Advancing Health During Volatile, Uncertain and Complex Times

Hospital and health system executives face a reality that plagues military brass on the battlefield: how to lead, create a vision for success and inspire innovation when it’s tough to see what’s over the horizon.

Situations like this are fraught with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). In a new podcast, Andy Shin, chief operating officer of the AHA Center for Health Innovation, interviews Greg Bunch, adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Booth School, who discusses VUCA in health care and why developing a culture of innovation is vital to future success.

Bunch analyzes some of the dramatic business shifts occurring in health care and uses Microsoft as a best-in-class example for health care executives to consider. For example, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO and a Booth School graduate, led his company back to a strong position after being on the ropes due to rapidly changing market conditions and shifting core values within the tech giant.

One of the “brilliant” things Nadella did, Bunch says, was to carefully examine the DNA culture of Microsoft so that it could be reignited. He believes hospital leaders who have concerns about their organizations’ futures can do much the same thing. “What Nadella pointed to was, ‘What did we do when we were at our best? What did we do right?’”

With similar introspection and the right tools and framework, hospital leaders can further develop a culture of innovation. They can probe cultural issues like how to achieve optimal care for patients by combining what they know about medicine, technology and human engineering.

Professor Bunch will be joined by other faculty from the University of Chicago and the AHA to explore these and other issues in greater detail in a one-day course called Building and Leading a Culture of Innovation offered by the AHA Center for Health Innovation and the Booth School in Chicago on April 30 and July 9. Register today.