Pamela Davis knows a thing or two about taking risks to expand her company.
She knows you can’t be timid if you’re going to become the first hospital in Illinois to build all private patient rooms. You can’t be timid if you’re going to allow open visiting hours when everyone else sets a strict block of time. And you certainly can’t be timid when you call the FBI to blow the whistle on corruption that separates you from growth.
By 2003, Davis, as president and CEO, had already led Edward Hospital & Health Services through significant growth by investing in renovations, expansions, cardiovascular and cancer centers, two health and fitness centers, and two off-campus medical facilities.
But when she sought capital approval from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board for a new medical office building, she hit a roadblock. An investment banker called advising her to use a certain contractor if she wanted approval. She brushed it off, only to have her proposal turned down. Then, the contractor approached her directly, urging her to use his firm.
Davis reported the activity to the FBI, who wired her home and office and, in some cases, her person. Her tapes contributed to a snowball of “pay-to-play” convictions that ultimately led to the indictment of former Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Now, Davis is applying the lessons learned back into her business — the lesson being: It takes risk to expand a company.
“The combination of calculated risk and appropriate planning has resulted in huge business success,” Davis says.
But it isn’t a solo effort that amped Edward from serving less than 37,000 patients in 1987, right before Davis stepped in, to more than 440,000 in 2007 or revved the hospital to 2008 net patient revenue of $459.8 million. It’s really a cultural approach, where Davis starts by building an environment where her employees can contribute input and information so she can analyze whether risk is appropriate. That requires getting employees involved and making herself approachable.
“You’re never going to have perfect information or the ability to say that something is black and white in this world anymore,” she says. “So one of the best skills for a leader is to be able to analyze what information you have. You have to make some predictions about the future and then based on the combination of those two, you have to be willing then to make a decision, and that means taking risk.
“Risk obviously then opens you up for success or failure. But the responsibility a leader has to the organization is that you must take appropriate risk in order to succeed and have innovation.”
