Unlocking the power of time: insights from an inspiring leader

Today is the longest day of the year and the official start of summer. This longest day leads me to reflect on how we spend our time.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Saad Chaudhry, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Luminis Health, for a Townhall episode on This Week Health. Saad is an inspiring leader on so many levels so preparing interview questions was easy. I had heard Saad talk in the past about what he calls his Manifesto of Time, so I wanted to make sure we discussed it in the interview. For Saad, looking at the number of hours the average person has in their lifetime means looking at how we choose to spend it and whether we give or take time from others.

As a health IT leader, he says we are in the business of time. He is committed to giving time back to staff and patients. He asks in his manifesto – “Does a process/technology/policy steal time from a fellow human? Is there a better alternative to simplify the experience?” He challenges us to make systems and processes easier for patients and staff, giving time back rather than taking more time from them.

I can’t say it nearly as well as Saad, so I encourage you to read The Manifesto of Time and listen to the short clip on time from our interview – Spending Time: Why It’s Important to Maximize Giving Back Our Most Valuable Commodity. We covered much more in the full interview if you are interested and willing to spend 30 minutes of your time listening – A Realigned Role, Generational Diversity, and Giving Back Time.

I know your time is precious – thanks for reading and listening!

Good email practices – lead by example

Have you ever gone through hundreds of email post vacation trying to catch up and found too many branches on one subject making it difficult to quickly get the full picture on that issue? canstockphoto17451721 (1) email

Have you ever read through a long email trail when you are in a new organization and many different people are weighing in – you don’t know who they are or what they do because there are no signatures, just a first name?

Have you ever had that sense that too much project management is happening via email?

Have you ever tried to find an email but there is no subject or useful subject to search on?

Have you ever lost the thread because the email trail is now on an entirely different topic but still carries the original unrelated subject line?

Have you ever looked at an email trail and wondered why someone doesn’t just pick up the phone or do a quick huddle with the right people to resolve the issue?

If the answer to any of these questions are “yes”, you may share some of my frustrations with managing email.

So, what do we do? Complain or lead by example? Continue reading

Tyranny of the urgent

You have priority work scheduled on your calendar. You have carved out time when not in meetings to get some work done. Yet urgent issues keep finding their way to your office. Sound familiar?canstockphoto28657290

That’s the life of anyone in management, especially in large complex organizations. And it’s a challenge these days as our new Stony Brook Medicine CIO and I try to get through a three-week transition period. The outline of what I need to cover with her is four pages long. And I keep adding more items.

We are ending week two.  By next week, I should be in far fewer meetings as she handles them without me. I should be able to finish my tasks as part of the transition and organize my paper and electronic files to turn over to her. I know she doesn’t like paper, so I’ll be ruthless as I purge and give her only the most important paper files.

We’ve done our best to block out some chunks of time together to get through everything.

But when we sit down together to go over the next block of information, we often end up first dealing with the latest requests and issues. What started as a focused two-hours is suddenly half gone.

What have I learned? Continue reading

Email overload — does anyone have the answer?

Spoiler alert! I don’t have the answer either and want to learn from others.

I remember the old days before email: we relied on talking to each other and on written communications that came on paper. On the day before a vacation I would finalize reports, make copies, Connected emailand stuff them into inter-office envelopes after I’d taken care of all my follow-up phone calls. Now on the day before vacation I have to get through all the email that can’t wait another week and generate new ones as I work through my to-do list.

It seems endless. Everyone complains about too much email. Can’t we just shut it off?  No, it’s the way we work now and there’s no going back.

Here are some of my tips:

Triage – I quickly scan for priority emails by subject, who it’s from and importance (some people actually use those flags as intended). Deal with what you have to in as timely a manner as possible. Continue reading