Welcome to this week’s issue of The Healthcare Leader — one thought on leadership, operations, and career.
As the year resets, so do a lot of good intentions.
But January often reveals something uncomfortable:
What we celebrate and what actually works aren’t always the same.
Let’s dive in.
Inside
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🧠 Leadership: It’s Time to Be a Boring Leader
Here’s something that probably didn’t make your New Year’s resolution list:
Be a boring leader.
We tend to celebrate leaders who:
Speak the most (regardless of what they say)
Appear confident (regardless of competence)
Look perpetually busy (regardless of results)
In his TED Talk "Why do we celebrate incompetent leaders?”, Martin Gutmann argues that we often confuse rushed activity and visibility with effectiveness.
In healthcare, this shows up as admiration for the Captains of Crisis — leaders who swoop in, fix chaos, and save the day.
But misaligned incentives create misaligned outcomes.
If we reward the people who operate in (or create) constant crisis, that’s exactly what we get.
Since we reward people who are good in crisis (and ignore people who are such good managers that there are very few crises), people soon learn to seek out — or reframe — situations as crisis.
In reality, the strongest leaders are often the least dramatic.
They prevent fires instead of fighting them.
They’re boring.
And their team is grateful for it.
Discussion & Reflection
Where might crisis behavior be unintentionally rewarded on your team?
How could you recognize leaders whose work prevents problems instead of reacting to them?
⚙️ Operations: What a New Gym Teaches Us About Patient Experience
If you want to understand what patients feel walking into a hospital, try joining a new gym in January.
You walk into an unfamiliar space.
Everyone else seems to know the rules.
You’re asked for a payment without fully understanding the terms.
You receive minimal orientation.
You feel like you’re in the way.
I’m speaking for a friend, of course. 😉
But this isn’t far off from a patient’s experience — except patients didn’t choose this moment.
They’re greeted by busy staff.
They’re asked the same questions repeatedly.
They’re placed in rooms with limited explanation.
They interact with experts who seem rushed or frustrated.
They leave unsure what comes next.
None of this comes from bad intent.
It comes from systems designed around insiders — not newcomers.
January gyms are a useful reminder:
Familiarity does a lot of invisible lifting in our operations.
When we design experiences assuming knowledge, we create anxiety for those who don’t spend every day inside our institutions.
Discussion & Reflection
Where does your operation rely most on unspoken rules or tribal knowledge?
What would a true first-time user walkthrough reveal right now?
🚀 Career: A Better Alternative to New Year’s Resolutions
January is full of career resolutions.
“Get that next promotion.”
“Read 52 books.”
“Finally work on executive presence.”
They’re well intentioned — and rarely sustained.
Annual resolutions ask too much, too vaguely, for too long.
A simpler alternative I’ve been experimenting with comes from the agile development concept of sprints (see Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time) — breaking projects up into short tasks that can be completed in a few weeks.
A one-line resume sprint is a short, focused window — typically 4 to 8 weeks — dedicated to one professional objective. Not five. One.
Examples:
Build a proforma and business plan for a new service line
Complete a lean project
Implement a cost saving initiative
Improve a single, measurable metric
Each sprint has:
A clear outcome
Weekly actions that ensure forward momentum
Feedback (mentors, metrics, reflection)
A brief reset at the end: keep, stop, start
Instead of one big New Year promise, you give yourself permission to reset multiple times through the year — avoided the “one and done” failure of resolutions while rapidly building your resume and improving your organization.
Discussion & Reflection
If you ran one 4–8 week career sprint this quarter, what would you focus on?
What sprint could you help someone on your team run this year?
📰 Last Week in Review: News You Should Know
Here are a few healthcare highlights from the first full week in January.
1. OpenAI (ChatGPT) is all about healthcare in 2026
With the rollout of OpenAI for Healthcare targeting health systems and ChatGPT Health for individuals, it looks like OpenAI sees healthcare as a quick path to justify it's $830 billion valuation and keep the humans happy. Provided ChatGPT doesn’t create phantom diagnoses, it really could revolutionize healthcare navigation. And partnering with established players in the industry helps quickly build credibility.
2. House extends ACA subsidy and CDC alters childhood vaccine schedule
Healthcare continues to be at the forefront of political discussion with House Republicans voting to restore ACA subsidies and heated discussion around the CDC’s changing vaccine recommendations for children. For operators and leaders, it’s crucial to be ready to align with everchanging regulations and reimbursement, while building a culture where patients and employees feel welcome, regardless of political affiliation.
3. Prior auth regulation goes into effect — a win for healthcare providers and patients
CMS-0057-F requires health insurers to provide a faster PA decision, specific denial reasons, and public reporting of PA metrics, as of January 1. While this may create a burden for health insurers, it will hopefully be a win for healthcare providers and patients, reducing the administrative burden of chasing payments for necessary procedures.
Next week, we’ll move past the AI hype and focus on how healthcare leaders can use it effectively. The following week, I’ll share insights from healthcare operators.
Until next time, stay inspired!
Rob Erich, MBA, FACHE
LinkedIn: @RobErich