David Pollack barely had enough time to get his business cards printed when he learned that he would need to get them changed. The chief operating officer at Molina Healthcare of Florida was now the president.
His predecessor was moving on to lead a sister company in Texas, leaving Pollack with a company that was full of both energy and inexperience. Molina Healthcare of Florida had launched a month before Pollack was named COO.
Then, in July 2009, a mere four months later, he was the man leading one of the newest divisions of the 2,800-employee Molina Healthcare Inc.
“We had a lot of people in first-time leadership roles as director-level people in the company,” Pollack says. “We were going through a natural evolution of starting up and going through the go-live part of the company. We had our first member and had our first product out in the field. We were going from that transition to starting to grow and starting to figure out where we were going to go next.”
Pollack had executive-level experience, so he wasn’t too concerned about his ability to map out a workable growth plan to expand the company and build partnerships with hospitals in South Florida. But he first needed to find out what he had within his leadership team. He had to know what skills his team brought to the table and whether those skills would be helpful in the 121-employee company’s effort to achieve its growth goals.
“We really tried to understand where our operational weaknesses were and how we could shore those up pretty quickly,” Pollack says. “When you’re stepping into a new role, the first thing you really have to do is understand the people you’re working with and how you’re going to be working with them.”
