Co-written with one of my dearest friends and leadership buddies, Dr. Mark Pochapin, for the audience of my team at NYU Langone Health at our Annual Leadership Team Retreat only days after I’d resigned. My intention for the day was to give them time to digest what had happened that week, come together and rally around my successor, Sandy Saunders, and reflect on what was needed in the year to come to lift their game to new heights.
Drs. Sherry & Mark Pochapin and me,
New Year’s, January, 2020
Good morning, team!
What can I say to you this morning…
- To even begin to tell you what you mean to me,
- To adequately describe how PROUD I am of each and every one of you,
- To convey how deeply I believe in you?
What can I say…
- To inspire you to take this moment (the gift of this day) to dig deep, to go inside yourself, and to authentically channel your own story to show up in this next year and give your very best!
- Even when there feels like there is no clarity,
- Even in times of flux,
- Especially when times are hard?
What can I say…
- To help you begin to understand the “why” behind my decision?
- As a leader, we are taught that even if people don’t agree with you, taking a beat to explain your rationale helps.
- I know from the core of my being that you – individually and as a team are GOING TO BE OK.
- I truly believe YOUR BEST is yet to come!
I’ve been reflecting on “what can I say…as I’m running out of time… as I’m running out of time… as I’m running out of time….(First Hamilton reference, anyone?)
On Tuesday, I had a really special conversation with Dr. Mark Pochapin. It was inspiring to me, so I decided to go with much of what he told me, make it my own, and deliver it to you this morning!
Fun fact: Mark and I both come from hardy stock and generations ago our ancestors’ BOTH chose North Dakota as their first home in the United States to begin to carve out a better life for their families. Mark’s great-grandfather’s brother, Henry, moved from Russia to Carlton, ND, a town of 225 people. Leadership and public service runs deep in both of our family trees. Henry Pochapin established the first Jewish temple in the state! Around the same time the Kingsburys moved South from Hemmingford, Quebec, and began working the land and eventually serving in the state legislature.
Alright…here goes!
Change is universal and inevitable
The pace of change is increasing, and times of flux are becoming almost constant. Even our way of life is in continuous flux. Left to our own devices, we tend to:
- Deny it,
- Fear it,
- Personalize it,
- Resist it, and
- Blame it.
We BELIEVE we can control it. We TRY to prevent it. We FORGET that change is necessary for survival and growth.
So what would happen instead…if we embraced change? Could we actually enjoy it?!?
There is nothing like children to remind you to strive to live in the present. Nor is there a better litmus test for HOW FAST things change!
On Facebook on Tuesday, this video clip popped up in my feed of Natalie careering across the floor of our Brooklyn apartment as she was learning to walk.
- We lived in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
- I worked in Managed Care. I had recently been made a Director. That was a BIG career step for me!
- Natalie was 5 months old.
- My mom was living with us and sleeping on our pull-out couch as she battled non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the Perlmutter Cancer Center. Mom now 10 years in remission. She credits NYU Langone for saving/extending her life.
To the right, in ten years – this little guy, Zachary, (who wasn’t even born when I started leading the strategy team) will be a freshman in college.
- Matt and I will be empty nesters.
- At that point, I will still have ~15 years left of contribution in my career.
- God willing, my mom (who will then be in her early 80) will still be with us.
- Come what may, I want a front row seat to these next 10 years!
I am not throwing away my shot!
– Hamilton
The DNA of Evolution – Change vs. Chance
I have had an incredible career here at NYU Langone these last 15 years. The organization, the Dean/CEO, my boss, Joe…have been SO GOOD to me! There is NO reason why I have to leave. I have been VERY happy here.
If you think about it, “change” and “chance” as words are not that different. Grammatically, there is only one letter variance in these two words – “G” and “C”.
Even in the very strands of our DNA, G and C (guanine (G) and cytosine (C)) come together to effectuate change and carry out the instructions at the molecular level of how we need to grow to survive.
Why make a change? Why take that chance? It’s scary. There is risk in it.
Are you being forced to change? Or are you getting a chance? Depending on how you look at it, you can see risk and/or opportunity.
Change is both scary and exciting
In hosting a Japanese au pair, I learned that these characters are called “kanji.” The word for change/crisis in Japanese is composed of two parts: (危機=kiki) has the kanjis 危=”danger” and 機=”opportunity.” To be honest, I am feeling both a little scared, but also excited about what my future may hold up at Yale.
So much depends on perspective
Substitute “Have to” with “Get to”
- Do I have to see another patient, or do I get to see another patient?
- Do I have to go to another meeting, or do I get to go to another meeting (and have a seat at the table)?
- Do I have to be the parent of neurodiverse children who need a little extra time and intervention, or do I get to help shape how they change the world with their brilliance?
- Do I have to be a kid who helps care for my parents, or do I get the opportunity to return all they’ve done for me?
- Do I have to be part of change, or do I get to be part of change?
The grass is not greener on the other side
The grass is NOT greener in New Haven (or anywhere else for that matter).
The grass is greener where you water it!
“Your life story is your leadership story.”
– Doug Conant
I’ve been at NYU Langone for most of my adult life. I started the day I got back from my honeymoon. I think I kind of look the same, but who is the kid next to me that I’m marrying!?! Boy, were we young!?!
If any of you are familiar with the opening lines of Hamilton….
“How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore…” Well, my story doesn’t go quite like that…I was blessed with a tight knit, devout Christian upbringing. But I do think given our focus on leadership today, that some qualities of leadership are universal…
Hamilton…”got a lot farther by working a lot harder
By being a lot smarter
By being a self-starter”
Dr. Grossman, standing next to me at this Working Mother Gala, was born a kid from the Bronx and grew up to be CEO & Dean of one of the greatest Academic Medical Centers in the World. Our life story is our leadership story.
Well, if Mark Pochapin’s family hails from a town of 225 people, just for fun I Googled the population of MY home town, Nash, North Dakota. Depending on the year, the census oscillates between 50 & 5! Consisting of a school, a post office, a few houses, and a grain elevator, it remains one of my favorite places on earth.
How does a Nash kid, opera singer, daughter of a farmer….grow up to be Vice President of Strategy at NYU Langone? What are the odds? How does that happen?
In the greatest city in the World…there is boundless possibility
New York has long been hailed as the “city of dreams,” where in one generation you can build something. The thing I’ve always loved most about NYU Langone is that it’s a data-driven, meritocracy. People come here from Johns Hopkins and Harvard to do just that…to build something. This place is incredibly special!!
And how lucky we are to be alive right now. As a young woman, that I was taught that I could do anything.
And how lucky I was that I was given the gift of education. How lucky I was that Notre Dame uses its large endowment (largely from alumni donations for football tickets) to fund scholarships for kids like me, who otherwise would not have been able to afford to go there. What a foreshadowing of getting to work on the NYU School of Medicine tuition-free initiative for a decade!
And how lucky I was that my family instilled the values of hard work, curiosity, grit. At my Uncle Bill’s wake last week, my cousin, Barry, put it so well, “we had what I needed and what we wanted we earned.”
And how lucky I was to have a role model of a purpose-driven working mom who was devoted to her students with deep caring for each and every one of them. Mom was only more devoted to us kids, loving us boundlessly, forever being our biggest fans, and believing that we were amazing and capable of anything we put our mind to.
NYU Langone has taught me almost everything I know about intentional leadership…
“You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.”
– Desmond Tutu
On top of those deep-seated values, from early in my career I was exposed to some of the greatest strategic minds in the industry. Above are just a few who have left an indelible imprint on my life, as did each of you. You are so lucky to get to work, learn, and grow here. You are surrounded by heroes and role models. Take it all in. Don’t take it for granted.
As you rise to a specific challenge, who do you bring with you for inspiration? And whose lives are you influencing?
“You know what good leadership looks like. You’ve seen it!”
– Doug Conant
Perhaps Fred Rodgers said it best as he accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1997 Emmy Awards…watch it here! I encourage you to close your eyes what Mr. Rodgers says, “I’ll watch the time.”
This is a candid photo taken on the morning of my wedding. Matt and I had just done our “first look” in the nave of the church. Just beyond Matt, walking up the aisle was my Godfather, Uncle Bill, who passed away about two weeks ago. Truly a second father figure to me, Uncle Bill taught me many things, but above all – to see beauty in the world. Capturing the beauty of God’s creation through photography was his most authentic spiritual expression of his soul. Uncle Bill never went to college. My dad (his younger brother) got that shot.
Together he, my Dad, and my grandfather, Harley Kingsbury – while many neighbors were unable to sustain a living farming during the drought years of my youth – scaled our 6-generation family business to a corporation. I channel the three of them quite a lot and truly believe it was their influence that enabled me to be successful here at NYU Langone.
I am grateful that the love of hard work, the core values of faith and family, and the importance of being a good neighbor are life lessons that were hardwired in me. My father worked hard all year long, but when the crops were ready it was go time, and as a family, we raced against the changing seasons and the threat of bad weather to harvest our investment. In this modeling, I saw early on what became my core concept: “Family comes first; career enables family.”
If I’ve been lucky enough to have an influence on your life, I hope that you’ll channel me when you need to….And I’m always just a phone call away.
Gratitude is a strength….and an antidote
Life in never too hard or destitute to find something to be grateful for. It’s important to tell people thank you.
The practice of gratitude is one of my core beliefs and ties directly to my purpose statement as a leader.
This is what I’ve been going for these last several years in building SPBD. This is WHY I choose to lead.
Mission accomplished! Now YOU have to carry on the torch.
You are more capable than you think!
Proof: 2020 – present
You never know how strong, resilient, or resourceful you are until you’re tested by fire.
I often tell expectant mothers, you are about to see JUST HOW CAPABLE and STRONG you are. Prior to being a mother, if you had told me, all of the things I would have to do and rise to the occasion out of necessity and love – I would never have believed you.
If the last two years has taught us anything, you have proof that:
You are more capable than you think! It’s better to try and learn from your mistakes, than not try at all.
“I never lose, I either win or learn.”
– Nelson Mandela
Channel cool, calm, & collected under pressure both in and out of work.
In life and in leadership, do your best to STAY calm. Whether it’s musical performance training of singing in front of thousands of people or the rigor of NYU Langone’s continual strive for exceptionalism, I have learned to be cool, calm, & collected under pressure both in and out of work. I now consider grace under pressure to be my greatest strength.
There are two moments I want to share with you where this was powerfully revealed to me in the last two years. In both moments, it you had told me what would have been expected of me and that I’d rise to the occasion, again, I would never have believed you.
The first was Father’s’ Day, 2020. Matt and I had just sit down at the kitchen table to eat a homemade Sunday brunch after church. Natalie brought our puppy, Snickerdoodle, in from the backyard and closed the backdoor.
A pane of 1930’s non-tempered glass shattered on impact. I guillotine-like piece sliced through her arm, causing a deep 7-inch laceration that stretched from the meat of her palm to her elbow. I sprung up and as Natalie turned to me in sheer horror, I saw the flesh of her arm falling open and off the bone. There was an artery in her wrist, shooting spurts of blood.
In a nanosecond, I had an almost out-of-body experience where I became the general articulating orders to my children and husband on what needed to happen . “Matt, call 911.” “Matt, strike that, we don’t have time to wait for an ambulance, drive us to White Plains hospital.” “Zachary, get in the car.”
Muscle-memory of my highschool Tiger Woods-inspired golf grip with interlocking pinky and index finger allowed me to both hold the clipped artery on her wrist and keep the flesh of her arm wrapped around the bone. Upon arrival, I was asked by the surgeon to use my own body to pin my daughter down and calm her while emergency surgery was performed. To give Natalie the best shot of a full functional recovery, my daughter would need to stay awake for it.
It wasn’t until a couple hours later when Natalie was resting post-operatively that I realized I had no shoes or socks on given I’d literally run out our front door. Her surgeon told me at discharge that if I had not responded as I did, Natalie would have died before arriving at the hospital.
Be a leader, wherever life takes you.
The only other time in my life, I’ve felt this degree of cool, calm, and collected in crisis was the evening of August 10th. Hearing Dad had become septic, I had flown home 48-hrs prior, based on in-depth knowledge of end-of-life from four years of working on the Supportive Care initiative, and decades of modeling high-risk co-morbid patients. I systematically called my siblings and all four of us (each out of state) made a pilgrimage to Dad’s bedside.
We had been holding vigil, taking shifts, waiting for the end. Exhausted and drained, we had stepped away for supper. In what I can only describe as a bolt of anxiety, I knew I had to return to the hospital.
I opened the door of Dad’s hospital room. He was lying there peacefully, sleeping. “Hey Dad, It’s Mary I announced as I entered. He doesn’t stir. On the wall to my right is a row of light switches, I flick the one on the end, which brightly illuminates a fluorescent light above the headboard. He doesn’t flinch. The cool, calm, collected triage-mode washes over me.
Is he still breathing?” Getting close to his chest, I listen for breath, faint and distance. His warmth surrounds me, his chest and arms soft as I embrace him. Not hearing the next breath, I bolt out the door to the nursing station on the unit.
With his stethoscope, he listens for a heart beat for a what feels like a long time before confirming that it’s still there. I squeeze Dad’s hand, tell him that I love him, that he’d lived a good life, was a good dad, and that it was ok to go in peace now.
I watch the caregiver’s every move, gathering through context that Dad has breathed his last. Leaving his earthly body, Dad delivered over his spirit. “Time of death – 8:11 p.m.,” I mutter as I glance at my cell phone.
Mustering all the strength I had in me, I begin the process of notifying my family, beginning with calling my mom. It eerily feels a little like the moments after childbirth, calling your closest loved ones to announce that a new family member has just been born into the world, but in reverse. The anchor and patriarch of ours had just left it.
As long as it doesn’t kill you there are only two outcomes to any endeavor: Success and learning.
As someone who has lived through a lot of flux, I wanted to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. In the face of constant change, we must orient our mindset towards change and growth. The old script just doesn’t work.
April Rinne’s concept of “running slower” particularly resonates and harkens back to what I know to be true from my own leadership model, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” In uncertain times, it you run as fast and hard as you can, you may very well be running in the exact wrong direction.
As the serenity prayer reminds us, we must accept the things we cannot change, find the courage to change the things we can, and pray for the wisdom to know the difference. Change will happen. We must distinguish between what we can control, and what we cannot control.
This beauty of a classic is Mark Pochapin’s car, Gertrude, the same model Chevy he had in high school. The sporty little lady underneath it is my car, Roxey, which was a fun splurge of a commuting car for my trips up to New Haven. I also was gifted an Audible subscription from Christmas. While life have control of the wheel in life, we cannot foresee every pothole on the road ahead. We can try utilize our time on earth as best we can, but we can’t control the traffic or ultimately how long it will take us to finish our journey.
“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”
– John C. Maxwell
How can we embrace change?
In strategic management, we use tools to provide a framework to organize the unknown and the ambiguous. When navigating change, we can also use the tool of a change worksheet and consider:
- What you can control vs. what you cannot control
- What your world will look like before and after change
- What represents fear/danger vs. new opportunities
- What evidence is there for your fear? What evidence can you find against it?
When the dust settles…
Add to your worksheet:
- What did you learn?
- How can you do better next time?
- Who can you ask for help?
- Who can you ask for feedback?
To close, a few leadership lessons from a fellow Midwesterner
Don’t be this guy!
People can sense inauthenticity a mile away!
In the largest in-depth study on authentic leadership published in the Harvard Business Review in February, 2007, Bill George, Peter Sims, Andrew McLean, and Diana Mayer found that after reviewing 3,000 pages of transcripts from interviews with 125 diverse leaders specifically chosen for their “authenticity” and “effectiveness,” NO universal characteristics or traits were found to be directly associated with leadership success.
“Be Yourself! Everyone else is taken.”
-Oscar Wilde
Important Leadership Principles for Change
- Use your brains: Be transparency on what you know and what you don’t know.
- In your communication:
- Make it frequent,
- Be clear and definitive, and regarding tone,
- Be serious, yet optimistic.
- Use your heart to show up with authenticity & vulnerability.
- Lead with courage!
- Surround yourself with good people:
- Focus on success and recognize outstanding efforts. Remember to say “Thank you!!”
- Look at everything that is happening, and then ask how we can do better?!?
Change helps us be our best
Change will happen whether we like it or not.
Remember:
- Embrace change and (try to) enjoy it!
- ChanGe vs. ChanCe: Are you being forced to change or being given a chance?
- Change/Crisis has both components: Fear/Danger and Opportunity
- Perspective: Convert “Have to” to “Get to”.
- Water your grass.
- Don’t forget to count your blessings.
- Remember that you are not alone.
- You are more capable than you think!
- There are things you can control and things you cannot. Try discern the difference.
- When life (or change) gets overwhelming, watch Hamilton, play Solitaire, and sip some wine! Everyone needs an escape sometimes…
YOU GOT THIS!
To my successor, Sandy, (paraphrasing Captain Sully), you’ve been training your whole career for this moment. This is your moment in the professional development “Circle of Life.” You are ready!
To the team, you couldn’t be in better hands. And Sandy, Joe, and NYU Langone NEED each of you to step up your game and rise to the new challenges ahead. You are ready!
As for me, I’m going to try “kick some tail” doing good up in New Haven…I’d like each of you to try “kick some tail” doing good here in New York! I’m just a phone call away! I forever have your back and am in your court!
“You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.”
– Brené Brown
