Leo Bodden
The days of businesses operating in silos are numbered. With the rise of digital platforms and technologies, companies are part of broader ecosystems involving partners, customers, and competitors. How can CXOs navigate and leverage these ecosystems to drive growth, innovation, and customer value while managing associated risks?
Contributor
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- Leo Bodden, Group Vice President & Chief Digital and Technology Officer, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospita
Transcript
Sanjog Aul [00:00:06]:
Hello and welcome to CTN. To learn more about the show, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. and our topic today is Harnessing The Power Of Ecosystems In The Digital Age. So what are we talking about here? See the ecosystem any business today is not working in isolation. They have got ecosystem partners, value chain partners who all have to work together and as it says that it takes a village to deliver real value. So we got customers who are being touched by different parties who are working together to make sure they all make the respective living, thrive and survive, and at the same time create the value so that the customer stays and keep coming back.
Sanjog Aul [00:00:49]:
Now, easier said than done. Too many moving parts, too many different entities who have their own agendas, own profit and loss goals and other things which are driving them. So how do you get these otherwise disparate organization who have an intent to work together? At the same time, they have their own vested interest in making sure they individually do the best they can with such conflicting agendas. Not always, but still there are some conflicts. How do you bring them all together, especially when we are working in this digital age where not every time you’re shaking hands, you are getting very fast moving transactions happening all along and the customer is watching it, they are experiencing it, and that’s what determines what happens to the experience. So with that said, we have to discover and or discuss at this time what are the top challenges that people face, organizations face as they’re working as an ecosystem. How are they trying to deal with it, what’s working, what’s not working? And to discuss this, I could not have had a better guest than Leo Bodden, who is the Group Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Officer with New York Presbyterian Hospital. Hey Leo, how are you?
Leo Bodden [00:02:02]:
I’m doing great, Sanjog, thank you so much for having me today.
Sanjog Aul [00:02:05]:
Beautiful. Lovely to have you. Now, first question for you, since we are talking about ecosystem, and your Presbyterian of course, is doing great guns with respect to customer experience, as I have heard. However, would love to understand what does that ecosystem look like for that village that you’ve created which delivers such a fantastic value.
Leo Bodden [00:02:25]:
Thank you. And actually, I love the way you present the question. Right. It is about the ecosystem. It is understanding how an organization and an industry is structured. The reality is all of healthcare for the most part, the ecosystem is very much people based. We have the providers, the physicians,
Leo Bodden [00:02:47]:
We have our nurses. We have the clinical support teams that allow the services to flow as efficiently, as effectively as possible. But then, of course, to your point, around the ecosystem, there are the payers with whom we have to partner and ensure that we are able to get the payment for the services that are provided and then there are the suppliers for us and on the supply side, it could be something as basic and specific as infusion pumps, ventilators, the consumables, like our masks. But then there are also the technology providers, technology suppliers like the major vendors that everyone knows about, whether you’re talking about the large EHR vendors or clinical application vendors, whether you’re talking about the business tools, the mobility tools, and they themselves, to your point, have their own P and l’s, they have their own ecosystems that they have to manage and maintain and so it’s really our work is how do we align the people based processes along with the technology processes that are continuing to develop and evolve almost or seemingly on a daily basis.
Sanjog Aul [00:04:20]:
Now with the ecosystem with so many different parts and it is kudos to all of you that you’re working very well, seamlessly, to produce the experience. But then, given the kind of changes we are seeing geopolitically, socially, technology wise, are there any shifts that you are seeing in the ecosystems which one must heed and pay attention to and prepare for before they really become a big challenge?
Leo Bodden [00:04:49]:
Absolutely. There’s, you know, there’s, of course, what’s happening now with AI. A year and a half ago, that became the topic of choice. I do see that there’s a lot of noise in the market right now with all these new entrants, all these new vendors that are coming in with essentially the silver bullets that are going to solve everybody’s problems. But certainly for organization like mine, for organizations like mine, and really in healthcare in general, one has to recognize that there are workflows, there are the basics that need to be managed and maintained. There are a lot of capabilities in the current ecosystem service providers. The question is, can they move as fast as our programs require? And so, as we start thinking about the new capabilities that are being presented by some of these new entrants, one has to consider how do you invest in a way where at some point it’s not gonna be a total loss, or the current ecosystem providers, the large providers that we are already partnering with, would potentially catch up. And so we have to keep our eye on where the puck is going.
Leo Bodden [00:06:15]:
We have to recognize that our reality is we can’t overinvest in unproven services and unproven capabilities. But we do need to introduce a number of layers and a number of capabilities that some of these, some of the current incumbents cannot provide today with the understanding that as they catch up or as it becomes more commoditized, we are able to make those transitions. But by no means do we want to limit the innovation that is being introduced by some of the new entrants into the market.
Sanjog Aul [00:07:02]:
Now you mentioned about these emerging technologies or newer capabilities your partners may not have. So what is your first approach? Is it to look within to see can we pull this off? Even though you are not coming from that background, you may not have the capability yourself, or you try to go and look for another non incumbent partner who could be brought in. Now, if you do one route, which is taking this as a responsibility internally, then you are conflicting or you’re creating a conflict with that very good formula of your things done better and you focus on what you’re good at and you’re overextending yourself. Or if you try to say, oh, let’s go after this new capabilities and our existing partners cannot do it and I can’t extend myself, then let’s go and get yet another partner. With so many things coming into play now, if you keep adding partners, then you’ve got way too many partners and you’re diluting the focus and the integrity of that ecosystem that you took so much time and effort and energy and dollars to produce and maintain. How are you dealing with this?
Leo Bodden [00:08:12]:
That’s a loaded question. So the reality is it’s all of the above. I happen to be fortunate to be working at an organization with some of the brightest minds on the planet, and all of them are coming up with different solutions to real problems every single day. The big question as some of these solutions are being developed is how can we scale? We can’t make decisions for one small group, one hospital, one practice, one program and so the idea is, as we’re thinking about some of these new capabilities, can that be scalable? And then can we replicate that across the enterprise? In some cases we can and we double down. We invest in those programs. In other cases we can, and we have to look elsewhere. There are a number of providers, a number of partners with whom we have done work that introduce capabilities.
Leo Bodden [00:09:15]:
We’ve done that for our AI platform, for our contact centers. That was a new entrant three, four years ago. That was a game changing capability for us, and we were able to leverage that and deliver dividends for the organization three, four years ago. The reality is now that’s being commoditized and so we have additional opportunities, whether it’s with some of the larger vendors that existed or with some of our ecosystem providers with whom we do business and we partner today and so we may decide to make adjustments to the logic and we’ll continue to do the same as new capabilities come along.
Sanjog Aul [00:10:10]:
Now, when you do mention about these different ecosystem partners, what is it that they are looking for? Because when you got them together in one room, for example, and said, okay, we have to together work towards that true north, that mission to serve that customer, the alignment would have been there, or at least you had a good warm and fuzzy feeling that these people all want to work together. That’s how that ecosystem came into play. Where all do you see the signs of conflicts, some rifts, some strains, and how do you proactively deal with it? Because it would be too late when you are trying to fix it and customer experience is already shot.
Leo Bodden [00:10:55]:
Sure, it’s a great point. And actually I want to take us back to where you started the conversation today. Each of these ecosystem providers, they have their own P and ls. They have their own business plans that they have to manage too and many of them are trillion dollar organizations. They’re managing hundreds of millions of people and hundreds of millions of services and so the reality is that in order for them to align with our very specific processes, it would be unrealistic for us to expect that they could do something like that overnight and so recognizing that there are opportunities that we need to find to better align our programs, our very specific, detailed processes that today, in many cases, are human dependent with the newer capabilities, while working with those organizations, those larger organizations, to ultimately land somewhere where they can deliver what we are expecting
Leo Bodden [00:12:04]:
and it makes sense for them from a business standpoint and so that’s work that we do. This is a balancing act that we do every day in order to ensure that we’re maximizing the investments for our organization, recognizing the limitations for these larger providers, given the fact that they have to provide these capabilities for the masses, not just for us as large as we are, not just for us as an organization.
Sanjog Aul [00:12:39]:
So if you were to go ahead and look for that holy grail of an ecosystem, given the environment that you have and the business objectives that you have, what would be the type of benchmarks you would like to establish or must have established to make sure that if something is going below this or a threshold, then that’s a problem. Is there a numeric way or is it a gut feel for an ecosystem based measure and management and governance?
Leo Bodden [00:13:09]:
Yeah, I, you know, that’s a another loaded question. I, I see that. I see that as going back to the basics. We have to recognize that there’s a lot of work that can be done that generates a tremendous amount of benefit without getting to perfection. As, in healthcare, we tend to shoot for the stars. We tend to shoot for perfecting and in many cases, we play that perfection game, essentially shooting for three sigma and above. In other words, getting to 99% effectiveness when the reality is one sigma, in some cases 68%, can get you far more than what you have today.
Leo Bodden [00:14:04]:
And so making that mental adjustment, that philosophical adjustment, is critically important in order for organizations to move faster. We’ve done that recently, and we’ve begun to see a tremendous amount of benefit in changing our mindset. One sigma, 1st, 68%, get to two sigma, get your 95% effectiveness, and then ultimately get to three, four, you know, potentially six sigma but the cost to go from one standard deviation to another is pretty significant and so why waste all the benefit that could be generated by just getting one sigma? Simply because you want to perfect at the outset.
Sanjog Aul [00:14:51]:
So I love the way you are approaching it, because let perfection not get in the way of good and there is a cost with everything. So you’re trying to do the cost benefit analysis, and of course, at no point you want to compromise the customer experience. Well taken. Now, when you do this, and if you’re going at that sigma level, you are, I’m sure, measuring things and you are trying to work it in a data driven fashion. So if you had to paint or if there is a playbook to say, how do I build and run a data driven, analytics driven, emerging technologies driven, culture driven type of an ecosystem, can you measure each area of this so that you could, you know, improve upon what you’re measuring? So, is this a data driven or a gut driven at some point, where does that. Where do you draw that line?
Leo Bodden [00:15:49]:
Always data driven. It is critically important that everything that we do, especially in healthcare, is data driven. So, recognize, what are the points of contention? Is there friction in the system? Where is that friction? How do you remove that friction? So, really, understanding the flow and the journey that our patients have to undergo is critical, because you might find that there are broken points that don’t allow our patients, in this particular case, our customer, to get from the beginning, where they decide that they need a service to the end when that service is provided, and then that important loop, that virtuous cycle that needs to be managed and maintained for our patients.
Sanjog Aul [00:16:46]:
And when you are doing this data driven aspect, and now that AI is coming into being. How are you trying to leverage that?
Leo Bodden [00:16:55]:
Statistics, the basics? There’s not, you know, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel because AI came in. The reality is, you know, and if we take a page out of the airline industry, they’ve been maximizing their returns for decades before AI came along and they did it through running basic statistics. Really, to your point being data driven, recognizing what the points of contention are, recognizing what your overall utilization on a per resource basis is, and then defining an approach that maximizes the utilization for all those resources, eliminates enough friction that allows our patients to get through the system faster and that’s the philosophical adjustment that we made as an organization and again, it’s beginning to return dividends for us as an enterprise.
Sanjog Aul [00:17:54]:
Now see, when we talk about ecosystems and there are maybe multiple partners who may have an overlapping offering and or overlapping interest, and that could also create conflict of interest, maybe competition. You want to help the customer, and sometimes you might do something called as a cooperation, but if it stretches beyond, then it could become counterproductive. So how have you defined your ecosystem boundaries and what is acceptable amount of risk to invite somebody into your ecosystem so that it doesn’t undermine your overall effort, given there could be potential for competition and conflict of interest because everyone is trying to go within the ecosystem to some other side to find more revenue opportunities.
Leo Bodden [00:18:40]:
Yeah, it’s not easy. It is actually an incredibly difficult task because each organization is coming in with their business plan. Each organization wants to be that sole provider and, you know, to be fair to, every one of us, the reality is you can’t blame them. For us, you know, our commitment is to our patients. For me, my commitment is to our patients, our providers, our nurses, every person that works in this organization and they take top billing and so while it may seem or be perceived as an opportunity today to create a relationship or partnership with an organization, and whatever that organization, actually, they change on a almost a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily basis.
Leo Bodden [00:19:46]:
The reality is we have to keep our eye on the price, and that’s our patient and so the focus always has to be our patient as far as how we protect ourselves. As we are engaging in conversations with some of the providers, you know we are very focused, our legal team, our risk teams are very focused on ensuring that we have business associates agreements that before we go into any conversation or any deployment or any integration of any new capabilities, regardless of what they are, that those I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed. And we’ve been really fortunate, given the legal team that we have because they kept us out of a lot of trouble and so we continue to partner with our colleagues to ensure that we as an organization are protected. We make things incredibly transparent. There is a point in the negotiation where I recuse myself and a different team takes over and they finalize that negotiation and that’s usually our procurement team along with our legal team
Leo Bodden [00:20:59]:
and then I or my team, our team would get involved to answer specific questions but those negotiations are out of our hands at that point.
Sanjog Aul [00:21:14]:
Now, interestingly, when we look at within an organization, with a bunch of different departments and people and leaders working together, they are kind of brought together through this fabric called culture and a set of values and principles which drive an organization. Could we expand the scope of this culture and the value system to an ecosystem? If yes, how would you truly do it? Because internally, one is what they produce and you are aligning at the output level. But there is something to be said about what they do internally at every time, and no one is looking so that the outcome and the intent and the value system produce the most value. Have you found a recipe to be able to aligning at the culture and the value system level, or just at the output level?
Leo Bodden [00:22:03]:
Yeah, no, that’s a very important point that you bring up and I am fortunate to work for an organization where innovation is built into the value statement. Our values are respect, integrity, innovation, teamwork, and empathy and innovation is right in the middle and we talk about it before every single meeting. So we recognize that philosophy is what’s going to get us to the finish line. It’s what’s going to get us or keep us relevant and as the destination organization that we are in decades to come.
Sanjog Aul [00:22:49]:
Now, this is within the organization. So what if we had to align at a cultural and a value system level across ecosystem partners? Because otherwise you are just dependent on the symptoms of something going wrong versus knowing how they’re running their organization, how their people think, what they aspire for, what is their true north, then you might have a much more proactive control, if you will, of what the outcome is going to be. But is that even possible, or is it a pipe dream, or have you attempted to do something like that?
Leo Bodden [00:23:19]:
Yeah, I would probably lean towards pipe dream. The reality is these organizations, especially for an organization like mine, we’re partnering with massive institutions, and for us to think that we are going to control or define what their culture should be is unrealistic. Now, that doesn’t mean that as a leadership team, we shouldn’t be actively engaging with them and really tracking what their business models are saying and where their business is taking them. So we are of course engaging them and we’re very active in the communication. However, we also recognize that these massive organizations, and again, while we’re world renowned, while we are a large healthcare organization, a large enterprise, the reality is they’re far bigger and their coverage area is far greater and so we have to plan for that as well.
Sanjog Aul [00:24:29]:
So in a way you’re saying that while you cannot look under the hood, you look at the way they emote and or react or act on different situations to give you an idea whether this is an ecosystem partner they’re worth working with. And the second point I heard you say is also the amount of leverage one would have. So these are massive organizations who you’re working with, you may not have much of a leverage for you to say, I demand you to show me what’s under the hood.
Leo Bodden [00:24:57]:
Absolutely. That’s very well said.
Sanjog Aul [00:25:00]:
Okay, now when it comes to the other aspect, which is gaining steam, and rightfully so, is sustainability. So one is you’re talking about what output they deliver, but are they allowing us to have a sustainable or sustainability as the agenda met? If you are following it as an organization, then you want all your ecosystem members at least to be following on the same path. Or is that an optional aspect of building your ecosystem or choosing who’s going to be in that ecosystem?
Leo Bodden [00:25:32]:
Yeah, that’s a, you know, that’s gotten, that’s become more difficult in the last twelve to 18 months. We, as an organization, of course, we, you know, sustainability is always top of mind. We do a lot of work with NYSERDA in New York state around some of the investments that we’re making and work with them to have them come in to our organizations and review the new capabilities, new investments, and really how we are looking at the environment as we’re making our investments, investment decisions. However, over the last twelve to 18 months, there have been a lot of conversations around investing in AI, in GPU’s. These are, I mean, there’s limitless consumption associated with these new capabilities and the processing related to some of these new innovations and so over the next few months, over the next few years, we’ll have to keep an eye on what that does to corporate social responsibility and the impact it has on some of the investments that we make in the future. Sadly, it’s too soon to tell now.
Sanjog Aul [00:26:52]:
Given this dynamic environment where things are shifting and not everything you had built your muscle for or your business counterparts may not have built a muscle for and you’re expected to manage and get your ecosystem to thrive and at no point do you allow your patient experience and the customer experience to suffer. What is it that yourself and your business leaders doing so that you are equipped and get better than yesterday to deal with this ecosystem and maintain its integrity and sanctity while you’ve got a volatile environment out there?
Leo Bodden [00:27:30]:
Don’t forget the basics. As an organization, we have to remember that the basics don’t change. Making sure that we are recognizing the, the opportunities that we have internally, the fact that we are today, our ecosystem is today very much people based and workflow based. Those people and workflow investments are critical. If we optimize the people and the process that gets us to Sigma before we start looking at some of these capabilities and really get bogged down by some of the noise that we’re hearing and so ensuring that we are aligning our people and our processes is going to be critical as some of these new entrants come into the fold and become new opportunities for us and then by doing that, things like automation, things like AI, things like getting to the three sigma, four, five, six sigma are reasonable expectations but that doesn’t work if the foundation isn’t there.
Leo Bodden [00:28:48]:
And so that foundational work for us is critical and we’re spending a lot of time on our standardization, on the engagement of our team members, ensuring that we are baselining the organization to prepare for what’s coming in the near future.
Sanjog Aul [00:29:07]:
Once again, thank you so much, Leo, for sharing your insights about how ecosystems, while they are critical, and it’s a massive effort to maintain them. But what’s the intent, the mindset, the communication, the leadership style, the people and the culture that you have to keep in place so that you are able to get the most value and harness the most value out of these ecosystems.So thank you
Leo Bodden [00:29:28]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Sanjog Aul [00:29:32]:
Thanks for joining us. And listeners, please subscribe to our podcast and join us on social media. This is Sanjog Aul, your host at CTN. Till next week. Take care and God bless.
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