With the ACPE

I had the pleasure of addressing the Vanguard Program of the American College of Physician Executives at the ACPE annual meeting in San Francisco.  The goal of this program is to empower and inspire this group of 100-125 senior physician leaders to practice transformational leadership in health care, something they are uniquely gifted and positioned to do.  After they were welcomed by ACPE CEO Peter Angood (seen here), I gave a talk focused on the the leader as coach.  My lead was borrowed from the legendary coach John Wooden, who once said "You haven't taught until they have learned," suggesting that a failure of a team to learn is more a statement of the teacher's inability to present the lesson well than the students' inability to learn.

My talk was followed by that of Andre Delbecq, McCarthy University Professor at Santa Clara University (seen here), who presented similar themes.  In particular, Andre reinforced the message that while managing change is a key leadership challenge, change requires movement away from "expert decision making" to managing a discovery process and pooling judgments.

This theme of physician leadership and innovation was pervasive during the day, and the group was fortunate to hear from a number of experts in both the plenary sessions and workshops.  I was pleased, for example, to have a chance to talk with Dr. James Thompson, of The Hayes Group International, who likewise reinforced the idea of physicians as mentors and the concept of servant leadership.

Attendees included people from many parts of the country, with highly varied backgrounds.  It was a convivial and good humored group, especially when one took into account a Sunday morning 7am starting time!