Moving from Friction to Flow: How to Strengthen Your Marketing Team's Performance

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Hello again and welcome to the Healthcare Success podcast. Today I have not one guest, not two guests, but three guests, of whom are very smart and very knowledgeable on the topics we're going to talk about today. Brooke Hynes, David Eilers, Anissa Davenport of Possibility Partners. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, welcome.

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): Hi, good to see you.

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Thank you, great to be here.

Dave Eilers (Possibility Partners): Thanks, Stewart. Good to be here.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Good. So I'm glad to have you guys. And so as we talk about on our podcast, we have lots of different points of view from people on different sides of healthcare, whether it's pharmaceutical or multi-location practices or device or telehealth, and a lot with health systems.

And today we're talking to some of the more experienced renowned consultants within the health system space and others. And so one of the things for our listeners that are regular listeners may recognize we've recently done some podcasts with CMOs about how the CMO can become part of the leadership team and really get marketing its rightful place in the executive decisions. But that's a big, and so we can talk about that again today, but today I also want to talk about the marketing team. Like how does the marketing team get into that ecosystem and understand the bigger picture?

And it seems like every time I talk to somebody in the health system space, whether it's an agency or a CMO or a marketing team member, everybody feels misunderstood. It's just a thing. So, you you're in a world where clinicians rule the day and the administrators may or may not be clinicians, but marketing is a topic that needs some, its own PR, I guess, within the community. So today we're going to talk about this.

I'd like, and you know, this is pretty informal guys. So whoever wants to jump in can jump in, but you know, like we talked about this offline. You guys are like, we've got some great stories. So tell me a story or two about this issue to kind of bring this to life and then we'll go drill down from there. It doesn't have to mention who it is.

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): Well, we work with a lot of teams and we see some of the similar things. So there's also a blending of teams and some of the strengths and challenges we see in each of those teams. Marketing is moving really fast and so is healthcare. And frankly, so is the world. So we see a lot of teams trying to be their very best, but they get sort of roadblocked by how the team is actually operating, how they're operating with each other within the marketing department, and then how they're operating with folks outside the marketing department.

Because there's few projects that only marketing works on today, right? They're having to work with operations, they're working with IT, they're working with administration. So we see all kinds of things.

Sometimes we see struggles within the team itself. Are they able to speak clearly to each other? Do they know what roles they're playing? So think about social media. Social media seems to be a ball that gets passed around. Sometimes it sits in content marketing. Sometimes it sits in media. Sometimes it sits in marketing. So those folks sometimes don't have clear roles. And if they don't know where they fit, then there becomes a lot of stress between the different teams. Well, that's my social media team. And so there's confusion and those folks feel either really loved or really confused because they're wanted in all those departments, but yet they're not quite sure where they fit.

We've also seen like in honesty between creative teams. If you have in-house creative, sometimes if there's not honesty, we've seen the account managers and the strategists not able to tell creative that that won't work. I can't honestly say to you that that creative won't work. And then they let creative go out there and show that to either administrators or to doctors. And it falls flat on its face and it ruins the reputation of not just the creative team, but the whole department. So those are some of the things that we see regularly when we meet with teams.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's really challenging. I want to pick on Anissa next. So building on the social media, that's so topical. That just happened on a call I had earlier today. So I was talking to the head of a multi-location provider and social media came up because they're asking us to do a marketing plan for them. And the social media is, especially organic we're talking about. Like our agency typically will do the paid social creative because we want to control that.

But organic social media is very difficult for an agency to do because like for example, they were talking about Doctor Appreciation Day, they did a photo shoot with the doctors. Like it's hard for an agency to do these things at all. Like we can't call the doctors and ask them to be, you know, at one of the offices on Tuesday. They won't take our call, let alone do it.

And so from an agency standpoint, it's really difficult to do that. But then the CEO said, yeah, but I want social media. So we talked about how are going to actually do that? So today, social media could be, just like you said, it could be a communications function, a PR function, it could be a marketing function, it could be something else. or Anissa or Dave, guess, either one of you guys can chime in on like how you're seeing that work because that's really important. It's such a hot potato and it's all important, but then even understanding what social media is for can be a thing, which I'd love you guys to comment on too.

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Yeah, I guess I'll address the teamwork piece of that first. So, you know, when you talk about it could be in all these different places, when we start focusing on territory and who has ownership over certain areas, I think that's where some of the breakdown can happen for what can be our best.

So thinking about how are we more aligned together on what it takes to get the ultimate goal done and even in working with an agency. you know, do you have the relationships internally with the physicians to be able to get them to the table if you want to do a social media interview or something like that? So I think it's having that common goal and understanding allows people to work together, whether it's social media or any other aspect of marketing.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Very good, Dave, you have any additional comments on that?

Dave Eilers (Possibility Partners): Yeah, I think it's keeping the larger story in frame, so to speak. I was with a hospital last week and they were quoting the chief executive officer and the access issue. So sometimes it's not about the small story of who's doing what, although we need clarity there. It's keeping the larger story in frame as well.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): For sure. so, Brooke, like in terms of going back to what you were saying in your opening comments, what are the greatest challenges you see today with healthcare marketing teams? What's holding them back from being their best?

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): I think a lot of it is that lack of understanding how many teams you're on. So we're all working across teams now. So you might be on the marketing team, but you're also on the team that's going to launch a new medical record, right? So you're on the Epic team or the Meditech team. And then you're also on the team that needs to cooperate with operations to implement a new cardiology campaign or something.

And so I think sometimes we in marketing and I speak from having sat in that seat myself, we get so focused on what are we doing as marketing that we forget to remember we're on that larger team and that we need to start communicating across those boundaries.

So I know many a time I had a conversation of, know, what's wrong with IT? Why won't they listen to us or what's wrong with operations? We've got this perfect marketing plan.

And so I think some of this dysfunction now is making sure that we're seeing the other people that are part of the team and actually actively agreeing that we're all on one team to implement that project. And so we do a lot of work with teams to have them actually come together. So the IT person, the ops person, the marketing members and have a dialogue.

How are we going to act as a team? How are we going to process this new initiative as a team? So we go through all of that so that they start acting like a team instead of going back to our marketing department and wondering why things aren't working out the way we want on the operation side or the patient facing side. I think the speed of things, AI.

Yeah, we're going to have AI team members on the org chart before long, if not already. So again, thinking about how fast things are changing and how we can respond by looking at the entire team.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That totally makes sense. So, we didn't talk a little bit about possibility partners and I'm sure you do a lot of things, but one of the things that you guys focus on, I believe is helping teams get out of dysfunction.

So like, what are some of the tools and tricks and things to do to help teams where you just, you know, and the, well, I have comments on this, but I'd love you to start like even know they have a dysfunction like the team and does the leadership know.

And, and I'm just curious while you're giving me the answer, like, I always feel like sometimes as a leader of an agency, it's very similar. At the end of the day, it's up to me, right? There's dysfunction, it's my fault, right? So it's like, we have to be clear on what we expect and who we hire and how we manage. But I'd love to hear what's your process and steps to help get people out of a dysfunctional situation into a team that works well.

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): I think one of the things that we found as we look at the complexity of healthcare, of the world that we're in today, it's really important that people work cross-functionally. So how do they work together? was just talking about that. And so one of those things that we work and focus on is what we call a team of teams approach.

And with that, that is really, instead of working in silos, so as functions, it's really working together, organized around a shared goal so that everyone brings their expertise to the table, but they operate with a shared understanding of the outcome they're trying to achieve together.

That seems so simple, but often is just a missing piece. And so when we're working with teens, we find that there's a lack of clarity around exactly what it is we're trying to do. And the more that people really understand and feel part of that, the more they want to align together and have the common goal as the success versus their individual or their functional team's support.

Stewart Gandolf (Possibility Partners): Totally makes sense. Dave, Brooke, do you have anything to add to that?

Dave Eilers (Possibility Partners): I think it's a three-part solution. There's leading self. You were saying at the end of the day, I'm the leader of the agency. So there's leading self, leading teams, and leading the organization. And so you have to work on all three fronts, whether that's doing a deep dive with an individual who's having a difficulty, having a listening framework for your specific team, or having a larger framework for the entire organization. So you can spot the teams that are succeeding and also the ones that are having trouble.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So I'm curious, I want to come back to something Anissa said a minute ago about the working across teams, because I think that's really interesting. one thing that I probably should have covered at the very beginning is, what are the symptoms of a dysfunctional team? When is it bad enough that it's time to call you guys? Because nobody's perfect, but when is it, geez, I don't know, this could be better. What are the kinds of things that are happening inside the health system that we kind of know we have a problem? Brooke, you wanna take that one?

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): Sure. Well, some of it is you don't have to be in a state of dysfunction to focus on a team. In fact, it's even better if you start early. So again, we mentioned starting a new project. So you're to upgrade your Epic or you're going to launch a cardiology campaign. Don't wait for the dysfunction. Make a conscious effort to talk about teams. That's one of the things that bringing us in helps you do.

You don't just assume the team is working well and that everything's going to work out. You actually take, you make it part of what you do. As much as you would sit down and work out a plan for how you're going to launch a new campaign or how you're going to change the way you do search engine optimization, you actually sit down and talk about how you're going to function as a team. And we have an assessment that we can come in and do or just conversations that we can come in and have that put team at the top of the agenda.

And so that's one key way that we're making sure that people are looking at teams, thinking about teams and not just going with the flow and thinking it's going to work.

Some of the ways you see dysfunction though is the conversation after the conversation. So you have a meeting and then this group comes over here and then they're talking about, well, what really happened in the meeting and what did people say?

It's people walking around going, I don't know, what am I supposed to do to move the needle on this? Because they don't have clarity of how their team affects the end goal. So you'll start to see confusion or people going off in their own silos and well, I don't know how the team's going to handle this, so I'm just going to do my thing.

We talk about stories, we had somebody at one time say, look, I don't have time to focus on the team. We had come in to help, don't have time to focus on the team. The best thing I can do is just get my job done. Where actually, sometimes it's not that at all. Sometimes it's pausing and actually focusing on what the rest of your team members need. And a lot of times it's not your actual work product. It's your time, your thinking, your ability to have clear talk and to be honest together. So that's where we start to see the dysfunctions. But again, we love it when we can come in early and avoid those dysfunctions.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Great. So I have another question for you. Something you said there just reminded me of something I've seen in various organizations, especially if it can be virtual.

And what I refer to, and I stole this term, it's been used before in psychology, but learned helplessness. Like in a big organization, I'm going to start to decide, well, nothing I do matters anyway, so I should even try. And that poison can get multiplied in a virtual environment. They start hiding out.

Is that something you guys see? Is that a common problem? how do you fix that?

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Yes, it is something we see. People feel like that they can't make a difference. they, you know, we've all heard of people leaving without leaving, right? So they just kind of shut down. And then they just say, what do you need? What do you want? They're not using their ability, their skills, their talent to come into the table with ideas and solutions and problem solving.

And so when we see that, we, as Brooke mentioned, we do a team assessment. So we find out what's important to the team and then how present that is actually on the team and where are there gaps and variabilities in experience. And so anytime we see gaps or variability in the experience, that's where we want to facilitate a dialogue to really understand what do we need to do differently.

And oftentimes it really does help re-engage people that have shut down because they sort of feel like I'm not valued anymore, there's nothing I can do, and I'm going to kind of hide out and do the minimal work.

That's where we see the difference. Part of what our philosophy is, is that we want to hear from everybody's voice on the team. And some people are natural and they can communicate and share how they're thinking and feeling and other people really struggle with that. And so that's part of our job is to make sure that we're bringing everybody's voice out. And having a team assessment is an X-ray of the team. It is not an individual assessment.

So most of the assessments we have the opportunity to take, and they're wonderful. Individual assessments are great, but it really gives us feedback on ourselves, whether it's our personality or our disc style, whatever it may be. And that tells you how you interact with other people.

What we do is we come in and take a team X-ray. And that, again, it's kind of that common goals. When I was talking about earlier, if people have an understanding of a common goal, what we're trying to do together, it changes the dialogue and it really opens up the door for engagement.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So one of the things I've noted in human behavior, there are people that tend to like, this is not just made up by Stewart. There's something I've always thought was really interesting, the idea of diffusion of innovations as a model. And you may have heard of it called by a different name, where the innovators, the early adopters, early majority, late majority laggards.

And every organization has that. So when you're working with a team, do you ever consider that and try to harness that and think that you're going to like, find some stakeholders that are respected, who can lead change and recognize it. Because it'd be great if it's all democracy and everybody joins in it automatically.

You guys are laughing, right? So the human side of this thing is really important. For example, we have an art director on our team who is amazing at art. She's also had a pre-med and a graphic design degree.

But today she's been made art director. She's helping with structure and onboarding and all these things that are in addition to art because that's just who she is. And so I want to empower her.

So I'm curious, is that a good decision for the boss? Should they look to empower their stars and how does that work?

Dave Eilers (Healthcare Success): I was going to weigh in on this question and your last one. When we do take an assessment, there's a range score. And so if you have a team of, 10 people and eight are feeling one way, but there's a big gap and that's reflected in the range, you can draw those people out.

And what's interesting is, because we also combine this with some agile development in making improvements, you'll find people volunteering for things sort of like your art director story, where they can not only do the artwork, but they can add structure or process or something like that.

I was working with a team in the South Bronx and their security officer was great at CAD and basically redesigned their ED department. I mean, I was shocked and he's like, “I've always wanted to learn CAD.”

Well, we gave him the opportunity to take a stab at it. He's working all hours of the day and night. We're getting emails at 10 o'clock at night with new chem drawings. It was amazing.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's awesome. Very good. So we talked about some of the departments and you guys have already talked about IT operations. Like how do we get the departments to get along? Because I think that's a pretty common thread. It's us against them mentality, which we're hoping isn't the standard, but seems to be sometimes.

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Well, this may go back to some of the conversations you had in your previous podcast about the role of the leader of marketing or communication. So oftentimes that person really can take on the role of connector, helping to create that shared understanding that we've talked about, translating the consumer perspective, building trust across those cross-functional teams.

So I think that sometimes it's hard for marketing to know what role to play when there is a project that has many different cross-functional members to make it successful. So that leader-to-leader relationship, but also the role of the marketing team in a cross-functional project is also really, really helpful to build that relationship.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That totally makes sense. And I'm curious also, the, that note, and this is kind of implicit in what we just discussed that certainly in hospitals and health systems, it's oftentimes executives don't even fully understand what marketing does. I mean, they think of marketing as billboards for the doctors, which is the classic thing that people have been complaining about since I've started this business. But, mean, really it's a classic. So how, like, so if they don't understand what marketing does, it's kind of hard to get the most out of marketing. how this kind of team development help with this.

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): A lot of it is looking at being the, as Anissa said, the connector and the convener. And so making it clear, what are we trying to do together, right? So you're the one that comes in and starts to have that conversation. And that begins to elevate you not only as a marketing expert, but as a leader.

And so I think administration respects that. They understand that they're going to need leaders. So if it's a physician leader or an administrative leader, and then if you can show yourself in the marketing seat as a leader of teams. So the one that actually gets that all these pieces need to come together. And then if you can have the team talking about that upfront, so you get IT in the same room, you get HR in the same room, ops in the same room.

And if you're able to deliver on projects that don't have hiccups, that don't go over budget, and you're the one leading that, that's a great way to get the respect of leadership. At the end of the day, know, they love good creative and they want people to see them on the street and say, saw your creative or I saw that great video that was on social.

But what they really want is I want it cheaper or I want it within budget. And I don't want people coming to my office complaining about working together. So if you can solve those pieces, you you've just elevated yourself in administration's eyes to a level that a campaign, a successful campaign will not do alone.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Okay, that makes sense. And so I have another couple of questions that are related. what we talked earlier about how to identify this and there's lots of symptoms probably like, you the teams aren't getting along together, deadlines are missed. I'm guessing sometimes you may be hearing like, what does marketing do? That's like the death sentence, by the way. What do they do anyway over there? That's not a good sign. If they're wondering what you do, that's not good job security.

So I'm curious part one of the question is, so who thinks this is important enough to bring you guys in? Meaning like, for example, the prototype could be a new head of the marketing department, or maybe they're afraid that'll make them look bad. They're going out to consultants on their first weeks on the job. Or is it the CEO? Like, who's doing this, and who thinks it's important enough to invest money and to fix? I'm just curious how that works.

Dave Eilers (Possibility Partners): I was going to say a new leader is a great example. Well, a new leader needs to, you know, find out the condition of his team. I mean, it's not a sign of weakness. You’re taking a baseline so you can build a better team. And so I think that's a sign of health rather than a sign of weakness to just assess who you have and ad say it's for the purpose of finding the right fit and get the right roles for the right people get the right people in seats on the bus is the way Jim Collins always described it.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, I agree. Anissa, you had some other additional thoughts.

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Yeah, so sometimes we're brought in if there's been a change in leader and they don't have someone. So we might come in in an interim role. And part of that is to find out, is to do an assessment on how well the team is working and finding out what's important to that team, even in hiring that replacement. So that's another scenario where people will bring us in.

We also are brought in more from an from an HR standpoint or from a CEO standpoint. So they really want to understand how their senior leadership team can work even better together. I think everyone gains when teams work well together. They know that, but how to do that? We all think that we know how to lead teams because we're promoted into different roles and then you automatically just have that gift, but that's not always the case.

And so just being able to bring in and having a common language, we find that leaders find that to be really helpful. So that gets their message across more to their team members as we develop that common language, like failure without blame, as an example. One of the things that we talk a lot about, or safe place to share ideas, or resolving tension quickly.

These are all examples that when everybody's talking about that together, there's that full movement and actions are taken versus it being individual silos of what someone thinks things should be.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's really interesting. ahead, somebody else have something? Well, I was going to say it's intriguing to me as a new leader, and I guess it depends on the stature of the new leader taking over the department, because that would be a discussion that probably if you're going to do that, you'd bring up before they hire you so you don't hit them with a surprise bill the second day. But I could see, because that's an objective way to very quickly see who you have on your team, and it's objective.

So it's not like if you end up letting some people go, it's not like it's just you walking in without a process. Because I mean, I'm assuming you guys get brought in when you have some pretty sick departments and like, while we all want everybody to win, not everybody belongs on the bus at all. So is that a thing for you guys? Because it would be certainly helpful if, you know, I could spend six months trying to get to know these people and doing the best I can and going through the pretend that this is working, but if it's not, I'd rather know that sooner than later and then figure out.

Are there development plans that we could do? And then some people just probably aren't right for the job. So I'm curious how that all works when that happens.

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): I think some of it is understanding the culture too. So it might not be that the individual is a problem or not fit for that job. It might be that the culture hasn't been supporting them in the right way. So they may have all these ideas, but they've been afraid to express them because the culture has been very much top down.

Or it may be that they're struggling to know how they fit because no one sat them down and said, this is how you'll help us move the needle, right? And when a new leader comes in, they're going to have their ideas for what needles they want to move and how fast they want to move them. So helping the team be able to discuss that and talk about clarity of where the new leader's going, those things are all extremely helpful.

And then in addition to a new leader, we come in a lot of times when it's a new project and it involves a new strategy. So if you're looking to grow a certain area, say you want to grow cardiology or want to grow pediatrics and you're going through the strategic process and you're pulling all the right people together, that's another time where we're brought in because we do have background in strategy and marketing as well as our expertise and teamwork.

So we can take the team through a process that helps them think about how they're gonna approach this differently. We work with committees. So sometimes it's not even a set department that we're working with. It's a committee that's come together, steering committees and things.

So again, it doesn't have to be when things are bad. It can be at the front before things sort of go off the cliff. But we do help people in situations that might not be a good fit for them, figure out why that is. And sometimes they want to leave at that point. They say, this isn't the right fit for me. I'm not having the impact I want to have.

And so again, you help the new leader figure that out quickly. And you mentioned a new leader coming in and all of a sudden saying like, hey, I want to bring in a consultant. Sometimes we work with organizations that do this for their new leaders. So it's not you coming in and rocking the boat. It's an organization that's made a commitment to helping new leaders succeed.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's a great point. You mentioned earlier, like, they've been brought up in a culture where the input was discouraged. I can just imagine you guys saying, the good news is we figured out the problem. The bad news is it's you. What do you do in that case?

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): It's rarely one person, very rarely one person. There are times and there are sort of toxic situations in people that once they move on, people do feel more freely. But just helping, sometimes it's a past leader that's left. And so the team all of a sudden needs to know that this new leader, what they value as opposed to what the old leader valued that was kind of holding them back. Because there's usually a reason when leaders leave and an opportunity to create a new culture.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's true. So I want to share something. We had some fun on a previous call when we were talking during your fun Friday discussion. And I'll just share this. I don't know if I've shared this in the podcast before, but you guys have heard this.

So we just went through a scaling exercise. We went from outside to get an insight of like where we go next. And this expert does sort of a combination of scaling up in EOS. And so we redid our values and I thought, ah, values. Okay, fine.

But the difference was the nuance was this time we'd had values before and we use them and we did refer to them. We just put them on a, you know, virtual wall somewhere. We did talk about them, but we did feel like we're in a different place. We had did our values like seven, eight years ago. That's pre pandemic, which is another eon ago. So, but here was a nuance we had, which was don't do aspirational values, do add values based upon the people you admire most of the organization. That way they're… And so if you remember the story about my art director, she was one of the people that inspired us to create our new values.

And so the values include like do your best even when no one's looking. And we have like internal picture where we have Rocky working out before, nobody's watching, but do your best. We talk about being resourceful, be a guide dog, not a pet so that you're leading the organization forward and several other different values that mean a lot to us.

We've been sharing them with our team on a weekly basis and that dissonance of the team members that are just into this all in, there are some that want to be this and there's some that you kind of tell like, wait, does that fit me anymore? And we understand that. Like so many real world comments about values from your guys' perspective.

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Well, we're big fans of value. So we do value workshops with teams all the time because it really is around what are the, again, what's going to align us together? What are those behaviors we're going to do and to make sure that we are helping achieve our mission and vision, right? So it's a code of how we're working together. And when you have that alignment around there, that really, really does help gel teams.

So that's something we always bring in as part of the teamwork to understand the mission, the vision, what's the company striving to become or what's this team striving to become and what are those values that are going to help guide that team.

Another piece that I think is very related to that is psychological safety. And so we look at psychological safety and trust as two foundational pieces that when we're working with a team in addition to their values is how well are they doing in both those areas. And so that's part of what we're able to assess.

And those are so foundational. If there's a crack there, then it's hard to build on top of that. And so those are oftentimes places we want to really focus and make sure the team is solid there.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's actually really helpful because anything that's solid advice is really helpful to our listeners. And that's a good reminder, I think, because most of you years ago, am I always doing that? Right? It's like we're all human, right? We all do our best. We also have 1,000 priorities. So it's easy to forget about basic stuff.

I'm curious about AI. How do you see impact with AI on teams and team development?

Dave Eilers (Possibility Partners): I was going to say we use AI quite regularly and encourage each other to use AI, particularly, I don't know if it has certain categories, but it certainly helps in ideation and in refining things.

Brooke wrote something the other day, by the way, we use this teamwork principles on our team. And she wrote something and she asked AI for a response, sort of a review, and it said it was traditional. And so she used AI to make it better and a little more edgy. So I think in health care, because AI is a hot topic, I was at a conference and it was not only a panel discussion, but it was a hallway conversation. You have to have a perspective on AI and

You have to use it regularly in the work that you do, otherwise you're going to be left behind. People pay us for time and expertise. It's the same in an agency. And AI can really accelerate that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Any additional thoughts, Anissa and Brooke?

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Yeah, just a couple thoughts. In addition to AI helping you be efficient in what you do, we also know that AI can really help with coaching. So there are reminders and things that AI can do. So we actually, part of our resources that we have, have the first ever AI-powered team coach.

So all the things that we talk about and all the leadership modules are all put in there to help people remind the basics like we were talking about, how well are we working together? How do we add our behaviors in there?

And so we can actually modify the tools to input your values in there and really make sure that it's all customized. So it really allows us to do more customization in our teamwork and have something that's a resource for them to ask any question and prompt just like you would AI, but it's all trained in teamwork and leadership.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That makes sense. So as we begin to wrap up here, I often think about, and particularly on this topic when you have consultants, years ago, I was leading a seminar about marketing and I referred to a conference I'd just been to and one of the doctors that was there came up to me and goes, you mean you first brought up the fact you'd been to another conference. I thought, wow, that scares me. My speaker is learning from other people. And he goes, wait a minute. No, I want my speaker to be learning from others. I want him to be, you know, practicing what they preach. So how do you guys keep up? And you know, like, do you ever have people as intermediaries help you guys or how do you keep up? I'm curious.

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): Well, one thing we, as Dave mentioned, we do the team assessment ourselves and we use that AI coach. So we're able to go in there and as Possibility Partners talk and go back and forth with that AI coach about, know, on our latest assessment, it showed that we either went up in this area or we went down in this area.

What might be the reasons behind that and where might we focus? So, you know, we're trying to jump into the AI coaching mode on ourselves and also having, you know, a clear dialogue to be able to say, you what's working, what's not working.

And so helping us to kind of to push ourselves forward. And then we have this great thing, which might be one of the places where we met you, Stewart. We do Fun Fridays where we bring in speakers from all kinds of areas and we just have an hour conversation.

And sometimes we talk about AI or some major issues. Sometimes we talk about the best business books we've all ever read. Sometimes we talk about the best regular books we've read. We had a conversation with a great woman who was doing some strategy work and ended up that she was an expert on rom-coms. And so we spent at least 20 minutes discussing rom-coms and just got sort of creative.

So we reach out and specifically try to have dialogue with people that either are in our world and like the same things we do or are in different spheres that can bring new knowledge to us.

I think it's one of the most important things as a leader and it's actually something that I took a while to learn as a new leader is that I actually don't need to have all the answers, shouldn't have all the answers. I should hire people who are better than me in a lot of areas to bring new information and I should meet new people. So we're big fans of learning from different people, different styles and appreciating what we don't know.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I love that and it's funny, we have two different things we do with our company. One, we have something called AI and Innovation Club. Every month with our internal team, it's open to everybody. We tend to, there's about two thirds of the company attends every session. That's been really powerful. And we started off like, how do you use this stuff? And now it's much, much more advanced, obviously.

And the other thing we do is we have in services periodically from, or from people like we just had a software called NextPatient, we had them speak to our team about what their service is, why, how does it work. We've had other people like Laura Lee from Lion's Share and different people come and explain what they do.

And very similarly, it's like to have the network spread out. And then we also even use our webinars and podcasts and like interviews like this to share with the team and to share with clients. And, you know, we come across something every day almost, but certainly every week.

So doing these kinds of things for us helps us have the right experts when the time comes. Any other final thoughts as we wrap up here? You guys have any last minute words of wisdom.

Very good, I think that's a perfect place to finish. Thank you guys for your time today. I knew this would be fun. Thanks for inviting me to Your Fun Friday. It was always stimulating talking to you guys, and I'll see you the next time.

Anissa Davenport (Possibility Partners): Thank you, Stewart.

Brooke Hynes (Possibility Partners): Great. Thanks for the dialogue.