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Creating Meaningful Connections with a Hybrid Workforce with Jan Keck – The New Future of Work Podcast, Episode 6

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Creating Meaningful Connections with a Hybrid Workforce

Listen on: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

I’m excited to welcome Jan Keck to today’s show. Jan is an Experience Designer, Facilitator, Trainer, TEDx Speaker, Video Creator, Entrepreneur and Dad of a 3-year old. He has been running public events and online experiences that build trust, empower people to share vulnerable stories and turn strangers into friends.

Jan’s mission is to help people feel less alone, so by creating experiences, workshops and programs he is fueling the movement for deeper human connection.

His “Connection Cards” have been used on every continent around the globe and helped turn over 70,000 shallow conversations into deep connections.

In the past few years, he ran over 30 workshops and trainings with over 700 trainers, facilitators, educators, team leaders learning the skills to create engaging, purposeful, inclusive and connecting experiences on Zoom. I have participated in several of Jan’s programs in recent years and they have helped me become a better Zoom meeting facilitator, as well as feel more comfortable creating meaningful engagements with meeting participants.

Recently, Jan relocated from Canada to Germany to be closer to family and is continuing to build a community of trainers, facilitators and creators that create MAGICAL HUMAN MOMENTS online.

His work has been featured on TEDx, CBC News, Breakfast TV, Cityline and HuffPost.

On today’s show we talk about how to create more connection in the workplace, especially for those who are working remotely or in a hybrid workplace.

Learn more about Jan’s work on his website which is www.jankeck.com, or on social media.

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 (via AI – please excuse any errors):

Monica (00:06):

Well, welcome to the show, Jan. It’s so good to see you. So I have a very special guest today. His name is Jan Keck and he’s an experienced designer, a facilitator, a trainer, a TEDx speaker, video creator, entrepreneur, and dad to a three year old. So and so much more. So, Jan, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here today.

Jan (00:28):

Thank you so much for having me. You now reminded me that I need to update that bio because my son just turned four three days, four days ago.

Monica Bourgeau (00:37):

Oh, wow. <Laugh>. So just barely four, but that counts.

Jan Keck (00:42):

Yes, exactly.

Monica Bourgeau (00:45):

Well, maybe we could just start by you telling us a little bit about your story and your background, and I know, I know you’re living in Germany at the moment, so maybe you can tell us a little bit about that as well.

Jan Keck (00:57):

Sure. So I am in Germany right now. I’m actually sitting in my parents’ apartment. But this is also my home office kind of away from home. I now live with my wife and my son five minutes away from here. But I spent the last 14 years living in Canada. So my life is kind of moving. There’s been big changes happening in the last little bit and I’m still struggling a bit with the whole idea of moving back home versus what I like to say. I’m moving forward to like a new place cuz so many things have changed here. And sometimes I think for anybody that has moved away to a different place, they can maybe relate when you move away and then you move back, it sometimes feels like you’ve failed and you’re moving back because it didn’t work out. And I think for us, the decision to move literally closer to family, like really close to my parents is because we have a little kid that you might even hear in the background running up and down the hallway.

Jan Keck (02:05):

And the pandemic kind of made that all possible because my wife sold her Columbian street food restaurant and my work has moved from in person to all virtual. And maybe that’s a good time to talk a bit about what I actually do for work. But when somebody asks me, what do you do? I usually like to tell them just I help people feel less alone because I do a lot of different things. The one thing they all have in common is helping people connect in a more meaningful way. So by the end they feel a bigger sense of belonging if that is at work, if that is at a networking event, if that is just because they arrive to a new city and they don’t know anyone or maybe even at a dinner party. So yeah, I’m wondering should I, like how far back should I go with my story?

Monica Bourgeau (02:57):

I think that’s a great Starting point. And I might just mention too that you and I met a number of years ago at the World Domination Summit here in Portland when you were talking about your Ask Deep Questions cards and facilitating a lot of meetups and groups for people to connect and get to know each other better.

Jan Keck (03:32):

<Laugh> Yes, World Domination Summit and Ask Deep Questions. I think both of those things have a lot in common because when I first attended the conference, I didn’t know anyone who was going there. I just heard about it from other friends who basically said, you have to go there to experience it. But what I learned is that when you get people in the same room or in the same place who, who share similar values, then you’re gonna have a much easier time connecting with them. And I’m sure you’ve experienced that too. There almost every single person, you don’t do a lot of small talk. You kind of go to the deeper meaningful things much quicker. And I’ve realized that that’s actually the thing that has been missing in my life. Like the first year that I attended the World Domination Summit, I also attended another weekend retreat near Toronto that I now say I have made 30 new friends in 48 hours.

Jan Keck (04:33):

Wow. Because at that point I lived in Toronto for eight years, or six years, a long time. And I did go to lots of networking events and social events and I made a lot of connections and was very proud when I got to like the 500 connections on LinkedIn where it just does 500 plus. Yeah. And like, yes, I’ve made it, I’ve built my network. Yet I did not have a lot of like really close friends. And it wasn’t until that weekend retreat where I realized, oh my God, these conversations I’m having with people, like where we share like really personal things and we share what we’re working on and our goals and our challenges in relationships and in business and in life, that I needed to find more ways to have experiences like that. And for me that was not only attending these experiences, but figuring out how can I create that for myself and for others as well.

Monica Bourgeau (05:36):

I love that so much. And that kind of just mindset is part of why I wanted to have you on the show today. Because one of the challenges that a lot of employers are facing right now are working with employees who are either remote or they’re hybrid. And just in general, I think that there’s a real struggle to find connection in the workplace. You probably heard about the term quiet quitting that’s become popular on TikTok and employees are disengaged and just feeling really disconnected at work. So what are your thoughts on what might be happening there and how could we start to bring some of these concepts into the workplace to create a more meaningful connection?

Jan Keck (06:27):

Yes. I actually was talking about the loneliness epidemic before the C pandemic started happening, knowing that there’s a lot of people who don’t feel like they have anyone to talk to. I think there was a statistic that only one in four Americans has somebody that can confide in. There are statistics about how loneliness can have a big impact on our physical health where some scientists have compared it to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. And I already knew, okay, this is gonna be a big issue if you’re in the workplace if you’re not. For myself, when I was in Toronto, as I shared earlier, I felt like I was really well connected. Like I had a lot of connections. I wouldn’t say that I was lonely yet. I did still feel that impact of I don’t have anyone to talk to.

Jan Keck (07:21):

I didn’t have anyone that I could call in the middle of the night or like show up at front of their door with let’s say a bottle of wine and say like, Hey, I, I dunno, there’s something going on. Can we chat? And they would like, welcome me in. And I think there’s this thing happening where there’s a lot of people who feel disconnected, but number one, they might not even be aware of it because we distract ourselves by, I dunno, picking up the phone, going on social media and like scrolling through like different social media app feeds. And you just kind of numb that feeling. You’re not really pausing to pay attention to it. And I think that’s the bigger problem that a lot of people feel disconnected, yet they don’t notice it and therefore they’re not looking for a solution for that either.

Monica Bourgeau (08:11):

Oh, interesting point. Well, and it’s challenging when you talk about disconnection at the workplace too, because up until now it’s just been known that you leave your personal life at the door. Right? You don’t bring your personal life into the workplace. But I think as a result, we’re not bringing our whole selves to the work environment and we’re not forming those deeper connections.

Jan Keck (08:38):

Yeah. I mean I’m sure you’ve heard about the, the Google study where they figure out how what makes a highly successful high performing team. They found out that psychological safety and trust are actually the foundation that teams need to have, which means team members need to be able to feel safe to speak up and like share things that are hard or be vulnerable in front of each other. And I think most teams don’t have that. Like, you might have an idea, but you’re like, Oh, but what if people don’t like it and you don’t share it? Or maybe you make a mistake. And rather than telling everyone right away, you kind of try to cover your tracks. You try to hide it and hope that it doesn’t come out because you’re afraid of what people will say or do once they do find out that you made a mistake.

Jan Keck (09:28):

I think the best teams are open to sharing these things and I feel like there’s so many parallels that I’m realizing now as I’m even sharing that with parenting. Like all of the things I’m learning of how to talk to my son or how to be a better parent can be applied to leading a team. And yeah, it’s definitely in a challenging place that we’re in with teams not even being in the same room often. Right. because of the pandemic or people have moved online. So it’s, it’s just getting more complicated.

Monica Bourgeau (10:10):

It sure is. And during the pandemic, I really enjoyed taking your Zoom facilitator class and I feel like I learned so many things that I didn’t know. And I’ve been using Zoom a long time before the pandemic, but there’s so many things that you can do to create more engagement using virtual communication as well. So maybe we could talk about a few of those suggestions.

Jan Keck (10:39):

Sure. The very first thing that I have noticed, especially when it comes to creating trust is creating psychological safety, creating those connections with teams. I like to think of new teams, strangers. Like that’s maybe the hardest part. It might be easier if people know each other already a little bit. But if you get a group of strangers together, there’s this moment that happens often where you ask a question and all you get is crickets.

Monica Bourgeau (11:11):

Nobody wants to speak.

Jan Keck (11:13):

Right? Yeah. Or what has happened more frequently recently that I’ve heard from a few people, they wanna send everyone to breakout rooms and suddenly they drop off and they leave the meeting.

Monica Bourgeau (11:25):

Yeah.

Jan Keck (11:26):

And to me, both of those are signs that the people, the participants don’t feel safe yet. Like we haven’t built that psychological safety yet. So we’re trying to do something that is a little bit too early, a little bit too risky, too vulnerable for people to do, which is unmuting and sharing something in front of a group of people that they don’t know. So when I design a meeting, when I design a workshop, I always try to build it the same way I would build a campfire. That’s why for the people who would be able to see me, I have a campfire standing behind me. When you hold up a lighter to a big log, what would happen? It probably would not catch fire. Right. Because the flame is way too small for that big log. Yep.

Jan Keck (12:15):

And that’s what we’re trying to do when we ask participants to unmute right in the beginning, share something or send them to breakout rooms too quickly. It’s too uncomfortable for them to participate. So when we do the fire analogy, if we light our paper first and then add the little sticks and then the kindling and at the end put the big log on the fire, once it’s burning already quite well, then this is gonna work and create this nice fire that we can sit around and provide warmth and we can cook food on it. So when we’re designing a virtual experience, what are those first few things that we can do to get people to open up to kind of get settled to get to know each other, but on a slow speed?

Jan Keck (13:07):

So for me, some of the easiest things to do at the very beginning is asking people to just give you a thumbs up or typing a yes in the chat. Like those actions are much easier to do, or like voting in a poll than anything else after. And in my opinion, if you want people to unmute, if you give them a moment to maybe think about the answer to your question, maybe write down the answer to the question. Share it in a breakout room, then come back, they’re much more likely to engage because now they’ve had time to think about it, they’ve had time to process it, maybe they had time to practice sharing and getting feedback from a small group before they try that in the large room.

Monica Bourgeau (13:52):

That’s a great suggestion. And many times we don’t do that, especially in work meetings, there isn’t a warmup, it’s just jump right into business.

Jan Keck (14:04):

Yeah. I think it’s different if you have the same people in the meeting every, like if it’s an ongoing, let’s say a weekly standup meeting or something like that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then of course you don’t have to build that psychological safety that’s slowly every single time. Sure. But if you work with new people, if you have like a new employee joining or if you have like whole group of people that are working on a new project together, I think we really need to spend the time in building those connections very slowly in the beginning. And maybe having a session just focused on people getting to know each other is, is worth the investment up front.

Monica Bourgeau (14:41):

That’s a great suggestion. And what do you recommend, I know some workplaces now have some people that are coming to the office and then some people are remote and, you know, coming and going and kind of hybrid. How do you structure something when you have some people physically in the office and some people that are remote?

Jan Keck (15:04):

I’m very glad that we’ll talk about this because I’m actually designing a workshop on exactly that topic right now.

Monica Bourgeau (15:10):

Oh, good.

Jan Keck (15:11):

And it’s one that I might have a little bit of a controversial opinion on as well. I actually believe that a hybrid meeting should not exist. I think it either is a remote, like virtual meeting or it is an in person meeting. There is no real use case where I think hybrid will be better than let’s say all going virtual, all going in person with the risk of losing some people that can’t attend one or the other. Yep. And here’s the reason why. I think if we look at the meetings that we wanna do and start by what’s the purpose of why we’re bringing people together, Like what do we actually want to have accomplished by the end? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, very rarely would the answer be, Oh I think this should be half of the people online and half of the people in person or some kind of mix of that.

Jan Keck (16:02):

Because the risk of ignoring and missing like communication from half of the group or part of the group that is in the other space right is way too high. And just the fact of making everyone feel included and making everybody’s voice feel heard is so much harder. As it is in my opinion, a hybrid meeting is actually three meetings. Like you’re designing an in-person experience. Yeah. You’re designing a remote experience, but then you also have this overlap of where both of them connect. And to me those are the hybrid moments. And hybrid moments can exist, but I don’t think the whole meeting should be designed as hybrid because you’re running two things. You can’t do just it by doing something in person and expecting the virtual participants to feel as included as the people who are there in the room.

Monica Bourgeau (16:59):

I agree with that so much, even if it is controversial. But I’ve facilitated a meeting where we had many people virtual and then we had some people together kind of around a phone with the Zoom participants on a screen. And like you’re saying, there’s multiple meetings happening because there’s discussion happening there in the room that the people on the Zoom call can’t hear. And it was very difficult to connect. I totally see what you’re saying, but with having kind of these mixed teams that that could be a little bit challenging.

Jan Keck (17:40):

Hybrid meetings shouldn’t exist, but the hybrid workforce definitely does exist. Like it has existed for a long time. So I think having people meet virtually and meet in person is definitely what is happening. And I think there’s a lot of opportunities in there because we can do asynchronous communication as well, Right. Like we don’t always need to be there at the same time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I think that’s what a lot of workplaces are right now, trying to figure out how can we find that right mix of when is it necessary to bring everyone in and when is it not necessary and maybe we can just do a virtual meeting instead. I think those decisions hopefully are gonna be made with more intention than just saying it’s gonna be, it doesn’t matter where you are, you just call in this number or you’re in this room and we’re gonna do it hybrid. That’s kind of where I’m hoping we’ll get to

Monica Bourgeau (18:41):

I hope so too. So essentially even if people are in the office, they could still take the Zoom call in their own private office on Zoom. They don’t necessarily have to convene in person if a large number of the participants are gonna be on Zoom already, just make it a Zoom meeting.

Jan Keck (18:59):

Yeah. Like that would be one solution where everybody feels at the end probably more connected and more visible. Because even if you think of having one camera that shows a whole group to the people who are on Zoom, they will never see the facial expressions of each individual speaker. Because they’re sitting so far away from the camera. But if everybody was in front of their own laptop and once you solve them more like the audio issues, even if they weren’t in the same room. I mean, we all have the devices. I think everybody or most workplaces people have like a personal device that they could log in from, that they then could access the chat they could access different engagement tools or reaction buttons in Zoom. They could share their screen and I think that would make for a much more inclusive experience if not everybody can be there in person.

Monica Bourgeau (19:53):

Yeah. Great suggestions. What other kind of challenges are you hearing about in the workplace with regard to remote work and zoom and video and all of those factors?

Jan Keck (20:07):

Yeah. there’s one big issue that I knew was gonna be a big, big challenge that actually was, that almost helped me back from doing anything online at all. Oh. Because I’ll show it to you, but the people who are listening to this can’t see it. But this is basically a padded envelope. And on this envelope I wrote down Sleep Well and it has a picture of a phone in a sleeping bag. It basically is a cell phone sleeping bag. I’m doing an in-person workshop at the end of this week. And I’m gonna have participants create their own cell phone sleeping bag, bringing a bunch of padded envelopes. I’m gonna bring some stickers and some markers so they can customize it. And that’s where we’re gonna put our phones at the beginning of the workshop so they’re sealed off. Yeah. And they’re not a distraction for when we’re focusing on connection.

Jan Keck (20:58):

Like, I’m running a workshop on building deeply connected teams and to me the phones are one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to connecting with each other because I’m sure you’ve been in the situation where you’re with a friend at a coffee shopping or you’re telling a story and why you’re mid story, like they get a message or the phone rings and it’s on the table, You see that it’s ringing, they pick it up, they reply, you’re still talking. They haven’t even acknowledged you at that this point. Like it just makes you feel

Monica Bourgeau (21:33):

<Laugh>. Yeah. It’s so annoying.

Jan Keck (21:35):

Ignored. Right. It’s so annoying. And to me that’s what’s happening a lot since we had to move online. Like we couldn’t put the technology away anymore. Now we had to find a way on how do we still make sure that we’re present with each other? Cuz I don’t know if you’re looking at me or if you’re checking emails or if you’re scrolling on social media or if you’re doing something else. Right, Right. And I think a lot of people are actually doing something else when they’re attending a meeting. Yeah. Virtually they’re not really present with the person who is talking. So to me that’s maybe the biggest challenge. Like how do we solve this that we don’t make each other feel invisible and unimportant.

Monica Bourgeau (22:19):

Yeah. It is such a challenge. I’ve been to restaurants where I see a group of like three or four people and they’re not engaging with each other. They’re all looking at their phones. And I think you’re missing this huge opportunity to actually have a conversation with the people that are in front of you by looking at your phone. So I love the idea of the sleeping bag <laugh>.

Jan Keck (22:41):

Yeah. But of course that doesn’t really work if we’re all virtual. Unless I’m now thinking if you were an organization, you sent everyone a cell phone sleeping bag and like at the beginning of the virtual meeting they’re like putting it in there and they’re putting it away. Yeah. But still, we’re using our computers and there’s lots of other distractions that are on there, so we can’t, we can’t really turn that off. Right. And I think the, the most important thing we can do or the leaders can do who run meetings and run workshops is set the intention, like put it out there as like I call it a community agreement. Something that we agree on that during this call, especially if it’s focused on let’s say something that helps people connect with each other, where it’s not just a, like somebody’s doing a presentation and you’re there to listen, but is it, it’s a truly interactive experience. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> when we use breakout rooms, nobody wants to be talking to the other person that is not really there. Right. Absolutely. So I usually talk about giving each other the gift of presence and Yeah. Once I actually share what I just told you, Hey, I’m not sure if you’re looking at me or if you’re checking emails right now. Yeah. I know who’s been checking emails because of their facial expression mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and just mentioning that they will be more hesitant to go back to that after that.

Monica Bourgeau (24:07):

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I’m hearing a lot is people are tired of zoom and tired of being on the camera. In fact, I’m in a, a writer’s group that used to be on Zoom and we would work virtually, like it was a co-working and so we would turn our cameras off when we were co-working, but we had that moment of seeing each other first and it has just moved to no cameras, which I thought was kind of interesting because we’re just seeing basically the person’s box on the screen. So are you starting to hear kind of that almost backlash to zoom and video? And are there any suggestions that you have to help people kind of cope with that?

Jan Keck (24:51):

Yeah, for sure. I think this, this summer I felt the impact the most because this summer a lot of people went back to in person, people went back to the office. Even myself, I felt a little bit zoomed out because yeah. I spent most of my day sitting in the same spot where I’m at right now at my desk looking at a screen. Sure. And especially when it came to socializing with my connections, which are in North America, most of them different time zone. It was the late afternoons that they were like, Hey, we should hang out. We should do a video call. Yeah. And I just was exhausted by a full day sitting in front of the screen that I said, I don’t actually wanna do this anymore. I actually did kind of lose out on connecting with a few people because I didn’t have the energy.

Jan Keck (25:40):

Sure. And I tried to figure out, is that just me said a thing that lots of other people experience as well. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and I did share kind of an email and on my social media how I’m kind of reconsidering this whole career that I’ve built of teaching people how to connect virtually. Is this like, should we even be doing that? Is this still a problem or should we just go back to in person? That was also right after I attended the World Domination Summit again in person. Yeah. And I came back having given and received so many hugs and high fives and hang out with people in person that I felt the energy of being around people again, that I questioned everything. And out of that moment came kind of two insights and one experiment. First I realized, okay, not everybody has the opportunity to turn technology off and go back to in person.

Jan Keck (26:39):

Right. Like we just talked about hybrid remote teams that don’t work in the same city, same country. And giving our employees the option to stay at home or go to the office. Yep. All of those companies don’t have a choice but to figure out how to do the virtual and hybrid mm-hmm. <Affirmative> type of work workforce. And so I knew, okay, in terms of my business, this is definitely something I need to be investing more in. Like, I’m not gonna stop serving those people because they actually need it more than the people who do have the option to go in person or remote. The second thing I realized for myself personally, I haven’t since I moved to Germany, invested into finding my local community yet. So I just spent more time making connections with people here in my city.

Jan Keck (27:30):

I joined an improv meetup that I’m actually going to after this call today. And I think that helped me get back a little bit more of that energy. Yeah. and then the third thing that happened is I tried this experiment. I’m like, Okay, are we tired of being on a Zoom call or are we tired of looking at a screen and sitting at a desk? Oh, and I actually think it was the latter. So I said, Okay, what if we could still do a Zoom call, but we’re not gonna be at our desks. Yeah. And we’re not gonna be looking at the screen. So I created this series of remote adventure walks. I called them

Monica Bourgeau (28:11):

Oh fun.

Jan Keck (28:13):

Where I invited everyone to join on Zoom, but through their cell phone. Yeah. Grab earbuds and plug those in. Nobody’s turning on their camera, it’s just audio only. And I’m sharing different music and different activities that help people connect. And I can still do breakout rooms so people can do like smaller group conversations. And we did lots of like visualizing and I sent them on different adventures, basically saying, Okay, face the sun and walk that direction for the next few minutes. Yeah. They face or find the a natural object and describe that to each other in a breaker room. So there were a lot of activities that we could do that maybe not surprisingly. Yeah. Help people feel more energized. Ah. So I did this check in and check out at every session where I ask people how, how much energy do we have right now on a scale from one to 10.

Jan Keck (29:11):

<Affirmative> knowing that after a Zoom call, especially now in 2022, people usually feel drained. They feel like they have less energy of looking at a screen for like an hour. With the audio only experience, it was the complete opposite. Like people would check in at maybe like a five or six and almost everyone checked out at like a eight, nine, or 10. Wow. And people said I could have gone on for like another half hour, so I realized I can do much longer events because people are moving around. Like, your scenery is changing. Yeah. You only have sound, so you’re focusing on just that sense. And somehow it also made people feel more connected to each other. It was almost a little bit more intimate experience than looking at a screen and, and hearing somebody that way.

Monica Bourgeau (30:02):

Very interesting. I would love to participate in one of those calls. That sounds like a lot of fun. And I remember when you sent that email out that you were a little bit burned out on Zoom and I remember feeling a little panicky because I feel like you’re kind of the only person that I know of in the world really doing this kind of work of creating this deeper connection and doing the Zoom facilitation training. And I thought, if Jan steps away, what are we gonna do? <Laugh>? So I’m glad you found some solutions.

Jan Keck (30:36):

Yeah. It was a bit of an identity crisis that I had there, but like I said, it was more, more the personal need for connection that I felt For in person that I haven’t actually looked into yet mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and realizing like when I send out that email, I got, half of the people responded, I’m, I feel the same way. I don’t want to be on Zoom anymore, I don’t wanna look at a screen anymore. Right. and the other half said, I’m so grateful that this exists because of all of these opportunities and all of these friendships that I’ve made with people and all of these communities that I’ve found. So I knew that for some people it was really important to continue and for other people like me mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, maybe they needed to invest into their own kind of finding a new social circle, going back to in person, like going back to in person after the pandemic is challenging too.

Jan Keck (31:28):

It is. Right? Like there is, Yeah. It just feels different. I remember attending my very first in person event that I attended in the summer of 2021 with a community where I usually would hug everyone. Yeah. But when I approach people, I was not sure if I’m ready to hug or if they’re ready to hug. And it was just this weird thing, like kind of like when, when you’re trying to shake somebody’s hand and they want to give you a fist bump and you’re like, they change to the hand and you change to the fist. Right. Like it was just this awkward dance that kind of overtook those, but usually should be, Hey, it’s so great to see you again after like, being locked in for like a year and a half.

Monica Bourgeau (32:12):

Yeah. It’s been an interesting kind of dynamic to go back to some in-person meetings, you kind of have to just gauge the other person and what they’re kind of expecting as well. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but I think that’s a great suggestion though, is if people are, are feeling burned out on Zoom to try to find ways to get that in-person connection, even if it’s outside of your work. Or I know I find that I work from home all the time and I have for about 15 years and sometimes at the end of the day my husband will be coming home and I’ll say, Can we eat out? I just need to get out of the house and like be around other people. So that makes a lot of sense to me.

Jan Keck (32:57):

Yeah. It’s been, it’s been a good thing, even for myself with the remote adventure walks, I realized that with a lot of things I created it for myself because I’m like, I need this. Yeah. But then I was the one who was sitting in front of the computer doing breakout rooms and sending people off into adventures and I could not leave my computer because

Monica Bourgeau (33:19):

Right. I couldn’t. You’re

Jan Keck (33:20):

Facilitating, facilitated. And I think for a lot of people that are like running those meetings, it sometimes can feel like you’re left out of the connections that you’re creating all of those sparks for campfires that you’re igniting.

Monica Bourgeau (33:37):

Yeah. That’s so true. You also mentioned, you know, on the adventure walks that you have the cameras off. Do you think that kind of rotating between maybe camera on and camera off, do you think that’s helpful? Do you think the camera on is necessary? I’ve, I’ve heard some employers now are requiring cameras on during staff meetings and there’s a little bit of backlash to that. Like what, what do you see as far as the cameras concerned?

Jan Keck (34:04):

Yeah, I think the people who require cameras to be on, they don’t really trust their employees. Yeah. And, and I think it’s the same thing of the people who require employees to come back to the office and don’t want them to working at home, even though they might be more efficient there. It’s, I think a matter of trust there, because for me, I don’t require cameras on yet. I would say 90% of the time people have cameras. Almost everyone has cameras on when I, when I run sessions because I set those expectations from the beginning and I tell them why I want cameras to be on. Yeah. But there’s also times where I ask them to do, to actually turn it off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So whenever we do anything that is like a reflection exercise or a journaling activity, I tell everyone. Or if we’re watching a video, I tell everyone, Turn off your cameras because I’m not actually looking at you. We’re not looking at each other. Sure. We don’t need that. And I think it’s a good break from that feeling of being watched. And I think that’s the Yeah. The part that also gets tiring, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So of course when we do breakout rooms and you want to connect with each other, that’s where you wanna have your cameras on. If you’re one person’s doing a presentation that is not interactive, which I hope is also not happening as much anymore,

Monica Bourgeau (35:27):

Right.

Jan Keck (35:28):

Maybe not necessary, but I like to ask people for a thumbs up or head nods or at least some engagement in the chat or using the reaction button so I can get some feedback. Because for a presenter or if you’re a speaker, getting that feedback back from the audience is also really important to get your energy up.

Monica Bourgeau (35:50):

It is so important. I agree. Otherwise it feels like you’re just talking into space. And that’s a great observation about the whole camera aspect with regard to work that and the employee can feel that too. Like if your employer doesn’t trust you, you know. That doesn’t create a very good working relationship. I know that there’s a study that came out recently that something like only one in four employees feel like their employer cares about their wellbeing. And that’s just shocking to me. You know, if we feel like our employers don’t care about us, they don’t trust us you know, it doesn’t create a lot of loyalty on the other side, which kind of makes quiet quitting and some of these other things that we’re seeing difficulty in recruiting more understandable, I think.

Jan Keck (36:39):

Yeah. That’s a pretty crazy statistic. I haven’t heard that before, but I can see it. Yeah. From the conversations that I have with people and like when I work with organizations that have this tradition of like, we have our cameras off, we have to work way harder to get them to turn it on, but once they’re on, they usually stay on cuz people feel the impact of it. But yeah, it’s like once you start not caring about it, then mm-hmm. <Affirmative> enforcing it is just like that in my mind will backfire.

Monica Bourgeau (37:18):

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Well, good suggestions. I’m just curious, so what is your kind of vision for the future of work? Like if you could wave a magic wand and create, you know, work environments where people can actually thrive and enjoy going to work and really a better future for work, what would that look like?

Jan Keck (37:43):

Hmm. That’s a very good question. I think that where some organizations are probably already doing this, what I’m imagining good, which is in a way a hybrid workforce. Like yeah, employees can choose if they want to go to the office or work at home. But of course if you’re working in the office, there should be enough people there that you also feel a little bit more of that connection, that energy there, rather than everybody working kind of individually in their own space mm-hmm. <Affirmative> because then we could also just be all virtual. Right. But I think that there is gonna be a mix of giving people the flexibility and finding the reason why people need to come at least once a year. Like even for remote teams, I think if at least once a year they bring everyone together in the same place Yeah. For a short retreat, for example then they will build such stronger connections and like trust and psychological safety. Like it’s not impossible online, but it’s definitely easier in person. Yeah. And I think that will make an impact once people go back and working at home. And if you’re ever worried about employees doing their work, getting them in person connected and getting to know them a little bit better, just beyond the name that they have on the bottom of their zoom call <laugh> is I think a good thing.

Monica Bourgeau (39:11):

Yeah. Great suggestion. I worked for a company, one of my first jobs out of college actually that did a camp and they did it every two years or something, but they brought together all the employees from different states and locations and I just remember it as being like one of the most impactful things that I attended in business because we got to meet all of these people from other offices and we played basketball and we walked along the lake and, you know, we left with these amazing connections, but we also had all this great training in between. They did a good job of making it fun. But I love that suggestion and I don’t think companies kind of do that enough, you know. I know it’s expensive, but like our organization saved all of their training budget for that time period and invested it all in one place rather than everyone going to different conferences or that sort of thing. So

Jan Keck (40:10):

Yeah. I think it’s not possible for every organization. Yeah. And I think the, the matter of investing into that, like building those deeply connected teams will pay off if you do it virtually or in person. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. But most, I think again, thinking of like ideal future of work. The other thing I would love to see if there is weekly meetings with the same people. Yeah. Investing at least 10 to 15 minutes in connecting people to each other before we even get into the content. Cause I think 10 to 15 minutes from a whole week of work, that is not a lot of time, but I think it will make a huge impact if you kind of accumulate that on like in every, every week. That’s a lot of hours in the end that yeah. That will be added up.

Monica Bourgeau (41:04):

Great suggestions. So are you thinking just like a quick check in or something at the beginning before you jump into the business?

Jan Keck (41:12):

Yeah. I like to call them ice melters because ice breakers is definitely the word that makes people cringe a little bit too much. Yeah. But something that just warms up the people in the room, gets them to arrive, share something with each other, maybe do a quick breakout room depending on how big the group is. I have one client of mine, she works for a big bank in Canada and she has several teams that she runs. And they all have a weekly meeting and she started implementing some of the activities that I shared with her and by now has gone so far that she actually stopped being responsible for it. And every week a different team member is responsible to bring any activity that helps them connect. Like the only things are they need to prepare it. So if they need slides, they need to set up the slides if they need to bring anything they need to bring it. And it cannot be longer than 10 minutes. Nice. And at the beginning, every session they know who’s leading it, they run the activity and then they get on with the rest of the meeting. And she’s been doing that for a couple of years now and I can only guess how well it’s going because she’s still doing it.

Monica Bourgeau (42:22):

Wow. That’s awesome. I love that. Good example. So what are you most excited about right now?

Jan Keck (42:33):

I think, let me actually look at my calendar because I have a few things coming up. I think one thing I’m excited about is the remote adventure walks starting up again after the winter because I’m not sure how many people want to be spending time outside when it gets really cold.

Jan Keck (42:53):

I feel like we’re just at the point where it starts to get a little bit too cool to go on long walks outside. So I am excited to bring that also to organizations in the spring. And offer that as like, Hey, I can organize this once a month for your team. And again, it’s a great way to get off the screen but still have that kind of social interaction. So that’s one thing I’m excited about. And the other thing is my virtual facilitator training that you’ve been part of.

Monica Bourgeau (43:21):

Yeah. It was amazing

Jan Keck (43:22): Coming up to the ninth cohort.

Monica Bourgeau (43:25):

Wow.

Jan Keck (43:26):

And I’m not sure, I think were you part of the first one or the second one?

Monica Bourgeau (43:30):

It was one of those either the first or the second. I know it was pretty early on, but it’s still so helpful. I still use those techniques when I lead virtual meetings.

Jan Keck (43:40):

Yeah. So it’s evolved a lot since then. Wow. Every time it’s a little bit different mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and of course tools change. Zoom has changed a lot in the last two years. Yeah. I just had the graduation of the last cohort yesterday and I’m really excited about seeing them applying the things that they’re learning. I think that’s like more so the seeing the impact it can create for the people who take my training. Yeah. where I know okay, they can do a much bigger impact than me running every team building session. If they go out and they work with teams and they work with organizations and communities, then my impact of creating more inclusive and engaging experiences online can be much bigger.

Monica Bourgeau (44:27):

Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I’m excited that you’re still offering that as well as I really enjoyed it and we’ll make sure to put a link in the show notes to your website where people can learn more about that as well. So what is kind of one key takeaway that you wanna make sure our listeners today take with them after, after the show?

Jan Keck (44:51):

I think we’ll go back to the campfire that I mentioned earlier. And if the people are listening can just think of what’s one question, one activity, like one small thing you can ask your team members to do during the next team meeting to just open up the conversations. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> open up them for connecting with each other that isn’t too scary. So we don’t wanna ask them, Hey, when was the last time you felt vulnerable or when was the last time you cried? Like yeah, those are maybe great questions when we get to know people really well. Right. But not as like a first interaction. And I’ll actually share one question that I love asking people even at networking events. Oh. And I usually have people imagine that we’re meeting again one year from today. Yeah. we’re meeting at a restaurant and we have this bottle of champagne and two glasses and we’re cheering on something that we both have accomplished. Yeah. what is the one thing that you want to have accomplished in one year?

Monica Bourgeau (45:58):

I love that question.

Jan Keck (45:59):

Conversations are much better when we go to networking events than, Hey, so what do you do and how’s your week been and what are you gonna do on the weekend? I feel like gets more to the core of what people value as well.

Monica Bourgeau (46:17):

That’s a great question. I think we all get tired of the same old small talk at networking events, so I love that. Thank you. So Jan, what where can our listeners find you? What’s your website or social media or preferred place that people reach out to you?

Jan Keck (46:35):

Yeah. my hub of all the places, all the things that I do is my website. So if you go to www.JanKeck.com that’s where you’ll find out everything. And out of the other platforms, I’m mostly active on YouTube and LinkedIn these days. So anyways, listening to this, you can just send me a connection request, just make sure to mention that you’ve listened to this podcast so I know you’re not just a person trying to sell me something because I’m very picky with the connection request that I usually accept.

Monica Bourgeau (47:08):

There’s a lot of those these days. So. Wonderful. Well thank you so much for being on this show. I really appreciate it. And I’ll put links to those in the show notes as well then. Great to see you.

Jan Keck (47:22):

Yes, same. Thank you so much for having me.

Monica Bourgeau (47:24):

Thank you.

Creating a New Culture in Healthcare with Susan Hingle, MD – The New Future of Work Podcast, Episode 3

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Creating a New Culture in Healthcare

We are delighted to host, Susan T. Hingle, MD, FRCP, MACP (Sue) today to talk about her journey in medicine and the creation of the Center for Human and Organizational Potential (cHOP) at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, for which she is the Associate Dean. cHop has a vision of “professional and personal fulfillment realized for all.” cHOP’s mission is to create an environment in which inclusive partnerships unleash the individual and organizational potential of SIU’s people and communities to learn, thrive, and excel. It is a model that includes pillars professional development, leadership and excellence, wellness, and organizational development and change management.

She shares how advice from her residency program director encouraged her to get involved in changing the healthcare system, leading her to create Rush Community Service Initiatives Program to help the uninsured and underinsured in Chicago. Sue continued her career in medicine and now leads initiatives at the cHOP.

One aspect of Sue’s work at the cHOP that really stands out is how healthcare and administrative professionals from across the organization study and learn together. This helps create a “leveling of the hierarchy”, a challenge that is prominent in healthcare today.

Sue also shares about her personal journey for wellbeing and shares some of her favorite books and resources, including the message on the bottom of her emails which reads, “Do not feel compelled to answer this e-mail on evenings or weekends, unless it makes your life easier, giving her team permission to take time off.”

About Susan Hingle, MD, FRCP, MACP

Dr. Hingle is a general internist and a professor of medicine and director of faculty development. Dr. Hingle is a fellow with the prestigious Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program. She has received several teaching awards including the Golden Apple Award, the Excellence in Teaching Outstanding Teacher Award and the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University and a medical degree from Rush University Medical College. She completed an internal medicine residency at Georgetown University Medical Center, where she served as chief resident of internal medicine. Dr. Hingle is married and has two sons.

During the podcast, Sue referenced the Three Good Things exercise which we highly recommend. Learn more at Greater Good in Action: Three Good Things.

To learn more about Sue’s work, you can visit the Center for Human & Organizational Potential at SIU School of Medicine or connect with her on Twitter or Instagram.

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

Listen on: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

***

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

Monica (00:05):

Okay. Well, I’m very excited to have a special guest with me here today. Dr. Susan Hingle is a general internist and a professor of medicine who serves as Associate Dean for the Center for Human and Organizational Potential. She’s also the Director of Faculty Development at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Dr. Hingle is a fellow with the prestigious Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program, and she earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University, a medical degree from Rush University Medical College, and completed an internal medicine residency at Georgetown University Medical Center where she served as Chief Resident of Internal Medicine. Dr. Hingle, or Sue, as I’ll call her in the interview, is married and has two sons. She grew up in Decatur, Illinois and is extremely proud to be part of SI’s mission. So. Awesome. Sue, thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. It’s good to see you again.

Sue (01:10):

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you even more for doing this really important work.

Monica (01:16):

Thank you. It’s exciting. We were just talking about, it’s the, the Friday before a long weekend when we’re recording this and Sue’s been covering call for a little bit, so it’s been an interesting time.

Sue (01:33):

Definitely. Definitely.

Monica (01:35):

So maybe we could just start off by having you tell us a little bit about your story and your background and how you got to where you are today.

Sue (01:46):

Sure. you know, part of it was in my bio that you just read. So I grew up in Decatur, Illinois, which is about an hour from where I work. When I was growing up, my, I’m gonna probably do this in maybe there’s, I sort of view kind of three parts of my journey to where I’m at. The first part is related to growing up my mom was sick quite often. She had a couple of chronic illnesses and then ended up with two different cancers. And she passed away when I was 18. And when I was growing up I, I had a good, I had a good life, but we didn’t have a lot of healthcare in the region. The SIU School of Medicine was really pretty new. And in Decatur we didn’t have GI doctors, we didn’t have a lot of oncologists.

Sue (02:51):

So my parents traveled for healthcare quite a bit. And when I look at, so dad still lives over in Decatur and I have two sisters who live there. When I look at not only Decatur, but really the, the spans of central and Southern Illinois, it really has changed a lot in those 30, 40 years because of the school of medicine. So, SIU was founded to really train physicians who were going to work in central and southern Illinois. It’s a really, it’s a mission based medical school. And the missions are fourfold, it’s education, it’s patient care, it’s research. So sort of the typical missions of academic me medicine, but it’s one of the few medical schools that has service to the community embedded in the mission. And when you look at geographically the impact that School of Medicine has had on central and southern Illinois, it’s really amazing to, to see the changes that have happened.

Sue (04:03):

And so kids now growing up in Decatur and other places in central and southern Illinois, their parents, if they get sick, they can access healthcare. Right, Right. Where they’re at. And so that’s really what brought me to I, and has kept me at I u. So that’s part one. The second part is kind of my journey to, to advocacy. I have been involved with organized medicine since I was a medical student and definitely a resident. So when I was a medical student a friend of mine, a fellow medical student, we started a, a free clinic for pregnant women on the south side of Chicago. That’s amazing. And, and when we did that, we learned that medicine is a complex system. There’s so many, it’s more that obviously the physician patient relationship is critical, but it’s so much more than that.

Sue (05:06):

You know, patients have to exist and the physicians and other healthcare team members have to work within this complicated system. And so we were able to work with the system to figure out how to provide medications for our patients, how to get the hospital to agree most of these patients, this was pre Affordable Care Act. They were uninsured. And so we got the, the hospital to agree to let the physicians deliver their babies without charging them for that. And so we really, it was we learned about systems of care and the importance of that jumping. That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It was really cool. That actually started something at Rush that is still in existence called the Rush Community Service Initiatives Program. And it’s all these community service programs that are all student run. It, there’s staff support for it and faculty support but they’re all student initiated and student run, which is really, really pretty cool.

Monica (06:19):

What a great accomplishment. How do you think you were able to get everyone to work together? Cause that’s pretty major. Getting people to deliver free care and really collaborate.

Sue (06:30):

I think reminding people of why they do what they do. Yeah, I think it’s like most, most things, if you can kind of get people back to, back to their mission, back to their why, identifying those shared common goals we’re more alike than we are different.

Monica (06:53):

Absolutely. And speaking of that mission, I’m wondering if you mentioned in your earlier story about your mother’s health issues. And I’m sorry to hear that. Do you feel like that’s part of what inspired you to go into medicine?

Sue (07:13):

Maybe So I actually, when I went to college, I thought I was going to do social work mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And my mom passed away when, when I was a freshman. And my maladaptive coping behaviors was to just really engrossed myself in my studies and like not pay attention to, to all these horrible feelings that I was having. And I was working with a professor in the zoology department through a work study program. And he said, You know, Thompson’s my maiden name. You know, Thompson, you’re smart enough to be a doctor. Why don’t you just become a doctor? And I’m like, Oh, okay. I’ll just become a doctor. And so I, it’s

Monica (08:03):

Easy

Sue (08:04):

<Laugh>. Yeah. I think there have been several times in my life’s journey that other people saw more for me than I saw for myself. And I’m so grateful for that. And that was one of those times.

Monica (08:18):

Wow. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve had a few of those in my career too, and they can really make a difference. So

Sue (08:24):

Definitely another one of those was in residency. My residency program director, who has been one of my most important mentors. He was another one who kind of continued me on my advocacy journey. And I was lamenting to him about how different care was with patients depending on their ability to pay. And that really frustrated me. Yeah. And he said, You know, you can do something about that. And I’m like, What can I do? I’m an intern. And he said, You can get, you can get involved in organized medicine and change policies. And that was my entree into my work with the American College of Physicians (ACP) which has continued. And I’ve been part of the ACP for my whole professional life now. And it kind of culminated. I served as the chair of the ACP Board of Governors, which is the grassroots part of the organization.

Sue (09:28):

And then I chaired the, the Board of Regents which is like the board of trustees, like the typical board. And through that was able to do some work related to gender equity to creating inclusive environments. It all kind of has led me to also the work that I’ve done at SIU which I think is maybe the third part of my story is you mentioned that I have two sons. One of my sons is on the autism spectrum. And has had a lot of challenging experiences in life without, with people not really accepting him or wanting to, to give him what he needs to be able to thrive. And I, I want a different life for him. I want him that he’s a, both of my boys are just amazing individuals. And I want the world to, to see all of their gifts and to appreciate all of their gifts. And so I really would love to, to continue to work to, to really create inclusive environments.

Monica (10:52):

That’s great. How old are your boys now?

Sue (10:55):

They are 17 and 20.

Monica (10:58):

Okay. Yeah. That can be challenging. Well, it sounds like it’s really helped fuel the work that you’re doing though, which is, is great.

Sue (11:08):

Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s all interrelated, for sure.

Monica (11:11):

Yeah. So tell us now about your work at SIU and the organization that you lead there. Cause I know you’re doing some tremendous things around creating a better workplace.

Sue (11:22):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I have had the privilege to start up and lead what’s called our Center for Human and Organizational Potential. And our mission is really to create an environment where through partnerships we work with others throughout the, the organization to unleash individual and organizational potential for everyone here to be able to learn, Thrive and Excel. And we do that through kind of three main pillars. Those pillars are professional development, leadership, and wellbeing. And it’s a little different because it’s really across the organization. So a lot of academic places really focus on the faculty and the trainees, and they forget this really, really key part of our team, which is everybody else.

Monica (12:24):

Right, right.

Sue (12:25):

And as we were developing this, we started out with kind of that old mindset that it was faculty and our medical students and residents, but we learned that that was never gonna be successful if we didn’t really pay attention to everyone else. And the environment the things that were making faculty and students and residents frustrated and not well, we’re the same things that we’re doing that to our staff. And we were able to, to really develop that, that mission. And our vision is personal and professional potential realized for all.

Monica (13:12):

I love that.

Sue (13:14):

And we’re just about three years in. So the timing was really good or really bad, depending on your perspective. It was good because we launched a little bit before the pandemic hit. And so really early on we were able to, to demonstrate a huge need for this. It was bad because the financial impact of the Pandemic has you know, really strained healthcare and well really our society in has a whole, but Right. So we’re we haven’t been able to grow as quickly as we, we need to really help everyone that that wants, wants assistance.

Monica (14:12):

You’ve done some amazing things. I remember when we spoke earlier, you mentioned the Accelerate Program mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And what I loved about that was that you are including everyone and like you said, not just the leadership or the physicians, but kind of everyone. And it’s a level playing field. Can you maybe tell us a little bit about the Accelerate program?

Sue (14:35):

Sure. so the Accelerate Program is part of our leadership pillar. We have a couple of other programs which are structured somewhat similarly, but it was designed by two of my great colleagues Sue Younga and John Mellinger. And it is really an emerging leaders program. And a couple of important goals. Obviously the, one of the goals is to, to train leaders. But I’d say just as important are two, two other goals. One is to really create a community of learning, and also in doing so, create a community of caring. And they’re learning together. They’re growing together, they’re getting to know each other as individuals, so they’re not just learning the content they are learning about each other. And we have people again, you mentioned we have faculty, we have staff, we have people who are early in their careers.

Sue (15:51):

We have people who are later in their careers who are having their first real leadership opportunity. And so they bring a whole different perspective and wisdom to conversations. There’s a lot of peer mentoring that goes on in the program. And this culminated the, we just started the second cohort, but the first cohort, actually, I think it was about this time last year that they, we had a virtual graduation ceremony. Oh. And each of them got to really say whatever they wanted. We, there was not a big script. We just said, you know, tell us what, what you wanna, what are you taking away from this? And it was incredibly powerful. The, everyone got something different out of it, but it was clear how meaningful it was to have had had this group to, to travel this leadership journey with. And so again, I think there’s the content piece. There’s the, the community of learning and the community of caring, which I feel are things that people really should pay attention to.

Monica (17:05):

I love that. And these groups, are they across different departments too? So people are having the ability to interact with others in different roles that they might not normally get to connect with?

Sue (17:17):

Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I don’t have, I’m not a numbers person, but I think we had people from maybe I wanna say 14 different departments. Nice. And that’s one of the, the challenges in healthcare and academic medicine is things are so siloed and so competitive. And when you do a program like this and you travel the journey together, I think whenever you can humanize things, it takes a lot of that competition out of it and opens your eyes to different ways to, to be able to do things. And that’s one of my big goals is to really just squash that hierarchy and break down those silos.

Monica (18:04):

I love that cuz we hear more and more about how we’re starting to make this shift to team based care. But it’s hard to have a team if it’s very hierarchical or competitive or you don’t know each other. And so, yeah, I just think that’s amazing work that you’re doing there.

Sue (18:23):

Well, I feel very very blessed to have this opportunity. And I’d say one of the, the highlights has been having the opportunity to build, build the team. And I couldn’t, we’re all very, very different than members of, of our team, but I couldn’t ask for a better group of people that they’re all fully, fully committed to that vision.

Monica (18:50):

That’s wonderful. And it’s a challenging time in healthcare right now too. We are hearing more and more about workforce shortages and increased rates of physical and mental burnout with caregivers and really kind of across the spectrum. And so there’s definitely a lot of challenges. What do you think it will take for us to start to improve that and maybe shift the culture of healthcare a little bit?

Sue (19:18):

That’s a great question. I’m on a quest to get people to, you’ve probably heard of the, the triple aim of healthcare. Yes. and then there is also some people will call it either the triple aim plus one or the quadruple aim. Yeah. So the triple aim is really to improve the patient experience, which is the, the quality of care, the patient satisfaction. The second piece is to improve the health of the population. So again, recognizing the importance of that system. And then the third is to reduce the cost. And a lot of the, the totally important work, you know, the triple aim, but it was done without additional resources. And when you’re trying to do all of those things without additional resources what’s gonna happen? Someone’s gonna have to do the work. And it ended up being our, our healthcare teams our physicians, our nurses, our medical assistants.

Sue (20:23):

And that’s when we really started to, to recognize the amount of burnout and unwellness and so my goal is to shift us away from the triple A plus one or the quadruple aim. And what I truly believe that we need to do to, to create a better culture and workplace in healthcare is to make wellness the priority. So take it out of a four part puzzle and have it be the, the priority because we know that when clinicians are healthy and well, they provide a better patient experience. There’s lots and lots of data that burned out. Physicians have lower patient satisfaction scores. We know that when you have a thriving physician, that patient outcomes are better. And now with the shift for paying for quality outcomes, you’re gonna start to impact the, the bottom line, the per capita cost in a positive way. We know that physicians and other healthcare team members, when they are healthy and well, they’re more likely to understand the entirety of their patients. So they understand the community, they get engaged with the community. And so they often have a different way of looking at population health. And so I truly believe that if you make wellness legal, that’s how you get to the triple aim. And if you make wellness, the, that’s how you really create a better culture because you’re really paying attention to the individuals who are doing the work.

Monica (22:11):

Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I think it goes back to that saying something about it’s hard to give from an empty cup. You know, if our providers and our caregivers and the staff are drained and depleted, it’s really hard for them to show up and give their, their full effort to the employees, even though they certainly do their best.

Sue (22:30):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, it’s interesting. Gosh, I think it was about this time last year, I one of my colleagues and friends sort of called me out for being a hypocrite. I know <laugh>, she no, it ended up being good. Yeah. Yeah. But I think a lot of people in healthcare do that. Again, we we’re caregivers, we take care of people Yeah. Often at the expense of ourselves. Absolutely. And I was struggling and she said, You know what? If you put all the energy that you put into the ACP into s I u and the ama, if you put all that energy into yourself, and my first response was, Now that would be selfish. And she said, Right. Listen to yourself. And I said, But it would. And she said, What do you say are your guiding principles in life?

Sue (23:34):

And one of the ones that I said was, Do one to others as you would have them do one to you. Yep. And love your neighbor as yourself, sort of different takes on that. And she said, I don’t think you love yourself. And I said, Yeah, I do. And she said, No, you don’t. You don’t take care of yourself. And she really got me reflecting. And I was not healthy. I was really, really overweight. I wasn’t exercising, I wasn’t eating well. I literally was surviving. Wow. And it took me a couple of months of reflection to, to realize that what she said was true. And this past year, I’ve really learned how to take care of myself. And for the first time in my life, I think I always intellectually bought into the concept that you’re better to others when you’re good to yourself. But I actually had never lived it. And interesting for this past year, I have lived it. I know that I’m, I’m a better physician, I’m a better colleague, I’m a better spouse, I’m a better mom, I’m a better sister. I’m a better everything because I’m healthy and well. Wow. And so I, I understand it really on a just kind soul level rather than just a cognitive level.

Monica (25:07):

Wow. I love that. So you’re really making that effort to kind of walk your talk and, and really showing up as a role model. I noticed at the, the bottom of your email, you had a couple of things. I was going back and preparing for the show, and I, one, I loved the books that you listed. The, the Book of Joy is one of my all-time favorite books. But you also had a statement at the bottom that said that something along the lines of, if you get this in the evening or on the weekends, that you don’t need to reply unless it’s more convenient with mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for you, which I just love because, you know, coming from some healthcare organizations where it was the norm to email and there’d be a full back and forth conversation with multiple members of the team at 10 o’clock at night on email or Saturday morning, you know, it just kind of never stopped to give people that permission to mm-hmm. <Affirmative> wait to respond to your message. I just love that

Sue (26:05):

<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And at first, I just, I, I had said I don’t expect you to answer this, but then someone said, But by you sending your email at nighttime, we still feel like you do expect that. And so I had to reflect, and I sometimes will work on evenings or weekends, because that allows me to be able to, if I wanna go for a walk in the middle of the day or to something at my kid’s school in the middle of the day, I still need to get the work done. Sure. But it frees me up. And so to me, it creates that flexibility. And so I hope, you know, when I change that wording, it really, unless it makes, you know, makes it easier for you, and it does make it easier for me to, to be able to live a full life and to decide when I want to do the work.

Monica (27:01):

Yeah. That’s great. I thought that was really powerful. And yeah. So I’m glad we got to, to talk about that a little bit. So are there some kind of emerging models or practices that you’re starting to see in healthcare or at I that are maybe kind of moving in the right direction?

Sue (27:24):

So I would say one, I have a couple of friends that I know who work for a primary care group called Iora. It’s a Medicare based group. And it really is a, a highly functioning team based approach that puts the patient at the center. They have health coaches, they have a lot of the support services, wraparound services for patients. They do home visits. That, that was one of the nice things I think in the pandemic in doing telehealth is getting invited, invited into the, the patient’s home. Yeah. Learned so much really important information that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. You know, about who all they lived with. You know, sometimes they bring family in, a lot of times they don’t who they live with, what hazards may be in the home.

Sue (28:39):

Medications, You know, I’d have them walk me to their medication cabinet and they’d have all these old medicines and things like that. And so we would have them dispose of those. Anyways, this practice that a couple of my colleagues work for home visits are part of it. But it really is putting the patient in charge. Like the patient can decide if they want home visits or if they want office visits. And right. Instead of the doctor deciding it’s an office visit or a home visit, the patient gets to decide. And I love the fact that, again, they in addition to a lot of the typical wraparound services, they have health coaches that are integrated into it. Kind of getting back to, to my experience of, even as a physician, I didn’t really know what I, as an individual needed to do to get healthy until I went on this journey this past year. And so that’s integrated into the care there.

Monica (29:38):

Nice. That’s great. So if you could wave a magic wand and really create a vision for the future of healthcare, what would that look like?

Sue (29:55):

Well, I think a little bit of what, what I just described, You know, as far as the, the I’d put patients in charge of their own they’d, they’d be the leader of their team. It would be really highly functioning, integrated team based care, but the patient would be the center of it. There’s always this I don’t know what the right word is, but this battle of who’s in charge of the team? Is it the doctor? Is it the, the advanced practice nurse? Is it the, the pharmacist who’s in charge to me? In the ideal world, the patient is in charge. They get to, they get to decide who’s on the team and how the team works. And it’s really allowing members of the team to function at their highest level. You know, one of the, the big challenges is again, in that drive to have high quality, cost effective care you have people doing things that they weren’t trained to do and that someone else maybe should be doing mm-hmm.

Sue (31:11):

<Affirmative>, you know, physicians providing information on healthy diets. We’re not trained to do that. The dietician should be doing that. Sure. We’re putting in data into the EMR so people can see if we’re keeping immunizations up to date for our patients we’re checking boxes that we checked the physician monitoring part of the, the record to make sure that the, the controlled substances were due and not being abused. All really, really, really important pieces of healthcare, but perhaps not the right people doing them. And so to me in that highly functioning team, it’s really letting people do the work that they’re trained to do.

Monica (32:09):

Yeah, I love that. Getting, getting the right people on the bus and the, the people in the right seat so that they can mm-hmm. <Affirmative> deliver care without burning everyone out too at the same time.

Sue (32:22):

Yeah.

Monica (32:22):

So one of the things that I’ve just really enjoyed about getting to meet you and visit with you a few times now is your bigger mission and just drive to kind of make the world a better place. How do you stay connected to that bigger vision? Because it can be challenging, you know, when you’re in the weeds and in the day to day of just working in an environment.

Sue (32:50):

Yeah. It definitely can get overwhelming. So I, I’d say a few things. I’d say one is I’m blessed to, to have my family who ground me and keep me focused. I would say another thing is my colleagues during the pandemic I started this exercise with one of my colleagues and friends who lives in New Mexico. Her name’s Eileen Barrett. And we started doing three good things. I don’t know if you have heard of three Good Things. It came out of University of California Berkeley, and it’s an evidence based reflective tool. And basically on a daily basis, you think of three good things. And we started doing it with each other. So we kind of became an accountability pair. And so either she would send them to me or I would send mine to her, and then it would sort of force the other one to, to do that. Yeah. And it was really, really helpful. And so whenever any of my colleagues or learners or other people in my life were struggling, we would start doing three good things. And Eileen and I still do it every day, and I have two other colleagues one that lives in Ohio and one here in Springfield that we do it on a regular basis. Some of the other people that I’ve done it with, it’s sort of, has fallen off. But so I think intentional reflection is another, another part of it.

Monica (34:43):

That’s such a powerful tool too. I’m glad you brought that up.

Sue (34:46):

And it’s so easy. It’s so easy. Yeah. There’s even an app that you can get on your phone that’ll send a, send a prompt to you saying, What are your three good things? You can set it for whatever time of day, and then you get this reminder, Oh, okay, I’m gonna reflect on this. Yeah. During my wellness journey, I started also meditating. Oh, good. I was having tachycardia and again, I wasn’t healthy and well, and so I learned how to meditate. And I start each morning out and, and each day with at least five, five to 10 minutes of guided meditation. And that again, kind of helps me get into that positive space. And then one other thing is I leave little sticky notes around like, like this one that says, Leave the world a better place. And so when I get frustrated, I’ve got this bright yellow paper that’s like, Okay, let’s remember what your mission is.

Monica (35:44):

I love that. And I think that that is such a simple but helpful kind of tool to just be a constant reminder to think about the bigger picture. So what, and who are some of your biggest influences? Like books, movies, people, experiences, those types of things?

Sue (36:05):

Well, I’ve talked about some of the, some of the experiences you know, with my mom and with my son books. So my all time favorite book is Man Search For Meaning by Victor Frankel.

Monica (36:25):

Yeah.

Sue (36:25):

And you know, that, that also is something that I, I’ve read that, gosh, dozens of times in my life. And that’s something that will always motivate me when I’m struggling, you know, to, to understand what what he went through and how he was able to, to still carry on with a positive mindset is really remarkable. So that, that’s my favorite book. I’d say two other books that have really influenced me are The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. I dunno if you’ve had the chance to read that.

Monica (37:09):

I haven’t. But I love Simon Sinek, so I’m a, I’m a fan. I don’t know why I haven’t read that one yet. And I’ve heard about it from Gabe Charbonneau, MD who was a previous guest. I know he’s a fan of that book as well. So tell us a little bit about that.

Sue (37:23):

Yeah, so it’s so a finite game is a game that there is an end. So, you know, at the end of four quarters or nine innings, the team with the highest score wins. So it’s a game that can be won. And the infinite game is really the pursuit of like a just cause. So committing to a vision, so like the work that you’re doing with the new future of work yeah, you’re committing to a vision of what that, that future looks like. That’s what the goal is and Right. You’re never gonna really reach that goal. Right. But that’s okay. That’s, you know, it’s infinite. And so it’s really working day after day, week after week, month after month to, to really make progress towards that, that infinite goal. And a lot of times when you do that it’s focused on what that causes, what that vision is rather than, than winning.

Sue (38:32):

Wow. When I first started cHOP, that’s our center here mm-hmm. <Affirmative> we our mission was actually very different than it is now. And a lot of it was about gaining recognition and it was sort of traditional academic missions. And I just kept saying, there’s, this just doesn’t feel right. This is not what our mission is. And we evolved our mission to, to what it is now, which is really helping people thrive, excel for the goal of making the organization better. Because when we do that, we’re going to make life better for patients for our community. And so that’s, that’s kind of the premise of the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. Definitely worth reading.

Monica (39:33):

I love that because often we’re challenged to create a goal and then figure out every single step that it’s gonna take to get there. But I think a lot of times when you do that, you’re not really thinking big enough. Like I always say, if you know all the steps to get there, you’re not thinking big enough. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. I’m never to read that book, but I also, I love the mission for your organization and I love the term Thrive and I actually use that in some of some of my materials as well, cuz that’s just so far beyond what we think about in the workplace. You know, we, we just haven’t really used that term in the past. And yeah, I think that’s interesting when you look at the statistics about how so many employees are disengaged and now we have this whole thing that’s been in the news lately about silent quitting, where employees are just doing the bare minimum. And one in, one in only one in four employees, I think was this statistic that actually feel like their organization cares about them. So three quarters of us don’t feel like our organization cares about us, so, Right. It’s really hard to do a good job when you’re going to work at a place that feels like that, but with that mission of helping employees thrive that just seems like it could be a game changer.

Sue (40:55):

Right. That again, that’s kind of the infinite mindset. Yeah. You hear a lot about zero burnout being the goal, and I think that’s so shortsighted. Again, that’s finite mindset. Yeah. So we can get to zero burnout, who cares? You know, what, what does that really accomplish? Do we know that that helps people to, to really be able to meet their full potential? You know? Right. It’s, it’s part of it, but it’s not the entirety of it.

Monica (41:23):

Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think if people are thriving at the workplace, it’s gonna have this ripple effect because then when they go home, they’re not gonna be cranky and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> short with their kids and their husband and just, and their neighbors and their community and it just, it ripples out if you’re, if you’re thriving and you know, really feeling like you’re doing well in the workplace.

Sue (41:48):

Right, right.

Monica (41:51):

Awesome. Well, what is one kind of key takeaway from our discussion that you wanna make sure our listeners leave with from today? I know we’ve covered a lot of ground, but

Sue (42:05):

I’d like to circle back to trying to challenge people to make wellbeing the goal. Yeah. Whatever that looks like. And as part of wellbeing being the goal is to start with yourself.

Monica (42:24):

Yeah. I love that. It seems so simple, but like you said, a lot of us are, are saying that message, but then living it is a whole other thing. So if we can really prioritize our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of our organizations, we’re really gonna create a shift out there.

Sue (42:40):

Definitely.

Monica (42:42):

So where can our listeners find you? Do you have organizational website or social media or anything like that that I can share in the show notes?

Sue (42:54):

The IUS website, we, we have. Okay. But Perfect. And I can send that to you. I am on Twitter. My Twitter handle is at @SusanHingle. Okay. And then I’m on Facebook and Instagram at @SusanThompsonHingle.

Monica (43:20):

Okay. Awesome. I’m a Twitter user too from, from the early days and I’ve been using it more lately as well. So I’ll have to connect with you there too.

Sue (43:29):

Yeah, definitely. I’d love to.

Monica (43:31):

Awesome, Sue. Well, thank you. Yeah.

Sue (43:32):

That was how, that was how I met Gabe was through Twitter.

Monica (43:35):

Yeah. He’s done an amazing job of connecting kind of like-minded physicians that are, are trying to create a more human-centric healthcare system and yeah. One where we can all thrive, so,

Sue (43:51):

Yeah.

Monica (43:51):

Yeah. Good work. Awesome, Sue. Well thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it and I know our listeners will enjoy it too. So

Sue (44:01):

Thank you so much for having me, and again, thanks for doing this important work yourself.

Monica (44:07):

Thank you.

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.