“This work has given us permission to take time for humility, vulnerability, and gratitude. I can see more clearly each day the potential for a new type of leadership to take hold, one that will put the care of the person first, starting with each of us.”
~ Mary Clare Lingel, VP, Strategic Integration of the Medical Network, Cedars-Sinai Medical Network
Reactions, guidance, and answers to the most common questions about Inside Out, from the participants of our national coLab.
Our Lab Partners hail from high-performing hospitals and health systems, including large multi-state systems, urban Academic Medical Centers, community hospitals, and rapidly growing physician networks and medical groups. They represent teams from 6,000 to 80,000, and serve both adult and pediatric patients. The common thread that unites all Experience Lab partners is their desire to provoke the prevailing and frame a new future, together.
Here’s what our Lab Partners are saying:
“This has been the best Experience of my career. Being part of Inside Out was better than any conference, any CME, or even any vacation in terms of inspiring and equipping me as a leader and as a physician. Inside Out has changed everything for the better.”
– Kyle Christiason, MD, Medical Director, UnityPoint Health“Being a health care leader can be hard and it’s lonely—when you get in a group of people who have those same kinds of responsibilities and they understand and they want to help. You realize you have kindred spirits.”
– Therese Sucher, RN, EVP/COO, Tower Health
Four senior leaders from each Lab Partner organization participate in the year-long Inside Out journey. You select which leaders take part. To date we’ve welcomed an array of executives who are leading the way by transforming their team member, provider, patient, and guest Experience, including: Chief Executive Officers, Chief Experience Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Chief Nursing Officers, Chief Medical Officers, Chief People Officers, Chief Brand Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Innovation Officers, and Chief Learning Officers.
Here’s a sampling of how two Lab Partner organizations chose their members:
“I knew immediately our Chief Nursing Officer needed to participate because she is the leader of a great deal of our workforce. The other person that I knew had to come with us was our Vice President for Human Resources. And we brought our Chairman of the Department of Medicine, and we did that very purposefully because the majority of our medical staff are in the Department of Medicine. We knew we had to have a member of the medical staff with us, and that seemed like the perfect combination. We complement each other. We see things differently. And that has been very helpful in terms of being able to really bring a broad Experience back to the organization.”
– Therese Sucher, RN, EVP/COO, Tower Health“Part of our strategy is to marry our brand promise with our patient-customer Experience promise and our employee promise. To that end, there’s my role of Chief People Innovation Officer, together with our Chief Marketing Officer, and then our Chief Experience Officer, responsible for patient-customer Experience. And then we rounded that out by inviting our Deputy Chief Nursing Officer who is a wonderful voice into the 16,000 nurses that make up our army of caregivers in the nursing world. All of us are responsible for driving significant cultural change across [our organization] and so we thought putting all four of us together just made a lot of sense.”
– Elaine Page, Chief People Innovation Officer, Northwell Health
Hear what our Lab Partners have to say about their transformation:
“For me, one of the many insights of the Experience journey has been the realization of how thirsty we are for this work. Our teams are working hard on the nuts and bolts of caring for patients, with an eye to metrics, productivity, quality. The time to reflect on our Experience has raised the question: “Who do we want to be when we grow up?”. As an organization, we are making great strides in transforming our practices and how we work together. We can now see the potential of transforming ourselves. We’ve always had passion and drive. This work has given us permission to take time for humility, vulnerability, and gratitude. I can see more clearly each day the potential for a new type of leadership to take hold, one that will put the care of the person first, starting with each of us.”
– Mary Clare Lingel, VP, Strategic Integration of the Medical Network, Cedars-Sinai Medical Network“We have a very cohesive bond with each other. Our work is so connected with one another…I use all the elements in the work that I do. It elevates the teamwork in our organization and elevates me personally and professionally.”
– Aggie Barden, Vice President, Patient and Customer Experience, Northwell Health“Being part of the national coLab gave me the gift of a new perspective, the power to change myself and those around me, and the belief that anything is possible. Love is a powerful tool.”
– Linda Hofler, SVP and Nurse Executive, Vidant Health
Inside Out is a courageous discovery of new frameworks, new models, new ideas for making health care the best that it can be, for healing health care from the Inside Out. Over the course of a year—guided by an extraordinary team of Experience Design catalysts—you are out there seeing, studying, and sampling exemplars, excursions, and provocations. Together, we create a unique, actionable Experience formula to positively transform your team, your organization, and your culture.
Reactions from our Lab Partners:
“Words cannot describe Inside Out. It’s immersive, experiential, and helps us understand the importance of softer skills and ties them with harder skills…I walk away feeling like I am not alone–I have this network I can reach out to. It’s this great place where you have the freedom to push beyond the normal confines of work.”
– Ramon Soto, SVP & Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Northwell Health“I think the most unexpected result from The Experience Lab and Inside Out is really being able to break down what sometimes feels a little hard to get your arms around. It’s from the heart. It’s emotional.”
– John Jenrette, MD, SVP, Cedars-Sinai Medical Network
There are many reasons why our Lab Partners chose to take the bold leap into The Experience lab and embark on the journey to transform the health care Experience, and we believe our Lab Partners say it best!
Reactions from our Lab Partners:
When we thought about joining, one of the things we talked a lot about was trying something different. Where we had been was not going to takes us where we needed to go…it’s not just because it’s new, but because there is something that connects with you on an emotional level.”
– Therese Sucher, EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Tower Health“We needed a catalyst. Something that would galvanize us to take that next step forward. It was a leap of faith…it was time to focus on Experience as a totality. We thought we could deliver a great ROI and that has turned out to be true.”
– Elaine Page, Chief People Innovation Officer, Northwell Health
The Experience Lab is not like any other health care offering. We set out to be a positive disruptor in the industry. Focus and research tend to be on studying best practices, developing care delivery models, measuring outcomes, and providing education. What’s been missing is the humanity. Recognizing that transforming the health care Experience requires new perspectives, ideas, frameworks, and discoveries, The Experience Lab is healing health care from the Inside Out through intentionally designing meaningful and memorable Experiences for caregivers, physicians and providers, patients and guests. It’s what we call “Big E Experience”—because we believe everyone’s Experience matters.
Inside Out transforms leaders—our Lab Partners—who then directly and exponentially impact others as they learn to lead, look, live, and love in a way they never could before.
We have flipped the health care consulting model, offering an unrivaled approach to equipping our Lab Partners with the tools and inspiration they need to design and create their futures. Our unique model utilizes a team of catalysts who precipitate and accelerate change by bringing the right elements together at the right time. We are leaders’ guides, provocateurs, and facilitators to help you create transformational change. Catalysts are by our Lab Partners’ sides until they are ready to go off and do the hard and heart work on their own, resulting in sustainable long-term transformation and success versus becoming “another thing to do” or fizzling out once we are no longer there.
Reactions from our Lab Partners:
“The Experience Lab is the antidote for worn out, outdated, old school strategies. Joining the Inside Out coLab has fundamentally changed our executive team and our organization—enabling us to address the big stuff with love and empathy. It’s an avalanche of changes. You see and feel it everywhere.”
– Julie Kennedy Oehlert, DNP, RN, Chief Experience Officer, Vidant Health“Somewhere along the road, as I took time to reflect, it dawned on me that this journey was not a ‘how-to’ Experience, but a personal and collective transformative Experience. As an individual, the exposures, challenges and broadening of perspective that Inside Out created were making me a much stronger, more empathetic and more collaborative leader—someone who could ‘actually’ transform health care. For our team, the Experience was building the collective and complimentary energy and cohesiveness that could ignite meaningful change in our organization. We have the power and insight to translate our new skills, knowledge, and outlook into something tangible, that belongs to us and that is molded to our specific needs.”
– Caroline Goldzweig, MD, Medical Director, Quality Clinical Performance, Cedars-Sinai Medical Network
Every aspect of Inside Out is masterfully curated and designed for each Lab Partner by The Experience Lab’s team of Catalysts. Our Catalysts bring the right elements together to precipitate and accelerate change, releasing a new energy in health care. Provocations, exemplars, awe, surprise and delight are all woven together to create a total transformative Experience.
Reactions from our Lab Partners:
“I loved how you surprised me. I was a little bit of a Kool-Aid skeptic when we started the journey, and that first day, that first event, we sat, we talked, we laid these expectations about grand changes that health care needed, and we started talking about how we were going to do that. And as time progressed, the skills that we were able to gain, I was able to deploy right at work. And I thought it was just incredibly powerful, powerful to build relationships with my teammates, powerful to build this coalition together with others who were doing the same thing that we were. And, you know, I have this very special place in my heart now for what we’ve gone through and what we’re capable of doing.”
– Ramon Soto, Senior VP and CMO, Northwell Health“I was struck by how differently I approached my most recent stint as an Attending on the medicine teaching service. The residents and I are usually so laser-beam focused on moving quickly, understanding the medical (i.e. scientific) aspects of patients’ illnesses, and on timely discharges that we tend to neglect the gentle souls inhabiting the gowns. This time was different. My Inside Out Experience has sparked in me an enlightenment about the importance of expressing (and in this role, in teaching and role modeling) love and empathy. So we took time to sit at our patients’ bedside; we truly listened to their stories; we held their hands; we felt their fears; we cried with them; we guided them through the wilderness. Our patients are us, and we are them—the only difference between us is luck. Having chosen this profession, we must always remember to give our patients everything we can every single day.”
– Brad Rosen, MD, VP, Physician Alignment and Care Transitions, Cedars-Sinai Medical Network