Build your management team
While employee re-engagement was going on, Laret also had to work to build a team of senior managers to replace the consultants that UCSF had in those jobs. But given the state of the hospital, it wasn’t easy.
“I had a lot of selling to do because people knew this was a place that was in bad circumstances after the de-merger — after the divorce,” he says.
He told candidates that UCSF was going to be great and the potential was fantastic, but he was also honest and said it wasn’t a place for the faint of heart.
“This is not a place where you’re going to be able to phone it in,” he says. “You’re really going to have to be energized by this challenge.”
He also needed people with good values.
“When I looked for all my lead people, I was looking for people who had a track record of success in demonstrating those good values in other organizations,” Laret says. “I needed the right people reporting to me, and then I charged them with making sure they had the right people reporting to them.”
He used search firms to h
el
p him and says he interviewed scads of people.
“I wish I had some great questions, but as much as anything, I asked people to talk to me about what their greatest accomplishments were and obviously about their failures and circumstances they felt didn’t go well,” Laret says.
He listened about what they had contributed and what they felt to be fundamentals of success or, on the other end, fundamentals that led to setbacks. He also asked about what they learned from those circumstances. This entire process took him close to a year to accomplish.
“I wasn’t interested in people coming in and telling me how great they were and all the fabulous things they had done, and when I asked about problems, it was they worked too hard,” he says. “I was looking for people who had another level of insight into themselves and had a level of confidence in themselves about how to lead in these kinds of circumstances. That would be what I’m still looking for today.”