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Highlights from the summit

The trailer for our 2020 summit, The Collapse of Standardization: three virtual days in October 2020, hosted with Fairfield University, when leaders from healthcare, business and higher education compared what the pandemic had broken open in each of their worlds.

Day 1: Healthcare Highlights

Highlights from the summit

Highlights from day one of the 2020 summit, given to healthcare. Clinicians, health system leaders and partners from outside the industry talked about what COVID-19 exposed in how care is delivered, and what it would take to put the individual patient at the center.

Day 2: Corporate Highlights

Highlights from the summit

Highlights from day two of the 2020 summit, our corporate day. Executives spoke candidly about leading through the pandemic and the social unrest of that year, and about what changes when the individual, rather than the organization, starts to define the business.

Day 3: Higher Education Highlights

Highlights from the summit

Highlights from day three of the 2020 summit, devoted to higher education with our host, Fairfield University. College and university leaders talked about a year that moved instruction online almost overnight, and what students now expect from the institutions that serve them.

Healthcare in the Age of Personalization

Dr. Jack Cox

Jack Cox and I opened the healthcare day on the question I believe frames the whole summit: how should providers define value now. Jack traced today's value equation back to Michael Porter and named what it leaves out, the relevance of an outcome to the person at that point in life. A sepsis protocol saves lives, but a patient with terminal cancer may want comfort instead. He also faulted a system that pays for a new hip over weight loss.

Corporate in the Age of Personalization

Jack Schwefel; Wendy York

Jack Schwefel sent Cost Plus World Market's people home with an hour's notice, closed every store for ten weeks and ran the company as a pure e-commerce business. What changed most, he told me, was calling employees in their living rooms to ask what they really thought. Wendy York, who became dean of Clemson's business college without a PhD, tells students leadership is a choice, and asks them to be authentic, brave and inclusive wherever they are.

Higher Education in the Age of Personalization

Adlai Wertman; David Banks; Mark Nemec

Fairfield University president Mark Nemec opened our higher education day talking about scaling intimacy while honoring a 500-year Jesuit tradition. David Banks, founder of the Eagle Academy for Young Men in New York City, told how one student's complaint about a cigarette billboard across from school became a lesson in every class. Adlai Wertman of USC urged universities to stop defining success for their students, and to change for first-generation students rather than expect them to fit the old model.

Telehealth and Virtual Realities

Dr. Bob Monteverdi; Dan Perez; Rich Miller-Murphy; Dr. Terrie Thomas

Rich Miller-Murphy told me New York Blood Center Enterprises has been transforming digitally since 2010 by turning skeptics into what he calls digital believers. Dr. Bob Monteverdi, 40 years in healthcare, remembered a doctor storming out of a focus group rather than use electronic records. Dr. Terrie Thomas, an OB-GYN who once dismissed telehealth, now sees it reaching mothers who can't get to prenatal visits. Dan Perez described how Hinge Health brings physical therapy for back and joint pain home.

Corporate Transformation

Rob Wolcott; Stephanie Lloyd

Stephanie Lloyd was chief underwriting officer at Farmers Insurance when her CEO asked her to launch a startup inside the 92-year-old company, with one condition: don't build it on Farmers' systems. With a team of 13 she created Toggle, a digital renters insurance brand. Rob Wolcott explained why every company needs both a fortress and ships, why organizations reject new ventures the way a body rejects a transplant, and how five principles guided Cambodia's response to HIV/AIDS.

Higher Ed's Reinvention

Nancy Hubbard; Sandeep Krishnamurthy

Nancy Hubbard, business dean at the University of Lynchburg, promised to upset just about everyone, and did: tenure breeds complacency, she said, and many academics have never held a job where they could be fired. She reminded us that half of today's college students are over 25 and most of them work. Sandeep Krishnamurthy of the University of Washington Bothell described the tyranny of teaching to the average student, and a transcript that proves what graduates can do.

Healthcare Leadership of the Future

Gyasi Chisley; Annette Walker

Gyasi Chisley called for confrontation in healthcare, and he started with himself. We build million-square-foot buildings, he said, and then ask the sickest cancer patients to come to us. He wants partnerships with banks and grocery stores, not only other hospitals. Annette Walker explained Jack Cox's value equation with a pizza order and a chemotherapy decision, then argued that leaders have to genuinely love their people, a lesson the frontline nurses and doctors of the pandemic made plain.

Leadership After the Pandemic and Social Unrest

Fred Diaz; Gisel Ruiz

Gisel Ruiz spent 26 years at Walmart, most recently as chief operating officer of Sam's Club, and she pushed back on my framing: 2020 isn't chaos, she said, it's change, and personalization isn't inefficient, it's intimate. Fred Diaz, former CEO of Mitsubishi Motors North America, described COVID moving car dealers four or five years ahead in as many months, and how he took his leadership team from 15 to 50 percent diversity of thought.

Leadership in Higher Education

Richard A. Greenwald; Wendy York

Wendy York called COVID a gateway crisis, the biggest opening since the 15th century to rethink how universities teach, given a model that grew out of monastic rules. Leaders with power, she said, have a duty to lower the penalty for people who take risks. Richard A. Greenwald, dean of arts and sciences at Fairfield University, described faculty adapting faster than anyone expected, and urged leaders to ask them what they need rather than hand them a toolkit.

Unpacking Personalized Care

Joe Alvarnas; Dr. Neha Nanda; Dr. Rebekah Gee

Dr. Neha Nanda showed why COVID hit Black and Hispanic communities so hard, down to homes without water to wash hands, and told how she caught Legionella in a flu-season patient by asking about her apartment building. Joe Alvarnas recalled two and a half weeks sick with COVID and fear his medical training couldn't ease. Dr. Rebekah Gee, speaking as a hurricane neared New Orleans, recounted how Louisiana found a way to treat everyone with hepatitis C.

Reinventing Talent Management

Eric Miller; Tiffany Monroe; Monica Pool Knox

Tiffany Monroe, chief people officer at H&R Block, wants to stop hiring for culture fit, which to her means hiring people to fit a box. Eric Miller of ViacomCBS argued that how people reach their goals should count as much as the goals, and that no one should be penalized for staying in a role they love. Monica Pool Knox of Microsoft noted how little companies know their people, and urged leaders to model the vulnerability they want to see.

Enriching the Student Experience

Bill Hulseman; Dr. Tyjaun A. Lee

Bill Hulseman, a former school administrator, looked back on his years at Fairfield University: his courses taught him to anticipate, but campus life, from the glee club to student activism, taught him to participate. Dr. Tyjaun A. Lee, president of the Penn Valley campus of Metropolitan Community College, explained why her advisors ask about students' lives outside school, and told of a $60 gift card that fed a student and her son that day.

Healthcare’s Tipping Point

Dana Woods; Jeff Pilof; Teri Fontenot

Teri Fontenot, a hospital CEO for 23 years, joined us with another storm nearing Louisiana and pushed back: standardization is a platform to build on, she said, until it starts to crumble. Jeff Pilof described what CVS Health's supply chain learned as stores became health hubs, including why some slack is necessary. Dana Woods told of a New Orleans critical care nurse who read get-well cards to a patient on what turned out to be his last day.

Reimagining Corporate Strategy

Gustavo Canton; Nik Modi; Kristin Gwinner

Nik Modi has covered consumer companies for two decades, and he told us the people who can put a company back on a growth path are usually not the ones making decisions. He pointed to PepsiCo, where an internal contest produced a drink to help people sleep. Kristin Gwinner, chief human resources officer at Chico's FAS, asked leaders to know their people beyond a title. Gustavo Canton argued that analysts now need to feel the data.

Corporate & Community Partnerships

Shaden Marzouk; Sridhar Sundaram; Daniel Connolly

Sridhar Sundaram of the University of South Florida described the strongest communities as three-way partnerships among a university, its civic partners and its employers. Dr. Shaden Marzouk, a neurosurgeon who served in Iraq and now leads CareMore Health and Aspire Health at Anthem, said healthcare's next talent will come from consumer, technology and community backgrounds, not only medicine. Daniel Connolly of Drake University told how Nike asked to help shape Arizona State's curriculum from students' very first year.

Inclusion as a Growth Strategy

Pam Abner; Nicole M. Cooper; Kety Duron

Kety Duron, chief human resources officer at City of Hope, said healthcare has never defined inclusive behavior or held leaders accountable for it, and noted that millennials and Gen Z now make up more than half her workforce. Pam Abner described the uncomfortable conversations about racism and privilege she leads with senior leaders at Mount Sinai Health System. Nicole Cooper explained how Lyft lets hospitals and health plans book rides for Medicaid and Medicare patients who would otherwise miss care.

Inclusion, Equity and Diversity

Brian Garish; Dalana Brand

Brian Garish started out stocking shelves at Walgreens at 16. Now president of Banfield Pet Hospital, with 19,000 associates, he challenged other leaders: if inclusion isn't changing as fast as your digital strategy, you're to blame. Dalana Brand walked through what Twitter did in 2020, from pausing performance ratings and reshaping schedules for parents to offering Black employees therapists trained in racial trauma. Both hope a separate inclusion office won't be needed five years from now.

Higher Ed’s New Virtual Reality

Nick Morgan; Erin Moran; Tomas Gomez-Arias

Nick Morgan, who coaches leaders on communication, explained why video flattens us: we read each other's intent through the body, so a natural eight on screen comes across as a four or five. Erin Moran, a Fairfield alum who leads Google's education team in New York, shared survey data showing 85 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds now prefer to learn online. Tomas Gomez-Arias, business dean at Stanislaus State, cautioned that online learning works differently for different students.