Insights from the Dartmouth Summit

I just organized what looks like the first of many Dartmouth Summits on Healthcare Delivery.

http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/healthcare/summit.html

It was a big success highlighted by Michael Porter teaching a roomful of business, medical school, graduate school and undergraduate students an HBS case about the Dartmouth Hitchcock Spine center. We even had a faculty workshop in which three of the top professors from TDI, Tuck and Dartmouth Hitchcock will be leading case-writing teams of faculty and students.

This was a very revealing event to me in terms of my own leadership in many ways. Most of all, it helped me to realize that the reason why all the grey-hairs keep telling us juniors that “its all about finding your passion”. Passion leads to ownership and commitment to what you are doing and enables you to have the energy and ability to move people. It doesn’t matter if you are an engineer, a doctor, or a student trying to move an institution forward, passion is always your best competitive advantage.

It also made me realize that when you do something significant, there is enough credit to go around so it almost doesn’t matter who gets the credit. This has not been easy for me at times because I often felt like I had to take on disproportionate work yet deferred the credit from myself to the students who will be staying behind and taking on this event next year. Taking my leadership to the next level will depend on my ability to subjugate my own ego for the objective to create something that sustains and goes on.

I also realized that having a platform matters. Having a position of influence buys you credibility such as being an MD/MBA student at Dartmouth or a future resident at Hopkins. However, credibility must be paired with delivery of an outcome for you to realize the value from that relationship. You can get anyone in the world to help you by having the right introduction, appealing to their interests and a demonstration of competence.

I learned how much one’s gut really does matter in choosing the right people and that giving people an opportunity to declare their abilities and motivation early is key.

Finally, I realized the importance of knowing one’s environment, knowing the players, knowing where the levers are as well as which to pull is critical. I think I am starting to see the advantage to settling down somewhere and building a network which will allow me to build things and have an opportunity to lead.