some of the changes that are happening and need to happen within the workplace. So maybe to get us started, you mind just telling little bit about your background

Kami (01:45):

Monica, thank you for the opportunity to connect with this group. It’s such a dynamic and game changing group of folks that are around us. So thanks.

Monica (01:58):

Thank you.

Kami (01:59):

Glad you’re here. Yeah, a little bit about myself and how I came to be in this position. I started off my career at an outpatient mental health center working as a psychotherapist, and I started to identify some of the dysfunctions that were happening organizationally, where there was a lot at the time we didn’t have the name for it, but now we know it as burnout, right? Not just individual burnout, but that cultural burnout. Yeah. And how that created an environment of us versus them being, you know, just creating that dysfunctional dynamic with the individuals that we were seeing. And I was at a cocktail party one night and I got on my soapbox about the injustices of the medical care system, which then led me into a role working nationally in rural healthcare.

Kami (03:09):

And that took me on the road. I was on the road for 12 years, traveling across the country, working with state offices of rural health hospitals, clinics, EMS departments rural health networks and their communities. So what I learned from that extensive travel was that what I experienced in my days, working at the outpatient mental health clinic was not the anomaly. It was more than norm. Wow. And that people were willing to sacrifice their health for their job. And I also saw that organizations were failing and supporting their team’s mental wellbeing. And now that again, this is particularly in medical care healthcare settings, but they were failing to support that mental wellbeing aspect, both individually and culturally. And what resulted is this lost productivity, you know, increased errors, low morale absenteeism you, I saw loads of poor internal communication that burnout, and of course, all of that leads to illness and turnover.

Kami (04:32):

And so I thought there needs to be a better way of addressing the way that medical care is delivered both externally and internally, because so I created and founded integrative resources, which is an organization that does just that we address common workplace issues. And we had developed an approach towards doing business based on how we as humans are wired neurologically and what makes us flourish. So now we’ve had some success in implementing this program and co-creating with various organizations and it’s been a lot of fun and I’m learning a ton.

Monica (05:21):

That’s amazing. And, and what a journey. And it’s so interesting that you see that culture in healthcare and I’ve seen the same thing kind of in my experience, working in healthcare, where the people that are charged with helping to heal us and make us well, the culture that they work in daily is very toxic and unhealthy. It’s hard to be a healer and a caregiver it seems like in that type of environment.

Kami (05:50):

Yeah, it is. So it takes it a tremendous amount of internal tenacity to keep going day after day hour, after hour when you’re experiencing the extreme highs and lows in medical care. And you can, individually, you can have that support, but if you don’t have the team support and the organizational cultural support to do that the culture will eat you metaphorically, right? And you will succumb because we are social creatures and our survival is based on being collaborative and we want to belong. And so it’s inevitable that we will succumb to the culture of the organization, regardless of how mindful and intentional we are as individuals.

Monica (06:43):

Yeah. Culture is definitely key, isn’t it? It such a huge difference. So what do you see, you know, with healthcare right now, we’re hearing so much about the increase in burnout and people are having a hard time recruiting and retaining employees, and there’s just a lot of challenges. What, what do you see kind of as the, as the biggest challenges facing healthcare and just the workplace in general today?

Kami (07:13):

I think it is the lack of prioritizing mental wellbeing. Interesting. When you have an environment that does support you as an individual and not just as the robot or the cog in the machine of which you were designed, the position was designed that creates this environment that is so typical. Like we often design businesses for profit and process, which our lag indicators, but when we pivot our approach and we prioritize people for most that and, and when you prioritize their wellbeing, particularly their mental wellbeing, because when you do that, then people feel like they belong. They feel like they’re a part of the system. They’re part of the, the mission that is greater than themselves. And everybody works more collectively, more collaboratively, and that piece is lacking today. And that’s why we’re seeing what is deemed, you know, the quote great resignation, I think. Yeah. It’s indicative of how people are tired of not being seen as individuals. They have been perceived as cogs in the machine because we’re coming out of this industrial revolution. Yeah. And so now we are working into this next phase of transformation and what a beautiful opportunity that we have to now co-create design and prioritize our own wellbeing while we are in the work that we’re doing. So we can work more effectively and more collaboratively

Monica (09:14):

Amazing. That, that sounds just wonderful. And I agree, I think we have this tremendous opportunity, but I think we’re also in a place where employers really have to change. There’s just so much kind of pushback and just changes within the workforce to even be able to hire employees that employers need to make some changes. So you talk about designing and creating this workplace that prioritizes mental wellbeing. Can you kind of share with us, like, what does that look like? And have you seen any examples or kind emerging systems or stories that are starting to move in this direction?

Kami (09:59):

Hmm. Well, I have a fun story that I could share with you that really demonstrates an example of an organization that prioritizes mental wellbeing. Oh, so I was working with a group this, that provides social work services. And one of the women there was so excited that she was having her first child. And she was so well loved by all of her colleagues. It still is still well loved by our colleagues and they threw her this beautiful baby shower and gave her some very sentimental gifts. And when she went on maternity leave a couple of weeks prior to her anticipated delivery date, every day, she’d get a call from her colleagues. So excited for the welcoming of her new family member. Oh, have you had baby? We had the baby and she, and they were so excited and so supportive.

Kami (11:01):

And then she did, she had the baby and she, however, did not pick up the phone for a week after her colleagues had tried calling and they were getting concerned because she didn’t call because she had lost the child in child and was grieving this loss and wanted the time to grieve the loss. And also had so many questions, you know, these are quest questions logistics, like, do I still get maternity leave? Do I, in the employee handbook? It says, you know, funeral leave, you get sometimes one day, right, right. A family. But there’s nothing that we’d have in most. And frankly in all of our employee handbooks, that address grief, that address the loss, the loss of a family member, mm-hmm, <affirmative> that’s special to us. And so the, her, her the CEO of the organization reached out looking for some support.

Kami (12:21):

And what we did was we established a care team for her because she was in the field of social work, where she would meet with new families that had young babies. And we know that grief does not hit just on that one day of funeral, leave that grief. Right. <Laugh>, it’s something that we sometimes we live with for a lifetime and we have to adapt to that grief. So noting this particularly at when grief was so active we connected with her two best friends peers, and we connected with the HR director and the CEO. And so these individuals created this care team. So her two best friends would when grief hit. And sometimes you don’t even know when grief is going to hit. Right. Absolutely. And she, these friends had the autonomy to, you know support her, go out for a cup of tea, go for a walk and process those emotions.

Kami (13:32):

And they would while the other one picked up these the work. Wow. And then these two best friends that were sup providing both the emotional and the, the physical burden, you know, physical workload burden of her work. Yeah. They needed the support as well. So then the other two individuals, the HR director and the, and the executive director, they provided the support of the overload for them as well as the emotional support for them to help carry that. The, you know, I I’m using air quotes like the, yeah. The <inaudible> <laugh> yeah. Of holding all of this grief for, for their beloved colleague. So having those supports in, in place and establishing a system before an event happens, because we know that death is inevitable and we know that it’s going to occur in all of our families. And so how can we best prepare and provide that support when we’re experiencing these types of losses in life? The, the typical response that people have when they are actively grieving is to dive into work as a distraction. Right. And they, they double down, they triple down, I, I know this because I did this myself. Yeah. I, you know, classic overachiever, I joined every single board I could before, you know, now I’m on 12 different boards working full time.

Monica (15:14):

<Laugh> yeah, I can. Really,

Kami (15:16):

Exactly. And what I was trying to do in hindsight was fill that void that I had of the loss, but it, of course, you know, work and work relationships can’t feel the loss of the death of an individual or, you know, or the relationship that you had. Right. So my recommendation, when we see and hear that our colleagues are experiencing these types of losses is to automatically dial back their workload. So they have that time to prioritize themselves to be kind to themselves. So you don’t push them into that zone where they are overextending themselves, where they are, overcommitting where errors occur, where mistakes happen, you know, so you, this is a way to prevent those process breakdowns that happen naturally they happen at a higher volume when we’re experiencing high levels of stress, adversities, and losses

Monica (16:42):

Interesting. And what a tremendous story and just caring work environment. And what I hear too, is that there is a lot of trust of the employees that are involved, that, you know, they’re not gonna abuse this, that they’re going to kind of help this employee make it through it. And also a lot of autonomy, because it’s hard to create just hard and fast rules about how that’s gonna look. Exactly. Yeah. So can you maybe speak to that a little bit more about, like, how do you create that type of work environment?

Kami (17:19):

So this begins with lots of conversations. We begin by doing key informant interviews and with the leadership team identifying what are those values that you want to, to have in your organization? And not every organization creates a list of mission, vision values, but so much of it is lip service, right. Because where we fail is identifying how we are demonstrating these values. Like, for instance, I can’t tell you how many times a medical care institution said, we provide compassionate care. Right. Fantastic. Yeah. Like I I’m in the field of compassion, right? Yeah. and when, and when I inquire, how are you providing compassionate care? The definition is always, oh, well we have nurses on staff.

Monica (18:22):

Right?

Kami (18:22):

Correct. That’s a role, but it’s start explaining how so when you start to have these conversations, that seems so simple. But they can be really challenging. Because we put up a mirror to say, how are you going to demonstrate these values? Because when you start to prioritize those values that you have, as that you all agree on as an organization and you outline what it means to live those values, that becomes you create these micro moments where those micro moments add up to create that culture.

Monica (19:04):

Wow. I love that. And that is so true. Like so many organizations have just these wonderful mission statements and values, but creating that alignment with the day to day work and, and actually thinking about how is that expressed, how does the patient or customer feel that, you know, how do we know when we’re in alignment with our values and having some of those discussions, because otherwise it’s easy to just have it be some statement in a binder that goes up on the shelf.

Kami (19:34):

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve participated in thousands of board meetings where and I even facilitated, you know, where you facilitated in every, and these re these retreats are great. They’re so inspiring, but what, yeah. Again, we fail to cascade that information and get everybody involved in, in those conversations. And so you know, depending upon the size of your organization, that can be challenging. So then it becomes a process of how can we educate people to have these conversations within their teams. So, you know, we connect with mid-level managers because mid-level managers are the, the conduit between leadership and the folks that are connecting directly with the customers or the patients. And so they often get forgotten in strategic planning sessions. Yeah. Historically, yeah. So providing that education on how to have those conversations and also listen is a lot of listening skills. So listening to what works, what is best for that, you know, best for that organization, based on the culture of not only the organization, but then looking at the, the heritage and the cultural nuances within your, the demographics that you’re serving.

Monica (21:11):

Yeah. Such great points. And, and I’ve seen that as well, that a lot of times the middle management gets left out of actually helping to create strategy and planning, but then they’re charged with implementing it. They’re also often left out of like development opportunities and those types of things as well. So I think that was a, a really good tip to help carry that throughout the organization. I just love this whole concept of bringing more compassion into the workplace. And I know that’s a lot of what you do with integrative resources. Do you have any other tips or examples for leaders who are listening to today’s podcast on how they could start to bring compassion into their workplace?

Kami (22:01):

I would echo that it be that it begins by listening and also having courage to have challenging conversations, that conversations about loss, about grief about traumas that are historically and not spoken about within our organizations, because it puts us in this space of feeling vulnerable. And, and frankly, there’s a lot of, some of these subjects are also taboo culturally to as Americans. It’s very taboo to be speaking about death openly, but it, you know, with my background in healthcare, death is an active part of the work environment. So how can we have the respect and start having these conversations. So it’s a series of conversation tools that we, that we utilize to help educate individuals to facilitate these conversations, and to also listen with intention. Sometimes as leaders, we have agendas in mind when we have conversations and we, we just wanna get our point across. And so we can move on with our busy day, so we can go through our task list, but when we make the time and we are intentional about having these conversations and making real connections with the people that we work with, because, you know, we who you spend your time with, like your boss has a greater impact on your health than your primary care provider.

Monica (24:01):

Wow.

Kami (24:02):

You’re spending 40 plus hours a week with this team of people. And if that organization, if that is if the conversation is dysfunctional, if it’s toxic, if it’s creating too much adversities for us, that, that plays out in our health you know, there’s studies that show individuals that have the lowest rank in an organization have the highest rate of heart disease.

Monica (24:38):

Wow.

Kami (24:39):

So like, if we’re, you know, you can quantify this from a financial perspective that this is not just the touchy feely type of approach, but you can connect this to real dollars. And focusing by focusing on prevention, by focusing on reducing those risks of disease in our colleagues that we spend more time with than our family. So, you know, let, let’s take care of one another we’re social creatures. And when we do that, we, we flourish and when we flourish our, or the organization flourishes because our customers and our patients, they see that they see that we’re happy. They see that we have effective communication, that we’re Fu we’re having a fun time. We’re joking around people wanna be around that that’s contagious. So when we start to live those values of creating that, that environment that we want, that feeds us, instead of drains us your finances, it, you know, word gets out there, customers wanna be around it.

Monica (25:55):

<Laugh>. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we need to really value that more and understand that connection between the bottom line and how workplace culture really connects to it. And I wanna come back to that, but I want to just go back a little bit to your recommendations. It sounds like it’s really starting to, by having authentic, real communication and relationships with your employees and your staff and your colleagues. I know a, a couple of studies that I’ve seen lately said that one in four people feel like their company doesn’t care about them. Oh. And that if an employee has a best friend at work, that the retention rate is just so much higher than if they don’t. And I think it goes back to what you’re talking about, about having those real connections and, and feeling like you’re part of something bigger than just, you know, punching a time clock.

Kami (26:59):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Creating those, those friendships and nurturing them, not just having conversations about work, but having conversations about what’s going on in your life.

Monica (27:12):

Yeah.

Kami (27:14):

And so that’s, you know, again, historically we have created a separation of work and home, and we even call it a like, Ooh, I’m trying to balance this work life balance. Yeah. I think it’s bogus, it’s work, life integration. You are not two separate beings. And that’s creating also part of this divide. And part of this resignation is because that puts us into this role of being coming a cog. And nobody likes being a cog. <Laugh>

Monica (27:44):

Exactly. I love that term work life integration. I think that that is a lot better than trying to have work life balance and yeah. I think, you know, what you’re talking about, the work life integration goes back to kind of what we’re seeing right now that a lot of women are slower in returning to the workplace. Yeah. Because they’ve been able to step back and create more of that work life integration and, and have a more fulfilling life. It’s kind of hard to go back, you know, once you’ve experienced that.

Kami (28:17):

Yeah, absolutely. It, it’s also treating employees like adults.

Monica (28:24):

Yeah. <Laugh> exactly, exactly. I’ve seen that in a lot of materials lately and I think that’s so true, like in their real life, in their day to day life, they’re able to go buy a car or buy a house, but they can’t buy a $300 chair or, you know, office supplies without getting however many signatures, you know, that’s right. Not exactly trusting their judgment.

Kami (28:51):

Yeah, exactly.

Monica (28:53):

Exactly. So what do you say to the CEO or the leader that says, you know, that just doesn’t feel comfortable providing that kind of trust because they feel like the employees will abuse it or, you know, that it will cause problems. You know, I get a lot of that when I talk about some of these concepts with leaders that are, are really afraid of letting go of some of that control,

Kami (29:21):

Then it becomes a, a convers, an individual conversation of what happened.

Monica (29:27):

Yeah. Right.

Kami (29:29):

You know, we see so many policies and regulations that are formed based on, and I’m using this word loose, but loosely, but, but traumas that we’ve experienced, you know whether it’s, we got our hands slapped and we don’t want our hands slapped at work ever again. So to prevent our that uncomfortableness of, of having our hands slapped, we are gonna create policy and we’re gonna use this baka that <laugh>, that S to that entire topic, instead of using a laser pointer to create a policy, you know, creating things more based on individual stories and perspectives and nuances, you know? Yeah. So it’s, it is a challenge of looking at things both from a, you have to expand from a micro to, to a macro, right. In a very quick way. So it’s, it’s a lot of pivoting in this type of work in, in our thinking.

Kami (30:40):

But looking at what is the root of why you want to have all of that control and why do you want to what purpose does that serve? And what if you let, let your employees grow up <laugh>, you know, and, and you provide that atmosphere of autonomy and, and respect, you know, it, it always comes back twofold, threefold, you know, when we do provide that. But it’s to our detriment when we try to controlled and domineer some of these, you know, policies and regulations that we create. So yeah, I’ll just reiterate, it becomes a, a individual conversation about what’s the root source behind that.

Monica (31:31):

Yeah. That’s such a great point. And I do think a lot of times in the corporate world, it’s easy to overreact when there’s been, you know, one issue and make it this big, broad uniform policy with all of this bureaucracy around it, instead of just addressing the, the issue or one individual who’s having a challenge. Yeah. It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like if you think your employees can’t handle the responsibility or manage this, then, then they, they know that and they, they don’t step up and, and do it because, you know, they, they don’t feel like they can in the situation. And so it, it, people down

Kami (32:12):

<Laugh> absolutely, you know cultures are often created by the leader. Yeah. And the, the, you know, the top leader and, and that, and the support that reinforces those behaviors. So if you have an over reactive emotionally dysregulated leader that creates the culture of fear or creates a culture of work around and we’ve all worked with organ with individuals that are,

Monica (32:43):

We’ve seen those.

Kami (32:45):

Right. So, you know and that creates a dysfunction. So then everybody’s yeah. On edge. And so having that, taking that care team support yeah. To help regulate us when we do get triggered by a stressor, when we get triggered by our own life’s <laugh>, you know, troubles then having that sort of checks and balances of saying, okay, let’s, you know, am I off base here in my response here? So having that flexibility and that freedom to be, I’m gonna use this word hyperplastic because that’s also what’s happening within our brain neurologically is that we’re creating that hyperplastic meaning we can be more divergent in our thinking more divergent and creative in our problem solving when we take that moment to respond with intentions, as opposed to having that gut reaction and split second default mode of fight or flight,

Monica (33:57):

Such a great point. So what do you think is possible and what do you see could happen if workplaces started to be more compassionate and create these authentic trusting relationships with their employees and allow them to have some of this, this autonomy, what do you think is possible?

Kami (34:20):

Sky’s the limit, right? Yeah. Because when, when as leaders we’re able to live in that space of compassion of not getting mad, getting curious, you know, I’ve got a whole framework this five C framework of compassion, curiosity connect consistency when we’re operating in that space, then we’re able to create this culture where people respond in kind. And now we are optimizing the, our fullest potential individually and collectively, which means then, you know, you’re going to attract more patients, more customers, because you’re operating in that space. And you’re also able to navigate and pivot the challenges much more easily without the raising the red flags <laugh> that we have tendency to do. And, oh, there’s a alarm I have to you know, jump you don’t, it’s most things, even in, even in hospitals, you know, that when it is situations, when you ha, when you’re operating from this space, it becomes much more fluid. And you’re in, you’re able to innovate. And in that space of innovation comes improvement become you know, that leads to, you know a really great place to work and you’re people wanna stick around. So, you know, it’s, it’s expensive to replace employees. They say it’s about 20% of somebody’s salary just for recruiting and training. And, you know, if you’re always having to have a blind item, but in that, in your budget for that, gosh, that what a wonderful way to have those recoup, those savings.

Monica (36:27):

Absolutely. So it sounds like there’s just tremendous benefits to retention and recruitment, better customer service, more innovation to kind of creating this more compassionate, connected culture.

Kami (36:42):

So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, and you, you can also look at because of this response, when, when we are operating in that space, it is better for us physically it reduces our risk of inflammation, which in turn, reduces our risk of chronic diseases. So then you can start to, to look at our, because we spend so much money as employers on health insurance. So

Monica (37:10):

Absolutely like their biggest complaint right now for

Kami (37:14):

Employees. Exactly. <Laugh>

Monica (37:15):

Yeah.

Kami (37:16):

You can reduce that simply by creating this more collaborative work environment, what an easy win.

Monica (37:27):

Wow. So how do you recommend employers get started down this path? You mentioned earlier conversations and listening, any other kind of suggestions on, on a leader who might be listening right now and wanting to move in this direction? But’s not really sure how to get started.

Kami (37:45):

Yeah. I think it’s also taking an assessment of where are those common stressors that are occurring within the organization that are habitual and that you have control over, you know, a lot of times the organizations will parti, you know, and amusing healthcare again. Oh, we complain about health insurance. We complain about this federal policy and regulation. If you don’t have the power to change that yeah. In that environment, let it go work within that system then. And identify what are those stressors that we do have control over that we can change. And then, you know, having those conversations of how can we think, how can we think smarter about this? Because what we are doing is network what do we want to, how do we demonstrate our values and demonstrate some of these mindful mental wellbeing practices?

Kami (38:50):

How can we integrate our work as well? Because some work is inherently stressful, so how do we establish those processes? So then when you start to really dissect what those top stressors are and look at, how can you problem solve those? Yeah. And, and by, by creating this experiential design. So we go through this process of experiential design, where we look at what is the desired emotion we’re aiming for in this activity? So if the emotion, because this is where memory retention we remember things that we have an emotional connection to mm-hmm <affirmative>. So if you’re aiming to create that emotional connection emotional response of say a sense of duty within work, how do you design for that emotion? Wow. Based on the activities that you need to do. And so we’ll, we’ll walk through that this exercise of, of what that looks like, and that gets people feeling creative, it gets you’re really designing with intention.

Monica (40:13):

Wow. I love that suggestion. And it sounds like you’re really kind of advocating for starting to address the system to create those ways of being and ways of feeling that you wanna create, which is so much more, you mentioned mindfulness and being really intentional, but that goes so far above just creating a mindfulness program or a meditation program. Like I know so many employers are starting to bring those in and have brought those in, and I don’t think they’re having the desired results because if you don’t also change the system, you’re not really making anything better.

Kami (40:55):

Absolutely. It it’s about integration. Yeah. And you may be able to integrate just like, this is the same conversation of work life, right? Yeah. This is of bringing the life and bringing our, our, what makes us happy while we’re at what makes us, and what makes us happy at work is generally what makes us happy in, in life too. So you know, harness those emotions that you’re aiming to, to achieve at, through various tasks, you know? And so we, we have a, a series of experiences that we design for you know, beginning with, how do we create excitement about this task? How do we when people enter this task, how do we want them to feel? What, what about when they’re engaged, inactively in the task? How about when they’re exiting the task, and then that extension phase of what happens after they have done this task. So you’re always creating this circular thought process of trying to achieve that, make your outcomes more meaningful, really, you know, cause you are designing for those emotions that help with retention, that memory retention that help with creating those micro moments of cultural responses. That, again, lead up to the values that we had set forth and had conversations of how we want to do this.

Monica (42:31):

That is so exciting. And that’s the first time I’ve really heard about that concept of, of thinking about how you want the employees to feel during the process that they’re working on. So it sounds like you’d wanna be eliminating friction points and stressors and you know, annoying forms and, and reducing those things as well, to create that kind of joy and ease or happiness or excitement, whatever you’re trying to create in the process.

Kami (43:02):

Yeah, absolutely

Monica (43:04):

Fascinating. What a, what an exciting area to explore and to begin to bring into the workplace. And it’s something that I don’t hear talked about very much by, by leaders or workplaces yet. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. So yeah, my appreciate maybe tell us, what are you most excited about right now? What are you working on or developing that or, or seeing out there that’s really exciting.

Kami (43:32):

Ooh, well, I’ve got a special project right now that I’m so thrilled about.

Monica (43:37):

Yay.

Kami (43:38):

Yeah. It’s, it’s called journey guys, and we’ve designed this to help individuals and their care, their support networks when somebody is diagnosed with a serious or terminal illness. The traditional historical response is to as a, as a medical care team is to outline here are all of the medical approaches that we are going to offer you. And, you know, they presented this information with such beautiful confidence. However, it is only addressing the physical aspects. And right now a lot, lot of organizations, medical organizations fail to address that mental wellbeing because they are only, there’s a perception that when you are talking about mental health, it is a negative, right. It equated with, with illness. And it is something that is quote wrong with you. But they, they fail to look at the emotional responses. And so that’s really what we’re looking at, regardless of whether you have a diagnosis, you know, mental health diagnosis or not, this is the about the emotional experience.

Kami (45:09):

So how can we provide support for individuals to navigate medical decision making throughout that process? Because there’s such a, a vast array of how care can be provided. And we know that we are not just physical creatures, like, you know, as noted earlier, we spent our time with dictates our level of help. And so the, to put all this onus of responsibility on our care team, on our hospitals and our clinics is faulting, an unrealistic who we need to turn to then is our friends, our family, our community. So this is a, a program that we use to provide education to individuals on how to have those crucial conversations with that offers support, but quality of life for individuals who are diagnosed this is a personal, this is a personal journey for me, both my sister and my dad have been diagnosed with cancer. And as I’ve you know, been the family member and the, you know, some of the caregiver in that role, I had wished that their medical team had asked them about their mental health their mental wellbeing. I wish they had had conversations about quality of life. I wish they had had conversations about what is it, what path do you of treatment do you want? And so this journey guide project is really an opportunity to facilitate those conversations and help individuals and their support network navigate this process in a more holistic, intentional manner.

Monica (47:14):

Wow. What an amazing resource for someone to have if they were fighting a serious illness, I know that you’ve had some family members experiencing cancer and, and, and I was going through something similar at the same time with my mom. So I can relate very much with what you’re talking about. And, and it’s a, a really stressful and difficult time for the patient and for the family and, and those discussions often aren’t had. And so it leaves a lot of fears and unknowns and concerns about you know, what’s gonna happen and, you know, do I get to have a say in things and, you know, I try to navigate that. So that’s exciting. I’m, I’m glad that you’re working on that. And I see why you’re excited about it as well.

Kami (48:02):

Thank you. Yes. We, we hope to launch this new project in the next month or so. Wow. So we’ve got some, you know, little tweaks here before we make the official launch, but we’re getting close and we’ve got an excellent team of, of people that are both from the provider perspective and from the family perspective and the community perspective, all working towards this program. So it’s, it’s beautiful. And each time we talk about it, we always get folks wanting to learn more and you know, wanting to be a part of it. So,

Monica (48:46):

Absolutely. Well, keep us posted on that. And if, if some of our listeners want to get more information about the journey guides is there a place that they can go or that information will be shared later?

Kami (49:01):

Yes. it will be live soon on the web, on my website, resiliencysource.org,

Monica (49:08):

Great resiliencysource.org. And I’ll also share that link under the show notes. So you can go there to get that link. And while we’re talking about links and resources so if people wanted to learn more about your work and your services through integrative resources, they could go to your resiliency source.org. Where, where else can they find you? Are you on LinkedIn, those types of things?

Kami (49:38):

Yes. I’m also on LinkedIn and Facebook, although I admittedly am not the most engaged with those platforms, but not to work in progress, so.

Monica (49:50):

Awesome. Okay. Yeah,

Kami (49:52):

You can definitely contact me on those on those spaces.

Monica (49:56):

Wonderful. Well, I will provide some links to those and just appreciate all the work that you’re doing to help bring compassion into the workplace and now into the caregiving process as well. So thank you for being with us here today, Kami, I really appreciate it.

Monica (50:20):

To see, so all, well, thank you so much, everyone. And for joining us today.

Making Primary Care a Great Place to Work & Overcoming Burnout with Gabe Charbonneau, MD – The New Future of Work Podcast, Episode 1

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Gabe Charbonneau, MD on The New Future of Work (TM) Podcast

I’m excited to launch the first episode of The New Future of Work (TM) Podcast with a very special guest, Dr. Gabe Charbonneau. Gabe is a rural family physician and high-tech entrepreneur. He is a founder of Medicine Forward and the co-founder of Fluent Systems, an EHR automation software company. He serves as EHR faculty at Practicing Excellence and has been a physician advisor to the AI scribe companies, Tenor and Saykara. He is also the passionate creator of the #FightBurnout movement on social media, and FightBurnout.org. Gabe lives and practices in Stevensville, Montana.

We had a wonderful discussion, here a few of my favorite comments:

“You’re not allowed to complain about a broken system if you’re not willing to do anything about it. We all need to realize that we can’t sit still and wait for someone else to fix it anymore. So get out of your seat and get involved in something.”

“When you start showing up, you find where you fit and and where you can help, and can hopefully be a voice for good and improving things.”

“I’m an accomplice in a broken healthcare system, fighting to transform it.”

During the show, we referenced two organizations, Buurtzorg, the home health company based in The Netherlands that operates from a very different model, and Orchid Health which is a group of Rural Health Clinics in Oregon that is structured around four pillars, the first of which is their people.

Gabe also referenced BurnoutIndex.org, a tool for measuring burnout.

You can contact Gabe on Twitter @GabrielDane, or visit his organization’s websites at www.MedicineForward.org and www.FightBurnout.org.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you usually find your podcasts.

Listen on: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

***

Show Transcript (Transcribed using AI – please excuse any errors):

Monica (00:04):

Thank you so much for joining us here today. I’m really excited to have a very special guest. Dr. Gabe Charbonneau is a rural family physician and high-tech entrepreneur. He’s the co-founder of Fluent Systems, which is an EHR automation software company, and he serves as faculty at Practicing Excellence. He’s also been a physician advisor to the AI scribe companies Tenor and Saykara, and he’s passionate about fighting burnout and actually created a movement on social media at fightburnout.org. Gabe lives in practices in Stevensville, Montana. So Gabe, thank you so much for being with us here today. I’m really excited to talk to you about the new future of work and what you’re seeing in the healthcare industry today. As we get started, maybe we could just start off by having you tell us a little bit about your story and how you got started.

Gabe (01:03):

Yes. Thank you so much for having me Monica. It’s, it’s really fun to do a podcast with such a good friend and someone who I look up to so much as a positive force in this world of trying to make things better for everybody. So yeah, I’m a family doctor in Stevensville Montana, and I usually start my story at the beginning of my doctor journey. So the first time that I realized I was interested in medicine happened when I was about six years old and I had this rash on my body that neither I or my mom knew what it was. And she took me to our local family doctor and he had exactly the things that I needed for care. I mean, he was gentle and kind but he also knew what he was doing and immediately put me and my mom at ease, quickly named what it was that I had, which was not a serious thing at all.

Gabe (02:07):

It was Maluma, which is a super common childhood rash. But the way that he cared for me left this indelible mark of, oh, there’s something special going on here. And it took me a while to realize that that was one of the big things that really imprinted on me about why I became interested in medicine. Reflecting on where we are today and, and what I would like to see more of it really was that whole package of his, his humanity and the way that he cared for me. And there were, there were no distractions in the way, there was no computer in the room at that time. There were no misaligned incentives trying to get him to do something other than just take care of me and my mom. And that’s become more and more clear about how special and important that is. And so has really become part of my guiding what guides me to want to fight for. And also a lot of other people too, are realizing that, Hey, that that’s a super important part. This relationship, the human doctor, patient relationship is such a precious part of what we do. And so, so that was the beginning. And then I went to, oh, did you

Monica (03:27):

I was gonna say, I love that story and I could totally see you bringing that type of, kind of warmth and caring and energy into the work that you do with patients. And also the work that you’re doing now at medicine forward. So go ahead and continue with your story.

Gabe (03:45):

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So it, it is so, so fast forward. So I went to medical school in Utah and then residency in Spokane and then worked in this community health clinic in Spokane for a few years after graduating. And, and that experience was really hard. I experienced burnout, I would say for the first time in, in that job back then, I didn’t have the word for it. Burnout wasn’t talked about so much, but it definitely was burnout. My wife and I actually both practiced there and she and I felt like it was just total survival most of the time. And then I guess the other thing is, is that I have always been a computer person. And so in that job, I was always trying to figure out things that might make it a little bit better.

Gabe (04:34):

So even then I started tinkering with stuff that might make our, our back then web based, very slow EMR work, a little better. And so I, I played around with some macro software and text expansion and built all the shortcuts I could trying to make this impossible job doable. And, and then then we moved to Montana, which is where, where I am now. And then we had the big go live with the major EHRs. And I met a fellow physician that was our partner in the clinic and he, and I hit it off quickly. And we’re, we’re both sort of these people interested in being problem solvers when you were presented with a big challenge. And we came at it from slightly different angles, but we challenged each other to build tools, sort of like the ones I made in my first job that would make things better. And so we just, we, we jumped right into making a lot of macros and eventually made a company that was all about macros for doctors, like basically add on software to the EHR where you could add buttons to the interface that would do whole series of things that were more like how a, how a physician would intuitively think. Because I’m so I’m sure you’ve heard, there’s nothing intuitive about the EHR. Not

Monica (05:53):

At all.

Gabe (05:53):

So, yeah. And that was, that was a lot of learning. One of the things that I learned is that that you can, you can build a product that you think solves the problems, but you, but getting it to be implemented and interface with the healthcare system is a whole other challenge. So we built this, this very custom thing that a lot of doctors loved, but we couldn’t figure out actually how to get it to, to fit inside of healthcare systems so that it could get any kind of significant traction. And then I took a little bit of a, as I was still interested in how technology could maybe make things more human. And I got interested in the voice AI idea, and that’s how I got into working with tenor. And then also S the, the way that I got into the fight burnout stuff was actually that I kept running into similar and similar problems that it was like okay, why is it so hard to fix things and, and improve it?

Gabe (06:56):

Yeah. And what the, what the thing that came to me was that I don’t really have the answers, but what I know for sure is I’ve met a lot of really wonderful people inside of medicine and healthcare who are very motivated to create this better world. And we don’t quite know how to do it. So I made this t-shirt that I know you’ve seen that the design is the design is a Phoenix raising the rod of medicine out of the flames, as a symbolism for that, as people we can overcome hard challenges because it, it, you know, if we don’t know how to technically do it today, it doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna figure it out. How many times in history have people had incredible challenges that it seemed like there was no way to solve it.

Gabe (07:41):

And then the right circumstance happen, you get the right people together and, and amazing things happen. And I just, I, I have to believe that that’s possible for getting unstuck in healthcare as well. And that led me to getting involved with some other, other friends through that project. Yeah. I started giving that shirt out to people that I thought were doing inspiring work and got connected with Eric Topol and a few other interesting leaders in medicine. And there was this interest in creating a new doctor’s organization that was really about standing up for the human doctor patient relationship. So that’s been a huge part of my volunteer work for the last three years. And I think that’s part of what we’re gonna talk about today.

Monica (08:26):

Yeah. So that’s medicine forward that you’re referencing there at the end, and yes. You have such a fascinating journey and we actually connected a number of years ago at the time when you were developing the EHR interfaces. And you participated in a rural medicine hackathon that I helped to organize. And so you’ve been doing innovation and kind of testing out new things for a long time in the healthcare system.

Gabe (08:53):

Yes. And I have to say thank you to you for, for doing that because when we were first starting out trying to create software, I had never created a company or really built any significant technology. I played around a lot. We made an iPhone game about diabetes with, with our son, but I had never made anything that I thought could be like a serious commercial software thing that might be disruptive of like, you know, the current ways of doing stuff. And you brought MIT to Missoula. And I was like, okay, I have to go to that. <Laugh> what is that?

Monica (09:25):

Everyone thought I was crazy <laugh>

Gabe (09:27):

I did not think you were crazy. I was like, there are not that many things where I just have to like clear my schedule and make sure I go to that. Not even knowing for sure what it’s all about, cuz I’d never been to a hackathon before, but I just knew that the energy of this was like something that was worth paying attention to, and it was totally it was to totally amazing. I mean we could go into some of the things that I really loved about that, but the, just the, the creativity of people and the some of the things that I learned about how you could get groups to work together and sort of organically create ideas and then sort of work through those and, and, and bring, you know, people from a place like MIT, where they’re on the leading edge of technology to like our little Montana to talk about it and try and help us. I just thought was so cool.

Monica (10:16):

That was amazing experience. One of the things that I think is so interesting is bringing together kind of the diverse perspectives from different fields to try to solve kind of a shared problem. So I’m really glad you were able to participate in that with me, and I’m glad we were able to get connected. But one thing that really kind of stood out to me about your story is talking about experiencing burnout in your career in actually when you were in your residency kind of early on, is that something that’s pretty typical of physicians during their training and or practice that you see?

Gabe (10:57):

Yeah. Well, okay. So I will give the best answer to this that I can I, I don’t think there’s anyone who goes through residency and thinks that it’s that’s easy. It’s, it’s usually one of the crucibles of life. It’s one of the hardest things that you go through. I think for a long time, people really knew what to expect with residency. And so there wasn’t necessarily a mismatch between your expectations and, and what it was. It was like, okay, there are gonna be these long hours and it’s gonna be grueling and I’m gonna sleep at the hospital a lot. And I’m gonna be challenged in ways that are beyond my comfort zone, but like other people have gone before me and done this and, you know, I’ve made it this far. I probably can do it. Yeah. And so, so the it’s not that there has never been burnout, but I think one of the things that’s come up is that burnout often happens when there’s a mismatch between people’s expectations and what happens.

Gabe (11:54):

Interesting. And yeah, and I think more and more since I’ve graduated and moved on, I been hearing about elevated levels of burnout throughout the entire education spectrum, even from the beginnings of medical school. One of my friends did a, did a research study on medical student burnout. He was really inspired to do that because he lost a, a friend who died by suicide and found really compelling information about that in medical school, burnout is already a huge problem. And some of the some of the things that seem to be linked to that in drivers and the we’re just in a really weird time right now. I mean, in some ways we have made so much technological progress, but in other ways we’ve got like, mm-hmm, <affirmative> lots of layers of bureaucracy and things that aren’t really about doing your work and do create that mismatch between your expectations of what you should be doing versus what you’re actually find yourself doing.

Gabe (12:53):

So as an example some of, some of my doctor, friends who are a little bit older or retired say that they don’t remember burnout being as much of a problem when they went through training, but they went through well before there was any kind of work hour restrictions. So it was like, you know, it’s not just like how hard people are working, not saying that, that means that was a good idea. Yeah. But just that, like, you know, the, the, the level of burnout has actually risen and it’s not entirely about how much we’re working. That’s a factor, but it’s not the whole story.

Monica (13:27):

That’s fascinating. Well, when you think about your kind of origin story about going to your family practice doctor and having that one-on-one encounter, that was so meaningful healthcare has kind of come a long way from that time in healthcare. And, you know, do you get to have those kind of moments in your practice today still?

Gabe (13:49):

Yes. And I have to work hard to intentionally see if I can make that happen more often. I’m on the same treadmill everybody else is. So I, I work at a large hospital system and I, you know, I think we do it as well as anyone’s doing right now in our current system, but I am on a treadmill of production and have short amounts of time for visits and lots of requirements of boxes that need to be checked for every visit that are driven by the incentives. And we can’t seem to figure out how to, how to change that. I do a few things on purpose that I think, give me more time to connect. So, and back to an earlier part of the story, so like the voice AI we’ve been piloting yeah.

Gabe (14:38):

Voice AI software. We’re now on our two, our second version of that, with the idea that instead of spending time typing in the exam room, you can just have a natural conversation and that all gets captured and then transcribed and structured into your, into your notes. And that actually, that has been really helpful. I, I made a rule for myself pretty early on with the EMR that I was only gonna use the computer in the exam room. If it actually like made me a better doctor and that I wasn’t gonna turn it on as the first thing or log into it as the first thing that I did so interesting. So even though you’ve got limited time, I, I walk in and the first thing is about, is about connecting and making eye contact and trying to trying to ask a question about how someone is doing, and then not interrupt right away, which there’s, you know, you probably know the research that doctors are horrible at this. Like we <laugh>, we can’t wait to jump in and say something <laugh>

Monica (15:36):

So get to the problem so I can

Gabe (15:37):

Fix it. Yeah. But also the, the flip side of that is that if you let people just speak, they often tell you important clues to their story and what’s going on. That helps you find what you need to do most to, to, to help them medically at that visit. And so it’s, it doesn’t help you to interrupt <laugh>. So anyway, those things, and then I have to give a shout out to the team that I work with is outstanding. I mean, beyond remarkable in terms of the ways that they help me to, so that I’m not the one doing a lot of the one of the movements that I love, the name of is get rid of stupid stuff. Oh, my nursing team does a lot of stupid stuff for me. Wow. But I know that a lot of people don’t have that that privilege. And so I feel a little bit guilty, but also very lucky.

Monica (16:27):

Yeah. I’m sure that makes a huge difference because and it sounds like you’ve been able to kind of cope with working in healthcare still, even with all of the challenges with the pandemic and mm-hmm <affirmative> other physicians are experiencing burnout, that sort of thing. One of the things I wanted to ask you about was a study that I read from the AMA recently about what they’ve learned about COVID burnout and the doctor shortage. And they’re talking about more than 3,200, almost 3,300 physicians have left healthcare and left the workforce in just the past couple of years. And what they’re finding is that employees in general are a little bit slow at returning to the workforce post pandemic, especially in healthcare, but doctors specifically have been very slow the ones that have left to return to the workforce. So why do you think that is you think that’s the kind of the bureaucracy that you mentioned and, and the difference in those expectations or what are the factors?

Gabe (17:30):

Yes. Well, okay. So, I mean, this is I, I am not an expert on this, but I can tell you what my experience is. And also friends of mine and, and what they describe. And I, and you know, that my wife is also a family doctor. So we have lots of conversations about these things. The, the, the practice, especially of primary care was unsustainable even before the pandemic happened. And so I just got done telling you the things that I do to try and stand up for a little bit of humanity, but I’m, I can’t say that my job is easy or that there aren’t times when I still actually get some burnout symptoms myself, in fact, I track it <laugh> every Thursday I do a burnout survey and I’ve been doing that off and on for a few years.

Gabe (18:17):

And because once I got interested in burnout, I’m like, you gotta, you have to learn about this, right? Like, what are, what, what can I learn? And I’m sort of a learn by doing person. That was how the, like, building software thing happened too. And I found that like, burnout is not a static thing. There’s a lot that affects burnout. So this last week I had very low levels of burnout and part of it, I can name a few things that made a difference. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> things were going smoothly in our clinic. We don’t have any major kind of disruptors of kind of what’s going, like, sometimes there’ll be a big tidal wave of challenges that just make everything hard. And we’re, we’re all stressed all at once, all understaffed. But we had, we had our regular staff we didn’t have any major fires happening and no, like existential threats that we might not be able to stay open.

Gabe (19:07):

<Laugh> like, those are all huge things. Yeah. And also it’s summer, and it’s beautiful and I’ve been riding my bike to work, and that actually has had a protective effect for me. And then the other thing that I haven’t brought up is I, I work part-time and have for the last 12 years. So I worked three days a week instead of four days a week. We started doing that when our youngest son was born and I, I never went back and I just, I wanna highlight that, like, you know, this exit, like for, so I talked about the expectation mismatch, but the other thing is like, if you think of burnout as like you, you’re a human battery of sorts. Yeah. And as you do this work and it’s really grinding on you, and there’s all these challenges layered on top of challenges, it like drains the battery and it keeps draining the battery.

Gabe (19:56):

And if you get too much drainage of the battery without enough recharging of the battery, that’s when, like you don’t come back from the burnout. And I think that’s what COVID and all these other social stressors have really done is like, mm-hmm <affirmative>. So doctors have been these people that are used to just like pushing ourselves really hard and yeah. You know, through all kinds of crazy stuff, medical school, residency, overnight shifts for too many hours, you know, <laugh> not going to the bathroom when you need to all this stuff. Yeah. But like, at some point you just can’t push yourself beyond anymore. And that, and, and you know, not all the, not all the challenges with COVID have been that it’s been more hours. Some of it has been that it’s emotionally, hugely challenging. You know, people who have philosophical or political beliefs that are like making it hard to care for, for them right.

Gabe (20:47):

Or for your community. And like, you know, so you show up to try and help people. And the first thing that you have to do is actually like deescalate someone, who’s throwing a temper tantrum in your waiting room because they don’t want to wear a mask. And it’s like, traumatizing your front desk. Who’s trying to help you. Yeah. Right. Those kinds of those kinds of things. And it’s, you know, it’s just like when society has all these pressures going on, on top of this already, like pressure cooker, right. Or battery that’s running on empty. Like you just, it does not surprise me about that. The exit and people not wanting to come back. Another thing is doctors are smart people and, and we’re waking up and realizing like, well, I’m pretty smart. And that person over there, like isn’t necessarily smarter or hard, harder working than me in this other industry. Why am I putting myself through this again? I mean, I do care about people, but this is crazy.

Monica (21:40):

Yeah. At some point the personal cost for what they’re doing is, is too high. So a couple questions come to mind. One is I was curious and I’m thinking our listeners might be curious too, about what type of burnout survey do you take every week? And that sounds like an amazing practice, cuz I’m one, that’s also suffered from burnout a few times in my career and it kind of sneaks up on you if you’re not paying attention and then, then it’s hard to come back from it.

Gabe (22:08):

Yeah. Well I’ve so I’ve tried a lot of ’em I’ve done the, the Maslak index, which is sort of the gold standard that one you have to pay for a copy of it and score it by hand. There are a few things that will sort of automate that for you, but I, yeah. It was a little bit too much work for me and didn’t also provide an easy way to track it. So I, so I’ve done that a few times, but then I, then I started playing with things that might be simpler. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> there’s a mini Z burnout thing that, that that’s easy and has a lot less questions. But the thing that I discovered, which is was actually not created for healthcare it started us, this website, burnoutindex.org, and it was actually for the it industry and it’s this little startup in Brazil called Yerbo.

Gabe (22:59):

And I just loved how simple they made it and they made a lot of their things that they put together, very evidence based. And it didn’t seem like it mattered that I wasn’t in the it industry, I just sort of ignored that question because the results seemed to be very like they were, they, they weren’t occupation specific. They, you know, that was just their target sort of customer. And so I still use that and they have a little slack plugin that pings me whatever day of the week you want it pings me and asks me these questions. And then it creates this graph over time of my burnout risk and also my level of engagement at work. And then I just reflect on that.

Monica (23:41):

Wow. That’s awesome. I’ll make sure to share that link in the comments below the show, but what a great resource. And one other question that kind of came to mind as you were talking too, is with the physicians leaving, there’s gotta be even more of a shortage. We were already facing kind of a physician and medical staff shortage prior to the pandemic, but now with even more physicians leaving, that’s gotta increase the burnout. And just kind of the, the stress on the providers that remain. Are you starting to see some of that as well?

Gabe (24:16):

Yes. And that, that trend is really alarming and, and as far as like common interest that you and I have of, of sort of future thinking and how can we, how can we, co-create a better future, right. I have become obsessed with how can you make primary care, a great place to work? Because to me there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that yeah. That thriving primary care is actually a, a huge foundational component of a well-functioning healthcare system across the wor world. There’s lots of data to back that up. Yeah. That that primary care doctors being around improves people’s health and reduces all kinds of things. We don’t want like hospital admissions, if there’s enough of us. And and, and, and I mean, that’s my, I know I’m biased because that’s what I chose to do. Yeah.

Gabe (25:08):

But I chose to do that because I believed it had the potential for this widespread impact at the local level and, and our communities need great primary care physicians. And so yes, I’m, I’m alarmed by that trend. And also, I think we’ve gotta channel that energy into saying like, how can we deconstruct this broken primary care workplace and rebuild something that actually works? I, I don’t think that’s impossible. In fact, you and I both know someone very well in, in rural Oregon, who’s, who’s been working on that Orion and orchid health. And that still is one of the highlights for me. In fact, I have talked to multiple people in Montana about like, what would it take to get this modeled going here? That includes insurance and starting to talk to the Montana medical association and people in the business world and even just, you know, sort of surveying my friends who practice about like, would you be interested in this and what would need to happen for it to take place? And really the core of Orchid as far as what I figured out is that they put their money where their mouth is for putting wellbeing as the first priority. Not the second, not the third, not the fourth. The number one priority is people’s wellbeing. And absolutely, I, I think that, that, that is the future that we need to fight for where human, human, flourishing human wellbeing is our top priority. And the other things can only happen if we are getting that right.

Monica (26:42):

I love that. And I loved how you posed the question about how can we make primary care, basically a great place to be. Because I think that so many healthcare administrators are going about it the wrong way. Like, I hear a lot of questions, like, how do we recruit, or how do we retain employees those types of questions. But instead of asking those kind of questions, they should be asking, how do we become a desirable place to see how do we become a workplace where our employees can thrive and serve our patients and where they want to work? So I think taking that, you know, kind of flipping the question really helps come up with the right answers. And yes, you know, some earlier in my career, one of my roles was leading a national transforming clinical practices initiative where we really focused on primary care. So, you know, even healthcare payers know the importance of primary care because that’s where everything starts wellness and prevention and keeping people healthy and keeping people out of the emergency room. So it seems like there’d be a lot of incentives to make this happen. You know, that there’s a lot of alignment.

Gabe (27:55):

Absolutely. And I think it’s, it’s interesting that the, the, the story that you just shared about kind of people’s questions that they want to ask versus asking different or better questions and yeah. And, and one thing that Orion had that I think is really important and special, and maybe why this hasn’t bubbled up other places is he was 21 years old when he started a primary care company and had no background in healthcare. He truly had beginner’s mind. Yeah. Like we’re all looking at it from the perspective of like what it already is and all the rules and constraints of what we think it has to be. Right. And he started this thing with the question of like, well, this is a huge problem. And I want to create a social business to make a big difference. And so everything was on the table and we’ve gotta start looking at stuff like everything is on the table.

Gabe (28:43):

And yeah, and we’re not, we’re not doing that yet. I have a few other thoughts I wanna make sure to, to get in, get in there. So a trend you talked about the trend of like people leaving primary care. Yeah. Back to burnout. One of the, one of the trends has been consolidation where lots of people are going from private practice to being employed mm-hmm <affirmative>, and that is not unrelated to burnout. So more and more studies show that private practices are much more likely to have lower levels of burnout and, and a huge factor. There is the level of control or voice that you have in, in your practice. Right. And so I, the way that I see it, we either need to shift incentives. So it becomes reasonable again, to have small private practices, because a lot of doctors choose medicine because we want to have autonomy.

Gabe (29:28):

Yeah. We want to be able to lead. We want to be able to right. Be in charge of something. Cool. and that’s not happening a lot of times in our, in our big systems or our big systems have to like start dismantling the hierarchy that says that, like, all the stuff comes from the top and you people who are like in the bottom, just do what you’re told and make widgets all day and right. We’re not listening to you enough. So, so my feeling is in the near term, it’s gonna be upstarts like orchid that create, if you can create a better workplace that people are gonna notice and say, Hey, I’m gonna go work there because I’m not gonna get burned out every day. If you don’t get paid less, they actually pay at the higher end of, for community health centers on purpose.

Gabe (30:15):

So it’s not like lower pay for like the same kind of a clinic would be where they are. And, and you can have wellbeing baked into the operating system of the place that you work as the top priority. Like, I mean, once that starts happening, who’s not gonna leave the incumbents and go work there. And so the choices are either that like big hospital systems are just gonna throw up their hands and say, we’re gonna let other people take over primary care, cuz clearly like they’re able to solve this and we’re not, or they’re gonna have to make some of those changes. Those fundamental changes that haven’t happened yet.

Monica (30:50):

I agree completely. I think more and more people in general are looking for more work life balance, you know the pandemic did change a lot of things for us because we were able to spend more time with our families and see how life could be if we weren’t, you know, constantly going places and doing things. And yeah, so that there seems to be a trend toward people wanting more and more of that work life balance, including physicians and wanting to really be able to be more involved in the process and not just being, like you mentioned, producing widgets and a hug on the wheel. And one of the factors has to be, you know, this week we were sharing some articles back and forth and one of those articles showed the trajectory an increase of administrators compared to physicians over the last 20 years. And I’ll, I’ll share a link to it in the comments, but essentially the number of administrators in healthcare has just exploded while the number of physicians has remained pretty consistent. And so you have this huge layer of administration over this small layer of physicians. Yeah. And it’s just continuing to grow. I think it was something like 10 administrators to every one physician, something like that. Yeah,

Gabe (32:07):

Yeah. Right. And it, and it, it just, I mean, if it, if it continues the way that it’s going, it really highlights where some of the incentives must be mismatched because yeah, because here we have this healthcare system that in so many ways isn’t working, it’s very expensive compared to the outcomes that we get. And we’ve got more and more bureaucracy who are people who are, and this is where I wanna choose my words carefully because a lot of, I love a lot of the administrators that I know. Yeah, sure. But they don’t, they don’t directly provide care. And so that’s, that’s one problem. And also they have this power over dynamic. And so it’s not, they’re not equals, there’s not the people who are the clinical teams, the doctors, the nurse practitioners, PAs nurses, front desk don’t really have a real seat at the table. And so there’s these, these kind of structural incentives that are like really, really making it difficult for people right now. And that’s some of what I would like to help unpack back to what I think is interesting about Orchid. I ask, I ask this question of like, well, how do you guys, how do you guys pay the bills? And one of Orion’s answers is we’re, we’re very light on administration. Well, how do you, how do you do that? Yeah. <Laugh>

Monica (33:29):

Yeah,

Gabe (33:29):

Right. Like, so they I mean, they’re, they’re relatively small at this point, like four clinics, but they, I mean, they get all their administrative work done. Part of it is, is that they, they don’t have so much like absolute, like what people’s roles, roles are or titles, I guess they’ve got, they’ve got roles and he’s gonna be better at describing the language, but, you know, they, they figured out a way to not create this administrative bloat because one of their priorities is they they’ve got to, in addition to caring about wellbeing, be financially sustainable. And so when you try and mash those things together, you’ve gotta get creative.

Monica (34:06):

Yeah. I’m sure that that’s the major factor. And as a result, I think that it gives opportunity for the clinical staff to be more involved in the leadership and development as well, which also has gotta seem like it would help increase job satisfaction if you’ve got a role in helping to create what’s gonna happen versus, you know, the top down model of being told, this is how we’re gonna do it type of, well,

Gabe (34:31):

One of the, one of the radical ideas that Orion and I came up with is and this might sound crazy, but I think you’ve gotta sometimes have wild and crazy ideas when you’re talking about future thinking and moonshot thinking is to get rid of the concept of having an administrator at all. Yeah. As in, like, there are no administrators and and this, and I’ll explain what I mean by that, but that you change it from there being clinical teams and administrative teams and all these power dynamics power over versus being on the same team, working for the same kinds of goals and administration in bureaucracy become service to care. So we came up with this concept of administration as a service. And so, wow. No one is an administrator. Yeah. You could have a healthcare organization that has zero administrators.

Gabe (35:19):

Yeah. So you, all of a sudden, like that changes the whole dynamic of how people interact. And so then you have the care delivery team, but then we also were getting kind of having fun with it and thinking like, well then the people that do things like billing, or, you know, figuring out this or that sort of logistic thing of how the business works called that maybe like the care enabling team, but there like the language change changes the intention of the whole thing. And like putting us aligned that we’re working towards the same things rather than like, you know, there’s the, this team and this team and they actually are fighting a lot and therefore not getting anything done sounds like Congress <laugh>

Monica (35:57):

Right. Well, I love that suggestion and I could totally see healthcare moving in that direction. And what you’re talking about has some resemblance to the BOR model mm-hmm <affirmative> in the Netherlands, BOR is a, a home health agency that was developed around these kind of self-managing teams. And I don’t know if it’s structured in the way you’re, you’re talking about, but the administrative kind of support role. But it, it sounds very similar.

Gabe (36:28):

Yeah. I, I know, and I, I share that interest in Buurtzorg too, and I hope that people who don’t know about them will, will definitely check it out. I just think there’s so much to be learned from these like interesting organizations doing things differently in other, other parts of the world. And Buurtzorg has just come up in so many different books we’ve shared and read over the past few years as like this super cool different model that is all about empowering people. Yeah, so like care teams sort of autonomously form in local areas to meet and need. And they pull for resources that they need rather than having like a central agency tell ’em like, here’s your standard issue of all the things that you need to get your job done? That’s that’s not at all how it works, which is like, I think so many of us in the states can’t even imagine working <laugh> in a, in a system like that, but it sounds so exciting. Like, I mean, if we could figure out a way to transplant that here and, and try it out, like, I mean, sign me up. I would be a volunteer to, to try it out and pilot it for sure.

Monica (37:32):

Me too. I’ll make sure to put a link to Buurtzorg in the, in the show notes as well. So the Buurtzorg model is really interesting and is certainly one thing we could look at, but one question I have for you is do you think that we’re ever gonna go back to the way things were before the pandemic mm-hmm <affirmative> and if not, what are some things that we can do kind of going forward to make the workplace a little bit better in healthcare?

Gabe (38:01):

<Laugh> great question. So the first thing that I thought of is like, be careful making predictions because we’re almost always wrong

Monica (38:10):

<Laugh>. Yeah, exactly.

Gabe (38:12):

And so this, like, could we go back to the way things were before the pandemic? It seems unlikely. I mean, it, it it’s been a collective trauma. Yeah. And I don’t think people go back to the way things were before, before, after going through a big trauma. So it feels very unlikely to me that things will be the same. Some things are losses. I, I think we’re, you know, it’s like hard things like a grieving process for things that were the way they were before. And now it’s not like that anymore. And I, and so some, some shared grief about those losses sure. Some, some things are like we’re being pushed to, to be innovative and creative and try new things that we wouldn’t have, like all the people that have been able to, to do work from home.

Gabe (39:01):

And I mean, that’s a whole huge conversation about what that means, but yes, it wouldn’t even been possible to try it out before the pandemic. And so we’ve, we’ve really learned to push the envelope on being adaptive and some neat technologies have really emerged as things that like, okay, we we’re gonna, this is something there’s something there that’s worth leaning more into and learning more about. And so well we’re in this time of a lot of stress right now. Yeah. My I’m an optimist by nature. And so that, I don’t, again, I don’t know if you should trust my predictions or if I should even make them, but the world that I want to live in gets better from here. And that we are, you know, we’re in this sort of dark era where there’s a lot of stress and strain.

Gabe (39:56):

Technology’s not living up to its potential. You know, we’ve got social media that like connects us all, but mm-hmm <affirmative> but influence us and polarizes us in all these negative ways. And the business model of it with it being funded by advertising may, may just be bad for our society. But it doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are realizing that that problem exists. Like part of the thing is change has really accelerated, like our rate of like learning change is accelerated. And I actually wanna flip the question back to you because I know you have an interest in spiral dynamics and say, yeah, what, what do you think, hang on my robot vacuum is turning on. I’m gonna stop that.

Monica (40:35):

<Laugh> <laugh> well, I think we’re gonna definitely see more robots in the workplace. So

Gabe (40:41):

<Laugh>, I know that was on, that was on cue. I actually love robot vacuums, by the way, like I’ve, I’ve geeked out on playing around with like what they can and can’t do. And awesome. Yeah. Anyway, but the <laugh> what never been interrupted on a zoom call by that before you the dog or the kids or phone call or the doorbell now it’s the robots.

Monica (41:02):

It was very timely

Gabe (41:03):

<Laugh> it was really time. It was really timely. Yeah, but so I think what I was talking about is how the accelerated rate of change with just how much is happening in society. And we tend to see so much of, like, what’s not working our outdated laws, our polarization, our EHR that is so cumbersome and horrible to use. And we think like, is this it, like, we’ve learned all these things and ended up in this like black hole of <laugh> like nothing can work and it’s just gonna get worse. I, I can’t believe that that

Monica (41:38):

We’re gonna see, I can’t either, but I’m an optimist too.

Gabe (41:41):

<Laugh> yeah. Climate change. I mean, the I’ll, I’ll give an example of things that I didn’t expect. So I just got an e-bike when I was talking about riding a bike to work. So I you know, I’ve known for a long time that fossil fuels are not like gonna be the way that we keep going for transportation, but I wasn’t quite in the market for an electric car, although, and I came out to Oregon. Last time one of our friends had an electric car and of course that was lots of fun. Oh, neat. And it was it was maybe a more affordable model. So I got excited. And then I had another friend in Bozeman who posted on Twitter about how he got this e-bike and he was surprised about how accessible it made, like getting around town. And I was like, I was like, you know, an e-bike is a lot less expensive than an electric car <laugh> oh,

Monica (42:27):

Yeah,

Gabe (42:28):

Yeah. And so I had so much fun sort of learning about them and I got this bike that like you know, I, I, my goal is for this summer and as long as I can to ride it to work which has proved to be like, you know, dabbling in this, like what would a world without transportation with fossil fuels be like, yeah. And also it gets me outside and I’ve been enjoying like getting a little bit more vitamin D and slowing down just a little bit. It’s actually remarkably fast, but slowing down a little bit from being in a car, you’re much more aware of like, yeah, what’s going on around you. And my mood has been boosted from that. So anyways, I sound like I’m a salesperson for e-bike, but the, the point is like, like these ways that you don’t see coming where things might get a little bit better as you’re like, moving on your way to this future.

Monica (43:16):

Yeah. Just tapping into those and being open to doing things in different ways, even outside of the workplace. For sure.

Gabe (43:23):

Yeah.

Monica (43:25):

So Gabe, we’re getting close to our time here, but I do wanna ask you, like, what is one action item that people can take away from this to kinda help reduce burnout in healthcare, but in the workplace in general and make things a little bit better going forward?

Gabe (43:42):

Okay. Well, you, you, I’m sure you know, that I have more than one thing that I’d like to say <laugh>. But, but I, but I think that the thing I’m gonna say that brings it together is to find a group of people. If, if this speaks to you that this is important, find a group of people that’s working on something and get involved. And so you know, the group that I’m involved in are nonprofit medicine forward. Like we, we are working on advocacy right now. Our focus is on prior authorization. It’s like one of the main dysfunctions in our legacy healthcare system. Right. And, but I, I think the thing is, is like, we, we can’t wait for other people to come and fix problems for us. Like it’s, it’s time to get involved in things that speak to you that are important to you.

Gabe (44:30):

And sometimes people say, I, you know, I have doctor friends who will say like, advocacy is not my thing. my job is hard enough to show up and see patients. That’s what I signed up for. And, yeah, I push back at this point and say, you’re not allowed to complain about a broken system if you’re not willing to do anything about it at this point in time. And we all need to realize that, like we’re beyond the, we can’t sit still and, and wait for someone else to fix it anymore. So get out of your seat and get involved in something. And it doesn’t have, I mean, there, there’re simple things like voting, talking to people who are in positions of power and business and politics. And I never thought I would be doing that, but I have found myself just naturally having conversations with people because that’s what happens when you start showing up is that like you, you find where you fit and where you can help hopefully be a voice for, for good and improving things and not letting us stay stuck in a black hole.

Gabe (45:33):

<Laugh>

Monica (45:34):

That is such good advice. And it reminds me, what is the, the kind of tagline on your Twitter account again?

Gabe (45:41):

Oh, <laugh> that I’m an accomplice in a broken healthcare system. Yeah. Inviting to transform it.

Monica (45:47):

<Laugh> exactly. Cause we all are, especially if we’re not gonna, you know, you know, take some type of action and help move things forward, for sure. We’re accomplished

Gabe (45:56):

That’s there. That is there as a reminder to me that as long as I work in this system, that I am in a way and accomplice, and that actually was so freeing once I, once I was able to say that it, it sounds a little sort of weird at first to some people I think, but it’s totally true. I am, I am part of the problem. Not intentionally, but I, I, you know, I show up and contribute. We

Monica (46:19):

Are

Gabe (46:20):

<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I don’t want to keep doing that.

Monica (46:24):

We have to choose to be part of the solution, I think.

Gabe (46:27):

Yes, absolutely.

Monica (46:28):

So, so speaking of your Twitter, Gabe, where can we connect with you online, your Twitter and website and those types of things?

Gabe (46:37):

So the place where I really want people to connect is medicine.org. Great. I, we have a, a free newsletter for anyone, whether doctors or anyone, even outside of healthcare, who’s interested in this can subscribe and can see what’s going on with our organization. And one of the things as it, as it’s meant to be a conversation. So if you have something to say about these things, you can reply to the newsletter and we’re small enough at this point in time that you’re, you’re, you’re gonna be heard and you might be responded to, or brought into the group if you’d like to get involved. So that would be the first place on Twitter. It’s at Gabriel Dane, like a great Dane. And yeah, I that’s the place I’m most active on social media and then fight burnout.org. If you wanna see the t-shirts that we were talking about earlier.

Monica (47:30):

Great. And can people still get the t-shirts? Are they available?

Gabe (47:33):

You can order them there’s a link to get them from Teespring, they’ll print one up and ship it to you. And proceeds are actually donated to Medicine Forward for the nonprofit work and advocacy. And the other thing is I still periodically will send them to someone if I think they’re doing something really inspiring. So that’s my challenge to someone listening to this is like, do something that knocks my socks off about burnout and you’ll for sure get a shirt.

Monica (48:01):

Oh, I love that. That’s a great challenge. So. All right. Well, thank you so much for being with us here today and I’ll, I’ll post those links in the comments below as well. So thanks Gabe, and keep, keep doing what you’re doing.

Gabe (48:16):

<Laugh> thank you, Monica. I, it was a lot of fun and it was great to catch up,

Monica (48:21):

Talk to you soon.

The New Future of Work Podcast, Welcome to the Show, Episode 0

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The New Future of Work Podcast Welcome Episode
Welcome Episode 0

Welcome to the introductory episode of The New Future of Work (TM)! This is a special interview with our Executive Producer, Neil Hughes as he interviews the podcast host, Monica Bourgeau. In this episode, we talk about why Monica created this podcast, what you can expect to get from it, as well as a sneak preview of some of her upcoming guests.

In the show, Monica mentioned her company website which is www.NewPhasePartners.com. You can also connect with Monica on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and over on Medium.com.

The first full episode of The New Future of Work (TM) Podcast will launch on November 11, 2022.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you usually find your podcasts.

Show Transcript (via AI – please excuse any errors):

Neil Hughes (00:44):

My name is Neil C Hughes. I’m usually the host of the Tech Talks Daily podcast, but today I have the honor of introducing you to my good friend Monica, who’s gonna be the host of this podcast called The New Future of Work. And so, Monica, for people tuning into this podcast for the very first time, can I ask you to tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

Monica Bourgeau (01:09):

Sure. Thanks Neil. Well, I’m a future of work consultant and executive coach, and I work with organizations and leaders who are trying to transform their workplace culture, but they don’t know where to start. So just to step back a little bit and tell you a little bit about my background, I actually grew up in very rural Montana. I then went on to study psychology and ended up getting a master’s degree in management and organizational leadership. And after my undergraduate degree, I did what I thought we were supposed to do, right? I went and got a corporate job and thought if I could just climb the corporate ladder and become a senior executive, then everything would be okay. And so I was really committed to that, even though I had a very young daughter at the time and was really juggling a lot and had a lot on my plate.

Monica Bourgeau (01:59):

But I worked a lot and I was really kind of committed to this goal. And so I worked a lot and essentially I ended up, I did end up becoming a healthcare executive before I was 30. And once I got there, I kind of took a look around and realized, you know, I was pretty miserable. I didn’t enjoy what I was doing and working all of the long hours and stress really affected my family relationships and took a lot of time away from my daughter. And so I really started reevaluating things. And I blamed myself a lot. You know, I did a lot of looking at, you know, could I be more productive? Could I manage my time better? You know, all of these different things that we do to kind of try to make it work. I ended up leaving the corporate world and went into business for myself a few times and kind of went back and forth because I always thought that it was my fault.

Monica Bourgeau (02:57):

You know, if I could just work harder, if I could just manage my time better, if I could just do something better, then the workplace would work for me. I’ve always been somebody who enjoys working and really know that it’s part of my purpose in life is to have a career and make a difference in the workplace. And so you know, I did that a number of times and also ended up burning out at work a number of times because I worked so many hours and was kind of constantly in a state of imbalance. And so I finally left the corporate world for good back in 2020. Before that I wrote a book called The Change Code, kind of looking at some of these systems and why systems in general are struggling right now. You know, our, our work systems, our political systems, our school systems, there’s just a lot of challenges in the world right now.

Monica Bourgeau (03:52):

And so I wanted to understand that a little bit better. And I also studying to become a futurist. And so I started taking courses with an organization in Germany, actually called Futur/io and an organization in Copenhagen. And I took some classes at MIT and really started studying the future and realized this connection between kind of this lifelong love hate relationship that I had with work and trying to have a career and trying to be a mom and trying to, you know, maintain my home and my health and all of these different things that we juggle. And so as part of this process, I really started to identify new ways of working and organizations that are beginning to create the future of work today, both here in the US and also in other countries and the way other countries work as well. That became fascinating for me and is part of why I wanted to start this podcast is to share what I’ve been learning about these emerging trends and how the workplace is changing today, hopefully for the better, to make it a little bit more manageable for other people who are out there trying to just juggle it all but also really want to have a career.

Neil Hughes (05:11):

And you listed so many great reasons there. Well, I’m excited for you to launch this podcast. I’ve interviewed over 2,200 different people and people often say to me, now what have, what have everybody got in common that I’ve gone on to achieve great success? And I think we all have moments where we are challenged. We have moments where we, we are frustrated with our lives, we come across problems in the workplace, but for the most part, and I possibly include myself in this, I might complain about it and not do anything about it. But what you are doing here is you’re trying to make a difference, building a future of work and actually looking for a solution. And that is one of the things that excites me. And I suspect that so much of what you just said will resonate with people all around the world no matter what their gender is. They’ve been parents, they’re workers, they have friends they’re trying to juggle and get through life. And I cannot commend you enough for what you’re doing here. And I’d love to just expand a little more on why a podcast, What inspired you to create this? Could you expand on that for me?

Monica Bourgeau (06:16):

Sure. Well, I think part of the reason that I wanted to do a podcast is because part of my process has been connecting with all of these amazing people across the globe that are doing things differently and think really innovatively. And so I just thought, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to share these amazing stories with other people who are in similar situations and who are also trying to change their workplace? And so for me, that was why is, I was having so much fun having these conversations and I thought it would be really helpful for others to hear these discussions as well.

Neil Hughes (06:54):

I love that. And especially because I think the world has changed so much over the last three years. And I’m curious now we’ve come through remote working, hybrid working. What do you think is wrong with the traditional workplace and why do you think we need to reinvent the way we work? Because I think it’s a question that nearly everybody’s asking right now, isn’t it?

Monica Bourgeau (07:13):

Yeah, that is such a good question. You know, personally for me, I believe that the workplace is broken and I think that we’re seeing that with other people as well, with things like the great resignation. And there’s a trend here in the US that’s become a popular term, the media called quiet Quitting.

Where people are doing just the bare minimum so that they don’t get fired, but they’re not fully engaging with their companies and their work, which to me is so sad because I believe that our work is such a big part of why we’re here and our contribution during our life and to, you know, be quite quitting and disengaged and not fully committed to the work that you’re doing. You know, quite honestly it’s soul sucking. I’ve, I’ve been in in positions like that where I’ve felt that, where I just didn’t feel that engagement, you know, even though I wanted to, I just couldn’t quite get engaged with the work position.

Monica Bourgeau (08:11):

I just feel that that’s really sad and that it’s a loss for a lot of companies that have these amazing employees with these tremendous gifts and they’re not tapping into it. I believe that the workplace has changed permanently and Covid was definitely a factor in that.

In fact, I follow a, a lot of futurists, but one of them is Jane McGonigal who recently published a book called Imaginable. And one of the things that she talks about in that book is that essentially for us, covid was a shared collective trauma because everyone in the world went through this trauma at the same time, where it basically upended our entire lives and changed everything overnight. And so, you know, as a human species, we all have that in common. And one of the things that she shared that I think is really cool is that has shown that the 10 years following a major trauma in someone’s life is a period of dramatic change. And so I look at that as a huge opportunity for us as humans to reflect back at what was working and what wasn’t working before covid and design better systems and better ways of being. And so I think that right now is just a time of huge opportunity for creating positive change. For me it’s focusing on changing the workplace.

Neil Hughes (09:36):

Wow, Incredible. And I completely agree with you. And again, so much of what you just said will resonate with people around the world. Every single person listening to this needs a reason to jump out of bed in the morning, a sense of purpose and building a future of work. It’s a future of work is something that will impact every single person. So as for the podcast though, what is the new Future of Work podcast? And I know you don’t wanna reveal too much cuz we have a lot of interviews lined up, but what can we expect in your first episode?

Monica Bourgeau (10:05):

Sure. So the New Future of Work podcast for me is my way of sharing workplace trends and highlighting emerging practices and companies that are creating the future of work today. You know, this isn’t tomorrow we’re talking about there are companies both in the US and abroad that are dramatically changing the workplace. They’re bringing in flexibility, they’re looking at four-day work weeks, they’re looking at remote work situations, hybrid work situations, self-managing teams, where you start to level the hierarchy where we don’t just necessarily have this top down leadership model anymore, but we actually have teams that are able to manage themselves. And I’ve seen that happen in just the most interesting places, including at a rural hospital. I’ve done a lot of work in healthcare and there’s a rural hospital in Wisconsin actually that has a self-managing team. They might not realize that, but they were having a hard time staffing their admissions desk.

Monica Bourgeau (11:04):

And so what they ended up doing was the CEO said, Okay, here’s the criteria. This is the work that needs to be completed. These are the hours that we need someone here, you guys work amongst yourself and come up with a workable solution. And so, you know, that dramatically changed that work environment because some of the employees were having a hard time with childcare and pickup and drop off from school and all different things. They were able to work together to come up with a schedule that met the needs of the organization, but also provided some of the flexibility that the employees needed. And so that’s been a tool for them to be able to, in their staffing levels, which was a real challenge. So those are kind of the, the stories that are exciting for me that are happening out there.

Neil Hughes (11:52):

And I’m gonna push you a little bit more now and ask you who are you gonna be speaking with? Are there any teases that you can share on some of the guests that you’ve lined up or, or some of the businesses that you might be speaking with in the coming weeks?

Monica Bourgeau (12:05):

Yes. So we’ve have a lot of amazing conversations scheduled and I’m so excited. One of our first guests is Dr. Gabe Charbonneau, who’s a family practice physician, and he’s working on kind of reinventing the workplace for physicians and he’s also the founder of Medicine Forward. I’m also going to speak with a Dutch futurist, whose name is Eric Korsvik Ostergaard. And Eric is actually working in the field where he goes and works with organizations to help them create little mini experiments to change their workplace. And so he talks with us about that process and how that looks. I also have a friend and fellow author, Dr. Peter Mary, who is the co-founder of Ubiquity University, which is an online learning platform to help kind of conscious leaders work in this current environment. And he’s also the author of a book called Why Work. And so I, I speak with Dr. Peter Mary as well, and lots of exciting conversations to come.

Neil Hughes (13:08):

Oh, exciting. I’ve read that book. So that’s one I’ll be checking out for sure. And as we talk about the future of work, obviously it impacts every single person, but who would you say the podcast is aimed?

Monica Bourgeau (13:20):

Yeah, great question. Well, it’s really aimed at organizational leaders, so CEOs, human resource directors, managers, anyone who’s leading some type of department, company or organization that they’re ready to change. They know that things aren’t working the way that they are and they’re open to listening to new ideas and new possible solutions.

Neil Hughes (13:45):

Awesome. And obviously this is Episode Zero, which is almost an intro episode just to prepare people for what to expect, but as they are just about to hit the subscribe. But, and then if they’ve not done already, please, I employ you to do that. But what would you say your ultimate aim for the show is, and what would you like listeners to walk away with from each episode?

Monica Bourgeau (14:05):

I would love people to walk away from each episode feeling very inspired and excited, and I want them to be able to go back to their workplace and look at it with different eyes, you know, because a lot of times when you first hear about some of these concepts, it’s easy to say, Oh, well that couldn’t work in my industry or that couldn’t work in my company. And I hear that all the time, and once we start to dive into it a little bit, we find that a lot of these new models are possible in your industry and in your company. And so yeah, just being able to look at their organization with new eyes.

Neil Hughes (14:41):

And something that excites me about recording this episode is once people are subscribed and you’ve got 10, 15, 20 interviews out there, you’re gonna be having so many rich conversations with people, and you are, you are an absolute natural at getting these insights from your guests. But many people will start to think, But what about Monica? What does she think? What does, what excites Monica about this? So this is my opportunity to ask that question on behalf of everyone listening. So Monica, what excites you about building a new future of work?

Monica Bourgeau (15:10):

Well, I think what excites me the most is that I feel like it will really help people. You know, I think that there’s this kind of shared frustration with work right now, you know, with things like the great resignation, but also, you know, unfortunately my daughter is now working in the corporate world, or, or fortunately I guess she has a good job, but I see her facing a lot of the same struggles that I faced when I was a young mom as well. She’s also a young mom, and it’s difficult, you know, when you have a very kind of rigid corporate environment, and you want to work and you enjoy working, but you’re kind of forced to fit in this cookie cutter mold, and if it doesn’t work for you, then you know, it can be really challenging. I think that’s what I’m most excited about, is being able to change the workplace for her and, you know, hopefully for my granddaughter and future generations.

Neil Hughes (16:06):

Excellent. Well, the podcast is already live on Spotify, Apple podcast, Amazon Music, and wherever you listen to your podcast. But finally, before I let you go, Monica, when can people expect those new episodes to drop and how can they find out a little bit more information about you too?

Monica Bourgeau (16:23):

Yeah, so we plan to release new episodes every two weeks and people can learn more about me and the podcast by visiting my company’s website www.newphasepartners.com or by connecting with me over on LinkedIn or Twitter. And my username is @MonicaBourgeau on both of those platforms.

Neil Hughes (16:46):

Well, I wish you the best of look with the New Future of Work podcast. I’m fortunate to see behind the scenes that you’ve got some great interviews lined up. You’ve already got seven or eight in the bag, so I’m looking forward to seeing these go out there. But thank you, Monica, for giving everybody a scene setter for the podcast and what they can expect.

Monica Bourgeau (17:03):

Thank you, Neil, and it was great talking with you today, and thank you for lending your expertise to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the New Future of Work podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave us a review and don’t forget to subscribe so you can be sure to catch our next episode.

Launching 11/11/22: The New Future of Work (TM) Podcast with Monica Bourgeau!

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Coming 11/11/22: The New Future of Work Podcast

The world of work is changing and old systems and ways of operating are no longer effective.

More than 65% of employees are reconsidering the role of work in their lives. Employee stress levels and negative emotions are at an all-time high, and fewer than 1 in 4 employees feel their employers care about their wellbeing. It’s time for a change.

People need to come first.

It’s time to design new ways of working and create human-centered workplaces where employees thrive and do meaningful work.

Join host, future of work consultant, and award-winning author, Monica Bourgeau, as she goes behind the scenes with with leaders and changemakers to learn how they are designing workplaces of the future today, how they moved from idea to execution, and how they stay motivated when the going gets tough.

A former healthcare executive for nearly 25 years, Monica went from burned out, exhausted, and disheartened to mission-driven and excited to wake up every morning. As the CEO of New Phase Partners, she now helps leaders create more human-centric and mission-driven organizations.

Get inspired to think about work in a new way, transform your workplace, and bring about lasting change in your part of the world. Let’s get started.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you usually find your podcasts.

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