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Today, we're going to talk about why you should not wait to give back. I was having a conversation with somebody today. As someone they wanted to do in 10 years. And invariably, when I talk to somebody. Of a certain age, they want to give back. And they want to give back in 10 years and that kind of stuff.

And my response is usually the same. Why? Wait. Let's start doing it now. We're going to talk about that in a minute. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health, a set of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare. One connection at a time.

I love the generosity of the community around Alex's lemonade stand foundation. I was at a. Customer advisory board meeting at the beautiful Rackspace facility down here in San Antonio, Texas. And I ranted into Keith Perry. CIO for St. Jude's out of Memphis and he had his yellow hat on. I had my yellow hat on and we took a picture, put it out on social media,

raise some additional money for Alex's lemonade stand foundation.

Somebody asked me what the most gratifying thing of the work that I'm doing. And I said, it's absolutely the fact. That we've been able to rally this community to raise over $150,000. For Alex's lemonade stand foundation and the families and the 60 leaders that are now part of the yellow hot club. Haven't given over $500 a piece. To ALS F we are thankful.

We appreciate you. And we appreciate the generosity of our community. Hey one last thing. And this is what we're going to talk about today. Share this podcast with a friend or colleague, use it as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you in the industry, a form of mentoring.

They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, let's talk about that topic. Let's talk about. Mentoring.

My first internship was at M and M Mars. How I got there as an interesting story. I was struggling to find a summer internship. And my friend had to, we were playing basketball one day and he said, why don't you take one that I don't want to two college kids. This sounds like amazingly good logic.

An HR person who is listening to this right now is cringing. As they hear this. So I showed up on the first day, filled out the paperwork. Went through the orientation process and they assigned me a desk and I thought, what could possibly go wrong? Can you imagine that anyway? The next week, Bruce, the VP of global marketing for eminent.

Maurice came walking in. He looked over, saw me sitting at one of the cubes. And in his area. He was active in our community and I'd met him before. So he actually knew who I was. He immediately walked over and asked what I was doing there. I told him that Herman didn't want the internship and had offered it to me.

So there, I was lucky for me. He thought the whole thing was hysterical. He started laughing. Then I think he had a smile on his face, the rest of the day. He ended up inviting me to lunch that day and that started an amazing relationship. The position of VP of global marketing frame and a margin is a pretty powerful and busy position, as you would probably imagine somehow though, Bruce found the time to have. Five lunches with me over the course of that summer. The things we discussed in those meetings still impact me to this day.

Bruce is the one who told me to dress for success. He encouraged me to play to my strengths and hire to my weaknesses. He also told me to look for ways to give back. Finally, he walked me down to the it department where he introduced me to the Mars marketing. Department database. That was delivered the, all the Nielsen stuff was delivered through.

The research was delivered through CQL and that summer I learned to do SQL queries and brought computing to the Eminem Mars marketing department. For the first time actually pulling that information in, instead of going through these massive books. And flipping through them. He put me on a path to becoming a CIO. Every executive is busy.

However, there's an important part of our role and that is to mentor the next generation of leaders. And to this point, I'd like to give you a simple framework that I gave to my staff to mentor our next generation of leaders. And this is something that Bruce did with me. It's something I've done with others. And if you're one of those people that says, Hey, in 10 years, I would like to give back.

I would encourage you to find somebody to start giving back to now. And here's how you do it. Number one, expand their network. You likely have an extensive professional network or at least a larger one than the person you're going to mentor. It's one, that's taking you years to cultivate and to build. And one of the greatest gifts you can give someone that you are mentoring is access to this network. I'm not just talking about a LinkedIn invite.

Like a real world introductions and conversations with industry leaders. One of my goals at conferences was to arrange meetings between my staff and leaders from other organizations periodically. I would arrange meetings with other it teams in the industry where we would share best practices.

They would meet their peers, share their experiences and create new relationships of their own. One of the most overlooked opportunities relates to building new relationships within your own organization. There are leaders. That your mentees will never meet in the course of their daily work, but those leaders. We'll meet with you, right?

They'll meet with you, but they may not ever run into them. Invite that physician leader to lunch and bring along your mentee. Plant those seeds of connection. This isn't hard. It's just takes intentionality. So that's the first one, expand their network. Second one, expand their experience. I was asked to speak at a board meeting. Probably about four, four times a year, I went to board meetings to speak. I rarely went alone and in some cases I didn't even do most of the talking. In fact, I was, I loved giving my team that opportunity, finding opportunities for your mentee to face new experiences is an important part of their growth. It depends on the mentee, but I have led many to go outside of their comfort zone. They have spoken at conferences, utilizing my help and developing the content.

They have led a volunteer organizations, initiatives in the community. In order to gain leadership experience that I thought would be valuable. They've even run projects outside of their. Their normal scope of work. All of these, allowed them to expand their breadth of expertise. The key in any of these is do it with them.

They will benefit most from the interaction with you through the process and through the experience. So the second one is expand their experience. There were three. Expand their thinking. Confining your thinking to any one industry can cause your ideas to become stale. Find ways to introduce new thinking into your environment and keep the creative juices flowing. At Mark's once shared with me his practice of setting up meetings where his it team would meet with it teams from other industries. They would each. Spend a few hours sharing their strategies and tactics. This practice was a great way to expand their thinking outside the box.

The best people to learn consumer engagement from are not likely in healthcare. They're likely in other industries. Maybe Domino's maybe Starbucks, maybe the NFL. Use your network to make the introductions to people that can provide a different lens on the problems that we are facing in healthcare. Obviously, this is appropriate. For the entire staff, as well as the person you are mentoring.

Maybe think outside that little box and make it something broader for the entire organization, give them the benefit of seeing things through a different lens and watch their contributions to the industry. Expand. So you want to expand their thinking? All right. So expand their network. Expand their experience, expand their thinking. And then the final one. Span their knowledge. Thinking and knowing are two very different things. Thinking is how you put all the pieces and parts together in order to develop a solution, your knowledge, however, is the foundation for that thought. As a mentor. I would identify the gaps in a mentees knowledge and provide them the opportunities to learn things. It can be a standard course that you send that to.

It can be experiential learning. Th, deciding which one of those is best. It's going to take some personal interaction with them to figure that out. You will have a destination in mind in order to figure out the gaps. Someone who wants to be a CIO, doesn't need to know how to throw a curve ball. And a pitcher doesn't need to know how to manage an EHR project. Get to know where they want to go and identify the knowledge that it will take to get them. From where they're at to where they would like to go.

I did show up. I did. You SERP the the internship from Herman. And put myself in that position to be mentored, but Bruce really did in that case. Take me the young intern under his wing and gave me. That experience. In some ways, I didn't even realize that Bruce was mentoring me until many years later. I myself have mentored dozen of P dozens of people in my career.

In fact, Fact, I ran into a couple of them at the UGM meeting and, um, usually I met her. One person at a time. I can tell you that not only are, do they appreciate it. And almost every time I run into them they communicate that they have appreciated the. The time I spent pouring into them. But you're also going to realize how much you benefit yourself as an individual. So mentoring. I mentioned it every day on this podcast. And I think it's something we have overlooked as an industry. And I think some of us don't do it because we may not feel like we're ready. And I'm here to tell you that there's always somebody you can mentor.

There's someone who's not as far along as you, they may not have as much experience. They may not have as much of a network. They may not have. As much knowledge in a certain area, you can come alongside somebody. And if somebody asked you by all means there's so much benefit to doing it. I can't recommend it enough and it is one of the ways that we can give back to the industry. And ensure the the future of the industry and the progress in the industry. That's my encouragement for today. Find somebody mentor them, move people along. That's all for today.

Don't forget. Share this podcast with a friend or colleague by the way. Almost everything I read to you is in an article I wrote. Wow. How many years ago was that? Eight years ago. In fact the the article, I think it was, I think it was published on health system, CIO. And I just recounted my mentoring experience.

I cover this topic at least once a year on the today's show. Because I believe it is that important of a topic. And if I can just encourage two or three of you. To pick up a mentorship. And even if you only mentor somebody for the next three to five months, even if it's your, I don't know. Way of thinking about mentoring your kid. I will have felt like I've succeeded in some way today. That's all, it's late here in San Antonio.

I'm recording remotely and I will be back in the studio starting next week. Before heading out for about 12 days on the road, in which case you will get more of these shows on the road. We'll see what happens, that's all for today. And that's all for this week. Don't forget. Share this podcast with a friend or colleague. We want to thank our sponsor rubric. And don't forget about their healthcare summit on 📍 September 12th.

Check it out this week. health.com/rubrik. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.