Make a priority list
Pollack found that he had a lot of talent at his disposal. What the company needed now was a road map to lay out how best to use that talent to help build those strong and valuable relationships with hospitals and providers in the region.
“There’s a long workflow with how we interact with our providers,” Pollack says. “We had processes set up, but again, as you go live, those things change. It really was identifying those priorities and taking steps to make sure that we handled that workflow better. It’s really setting out where you want the company to be in 90 days, six months and a year. It’s understanding what priorities have to be set in order to do that and how the different departments and directors within the company fit into that puzzle.”
Contracts with hospitals and providers were a priority, but it wasn’t No. 1. Some time had to pass before it could be addressed. But Pollack needed a clearer sense of what were the top priorities and which ones could wait.
“We kept trying to decide when the right time was,” Pollack says. “When did we have enough data? When did we have enough membership? When did we have our operational processes under control to know we were administering the contract correctly?”
Pollack decided to begin the process of getting things in order by making his own priority list.
“That really becomes the starting point of where to go,” Pollack says. “People like to know that there’s a plan and there’s a vision for the company. The president of the company should be the one to be leading it. I also think it’s important as a president or leader to know enough about what’s happening at the individual department levels to set those priorities appropriately. They’ve got to be based on reality.”
Pollack got his dose of reality from the conversations he had with his people to assess their skill levels. Now it was time to turn that feedback into specific priorities that would address the company’s larger performance goals.
“When you start to break it down into the different levels, you’ve got financial stability, you’ve got growth, you’ve got compliance and you’ve got customer service,” Pollack says. “Any priority that you set really has to fit into one of those underlying tenets for any company. What I always try to do is, I try to break things down to their lowest level. You can generally get started at the lower level. You may say, ‘Well, I want to grow 10 percent this year.’ What does that mean? How am I going to do that?”
Each priority needs a reason as to why it’s a priority and it needs action items that will help you accomplish the goal.
“So you may say, ‘I’m not growing, because my customer service problems are keeping me from growing,’” Pollack says. “OK, now you’re starting to get into customer service. ‘Well, why is customer service keeping you from growing?’ You keep breaking it down and that’s a good way to get started.”
Pollack put his list together and shared it with his senior leaders and asked them for their input on what he had come up with.
“So we’ll take that initial list and either expand it, collapse it or change it based on some of that input. It’s important for the leader to take that first look and say, ‘This is where I think we need to go.’ I would involve other people once I’ve gotten through my initial thoughts.”
The key to making a priority list work is that you find a way to keep it front and center in your workday and make sure it’s a constant in your daily routine.
“It’s just got to be easy to use,” Pollack says. “It can’t be complicated, and it can’t take a lot of time to develop or change. It’s in a prominent position on the left part of my desk. It’s in a different colored folder, the only one I have of that color. When I’m sitting at my desk, you can’t miss it.”