CIO Leadership Lessons and Advice from Marty Paslick

Phil Sobol: Healthcare is all about people taking care of people. And today on the podcast, I welcome one of the finest examples of a healthcare leader, a true servant leader, Marty Paslick. Marty was the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of HCA Healthcare, one of the nation's leading providers of healthcare service. He retired after 38 years with the company and nearly 12 years as CIO. He led the company's information technology group, which provides IT strategy and support for HCA Healthcare and its hospitals and sites of care, and employs almost 6,000 team members across the U.S. He transformed the organization's field-based IT operations and was named the department's first Chief Operating Officer in 2010, becoming CIO in 2012. He has been an active leader in Nashville from the Nashville Sports Council, Nashville Technology Council, and a past board member of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. He holds two undergraduate degrees and an MBA, all from the University of Louisville. Marty, welcome to the CereCore podcast.  

Marty Paslick: Thank you, Phil. I appreciate you inviting me today. 

Phil Sobol: Well, you have had an amazing career at HCA Healthcare. As I mentioned, most recently serving as CIO for nearly a dozen years. So, if you would not mind sharing with our audience, what is the story of your career journey? I am sure there have been many pivotal turning points, critical decisions along the way, mountaintops, who knows, perhaps even a valley of despair along the way that shaped your journey. 

Marty Paslick: Well, Phil, a lot of times with onboarders, I will kick off with him by saying, many people ask me, you know, how do you become a CIO? And my answer is typically, I have no idea. However, the beauty of HCA Healthcare is that it is a place that has tremendous opportunity. And if you have the right character, if you have the right work ethic, if you have the ability to see opportunities and do things that are greater than what you are asked to do, then there is this probability, not even a possibility, but a probability that the company will continue to ask you to do bigger and larger and more significant things.  

And that has really been the course of my career is that I have just been fortunate enough to take those opportunities when presented to me and ask myself, is there something larger, something more creative I can do with the opportunity that presents itself? And fortunately, do a pretty good job.  

Every career has a bit of luck. And I would say that it is true in my scenario as well. The old adage of being in the right place at the right time has a lot of truth to it. And so, I was fortunate to have circumstances, sometimes volatile circumstances, that created opportunities for me to be in this role.

During the role itself, I think you covered it well, Phil. There were lots of tremendous highlights. And there have been times where, honestly, I was not sure how we were going to recover. And while I love the times where we have had huge success, I would say that the moments where we built character, and we built culture were the moments of adversity.  

It is kind of like the old Apollo 13 movie, where the person says it is going to be the worst disaster in NASA history. And the commander says, no, this is going to be our finest. I think in times of disruption, where we were not sure what the next step was, I thought that was one of the times our company and our organization really shined. And I think the perfect example of that is during COVID. 

I think our organization during COVID stepped forward, both from a financial resiliency perspective and from a delivery perspective, like we had never in our history. And a lot of that was just plain old mission motivated people.  

I always say, our technologists do not see themselves as technologists, they see themselves as healthcare professionals first, and then technologists. And when you look at yourself like that, and you see what was needed during COVID, people worked in ways that would just bring tears to people's eyes, because they knew that was their moment to make a huge difference for people in need. 

Phil Sobol: I think that is spot on. And I think the old adage, when the tough times squeeze you, it is what is truly inside that comes out. And you mentioned several times when that squeeze was there and what came out was truly tied to the mission. And that is just phenomenal.  

So, you know, and I know, over the years, I have heard you talk a lot about the kind of role and the goals of the role. I think a couple of the things that you would like to talk about were the concept of quiet operations, but at the same point, continual improvement. I would love to hear what the secret is to achieve and balancing those two healthcare IT fundamentals. Was there any sort of practices, proven go-tos that you employed, perhaps the use of a story to get your point across? 

Marty Paslick: Well, first of all, I think that early in my career as CIO, typically the company was either in one camp or the other. It was either in a moment of resiliency because of economic downturns or whatever, and the company literally put the brakes on innovative projects and pulled the shutters down. It was ready for the storm. Honestly, HCA performed so well in those difficult times.  

But in prosperous times, we shifted focus to pedal to the floor, innovative, what new things can we introduce? And sometimes that came at the expense of disruptions, stability and technical resiliency.  

But in the last, I would say over the last three to five years, we have not had the luxury of being in one camp or the other anymore, at least here at HCA. At HCA, they want the pedal pushed on both sides. And they want us to continue to maintain a highly technical, resilient organization. They want us to also be extremely innovative at the same time.

I think that the key to that from a leadership perspective is one, this is my style, might not be someone else's, but you cannot afford to be an administrator. You can’t simply be a facilitator. You must be in the game with your staff. You must know the details, at least a significant enough detail, to be actively participating in the direction you want to go.  

I think you also hit on it a little bit, and it is not really storytelling, but I do think you have to be really clear about the messages you want to deliver to your organization, and you must have the channels to emphasize that over and over. They may come in slightly different ways, but they all head back to the same theme.  

And so, you use the phrase quiet. Well, I think there was one year when I came out and said, look, we have got so many things going on the innovative side that we have to have a high emphasis on quiet

You know quiet can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. We use that single word to create lots of tactics and strategies about how we were going to build "quiet" in the organization.  

So, it is a fascinating time. And I do not think we will ever retreat to one camp or the other. I think we will always be in a place, especially with the importance of technology in our organizations, where you have to have the ability to do both extremely well. 

Phil Sobol: Yes, certainly years and years ago, it was, you know, you could, right? There was kind of that steady state. And really, over the past several years, steady state does not exist. The accelerators are coming fast and furious. You are spot on with your assessment as to the new norm for healthcare IT for sure.  

You touched on something, and I want to dive into it a little bit more. You talked about being integrated with your team in lines of communication. You have witnessed a huge evolution over your career in healthcare IT and also the role of CIO. That has changed dramatically over the years.  

Relationships, as you mentioned, with not only your team, but also the other executives inside of the organization, key business stakeholders, vendors, employees, and the list goes on and on. The complexity that you had to manage probably far exceeds the complexity that most healthcare CIOs will see over their tenure. And so, I would love to hear about your approach to building and maintaining those authentic relationships, because they are absolutely critical when it comes to achieving and supporting the mission of the health system. 

Marty Paslick: Well, I think every leader and CIO has their own style. And I probably would emphasize that what is most important is to be true to your own style. When you try to be someone else, that’s the first bad step you’re going to take.  

And for me, I try to keep things simple. So, simple to me means don’t try to be someone you’re not. Just be as genuine as you can be. Be able to demonstrate empathy for everybody's position.  

Don’t think about circumstances from an IT perspective think about it from their perspectives, and that helps quite a bit.  

I think it is just critical for leaders to just be too able to shoot straight with people. I had a good friend once say, my only rule for my organization is tell me bad news as quickly as you would tell me good news. And I think that is a really good strategy to follow.  

And so, when we have had bad news to report, I didn’t try to control the narrative. I didn’t try to manipulate or choreograph a response. If anything, I probably was brutally honest about weaknesses in our organization or mistakes that we had made.  

And I have always come from the perspective, there are so many people that believe that when you admit to those things, you are demonstrating some degree of weakness. And I take the absolute opposite perspective there. When you are around other people and you admit what you don’t do well or haven’t done well, it shows great strength. It shows strength in your own ability that mistakes happen in every way of life and that you own your reality and that you will navigate and mitigate your way out of those difficult times.  

As far as the organization itself, the IT organization, I think having a wide range of communication strategies is important. And for me, I would never classify myself as a great communicator. But what I did in my scenario and again, this may work for some people and not work for others, I created what I thought was a great portfolio of channels.  

And those channels can be as simple as being deliberate about walking around the physical space where your folks work. It can be as fundamental as that. You can add things like I had a habit of sending emails to people that got promotions and people that had anniversaries.  

But it can be even more sophisticated, maybe sophisticated is not the right word, but a little bit more up the ladder of making sure that there is periodic communication with the organization about what is going on. Maybe a communication that is not just written, but it is also a video.  

I think when you start to think of creative ways that you can connect to people and give them the opportunity to just have a short two or three email exchange with you. That is like I always tell people that he is like Johnny Appleseed. When you start to reach out to people individually, it is like scattering seed. And some of it is a one-to-one communication, but rarely is that the outcome.  

Typically, someone's going to tell their buddy, guess what, I just exchanged with the CIO two or three emails about a photo I sent him on vacation about where I went in Italy. And we talked about being at the same place and it makes the role of the CIO more humanistic, and it makes it more approachable. And again, that is what fit my style. And I think I was fairly successful with it. 

Phil Sobol: I think that is a great summary of that, Marty. And certainly, I think the more that we can do from a leadership perspective of being known as approachable, and quite frankly, human, in some instances, the better off we are going to be in building those relationships. And when they see that, then it becomes authentic. And once it is authentic, you can get something done together. 

Marty Paslick: Phil, the last email I sent to our leaders before I retired was trying to emphasize that this communication was about reminding them you are not alone, that we all journey down a leadership path. And that, let’s do this together. And I think when you can get your leadership team to not just think about their own style but think about it as part of a bigger leadership initiative, that’s another little secret formula. 

Phil Sobol: Indeed. So, Marty, you have done this a couple of times just even here on the podcast, but you have a fantastic way of integrating stories into the conversation, into your communications, and being over the course of your career, I think you have become known a little bit like as a storyteller. And so, my question to you is that something that came naturally to you? How have you seen storytelling help in your communications to the organization?

Marty Paslick: Yes, there is so much of my leadership style that I can own up to and say that I learned because I was not born with certain skills. And, again, back to creating habits, I had to create several habits to mitigate things I knew I did not have as a leader. 

Storytelling wasn’t one of those. My mom is one of the greatest storytellers I have ever been around, to the point where at 96, you have to make sure she understands that you have heard a few of them a few dozen times. And people would say that about me well, I would say.  

I think you have got to be careful about storytelling. It is not easy as it sometimes looks. I made this mistake one time. I had a division CIO who had done a strategy update for his leaders and was very black and white about the discussion. And I could tell about halfway through the conversation that he had basically lost them and they were waiting for the end of the presentation.  

And so, afterwards, I was trying to provide some feedback that he could work on. And I said, perhaps you should think about telling it like a story next time. And I thought, he was like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that is a great idea. And I thought, all right, let’s see how this all works. Right.  

And next time, oh, my gosh, if the first one was bad, I threw this poor CIO right into the dumpster, because he was attempting to use a technique he just did not have the skill to use.  

And so, I think, again, this gets back to leaders and CIOs understanding what they do the best. Now, if they believe they have those skills, they should leverage them. Because I have met lots of people that are excellent storytellers, but there is something in their brain that tells them that the workplace is not the place to use that skill.  

And my encouragement is, look, you do not have to go jump into the deep end of the pool here. I think that you could test yourself in small situations and gather feedback of does it work or doesn’t it work. But I give all the credit for my own storytelling to obviously my mom. She is the ultimate. 

Phil Sobol: Oh, that's fantastic. So, we are coming to the end of the podcast, and we always like to wrap up with almost an open-ended call for wisdom from our guests. And so, in your career, you have seen a number of things. And, you know the challenges that CIOs are facing today, quite frankly, are unprecedented. I would love to just kind of leave you with an open-ended question. What are the most important lessons you want to share or words of encouragement for the CIOs today as you think back over your tenure? 

Marty Paslick: I am sure the past can help a little bit. But to be honest with you, as I look at my own successor here at HCA, in his first 90 days, he has a job that is extremely more difficult than the one that I spent 12 years executing.  

But I can honestly say that the 12 years I spent were way more complex than my predecessor. And so, I think this probably goes without saying, but again, back to finding your own style and being able to not get locked in and having thoughtfulness of staying flexible, being adaptable to the environment around you is key.  

The senior officers, we had a retirement event three or four weeks ago for me. When I had the opportunity to talk to the audience there, I was talking about a couple things. One of the nice things HCA does as part of your retirement is they make a donation to the charity of your choice. And for me, it was Erie Home for Children and Adults. And the reason is, my sister-in-law is cared for by them today and she has down’s syndrome. Now she is almost 60 years old and needs, as you can imagine, a lot of care at that age and with that disposition. 

I told the audience, I have spent my whole career trying to develop a leadership style. I have learned from some of the greatest leaders and managers in the world here at HCA. I have been an active reader. I have tried to improve my professional development and my academic background. All these things lead into what you think is leadership style. And I said to them, here at the very end, it is kind of like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz with her ruby slippers. She always had the way to go home.  

I always had the fundamentals of leadership and I got them all from Barbara. And Babs taught me three things. And anyone who knows a special needs person, I think can relate to this.  

One is, and we talked about this earlier, it is so important to be authentic and genuine with people. And if you can find you—yourself— and be that the majority of your time, you will be successful as a leader.  

Number two, Babs trusts everyone unconditionally. And if we as leaders can go into every relationship and trust people unconditionally, you build a foundation for great things to happen. And when people move away from that path of trust, instead of just discarding them, working to get them back to a point of unconditional trust, I think is another key point for leadership.  

And anyone who knows, especially people that are down’s syndrome, spend your time finding your joy. And with that, help others find theirs.  

And I know that sounds so idealistic, those three things. But if you think about it for a second, be genuine, build trust, and try to create joy among people. I think that is the winning formula.  

And like I said, I only learned it 30 years ago and then kept looking for all kinds of other things. And I didn’t realize that Babs had taught me everything I needed to know. 

Phil Sobol: That is fantastic. Wonderful. Well, Marty, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for your service over the years and I really appreciate your insights on the podcast today. 

Marty Paslick: Well, thank you, Phil, and I appreciate the invitation. I would do anything for CereCore. I think CereCore is just a dynamic organization that - talk about flexibility and adaptability. I think CereCore represents that from the top of the organization to their individual contributors. They are trying to meet the ever-changing needs of the technology landscape, healthcare, and just do an excellent job. So, thank you again for the invitation. 

Phil Sobol: Wonderful. Thank you.