What the Good Doctor Ordered for 2017

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be involved in the facilitation of a leadership programme for a healthcare group in Singapore.

What was unique about the engagement was the fact that the CEO, Dr Lim (not his real name) who is a medical doctor by training, was the driving force behind the formulation and structure of the programme. While this task would have been usually delegated to the HR department in most organisations, Dr Lim chose to take the lead in what he saw as an extremely important step in ensuring that the group remained a relevant player in the healthcare industry in Singapore.

As Dr Lim wanted employees and managers to start thinking and executing differently in an increasingly competitive business landscape, he was extremely passionate on two key programmes.

First, he wanted his organisation to step up a notch in delivering a great customer experience as he realises that it can be a strategic advantage to fend off competition from Malaysia and Thailand that are fast becoming a lower cost hub for healthcare in the region.

Second, he wanted his team to have an overall understanding of how their actions (or at times in-actions) contribute to the financial objectives of the organisation – ie. to equip them with skills to “think and act like owners of the business”. (This particular programme was based on a 1-day business simulation session which Dr Lim participated actively together with his management team.)

Dr Lim’s initiatives reminded me of actions taken by Lou Gerstner when he turned around IBM from near collapse in the 1990s. Faced with old technologies, employees who were set in the old ways and a new breed of competition, Gerstner led the change from the front. While the Singapore healthcare group is nowhere near the situation faced by IBM, it does pay for the CEO to proactively lead the organisation to face an uncertain economic climate in the years to come.

Happy New Year and towards a productive 2017, everyone.

#newyear #customerexperience

Sekar Shanmugam is the MD of ProfitAbility in SE Asia. ProfitAbility based near Oxford in the UK designs and delivers fully blended and customised business simulation programmes to some of the world’s leading organisations, such as Siemens, Nestlé, Roche, Volkswagen and GKN.