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Aaron Perry
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Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis, MD, shares authentic leadership insights informed by her years of medical practice and executive responsibility. Guiding us from the VUCA conditions pervading our culture (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) to a “VUCA PRIME” framework of inspired and emotionally-intelligent leadership (Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility), Dr. Allen-Davis reveals her innovative and heart-centered approach to service-leadership. The CEO and President of Craig Hospital, the leading neurology and brain-trauma recovery center in the Rocky Mountain region, Dr. Allen-Davis shares how good doctors are good coaches, how we must mitigate our addictions to drama, both professionally and personally, and how it is essential that “in an emergency, we first check our own pulse!”
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth communities stewardship and sustainability podcast series.
Today we have the opportunity to visit with Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis, hi Jandel.
It is so wonderful to have you with us today.
It is so cool to have this opportunity, thanks.
Thank you.
So Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis is the president and CEO of Crank Hospital in Denver, Colorado.
A world-renowned rehabilitation hospital that exclusively specializes in the neurorehabilitation
and research of patients with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries.
Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis was the vice president of government, external relations and research
for Kaiser Permanente, Colorado, from 2009 to 2018.
And in that role, she led the organization’s government relations and regulatory affairs,
community relations and community benefit investment, clinical research activities, stakeholder
engagement, communications and advertising and marketing functions, a little busy.
And Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and was active in practice
for 25 years.
She’s a graduate of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School and completed her residency
at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis is also a very active participant in the community and currently serves on the
boards of the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, the National
Jewish Health, Mile High United Way, and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.
It might pronounce you not correctly.
It’s Dr. Suss, be our geisel.
Be our geisel, right?
She is married and has two children and as I’m sure you can gather from this brief bio,
Mandela is extremely busy and with that especially in mind, thank you so much for joining us
today for this conversation.
I’m honored and privileged, so it’s all good.
It’s all good.
Well, I’m so excited to dive in.
We’ve been chatting a bit about the connections between the work that you’re doing clinically
with the patients and your role in the leadership position of this organization and I think
there are insights we will be gleaning that apply potentially to all of our lives and
roles in the world and I guess diving in, will you just tell us a bit about your role
and what you’re doing here?
So, well, thanks Aaron.
I’ve been at Craig Mount.
Tomorrow will be five months, so this is new work and if it proves anything, it’s that
you just never know what doors are going to open because even sort of hear what I’ve
done in my life and 25 years I actually practiced.
I took care of women and families in terms of Tetris and Gynecology to think that a door
would open where you’d find yourself at some point A, C, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E,
although we have rehab hospital D or C, as a, as a, I don’t beat you way in.
It’s like it doesn’t make sense and yet when I look through the rear view mirror, there
is such logic to how I find myself here and it does have to do with all the experiences
that I’ve had and in particular the clinical experiences, let alone the technical and
even sort of the, I’d say grooming in a sense that’s gone on over these last nine years
but who knew.
It does make sense but at the heart of it, for me it makes sense because I have a firm
belief that one of my roles on this earth is to be a warrior for the underdog, for the
vulnerable.
So, and I had to, I had to figure that out because I get and have had over the years, you
know, emails or phone calls about roles that are opening up in other organizations and
I love Kaiser Permanente.
It was there for 24 and a half years and most of that time that’s a clinician in practice.
So, why this one appealed to me when I was called and by the way, the first time I was
called, I gave the guy the recruiter names and hung up and then we’ll be yelled at and
encouraged by a friend that he won’t talk to me, he got me.
And so then as I really got to understand a little bit more about this gem, which interestingly
I knew was here, I knew they did rehab, I never thought about it any beyond that, I wasn’t
in that part of patient care so I had no idea what they even rehabbed and it worked.
But the more I learned, I said, yeah, let’s have a conversation and then when I knew that
I needed to do this interview, I said, you’ve got to be able to tell people why you want
this.
Slow down long enough, why is this so attractive to you?
Because it wasn’t about money, it certainly wasn’t about title or position.
It was, there was something else and so that was when it hit me that it’s because this
patient population represents a level of vulnerability that needs a voice, needs someone to
be their face in community and through the recognition of this, it’s a social, the way
that we treat people in wheelchairs and with brain injury, we marginalize them and I had
to even sort of face that myself, it’s not that I ever thought, oh, you’re awful or
I don’t like you or that, but we cease to see them, we see them as less than and we forget
and that’s what it hit me is that these are people who woke up with one reality and are
going to bed with a very different one.
And all of us are one accident away, that’s what we have to realize is that we are all
potentially could find ourselves at a crag.
And then you’re not at crag forever and then you get to go home and home to what and
our community is welcoming and are they safe and are they accessible and all the other
sorts of things we need to think about.
It just got my social justice hackles and my sense of being a warrior for the vulnerable
coupled with the healing and the healer in me who doesn’t touch these patients, not
I’m not a clinician in this role, but the idea of being back with patients and sort
of thinking about what I can bring after, you know, through all those years where I was
caring for folks to this work, it is so logical that I’m here.
And as a leader, there’s something about this particular culture at crag, the hospital,
how we serve our patients, but I told everybody I had never been in a place that’s more patient
and family centered in terms of care.
How we care about and think about our patients in this holistic, introgative action, that totally
gets me jazz.
It’s just amazing, as I shared with you previously, a dear friend of mine was here at crag
a few years ago and he has recovered in such a beautiful way and I remember visiting
him just within a couple days after his accident here and it was one of the most unusual experiences
in my life to see him need to rebuild memory, rebuild story and identity.
And I’m struck here and you talk about your role in the position of leadership as the
CEO of this institution that is on the one hand through so many clinicians and professionals
providing this incredible service to all of these vulnerable individuals.
And on the other hand, you’re bringing along the board and other stakeholders in the institution.
And I imagine that your capacity for storytelling and for relating to these different constituents
is a huge part of your efficacy as a leader and I was wondering if you might speak to
that a bit because I think our audience would really learn a lot about that.
Well, first of all, we know, and I’m going to be a little scientific or something for a minute
here, that if you want to watch people literally lean in, let alone figuratively lean in,
link data and information to stories.
There’s some kind of story telling, I like to call those campfire moments where you’re
in a groove, you’re in a rhythm, you’re talking about things.
And it’s so much fun when some flash of something comes and I say, I have a story about that
or I remember once, blah, blah, blah, and then bringing it back home.
What excites me, and it’s one of the many things that it excites me, is thinking about
the stories that I get to build over this next many, many years, I hope that I’m here
at Craig, that we’ll serve our patients and serve the world in some way.
It’ll be kind of cool, but probably one of the coolest, I think, things that I decided
some years ago, as I have been this art and student of leadership, let alone these amazing
the privilege and honor of leading in a lot of different ways.
Years ago, it was 2014, I said, or actually before 2014, I said, I am going to one day
write a book.
I want to write a book entitled, everything I ever learned about leadership I learned
in the care of patients.
I figured it out because when leading my last team, the team I had as a vice president
at KP, I found myself always using clinical examples as metaphor for what we were doing.
I mean, one of my favorite questions to ask the team when trying to get a sense of how
was the health and well-being of the teams that these folks led doing, or going, I’d
say, who’s in your ICU, who’s in your ICU, I’m going to get this look and they go, who
is literally sick, who has some toxin in terms of either how they’re showing up or being
in the presence of the folks on a team in a way that they’re spreading negativity like
and it is a toxin or a virus who’s ill that way, who is struggling with something that
we need to, just like in an ICU, shepherd the resources to figure out what to do, to
help them either out, help them out or help them out, and that’s the reality in all institutions
too that we help them out or help them out, and so that was one, and there were loads
of those sorts of ways that I thought about things.
In fact, when I told myself, tell you another great one is that when I first started that
job nine and a half years ago, that was 2009, and you may remember in 2010, the Affordable
Care Act passed, and even early in nine, but I had this crazy talk about a learning curve,
like a baptism by fire for government, the government relations part of things, and I would
have to tell myself, I remember saying, you know, when the media called, for example, because
I had media relations and this was relatively new for me, even though we had somebody who was on
the team who did media, she’s going to bring it all to you, you know, a panel or he’s going to
bring it all to you, and I would have to ask myself, is there blood on the floor?
Now, what do I mean?
So I’m an obstetrician, there’s blood, there’s a lot of blood in obstetrics, and there can be
whether it’s a C-section or a vaginal delivery, or even, unfortunately, sometime in gynecologic
surgery, and what you learn to do over a career, as you get comfortable with what you’re doing,
is you learn to know when your pulse should quicken, or to recognize when this is a high
drama moment, this is an emergency, that kind of thing, and when you’ve got time or you can
pace things differently, and by the way, the more that you do, the less you see that you’re
pulse, that you have to react like, oh my god, because you learn, you know how to end with.
Well, I had to tell somebody, my phrase, when I got over to that side of the business and
started doing no more clinical, is all of this stuff is new, and when it’s new,
it seems like there’s blood on the floor everywhere, right? So I’d have to slow my roll and say,
is there blood on the floor? And then just do a quick assessment, and sometimes you use others
to help you assess it, those who live the work longer, and then just say, chill, you’ve got this,
you’ve got people who will help you out of it, and that’s exactly how the good clinicians practice
too, is they didn’t look at it as this is mine to solve, I play my role, I play my role well,
and I’ve got team members who together we’re going to figure things out, and so you begin to,
so that’s another example of this use of story, and then you can say, oh yeah, I remember
this one case, and then you’re not carrying all of the weight yourself as a solo operator.
And you’re learning, and you know how to react, and the one thing that I think is so so important,
both as a physician, and as a leader, is coupled with authenticity about when things are really
icky, having to be honest, and transparent, and that was real important with patients, don’t lie,
never lie, never sugarcoat, but this notion of authenticity and transparency in the face of
some icky-ness, but you never, ever, ever lose hope, so my role is to be calm under fire, and to
provide those signs in the environment that things are going well, because that’s, so partly,
there’s this book, Strength Space Leadership, that was written by the guy, is it Wrath, who did
also wrote, Strength Finders, and he wrote a follow-on to that called Strength Space Leadership,
and he, and it’s one of the gallop books, and that organization studies everything, and you know,
surveys everything, and he talked about or described that the, he has a chapter on the needs of
followers, and he said, what followers need is hope, compassion, stability, and trust, and we can
always, always infuse that, even in the icky-est of times, and that’s the case when I’m having to tell
somebody that their baby’s died, that’s the case when I got to tell somebody, you’re not,
you’re not going to make it here, and you know, in this particular role you’re in, that’s the case
when you have to tell a patient your problems are of your own making, I’m here to help you,
let’s work together on whatever it is, that’s the case in management leadership when you’re dealing
with a performance issue, with someone, I’m not, I always want to be compassionate, and I want to
be gentle, I want to make sure that they, they sense my sense of confidence that they can do,
that’s the whole part, and that the ground’s not shaken underneath you, even though nobody likes,
nobody wakes up in the morning and he goes to work, it says, I hope somebody tells me I slept
today, so, and, and, and no patient, nobody wakes up in the morning saying, I think I want to be a
patient, so, you know, I think there are really some cool parallels between what I learned at the
feet of my patients, that informs how I show up as a leader, so, yeah, yeah, you were mentioning
to me earlier this afternoon that you see your role as a clinician interacting with patients
often as similar to being a personal coach, or a life coach, and it sounds like you do the very
same thing with your colleagues and the folks working in the organization under your authority,
and that’s probably a skill we develop over time, and when it’s well developed, it’s a remarkably
powerful skill. Yeah, you know what’s funny, I had a colleague some years ago who I’ll never forget
this line, that we, we give to physicians, you know, a whole lot of, you know, sort of homage,
or sort of a sense of omniscience, or that, that is not true, and in healthcare, there is
what we know a lot, and we continue to learn more and more about, you know, sort of whether it is
biomes of all sorts, or genomes, or your name, let alone in this space that I get to work in now,
how this thing called the brain works, and you’re learning more and more, and we don’t, we use
such a tiny component, you know, portion of it, all these things, like we’ve known forever,
just drive more questions, and that has the power to humiliate, which is good, keep a humble,
keep a very humble in terms of, yeah, you, you answer question and seven more pop up on that topic,
and so one of the really cool things about what I get to do here, as a docket, it was the same
there, it’s this notion of, you know what you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know,
and I don’t know anything, I’m learning, I’ll be a little silly, but I’m learning how the,
you know, the science is brain and spinal cord injury, in part, because I’m curious and interested,
but what I get to do when I walk the halls, our patients stay here for, you know,
months, weeks for sure, and months in some cases, so I get to see them along their journey,
but some from the moment they arrive, if I’m asked to make sure I check in on somebody,
but others I’ve just gotten more and more comfortable at just walking up the folks in the hall,
and saying hello, because they’re going to be here, we’re in a real bond, so I get friends around here,
and I get to see their progress, because I don’t see them every day, and I think one of the coolest
contributions I can make, I like to think to their recovery, or that notion of hope,
compassion, stability, and trust, is when I see them, I do see them, I get to see the miracles,
I get to see the miracles, I get to watch the recovery, but I’m not, you know, the one who’s
seeing it incrementally day after day, and to be able to say, oh my god, look what you can do,
wow, beautiful, this is, this is amazing, because they can’t see it, you know, I just, you know,
you can’t see it, and when I was in clinical practice telling a patient, you know, who I might have
been rounding on the hospital every day, you’re going better, you’re doing better, it’s not, it’s
not the same as a week goes by, or when I see them back in the office at six weeks for a check,
it’s like, wow, look how much better you’re doing, so I get to do that here, the same goes for how
I think we need to think about coaching and growing our teams, is when we see, when we see
changes in terms of how they’re really leaning in to trying to get better at what they do,
point it out and tell them the stories and give them the examples that I saw you do on XYZ, that
was awesome, that kind of, so again, it’s that, I think one of our, our most important roles as a leader,
I like to say is these need to be three times as big as this, even though it’s right now, it’s not,
in this particular, it’s a bug, yeah, it’d be a mess if I was quiet, it wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t work,
but so it’s to use all those other senses, which we also do in medicine, by the way,
use all those other senses to help lead the environment, and so it’s kind of a cool thing to get
the walk around these halls and watch patients get better and know that through that lens of hope,
compassion, stability, and trust, how are you helping them to see what they can’t see,
and the thing goes through the folks that you get to work alongside.
It’s beautiful, what I’m hearing is sometimes this perspective that you can bring in your position
that is less frequent than some of the other interactions and interactors, brings a special
potency to it, and it makes me think of that phrase less as more, and occasionally when I’m working
with executive teams and folks that I’m helping in the realm of leadership and sustainability,
I will tell them, you don’t want me with you every day of the week, I will actually be less
effective for you that way, and not that that’s necessarily true for each and every one of us in
each and every positions we can play in the world, but it does seem in certain positions that
occasional touchpoint becomes almost homeopathic in nature, it becomes such a strong
opportunity for reflection, for change, for feedback, and so forth, and what I’m hearing is you do
this routinely in your work.
I’ll say something that sounds anything but humble, I think it’s how it’s just who I am,
and I know you didn’t ask, I do it routinely in work, but it says natural is breathing if you just
let it be, if you don’t feel like you as a leader need to walk around buttoned up or you have some
sort of sense of the archetype, some archetype of what a leader is, is anything other than just,
you know, a leader is someone who, first of all they are servants, we sit at the feet of the people,
we don’t lead people, we serve those people, and some of that serving a big dose of that is coaching
and mentoring and guidance, and then there’s inspiration and vision setting, and all the other
things we have to think about, but your your comment, gosh, it just maybe think of something,
it’ll come back, but yeah, we don’t see them, we don’t see them, it’ll come back, I totally lost it,
that’s okay. Well, let me, that’s actually a really funny segue for me to ask you another question,
I’m just burning to ask, so you’re working here in a setting where folks are dealing with
injuries and issues related to the brain and to neurology. I’ve heard it said, and I don’t know if
this is still considered true, but I’ve heard it said that we understand more about outer space
than we do about the brain and our own neurological systems, what’s going on with our
neurology? What is all this that allows us to interact the way we do communicate, learn, etc?
Well, he thinks I have the answer, but I’m going to write the test book, I’ll just make sure I share
it with people. Who knows, I think, when I think about that part of sort of life, what? I have
this, like my husband says I have a memory like an elephant, and I can remember things from
childhood, I remember songs, I remember poet, I mean things from tiny, tiny, I can remember
smells and being places and sort of a sense of even lighting of things as a little kid, and even
as I got older, and I find myself sometimes thinking if a song comes on the radio, and I was like,
where is that stored? How is that stored? Not alone. I mean, I think we get the why, or we’ve made
up a why as humans, the why is because there’s this iterative sort of forward nature and everything
that we’ve learned prepares us for whatever is next, so maybe it makes sense or has some
applicability, a lot of it doesn’t, but I don’t, I don’t, I say is it ones in zeros, I mean,
that’s what a computer would say, it’s ones in zeros. I don’t know, but there is something
magical about the brain, and the part of it that actually interests me more than the cerebral
cortex is the mid part of the brain, the more primitive parts of the brain, you know, they hit the
campus, in some of those places where we store our unconscious and our subconscious sort of
sense of things, the part that gets us to work every morning without killing anybody while we’re
talking on the phone, we should be, or you know how it is when you find yourself at work and say,
I have no idea how I got here, and so there is this, this other, I think we need to pay way more
attention to that, not only understanding neurologically what it is, but tapping into that to understand
our motivations, and what, what, what, you know, that notion of real self-knowledge, because it’s
back there, it’s not in these, you know, these big old cortices here, which we have the ability to
learn, but it’s the primitive parts that, and actually even the transfer of what we learn from here
that becomes subconscious, so that driving is of naturals, whatever, or these elite athletes can do
what they do without even thinking about it. There is the thing that excites me, and I know I won’t
be around to learn it all, because I think as I said, to answer one question and seven more pop up,
it is going to be exciting what we learn about the brain. I’ve heard stories, and one,
and I can’t remember who in the hospital told it to me, but a patient who after a severe brain
injury could suddenly do amazing art, and they didn’t do art before. So, you know, we recruit,
and we use the accommodating way that the brain sort of picks up where the other part, or comes in,
when another part goes out, is pretty remarkable. To hear our music, or our speech therapists,
and we have music therapy here, where we’re using music to help people learn how to count,
or to pace themselves when they’re walking, or to speak again, because that whole notion of
music comes from, I guess, a different part of the brain than necessarily, you know, the way that
we express, or even hear information around the parts of the brain warnecose and broke a
barrier. I remember that from school, and expressive and receptive a-fages, where you, if you
heard that part of your brain, you either don’t understand what people are saying, or you can’t express
it in a way that you can hear it. So, I mean, it’s just one complicated organ, and I find myself
thinking, then how does, and complex? How does it recover? This is all the cool stuff that,
you know, we’re going to figure stuff out, and the pace at which we’re figuring stuff out in
science, just in general, is remarkable. It’s accelerating so much. We may actually figure out a
whole lot before I leave this earth. Right, I hope so. You know, there’s a thread here we’re talking
about, and incredibly complex and adaptable organ, if we can call it that. We’re also, this is our
stewardship and sustainability podcast series, where we explore linkages between health and
well-being at the individual, the family, the community scale, and how that links up to global
scale issues of sustainability, regeneration, stewardship, etc. And I’m really curious about the
insights you might have around behavior change, and around adaptability, and our ability to
wake up one day, sometimes because we have to, not that we want to, and suddenly we’ve got a very
different situation, and we can learn to respond to that. I’m curious if we might take some cues
and more proactively choose behavior change as well. These are some of these broad and complex
issues we face as a society, but I’m just curious on this topic of adaptability and behavior change
if anything comes to mind for you. You know, it’s one of the words that
saying before we got started that we had this amazing conversation as a group of 20 or so.
Actually, the word now goes 24, 25 leaders today. On what makes Craig so special, they talk about
this thing called the Craig culture, and back in 2004, the then CEO, actually the first CEO of
this remarkable place of the modern Craig. This Craig’s been around since 1907, but
penned along with the number of other folks in the organization, this thing called the Craig
Recipe, and it’s like, what makes this place of darn special, and what makes it hum? And I happened
to find it at a drawer right after I started here, and I just got this huge smile. I said, my gosh,
I’ve been here maybe two or three weeks when I read this and said, the gosh, a place still
functions like this. And I don’t even know that many people even, you know, there’s an upturn
over in workforce, even though we certainly have some people with long tenders that there’s a lot
of people who’ve never even seen this, and I can tell you, but this thing is hardwired. Hardwired
is can be. And so when we have this great discussion that they about, why does it endure?
What do we need to think about adding in terms of, you know, in light of changing,
the changing external environment and even internal environment? And are these still the right,
is this still the right recipe? And so far then listening to this incredibly
committed group of people talk, and leaders talk about this topic. First of all, it’s cool to
watch that happen. I think this doesn’t happen in most organizations where we make the time to
have a discussion like this, as leaders, and think about what’s our accountability and responsibility
to lead and to serve. But I went to this place of thinking about organizations as trees,
I love trees, but trees and really that notion of the metaphor of the roots. I mean, what is the
substrate that makes this possible, that makes this sustainable? And of course, then you get this
sort of heavy feeling and don’t screw it up, Alan Davis. Don’t let it go. But I threw into the
room a few things. It strikes me that it’s things like resilience and adaptability and joy and
determination and hope. And then someone else said, you know, this notion of, we come to work here
out of a real sense of, oh god, we know that the notion of generosity will come in a minute.
But you really want to help these folks in a way that is a sit. And then what hit me was,
as I said, this is the most these folks are like there’s nobody more vulnerable than someone who is in one of these horrific
catastrophic accidents who often can’t feed themselves when they first you know can’t go to the
bathroom all these things that we take so for granted and our job is to to help restore that
obviously rehab get people that using adaptability and resilience but also hope and
celebrating the small victories through a lens of joy and I see determination like I’ve never
seen I mean there’s something about these accidents when they happen to people that many say
they didn’t wake up wanting it to happen but they never want to go back to the way they were
before because of what they have tapped into in terms of their you know parts of them back to
what is there literally their brain or their you know their neurologic system in terms of you
know the compensatory things that can happen in this space but it’s more that what they discover
about themselves that they didn’t know or because this is a place that has lots of has access to
and provides sort of this holistic team based approach to care there are things that insurance
doesn’t pay for but that we have these amazing donors who allow for life therapeutic recreation
where people but they have they have these outings and one of the weekends outings too
ago was to go do archery cool cool I’d like to do that yeah seriously and then people discover
that they can do things they didn’t know that they either have the capacity for or even in their
former life would have never had the opportunity to be exposed to these things so there’s this
there’s this you know it I told them at the end of my kind of thinking out loud saying I said
we live in a place with sort of this sort of sense of the contradiction in terms of
what you think you should feel and see in here here and what we actually do it’s there
and it’s it just blows me away that we do it and and because we do it I think it changes us
and I am convinced this sounds corny’s can be but it’s not true I think we are better because we
get to serve these patients and these families the way that we get to do so and do we in turn
then take that out to the world and what’s that look like in terms of our own relationships with
others who we get to hang with our families our friends we are changed by this just as much as
our patients are it is it’s so beautiful it’s palpable walking you can be okay yeah and you would
expect a facility like this to perhaps have a vibe of Debbie Downer or something like that right
but it’s not at all so folks are so friendly even down in the lobby I was struck it was like
encountering a handful of new friends you know what I told back to know a clinical reality
that translates beautifully into leadership and these folks just reinforce this belief for me
that I’ve had for a long time and I used to say it to and I do still say it to leaders and
folks is that our people want to see and be seen by them they want to be seen by and be seen by
us and you end up in a chair are you end up not being able to quite get the words out right are
you end up severely disabled and what people want more than anything else and this is what the
nuns taught me in Catholic schools it all life have dignity all work have dignity and you
want to still be treated in that same way you want to be received in that same way you don’t want
to be seen as lesser so I was real and comfortable at first when I came over just walking up to
people and in chairs and or our patients and saying hi in part because I felt like I was um
invading their privacy and then like nothing more than to say hi first of all everybody want
to know about how great it is here I get that but they want to know that you see and then I’ll
say I’m the presidency or I’m the president of the hospital I go oh I get touched by this it’s
not a big deal you know I put them on the same way you do or you know all we’re up you know this is
so so um yeah it’s uh people want to see and be seen by and the sense and our ability to open
up our hearts and sort of really be as vulnerable as our patients are you know to experience that
and to live that occupy that space in the same way that they do obviously without the physical
barriers but more just if you think about when that happens what’s that patient feeling fear
hopelessness shocked um worry concerned
there are things on that desk over there that can bring out the very same emotions in me
and what I’m looking for then somebody to see me or or to help me and so uh we get to do that here
and and I think that’s what I think that’s what the world is longing for is leaders who will
will show off that way because then they’ll help you people are willing to go to the wall for you
if they if you are willing to ask and to show your humanity and your humaneness
yeah beautiful well speaking of cultivating our leadership abilities capacities I’ll take the
opportunity to make a couple quick public service announcements um this is the YonEarth
communities stewardship and sustainability podcast series and we’re visiting today with
Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis at Craig Hospital in Denver Colorado and we’ve got some really exciting
things to share with you in May may 17th to 19th the YonEarth community is hosting a three-day
leadership summit and it’s called massively mobilizing sustainability deep leadership for the
21st century and we’re bringing together a small group of amazing leaders authors uh community
activists to have a rich cross disciplinary discussion and learning together for uh capacity
enhancement for educators executives and entrepreneurs and although it’s not totally official yet
it sounds like Jandel may be joining us as well which is going to be fabulous um I want to also
mention that this podcast is made possible in part through the generosity and collaboration with
our sponsors the International Society of Sustainability Professionals the Association of Waldorf
Schools of North America, Walei Waters, Earth Coast productions and Purium and you can use the
code YonEarth at any of those websites uh to get discounts on the products and services that
are available and also finally for any of you who might be interested in our audiobook or ebook
resources at the YonEarth community uh market you can use the code YonEarth for discounts
on those as well and that’s uh the letter y on earth.org. I am so excited about the programming that
we’re going to be able to share with folks in May and through this podcast Jandel and
one of the things that strikes me as we’re talking through all of us there’s so much going on in the
if we can call it the microcosm of Craig Hospital and the folks that you’re serving here that can
really broadly apply to so many big system and big picture issues and challenges we’re facing
as a society and I remember speaking with you about this little four letter acronym and I
I remember a friend joking recently about TLA’s and having an aversion to TLA’s and I’m looking
down like with a TLA three letter acronym and I just couldn’t help but crack it so I guess this
is an FLA or letter acronym and it’s it’s VUCA and I think you for sure this with me a couple
of years ago when we were chatting and it’s it’s such a brilliant framework for understanding some
of the stressors really that we’re experiencing in life at every scale and then there’s sort of
a next step or or a companion acronym to go with VUCA as well and I was hoping you’d talk about
a tiny bit about that well VUCA spans for volatility uncertainty complexity and ambiguity
and you know you hear those words and think what sort of naropa light plays came up with VUCA
it turns out it’s actually the military and it actually was a phrase that was coined in the
military in the post cold world cold war era yeah where I mean if you think we started fighting
and conflicts started looking different across the globe after the cold war thing and and only
heightened after 911 where you really don’t know where and I mean I it’s why we’ve seen so many more
brain injuries not only is that not just about the technology or the instruments of destruction
it’s that wars are fought and conflicts look different and it was engaged in it so the late 90s
they finally took this sort of started writing and really coined this VUCA phrase in the military
and then after 911 business picked up on it it sort of started getting out and I happened I
happened upon it quite by accident one day a few years ago on the internet and there is an
antidote to VUCA it’s vision understanding clarity and agility and you know I’m reminded of
another story fabulous there was and this is a story that maybe others know and it’s about
sense-making because if you think about vision understanding clarity and agility in the face of
volatility uncertainty and complexity what we have the opportunity to do and I dare say is
crazy as things can feel at any given point we have the obligation and responsibility to do
is to sense-make and so the story isn’t I’m gonna tell it wrong but I’m I’m gonna do it anyway
goes back to world war one and or two anyway back to one of the wars and one of the leaders sent
a group of see I don’t even know all the military things up Latuna band which is not even close
to right but the group of soldiers out on some sort of a mission and this was over in the Swiss
Alps I believe so they’re there and they do their thing and this snowstorm comes in and they get
terribly lost and they get a they get really freaked out they don’t know they’ve lost contact
with them back at base at the base the the leader is feeling terrible about you know
it’s been horribly guilty about this happening while they do end up the the the leader of this group
puttune and I will call that find a map in the bottom of his rucksack and they use this map and
they navigate themselves back and out and they’re in the hospital and they look at this map and
it wasn’t even a map of the Swiss Alps it was a map of the Pyrenees and so the the sort of moral of
the story is when you’re lost in a snowstorm any map will do when you’re lost in the forest any
map will do when you’re lost in your life any map will do when you’re lost and not quite sure
how to do what you know challenge is facing you any map will do and what that maps I mean you
can think of all the ways and what the things what did that give to them since it wasn’t them maybe
all mountains are the same as what it means but I kind of doubted it was the up in the down part
but beyond that who knows but what what what that gave them was a true north for the moment
pardon the pun some way of saying okay it gave them the sense of hope and confidence okay look we
found one let’s just follow this Luca does the Luca prime attempts to do the same thing in that
moment where you want to book your ramps you’re that you’re that afraid and and we all know
sometimes we can look cool as cucumbers on the surface and be scared spittless it can be a new
opportunity like this one where you go holy cow I don’t know what a CEO and a president does I
think they made the steak which was my January 1st crazy meltdown where you just sort of have
this moment where you go thinning steak oh my god I can’t do this job and then what you have to do
and I had to do with myself even in that case was to take a pill you know what you don’t know he
didn’t literally take a pill actually I waited till three o’clock and I knew that somewhere in the
world it was five o’clock I had a glass of wine yeah me clearly another aspect of the microbiome
we can be grateful for and then microbiome absolutely to out that’s right but what that story tells me
is that in those those moments where and you’ve got to have the intuition to know and people are
at that space and I think we are societally at that place yeah for sure right now we do have the
option to choose and that’s where these cerebral cortices do help because we can choose our reaction
to things and this notion of sense making providing the map telling yourself what you know and what
you don’t know um seeking as much clarity as you can about a thing recognizing that when things
actually are uncertain complex and ambiguous you’re not going to see a whole lot of clarity but
there’s a few things out there that tells you that the world is and just chart a course and and
take that course it gets back to my is there blood on the floor ask yourself is there really blood on
the floor um when there is do you have to figure out what is the response and I think given some of
the crazy that we’re all living in right now this isn’t where you answer the question no there’s no
blood on the floor there’s blood on the floor we then have to decide how do we want to engage
and react to that bloody floor yeah is it rantman raving on a Facebook post is it you know burning
signs is it doing whatever the heck is it or is it thinking about in my small
ecosystem my small community whatever that may be what are the things that we can say
and point to that things are actually there’s far more goodness going on than there is negativity
and where there is negativity how do you effectively use your voice to combat that
and what’s not destructive what’s not helpful and by the way secure your own oxygen mass first I
decided three days ago I am not listening to news for a while just can’t do it anymore yeah yeah
there was there was the end of last week and it was this whole thing it’s with this smaller
this artist the actor who did what he did where I was oh and then there was the coach from
the new England Patriots that’s what I said I can’t do this anymore I said I had this moment
where I realized this is like wallowing in like sort of taking in dirt every day or something what
is this doing to us on a cellular level yeah and that’s in that moment you have a choice
I said I mean it’s not like I’m gonna become some big ignoramus it’s not like I’m gonna ignore
what’s going on then I can choose what and when and how to take this in and I also can choose how
to react to it and so I think this notion of vuka that was a long way to tell the vuka story
you know a vision understanding clarity and agility it requires slowing down
requires part of some stuff off as I just said it requires throwing the agendas away at meetings
like we did today and just wrap it and having a wrap session for showing my age and allowing people
to put their voice in the room in a way that’s different because you know that it’s out of that
that there’s a sense of I can feel earth the earth is solid um we can see our way through this
and by the way while the world may be changing around us in healthcare we’ve got all the right
stuff to know how to weather the storm we got the map and we or we can make the map yeah we can
make the map we don’t have to wait for somebody you know just don’t sit by the side of the road
and wait rescuing nobody coming we can do this we can do this so yeah but so it’s it’s so
interesting I know we need to wrap up in just a couple minutes and there’s there’s one final
thread I just I know I would I would feel remiss if I didn’t ask this when I hear you talking about
the observational capacity is there blood on the floor when I hear you talking about the
sort of self regulating awareness that says it’s time to turn off the radio it’s time to turn
off the news when I hear you talking about uh being in a leadership meeting with 24 of your
senior team saying we need to throw the agenda out for a moment and do this other thing
what I’m hearing what I’m experiencing actually it’s kind of cool to feel is that there’s a
de-stressing there’s there’s a lowering of maybe even the stress hormones that would otherwise
respond to these things in a different way and I’m just curious if one of the keys in in all of
this that we’re discussing in our own lives and how we’re serving others and our roles as leaders
and in our responses to some of the big challenges that we’re seeing in the world if we each become
a bit more perhaps intelligent I don’t know if there’s a better word about managing that
neuro biochemical response system that we’ve got that that might be one of the kind of keys or
parts of the map or or something it absolutely is and you know so you can start from that space
of talking about we have the opportunity to choose our reaction it does start though with having
a deeper sense of where you are both physiologically emotionally mentally spiritually physically
in any given instance when sort of like there’s a there’s another old book that was written it’s
actually sort of a true story it’s called the House of God and it was written in the late 70s
and it’s about an intern going through his internship at the Beth Israel in Boston and he has
these rules there these House of God rules and one of the House of God rules is in an emergency
knowing a code where some of these hardest moments during a code first take your own pulse
wow you know so that’s why I mean it’s an amazing book there are those who think it’s kind of
cynical but that one in an emergency take your own pulse so there’s this moment where you need
to stop and you do need to sort of assess where you are because I think what happens over time and
unfortunately lived in an environment like this kids live in environments like this you know
it’s some of the sort of the chronic toxic stress that yeah that’s been so well described in kids
that toxic stress exists in our workplaces it exists in our homes our families it can
and it certainly exists in our community and I think this really weird thing in terms of how
this back to this thing is wired happens we can pretty quickly get addicted to the the drama
and I think we’ve lived that for sure at least by I will own and I have over these two years I mean
it got to the point where I’d get in the car at night bill let me see what happened today
and it says much to sort of it’s feeding something that must be on some level pleasurable that
we’re not even aware of but mostly it is as destructive and toxic as taking a little arsenic
every day or finding yourself addicted to opiates over time in terms of the the lull the pull of
wanting to see what the crazy leaders have done this week or today because you know there’s this
point and sort of so there’s a self-awareness part that you got to do take your own pulse and
recognize the power the addiction because this is addiction I mean it’s just a different kind of
and it’s not as obvious an addiction but we are living in a place we’re living in a space where
we are addicted to the drama yeah where there’s some voyeurism that’s playing out here that’s
not healthy for any of us so I think that that’s the first part of sort of figuring out is
the blood on the floor is being able to just sort of check into how you’re feeling and looking at
things are because I actually think there’s some data that shows that the amount of alcohol intake
that is really increased in our society over the last couple three years so are you are you finding
yourselves responding and reacting to stress in some ways in terms of sort of then after the sort
of conflict there’s a cycle when I know it’s going on listen to all that you know in terms of
what it really physically does to you I’m talking emotionally physically and then what do you do
to self-medicate right what’s all that self-medication looks like look like and is it healthy or not
and then how do you pull back from it I think is the big question that we have to ask yourself
and how we manage that and again look around the environment then around what is certain I remember
working with my team one of my teams at a time that was super super stressful I said one of the
best things we can do and I remember grabbing the the table and saying it’s fine that solid Earth
when it is with this booth of thing fine the solid you know look around that’s still here what
has not changed in our environment that helps me know that I’m still where I was before I lost
my mind and let the crazy in and then we would do that exercise with ourselves well we still
have a healthy team we’re still checking in we’re still figuring out who’s in our ICU we’re still
being creative we’re still we’re still we’re still just as a moment to say okay now we can manage
that that’s when agility comes in that’s when we get at least enough of a pause from the crazy
to figure out what’s our map forward how are we going to weigh through this and maybe we won’t
be able to weigh through it in terms of being able to affect their impact the big picture
but the little picture rocks too and if we can get more people to do that you know we can turn
this puppy around I mean when you think about even sustainability in the sort of more literal sense
you know I find myself thinking why am I composting and I do I love that by the way
I think it’s a cool thing to do but we need way more than me a new compost being given this area
why do I recycle when we know there are people who don’t there are businesses organizations that don’t
well it’s because I’m doing I’m controlling what I can control and through that and even mentioning
the people yeah I got three compost bins out there yeah I’m probably not the best
composter but I use the stuff in my gardens but I mean in terms of I don’t go out
turn it the way I’m supposed to know if that it works there are lots of critters and there
I’m fine it’s fine because I’ll go out the spring and go oh look at it you know that’s a
told another lesson don’t overcomplicate it it’s not that complicated a lot of the stuff we over
complicate so we have to do our part and then talk about our part to see how do we make
the little ripples out by influencing the environment which we’re in as opposed to worrying
about the stuff that I you know that at a systems level that wouldn’t be nice for the magic one
wouldn’t be nice if any of us had a magic wand if someone has one for God’s sake somebody wave it
anything so we can get some crazy out of things but we don’t so you you do these incremental things
that it reminds me of that that parable of the starfish or something do you know that one the
little boy on the beach and then you know I guess this happens that he came up on they were
thousands of starfish that washed up on the beach and he’s picking one up they’re on back in
pick one so it comes by saying why are you bothering you can’t make a difference look at this
and this kid says I say this one and that’s the way I think we need to look at this
which requires I think a wholesome presence both in terms of being able to check in on yourself
a wholesome presence and being able to check in on your buddies whoever they may be including family
and friends in your workplace and knowing when you just need to turn off and take care of you absolutely
yeah so beautiful well maybe we all together get to wave that wand over time and that’s what you
want that’s what’s happening that’s the movement that we’ve we’ve got and we and and I am concerned
that what we as humans tend to do is think that when something’s kind of wacky we need to make
big changes like tell you another quick clinical I know we’re talking too long but I was a
medical student doing a pediatric ICU rotation at Children’s Hospital National Medical Center in DC
came down from New Hampshire and did this this sub internship as a fourth year med student
and that was back in 1983 when they let us do a lot more has medical students and you’d
ever get to do the day and that’s a good thing and in some ways maybe not so good but it’s
overall a good thing from a patient safety perspective so I had this kid in the ICU who was this
ex preny who was two and a half or three it was not yeah it’s probably about two and he weighed
17 pounds he was so what we do is failure to thrive and it was all because of the pulmonary
complications from the impreme at shore and we didn’t have what we have today to treat it like that
and and and this kid was my kid and there was this one night that I was working in the ICU along
with the critical care fellow and we had two babies not doing well in the ICU so I literally
me and this nurse the nurse and I had to take care of this kid all night and he was having we’re
having trouble is his way clinical but we were having troubles stabilizing his pulmonary artery
pressures and it was a drug which I don’t remember the name of now that we used to sort of bring
those pressures down we saw him getting high and we were fighting this all night and I’d go over
and talk to the the the fellow who was working with another critically ill kid and tell him
what’s going on and he’d be trying to make adjustments this nurse and I bonded in a way that I
will never forget because there was something spiritual about the two of us sort of locked in
a little combat with something grim reaper or whatever over this baby and it was almost
shift change we’re exhausted so I’d been up the whole day before and the whole night and
we still haven’t really gotten this kid’s pressure stabilized this is another one I use with
teens or talked to folks about and then it’s time to sort of get the bed and get the kid clean
you know sort of set for the day nurses who come in who’s going to have him at seven o’clock and
so the nurses doing what she does and she took this kiddos had as she sort of rearranging things
and just changed the head ever so and we watched the pressures normalize and stay normal
here we were all night pushing god knows how many you know sort of cc’s of the math nothing
that would hurt the kid but and not able to kind of figure out what the heck was going on and
simply turning the head did something and that it wasn’t magic there was probably something
and he wasn’t debated he was he was on a ventilator because that’s what it happened he had a
respiratory arrest at home and he just couldn’t get him off event but or didn’t during the four
weeks I was there because when I left he was still there but to think it was something that simple
and I always remembered that is they’re often we try so hard so hard so hard and it’s often
we don’t need like huge swings which we’re seeing I mean the backlash in this country to what’s
happening regarding racism or you name the isms that we’re seeing is I’m not sure that the response
to that from I’ll say it the left is any more is any healthier than what we’ve seen and have been
living you often don’t need to go that far so I did just turn the baby’s head and I and I tell
myself that I wrote I will always remember this story she just turned and it wasn’t even a big turn
she just kind of reordered and give the sheets and get them all cleaned up before the day nurse came
in and she just turned the baby’s head and his pressure stabilized and I was able to leave that
and we just both I remember we look at each other like yeah simple right not heroic nothing heroic or
or or sexy turn the baby’s head I love it well maybe we’ll coin a phrase just turn the baby’s head
and that’s right it can become viral when there’s blood on the floor turn the baby’s
love it so well thank you Jan they’ll so much for being with that
thank you such a joy to be able to speak with you and to on behalf of all of our audience thanks
for taking so much time out of your day really appreciate it this is as I say when we get to do
these things we actually get more from them and we get so this was cool and I’ll see you in May
sounds great
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