Adam D. Singer, M.D., says the doctors whom he oversees are living Shakespearean plays.
“There’s happiness and new birth, and then there’s tragedy and death and everything in between going on in these hospitals,” says Singer, the founder, chairman and CEO of IPC The Hospitalist Co. Inc. “They’re comrades-in-arms because they’re dealing with so much human emotion every day they’re at work. So it’s very important that they find the right people that are going to live that tragedy with them.”
Singer puts a lot of effort into hiring employees who will mesh with the rest of their team, but it’s not just for the sake of a cultural fit. Because he manages more than 1,000 affiliated health care providers in more than 150 private practice groups, he can’t be constantly looking over their shoulders. So his employees need to be able to fend for themselves — and each other.
“I want people that are out there self-starting, self-motivated, self-correcting,” says Singer, who also serves as IPC’s chief medical officer. “That’s how life becomes a lot easier for us in management.”
Instead of telling employees what to do or how to do it, Singer is more intent on providing the tools they need to make those decisions themselves.
That empowerment means he has to be prepared for mistakes, but Singer says you’re better off allowing those flops.
“You have to be prepared to allow those mistakes to happen in order to move forward,” he says. “You learn a lot more from your mistakes than you do from your successes. The more [mistakes] that you have, the more people are trying to stretch the environment with new ideas, the better I think your company is.”
Singer manages a mobile dispersed work force across more than 500 facilities in 21 states by giving employees the power to manage themselves and their teammates. Their self-improvement also drives the company’s success, taking it from 2007 revenue of $190 million to $251 million in 2008.
“We try to empower our employees to have a lot of autonomy in the way that they function and deliver results to their clients,” Singer says. “We don’t have a situation where you just come here and we tell you what to do. … You really just have to lead the horses to the water. They figure out how to drink it themselves.”