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 Welcome to this Week in Health, it influence where we discuss the influence of technology on health with the people who are making it happen. My name is Bill Russell, recovering healthcare, CIO, and creator of this week in Health. it a set of podcasts and videos dedicated to developing the next generation of health IT leaders.

This podcast is sponsored by health lyrics. Professional athletes have coaches for every aspect of their life to improve performance. Yet many CIOs and health executives choose to go it alone. Technology has taken center stage for healthcare. Get a coach in your corner. Visit health lyrics.com. To schedule your free consultation, there's two new free services on our website that I wanna make you aware of this week.

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If you're interested in either of those services, check 'em out on the website. Today we're starting another of our interviews from the Health and Analytics Summit in Salt Lake City, put on by Health Catalyst. If you're trying to apply data as a transformative part of your healthcare strategy, this is a fantastic event.

So I caught up with Dan Burton, the CEO of Health Catalyst, who has done so many interviews over the last couple of months with the, uh, company completing its IPO. He's discussed analytics, healthcare transformation, and the company's journey at length in those interviews. And if you wanna catch any of those, you can just Google 'em and pull 'em up.

They're, uh, they're worth watching. Um, so I thought I'd take a little different tack and I would ask him about a topic that might be more practical for our community, and that is Building Culture. Health Catalyst has grown in numbers, geography, client base, and has gone from private to public, and yet they remain at the top of, of every metric around employee engagement and great places to work.

In this conversation, I try to understand how they think about and build culture at Health Catalyst. Hope you enjoy. All right, so here we are from has 19 another session Today we're with Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst. Congratulations on the company going public and, and a, a great conference by the way.

Thanks, bill. Fantastic. The keynotes, the user group, the sharing, the collaboration. This is my first meeting. The really fantastic. It is a great community and, and part of what we hoped would happen with this summit is it would be an opportunity for the broad healthcare analytics community to get together and for all of us to learn from one another.

And I think this year's been another example of, of that great opportunity. How, what number is this? How many have you done so far? Uh, this is our sixth year. Sixth year. Wow. It's amazing. It's, uh, you know, the, uh, the analytics walk, all the different organizations, . Sharing their, uh, their experiences. I was one of those organizations that thought, Hey, we could build it ourselves.

Mm-Hmm. , and we should build it ourselves. And, uh, we went down that path and, uh, you know, you know how complicated it is and replatforming, you know, every couple of years 'cause the technology changes. But one of the things I think that people miss out on is that community. The community is really, uh, to learn from, you know, the University of Kansas and, and, uh, mission Health and, and just all your, all your great, uh, clients.

They're, they're just, they're sharing. Their experiences and, and really opening up, uh, to other people what they can do with analytics. It's really exciting. It is, and it's one of the wonderful parts of working in healthcare is the willingness of organizations to share what they're learning and to help other organizations become better.

And the analytics walk about as a good example of each of those organizations, uh, wanting to share their learnings and, and, and help others succeed as well. So this week in health, it, we try to be more pragmatic. So this isn't gonna be a new show. I'd love to talk to you, . About, you know, going public and what that was like and all those things.

But what I really want to talk about as a community, I, and I want to talk about culture. Um, you know, you were one of the first three employees Yeah. And you guys are now what about 700, 800, approaching 800. Yep. Um, started with one client now up to 50 plus clients I talked to, um, I talked to Alia, I talked to, you know, I talked about Asia Pacific, talked about, uh, what you're doing in Europe and you're now a global company.

So, culture's, uh, culture's very important. And, uh, the other thing I think I found fascinating is talking to your clients, talking to your employees, they love Health Catalyst. And so take us on the journey a little bit. Um, how do you think about culture? Well, I think it's such an important question and one of the frameworks that we were introduced to really early on.

Head Health Catalyst was one that Jim Collins had developed around the concept of a flywheel, which is really a way to represent the strategy of an organization, how your organization accomplishes its mission. And as we thought about our mission, which is to, to really be a catalyst to enable, uh, massive improvement through data and.

And analytics. Um, when we thought about what would make that flywheel spin faster and faster, it was really clear to us that the only way this could scale is if our team members were deeply engaged in that mission. And so early on we put the, the team member engagement component at the center of the flywheel, believing that if our team members felt

Totally committed to the mission of improvement through data and analytics. Totally committed to our client's improvement, uh, and engaged in that process at an extraordinary level, which we could enable by, by caring for those team members, by listening to them, uh, by respecting them and making sure that.

They knew that we were, they were our first priority, but then they would interface with all of those health systems, all of those healthcare organizations at an extraordinary level, be deeply committed to their improvement and that would scale. And so understanding that connection between team member engagement and the accomplishment of the mission, which, which we use to

Uh, to, to enunciate through that flywheel framework, I think has really guided us and helped us. We haven't been perfect. We've made plenty of mistakes along the way, but it's helped us at least have a true north keep team member engagement at the center of everything that we do. And, and it, it informs the reason why I think it's my number one priority that every day I should be working on improving the team member engagement experience at Health Catalyst.

Because it's our team members who are directly interfacing on the front lines with our health system clients to affect improvement. And they're the ones that have to be deeply engaged. Uh, and they're the ones that make the improvements actually happen. You know? And if, if I had an experience it myself, there's part of my skepticism that would say, yeah, really?

Is that really foundationally what makes, uh, health Catalyst what it is? Um, but you interact with your clients and they have a, a deep connection with the Health Catalyst employees, um, and staff members. And, and then your clients have a good connection with each other. Yes. Uh, in their, in their sharing. So it does seem, I mean, even when you start at three people and say, this is gonna be our core, as it gets bigger it does, it scales.

Because it's people. It does and it's it's people within our organization and it's people within our client organization. So a lot of what we talk about with our flywheel is our flywheel is just a compliment to our client's flywheel. And when we are deeply engaged in, in the same kind of mission of data informed improvement, our team members' engagement actually influences our clients' level of engagement.

We're trying to help. Those organizations stay deeply engaged and, and become more and more engaged in that data informed improvement. And that's what keeps them committed and excited. And then, uh, when they come together in a conference like the Healthcare Analytics Summit, they see like-minded, like engaged, uh, individuals and, and they start to feed off of one, one another, which is, I think the genesis of how we're gonna see transformation occur.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting to me to to think about just the, uh, you know, you're, you're at the intersection of two things that we're talking about here. One is data is gonna transform healthcare. Mm-Hmm. . We, we know that we're fundamentally, and we're seeing that, I mean the, uh, the keynotes, the conversations, um, the partnerships with pharma and.

Life sciences and other things. Um, and, uh, but people yeah, are really at the center of transform, transforming healthcare and have been since, since forever. So do the, do you ever get conflicts? Do you ever get, uh, situations where you're sitting there going, no, no. This is our core values, so this is what we are.

I don't know if it's core values, but we believe in the culture, therefore we're not gonna do this. We're not going to, uh, . You know, did, was that part of the conversation when you go public, is that part of the conversation? I mean, is it constantly being brought up and, and thought about? It is. And one of the, the concepts that I think has really helped us is the desire to be principle based in our decision making.

I. So if we can identify timeless principles, um, that form the bedrock or the foundation of decisions, then the practices and the policies and the specifics take care of themselves. And so when we face a decision, we try to go back to principles. Um, and we talk a lot about, uh, timeless principles like exercising, humility, understanding that we, when we face any specific situation, we shouldn't assume we know all the answers.

That when we're interfacing with a client, we shouldn't come in with a sense of arrogance that we, we know what to do. And humility also influences the way that we think about how improvement actually occurs. As you said, bill data is necessary for transformation, but it's, it's not sufficient. It almost every case where we've seen a client measurably improve.

It's a combination of the right data, the right analytics, but then the people that want to take action based on the data and the analytics. And, and we shouldn't overlook, uh, how significant that is and how important it is. And I think that connection to, to timeless principles. Helps us maybe stay grounded and, and stay balanced in the way that we approach the work that we do.

So let's, let's rewind a little bit. If you were starting over again today, are there some things that you might do differently in how you develop culture or community? Well, my goodness. Um. I think trying to, to embrace that attribute of humility, the number of mistakes that we've made along the way is kind of astounding.

Um, and yet, um, I would say one thing I would hope that we would, that we would adhere to is that concept of. If you get, if you get the principles right and you, and you treat people with a deep level of love and respect, uh, starting with your team members, um, it overcomes, uh, an unbelievable number of mistakes that you might make.

Uh, because when you make those mistakes, if you, if you, if you follow a principle like humility, you apologize, you recognize the mistake early, you learn from. Uh, the mistake and you become better, much more quickly. And so I think the regrets that I would have Bill would be situations in which it took us longer than, than it would've been ideal to recognize when we had fallen short and to apologize and to to change.

And I think that the areas where I feel, um, the greatest sense of, of satisfaction are examples where we were quick to apply the right principles, and they served us really well. Humility is a, it's funny, I was talking to my wife last night about this and she says, you know, to tell me about the conference.

I said, you know, the one thing I will say is you can, it's, the humility is palpable. It's not that you don't believe you're gonna change healthcare through analytics. Through your clients and helping them and assist in them. But it's just the con the conversations I was, I was relaying to her story of, of Dale in the front of the room talking to one of the clients that had been really critical of, of, uh, a change.

And I said, uh, you know, first of all to give the critical client the platform. Mm-hmm. and say, but also I think it's common after that was we really appreciate those clients that are . Vocal and critical that helps us to be better. And, uh, when you, when you drive humility through the organization, you're able to to be much more responsive, I would think.

It is, I think absolutely correlated to that responsiveness and that learning. And, and it's hard because human nature I think, becomes defensive. We, we naturally become defensive when someone shares negative feedback with us. Right. And so a lot of what we try to focus on is . How do we counterbalance that, that natural instinctive reaction, um, and instead embrace humility and view this as an opportunity to learn, uh, and, and then develop.

The one other thing that, that your comments reminded me of is, is another similar framework to, uh, uh, to the flywheel framework or the source was the same, which was some of Jim Collins writing that, that sense of the importance of humility. At first seems counterintuitive in many ways to an organization that has great ambition.

One of the, the bridges or the connections that he made was he, he studied a lot of leaders in great companies and leadership teams in great companies, and compared them to mediocre companies that had the same opportunities, but. Uh, but didn't take advantage of them. And he described level five leaders.

He had sort of a, a framework that he developed, but what was fascinating to me about it was this juxtaposition of individual humility that the, these leaders were unassuming and they were good learners and they were ready to, to receive feedback. But it was coupled with incredibly ambitious, um, mission oriented.

Commitment and, and ambition to see the mission of that organization be fulfilled. And that drive to see that mission fulfilled, I think is something that I, that I love about Health Catalyst as well. And so it's, it is an interesting coupling of, of two sometimes opposing perspectives. You are extremely busy.

Two real quick questions. I don't know that they're quick questions, but this is more for my listeners. So let, let's, let's put you in a position of . Uh, health it. So you're with one of your clients, you're in health, it, you're listening to this podcast, you're saying, well, culture's important. Um, you don't necessarily have the ability to impact culture, um, as a entire system.

Um, I, I mean, what, what would you say to that person? How can that frontline person really impact the culture? Well, first of all, we do believe actually if we're going to accomplish our mission, we need to help our clients build better culture, uh, because it's both data as well as people. And so we are really focused on that.

When we do assessment work, we also assess the cultural readiness to adopt . Data and, and analytics and use it to improve. So I would validate that that's a big deal. And secondly, we try to talk about how it all starts with me, right? And understanding that each individual makes a series of decisions that impacts and has a ripple impact.

Within the sphere of influence that they have. And so sure there are always constraints, but with every individual that we work with in a client setting, we try to start with, well, what can I do to influence for good? Uh, and then that often leads to more and more. Opportunities for influence. And last question.

So our demographics has shown us that a lot of students are listening to this podcast and, um, you know, what would you tell them about culture? What should they look for in the, the company that they choose to work for, and what attributes should they be looking for? Well, I appreciate the question. I, one of the things that I admire about students that are, that are about to enter the workforce is.

The desire that they seem to significantly have to, to find purpose in the work that they do, and I would, my advice to them would be focus on, uh, finding a place where you can fulfill a purpose that's beyond a paycheck. Because I think when you tap into those opportunities. To work in organizations where there's a, there's a mission that really connects with, with you, you'll stay motivated longer, right?

You'll make a deeper impact. You'll become more advanced in your capabilities, and I think you'll feel more fulfilled. And so keeping purpose at the center rather than, you know, how much money am I going to make? Um, how will this look on my resume, I think is. Is actually an an intuition that a lot of students already have, and I would just encourage them to follow that intuition.

Yeah. My, and this generation I think is more like that. At least that's what my kids are telling me. So my kids too. . Thank you, Dan. Thank you, bill. Appreciate the time. I really appreciate Dan taking the time out of his busy schedule to sit down with me and have a discussion around culture. I hope you got as much out of it as I did.

Thanks for listening. We have several other great interviews from has 19. Uh, please check them out on the website, iTunes or YouTube, and, uh, please come back every Friday for more great interviews with influencers. And don't forget, every Tuesday we take a look at the news that it's impacting health. It this shows a production of this week in health It for more great content, you can check out our website at.

This week, health.com or the YouTube channel this week, health.com. Just go to the top, click on the YouTube link and it'll take you there. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.