DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - Creating a Culture of Success (ft. Lou Shapiro)

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

On this episode of DGTL Voices, Ed interviews Lou Shapiro, CEO Emeritus of HSS. Ed and Lou discuss the importance of values, gratitude, and a helper's mindset in leadership. Lou shares his insights on creating a successful organizational culture, and his current endeavors post-retirement. "Lead with your heart, brain, and soul."

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation challenges and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marks. Hey, everyone, it's Ed. I'm super, super excited. I know I say that a lot, but wow, you're in for a treat. We have Lou Shapiro on Digital Voices. Lou, welcome to Digital Voices. Hey, Ed, how are you?

Lou, I'm doing great because you are a big influencer of mine. So I've watched you from afar for many years, your leadership and what you did at a hospital for special surgery and other places and just the way that you interact with your teams, your staff, medical staff, how you view the future and how you embrace technology. I've always been a big fan. So this is going to be a lot of fun to talk to you. I feel the same way about you. And I've been a patient. I was a patient there while you were the CEO and I had a fabulous experience. Fabulous.

Awesome. So the first question we asked, Lou, of all of our guests and maybe while, why this is the number nine show on Apple for technology, is what songs are on your playlist? What kind of music do you like to listen to? So whenever the family's together, my playlist is never, never allowed to be used. So you got to, that's important context.

So I was born in 59. I just made it right before the 60s. So I grew up in the 70s and 80s. So, you know, I'm the rock and roll guy, big Bruce Braxton fan. I used to love the doors. the Rolling Stones, sort of that genre. But my son-in-law and my daughter are big country fans.

In fact, that's all they listen to is country. So there's a lot of country. There's a lot of country music that's made by playlist, names that you would know and names that you may not know. There's a new guy that we saw in concert down here in Charlotte, Eka Moon, who's awesome. My wife loves Chris Stapleton, so he's on playlist. and my nephew loves this guy called Shibuzi

that I have, if it was a vital record, it would have been worn out the number of times I've listened to it. So it's eclectic. Yeah. No, I'm going to look that one up, and we do have a playlist. We do have a digital voices playlist on Spotify, and we'll add, you dropped a couple new ones on us

that we will. Yeah, you've definitely got it. Deco Moon is amazing. Yeah, going to add them to it. What about life message or mantra? Are there words that sort of you live by or guide you? Not that many people know this unless they're playing golf with me and I'm wearing shorts, but I have a tattoo on my left calf, and my brother has the same tattoo.

And the background, and it says get to, two words, get, G.E.T.2. Get to dot, dot, dot. And the background is, he created a foundation to raise somebody for kids who have cancer for research. He and I created a foundation to fulfill the bucket. list of a young woman who passed away several years ago. At the age of 19, she had eukes sarcoma, went through five or six courses of treatment and revision, and then finally you gave up the battle. But she was a larger-than-life person.

And the name of the foundation was Mooth Mountains, and you can imagine what that means. Her name is Kyla. If my brother and I were complaining about something, like, for example, I have to go to Chicago or wherever tomorrow. She would say, Paul or Lou, you don't have to. You get to. I think what it's done for me is place a new emphasis on gratitude, what you should be grateful for.

And you're the privilege to have experiences, big or small, good or bad. Get to, it's easy to forget, but it's important to remember because it doesn't you only need to think about it for a minute or a second and it changes your frame of reference so yeah yeah that's that's been um the tattoo needs touched up it's probably it's probably been on my leg for a decade or so yeah that's that's great i love that that's a new one also for digital voices so thank you for sharing well i want to ask who are you and what your story is we've heard a little bit already, Lou, but take us back to the beginning. Where were you born? And then sort of take us up to the present. If anyone's listening, make sure you have coffee, because this is not very exciting. I was actually born in Akron, Ohio. I lived there for six weeks, and then we moved to Pittsburgh. I was the first person in the family to go to college. You know, the most

my father ever made, income-wise, was $17,000 a year. But we, that was before. he was diagnosed with MS and became disabled, which was the beginning of a very long journey down to, you know, when he passed away in 2006. He was younger than me when he was diagnosed. But it was, you know, one of those childhoods where you didn't have much, but you didn't really know that you didn't have. It wasn't relevant because, you know, the phrase it is, but it is.

You just didn't know. There was nothing, nothing bad, but, you know, it was very exposed to the health care industry because when I was very young, my mother was always sick. And then when I was a little bit older, like, I'd say, you know, 14 through, you know, 2006, how, 20 years, so my 40s, when my father passed away, you know, he was sick. And then my mother got sick again, and she's still, she's still alive. live at 93. So I was always sort of exposed to that industry. That was just part of, you know, that was just, you know, part of growing up, being in that kind of environment,

not having much, not a lot of, you know, guidance. So whatever you did, you sort of did on your own. Yeah. Was I going to be able to go to college or not? Was I smart? Not to go to college or not? How was I going to pay for it? You know, all of those things. It turned out, turned out okay. It couldn't turn out another way. But I think I think growing up in that environment and then having the experiences that I had successively after that, including the get-to mantra. But I look back, I don't think I knew that until recently that some of the things that I value in terms of gratitude and helping people without expecting anything in a return kind of thing. It goes back to those years.

And you realize that it was actually pretty rough times, but you're probably stronger for it as a result. Yeah. How did you therefore raise, I know you have a daughter. I don't know if you have any other children. One daughter. How did you raise her knowing that you grew up, you know, in a less well-to-do environment? and now your daughter is growing up in a better, at least material environment. Did you ever think with your wife, like how to raise her so that she still has those sort of learnings that you had being raised in the environment that you were raised in? I don't think so. I don't think so.

I mean, she did everything with us. So we went on vacation with friends. She went with us. We went out with friends. She went with us. She was probably in environments that maybe she shouldn't have been in when she was. was five or six. But, you know, she just grew up in an environment of love. And, you know, our values, whether you don't have any stuff or you have a lot of stuff, it doesn't really

matter if your values are the same. And, you know, where the values, the values of being grateful in helping people. I think that's like the foundation of it. You know, she's, She's a role mong for that. When I grew up, I aspired to be like her. That's great. And I just think that comes out of, you know, never being confused about what's important. Yes. Yeah, that's why I asked the question.

That was a brilliant answer, which I expected. And I was very thoughtful with my wife, too. Our kids growing up, you know, started off really poor. And over times, my career grew, we grew more affluent. But, yeah, it's a focus on the. values. Yeah. In my brother's basement, there's boxes with hundreds of beanie babies and American girls. She had all the stuff that we could give her. But more importantly, she had the values that we, I don't know that we intentionally taught them, but they were basically how we

lived. Yeah, values are caught, not taught. Love that. Love that. So how, okay, amazing background. How did you get into health care here? I grew up. In a city neighbor in Pittsburgh, I contemplated the military, not because I wanted to go to the military, because I literally had no idea what I wanted to do. Yeah. I went, was fortunate enough to be able to navigate my way to get accepted to the University of Pittsburgh. I was fortunate enough not to get kicked out after my first year for really, really bad grades. I forgot about the spending part.

I just didn't know. I went to the library and looked at the career library. and stumbled upon this field of healthcare. And by the way, I digress. This was after organic chemistry. So I was headed towards medical, organic chemistry, got rid of that. I don't remember. I remember the book.

I remember where I sat. I can't imagine that I finished the course because it was just, it was behind me. So Career Library, stumbled upon this field. Turns out my parents knew the executive secretary her name was Dottie of Irv Goldberg. Erf Goldberg is an iconic CEO. If you know Tom Perlisep from Cedars,

Tom was trained by Irv Goldberg in generation after, Tom was a little older than me. So when Tom was working for Irv, I was a kid. And by the time I worked for Irv an undergraduate, Tom was off doing amazing things.

And I met Donnie. Donny got me a meeting with Irv. Irv let me spend the summer with him. And I was a soft or college. I spent a summer doing nothing important, nothing important, obviously. And I was like, oh, okay, this is what I'm going to do. And I decided then, and I didn't stop until a year and a half ago. It was like 40, there was obviously finishing undergrad, meeting my wife, getting married, or going to graduate school, getting married, 41 years. But it was that moment in the career library,

disumbled upon this field. Nice. Doddy. I forget Doddy's last name. Meeting Irv. That's it. Yeah, the rest is history. I sort of picked something and then I just,

I don't spend a lot of time, you know, debating or analyzing things. I could be pretty decisive of that time. Just so happens that I was with that. I like that. So we'll skip a few years. Now you're CEO of Hospital for Special Surgery.

And you were there for many years and many people would say, that because of your leadership, that you really transformed hospital for special surgery from what it was to what it is today. What would you say are two or three keys to success for any leader, but specifically you in this case, how you transformed, you know, obviously with a team and such, how you transformed the organization? I don't know. Maybe it may be two or three. It may be four or five. So I'm going to, these are going to be building blocks. So first is culture as strategy. What's his name? Peter Drucker, right?

Culture eats strategy for lunch. Not true. That's completely false. Culture is a strategy that if you deploy it the right way in the organization, it's like adding jet fuel to how far and how fast you could go. And it is a major driver of performance. So no different than having a technology. strategy, as robust as that would be, culture as strategy.

That's number one. Number two. Purpose with aspiration. And what I mean by that is, like, why does the organization exist? And what are your aspirations? Aspiration that's achievable, that inspires people. So you take the culture, so you have a great culture, it's a strategy, and that means people are excited to be there.

They feel like they're valued and their. contributing. Now they're working towards something that's aspirational and inspiring. That's number two. And I think you could do that in any kind of organization. Number three is a roadmap to get from A to B. And A to B is, where's the organization today? Where do you want to take it? A to B. And we did that when I was there six times in the form of having a strategic roadmap. This is our aspiration. Now we going to go from A to B. This is a road map to 2010 or a roadmap to 2020 or 25 or 2030, all that we have. And it's just taking that as for future back. It's where we're going to go. Here's where we are today. Here's how we're going to get there. I call it strategic roadmap. It's a strategic plan

that goes along with your financial plan and your operating plan and your leachie. So roadmap for A to B, number three. Number four is lead with your heart, your brain, and your soul. And leading with your heart is really about, you know, caring. You're leading with your brain is big, smart in terms of how you are managing and leading and allocating resources.

And leading with your soul is really about being all in. Like, all in. The fifth, which may be maybe a little bit unique for me because of the nature of age assess. Imagine 300 orthodox surgeons in the same room, right?

If you want to get anywhere, you have to share leadership with them. So this notion of shared leadership, which I don't know, honestly, I wouldn't declare success on this, but certainly tried repeatedly. But I think that contributed as well. So five things. Culture, purpose, roadmap, how you lead, and then sharing that leadership. No, I love that, and it's very succinct. And because to me, it's very clear, but why do many sort of struggle? So what you just laid out, like, you could write that down and we have the ability to execute, right? We've got our MBAs, those sort of things, got smart people, and we can execute that. But some hospitals, health systems, or any organization struggle. What do you think might be one challenge that people have despite having a good plan and how do you protect against it? So this, So we're speaking to our audience, Lou, like, they hear this and they're like, oh, yeah, it makes total sense and I tried that. Or how do they overcome?

What are obstacles that they face? I don't know. I think that there are unlimited number of amazing organizations out there that have had amazing success and their led by amazing leaders. And everyone sort of has their own way to do it. So I don't know. So for me, this culture thing is very important because I was in an organization early in a career that had it and lost it. So I was able to like see it up close and personal. Then I was in an organization that the only thing that it had was the integrity and capacity of people.

So how it took care of people. That was that was McKinsey. The first one was Allegheny that had a, you know, famous. you have bankruptcy. I'll get you in an organization that had it and lost it and then being in an organization that's that's all they had to sell. I said whenever I'm, you know, in charge, that's going to be foundational. So you have to believe that it's not something that you should believe it's important. You just have to believe. Right. Yeah. I'm looking at a sticker of Ted last son with believe on there. You just have to believe that's important. You know, different

strokes for different folks in terms of how they get the job done. No, those are really good insights. Tell us about what you're working on today. Obviously, you have so much wisdom to impart. And so I know you're doing, you're still doing something. So tell us a little bit about it. Yeah. I, you know, I decided to retire for a variety of reasons. The catalyst was more personal than professional. Post-COVIDD, my wife, during pandemic, the view of New York at the time was New York was on fire.

And my daughter made my wife come back to Pittsburgh. And I was commuting a lot. I just didn't want to do that anymore. So I thought now's the time. And we were ready from a succession planning point of view. And then later I realized that 17 years, I don't think anything was wrong, but 17 years is too long, right?

No matter how great things may be, things get a little still. So I was ready to retire, but I wasn't ready to, I was ready to retire from HSS, but I wasn't ready to retire from making a contribution to the industry. That is, you know, filled with problems. So I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do, and more importantly, what I didn't want to do. And I decided to, you create an objective for myself, which is I wanted to be a helper. but I don't want to be a helper from the seat of the CEO because that's stressful and that's hard work. And I just ended up with that.

I just don't need to do it again. So how can I help people and companies and communities grow and be better? So I actually wrote that down as an objective. And the way my portfolio ended is with sort of a collection of board positions where I feel like I can attach myself to an organization in one way or another and help them, help them. So I put, I put what I'm doing it to two buckets. One bucket is working with organizations, and these are all like board, these are all board rules, right? Three of the boards are private companies that I chair the board of in two buckets. One is, how can this company help health systems be successful? As opposed to, I'll use a word that we used at, I think

McKinsey left, as opposed to disintermediating the thing out of the health system. So I'm on the board of PT Solutions, which is a retail physical therapy company that partners with health systems to grow their PT footprint, which is great for being in front door. It's great for value-based care. It's great for increasing market share. I'm on the board of a home care company that's entire go-to-market strategy is joint ventures with health systems who may be challenged running their health care department, which is critical to solving the challenges health systems face. On the board of the MedTech company Zimmer Biomet, which is also helping doctors and health systems take better care of their patients through the use of sophisticated technology.

And then the other bucket is, I don't know if we really can fix the health care system by the way we're doing it. I think that there needs to be a new health care system created alongside the old one and have it grow over time and then pull along into it the pieces that should be pulled into it from the old system and leave the line the pieces that aren't and that's a primary care company that I'm on the board of is called People One Health. So primary care, physical therapy, health care, med tech, board roles helping spending a lot of time. There's the fiduciary part of the board roles, which is not as much fun as the helping

part where you get to spend time with the CEOs, spend time to the leadership team, talk about culture, talk about leadership, talk about strategy, and you take advantage of whatever I accidentally happened to learn over the course of 41 years that you can bear on the environment. Yeah, no, that's great. I love the fact that you're continuing to giving back in such a way. I want to spend the last couple of minutes. I wish we had more time because I want to delve deep into leadership with you,

but we'll have to have you back a second time. But let's talk about the role of the chief digital officer slash chief information officer and the CEO. So a lot of our audience is comprised of people that work in digital IT space. And they're always wondering, like, how, what are the secrets to having a great relationship with the CEO? So can you share maybe one or two things that you think make for a good relationship? Like, how would you like best for your tech leadership to work with you?

Yeah. What's the strategic direction of the organization? What's the role technology plays in getting there? What resources are available to allocate to it? What is the risk tolerance associated with those investments? And I've seen when there's a disconnect, even a little one, even a little one, because for a CIO or CDO to be successful, they need to spend money. They need resources. And maybe it's getting more efficient now with how AI and access of data has become. It's easier to do now that it was five or ten years ago. That's less of an issue.

But if you hire a CIO or CDO to accomplish something and you're not allocating resources to it in the right way because there's not, it seems like there's alignment. Yeah. But there's not. It creates, it just creates unnecessary. stress and friction in the organization. So just like anything else, when you've got two people who are different, make sure you're on the same page with what you want to accomplish and that the preconditions for success are

aligned. There is no health system that's going to go anywhere without a digital technology strategy, whether that's to just keep the lights on, whether that's to make the organization more efficient or whether that's to innovate and being a either a fast follower or a leader. Every health system needs the CEO and that person need to be on the same page. Last question regarding advice for CDO, CIO type person working with the board. So presumably they might present the strategy or some concepts at a board meeting. Are there any words of advice that you gave your CIO or any generic advice that you would give for other executives, direct reports,

who were presenting to the board maybe for the first time. You know, you hear a lot out there with startups and technology enabled. So it's not about the technology. It's about what the technology enables. So don't lose sight of the North Star of the organization and be very clear on how, again, whatever that organization is focused on under the rubric of digital technology, how that is going to contribute. Just no different than a human resource strategy or a building strategy or a governance strategy. It's just, it's the same. The difference is the pace of change is so fast.

It's very hard for anyone to be as fluent about where technology is. is going, then the CIA or CDO. So there's a lot of education. Nice. The first question you always ask is, GIFC-Chap CPT. If the answer is no, then you know you have a challenge. Right.

That's a good point. This has been a super fascinating conversation, especially the tattoo that you get to. So I get to spend time with Lou on digital voices. And then we talked about how you were raised and how that formed and shaped you and with your parents being sick, sort of gave you this heart and empathy.

And you pursued your healthcare career. And we talked about what makes for a successful leadership. And you gave us five strategies or five tactics of a strategy to ensure success. And then we talked about how you work effectively with the board, how you work effectively with a CEO, just a lot of different, what I call golden nuggets along the way. I took a bunch of copious notes. I'm sure our listeners are pulling over right now to write some of this things down as well. What did we miss or anything you want to double down on?

I'll give you the last word. You know, I think there's just too much division everywhere. And I mean, you can start in the world, then you could narrow down to the country, and then you could go to an industry and then go to an organization and then go down to a department. I think that, you know, people need to, this isn't Polyanish. This is just people need to be able to see the forest through the trees and develop a little bit more of a helper's mindset. I don't care what your title is. I don't care how much money you make.

The mindset is how do I help whoever I'm focused on to be successful, the greater good? And I think if we could just, it's like having your gratitude catch on and spread or you're paying it forward, catch on and spread. This is developing a helper's mindset. I think we'll move to the deal more on all of our challenges. Yeah, well said. Well, very well said. Lou, thank you for being guests on Digital Voices. Thanks, Ed.

Thank you for listening to Digital Voices podcast. with Edmarts. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.