Focus on your core

Charlie Scott
CEO, Henry Medical Center

One of the problems many leaders face is
straying away from their company’s core.
Charlie Scott, president and CEO of Henry
Medical Center, says you have to establish
your core so you know if you’re straying
from it.

“The first question to ask is, ‘What am I
really good at?’” Scott says in the July issue.
Then it’s a series of follow-up questions.
“Where is my expertise?” he says. “What
services do I feel I really have the intellectual capital, the expertise, the knowledge to
do a really good job at?”

Once you ask those questions and identify
your core areas, it’s important to ask what
other organizations are good at or better at
and identify their core strengths.

“What things have I gotten into that are
really outside my expertise and looking at
who else out there has more expertise than
I do?” he says. “Where am I getting into services where I’m competing with somebody
for whom that’s all they do or somebody
who’s dedicated to that line of business?”

If you identify places that don’t help your
core, you should consider dropping them.

“It’s a matter of trying to recognize as an
organization — we don’t have to be all
things to all people,” Scott says. “It’s not a
sign of weakness if we pare some services.
The way I see it, then we’re focusing our
resources … on fewer things that matter the
most, so we can do a better job on the
things that we do offer.”