1. Creating a High
Performance Laboratory
2009 Frontiers in Laboratory Medicine
Birmingham, UK
January 28-29, 2009
Larry Siedlick, CEO
Sunrise Medical Laboratories
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3. Sunrise Overview
• Located Just Outside New York City
• Founded in 1972 as Local Community Lab
• Comprehensive Clinical/Anatomical Services
• Approximately 400 Staff
• ~ 1.7 million patient encounters annually
• Became part of Sonic Healthcare July 2007
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4. Physician Office Market Share
in the New York City Area
Other labs
Enzo 10%
3%
Bio-Reference
12%
Sunrise
6%
Quest
62%
LabCorp
7%
Source: Laboratory Economics January 2007
Estimated Total Market Size = $ 1 billion
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5. “And now,
for something
completely different”
– Monty Python (Famous English Philosophy Group)

6. High Performance – Rule #1
Welcome to Healthcare
No
Whining
Please
“It’s not supposed to be easy”
© 2007 by Larry Siedlick
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7. High Performance– Rule #2
“Leadership Matters”
Rule #3
• Rules 1 & 2 applies to ALL organizations
 Private for profit
 Not-for profits
 Government
 Unionized
 Non-unionized
 Large and small organizations
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8. Today‟s Goal
“Scratch the Surface of Understanding”
• Purpose and Passion - Role in High Performance
• Connecting the Way to High Performance
• Leadership Responsibility
• Basic Characteristics of Senior Leadership
• Perception vs. Reality
• Competencies to Lead
• What is the “Meaning of Life?
And other small stuff you probably already know
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9. “What is the Meaning of Life?”
• What is your organization‟s purpose?
 Not to be confused with “what you do”
• Lab tests influence ~70% of all medical decisions
• Purpose inspires people
• Passion – Powerful magnet for talented people
• Passionate Workplace = Passionate Performance
____________________________________________________________________________________________
“We provide advanced medical laboratory services to prevent,
diagnosis and treat medical diseases to positively impact
human health.”
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10. Passion‟s Role in a
High Performance Organization
• New Organizations/Projects are rarely without passion
• Mature Organizations/People: Passion can be lost in the
"operationalization“
• Are you "passion-challenged?"
 50% of senior executives struggle with maintaining the passion.
 Question: „Can I really evoke a strategy, a compelling saga, if my
leadership is passionless?‟
• Where do you look if your passion is lost?
 Introspection
 Define what we are passionate about because we are language
beings.
 “Languaging passion” makes clear in our own minds what we are
up to, and to be able to articulate it to others.
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11. “Languaging” My Passion
“My passion is to revolutionize
leadership in a way that would
allow us to significantly alter the
future.”
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12. Some Challenges Facing
Laboratory Leadership
• Control demand for tests and stop
unnecessary testing
• Improve delivery of the service
 Customers are more demanding
 Who is the customer – clinician, patient, government?
 Developing organization-wide Customer Service Culture
• Services may be competitively awarded
 Could mean only low price wins
• Future Consolidation of Laboratories
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13. Some Challenges Facing
Laboratory Leadership
• New Quality Metrics
• Training/Career Paths for laboratorians
• Maintain existing staff expertise across services
• Shrinking Talent Pool
• Less Financial Resources
• How to ask staff for a higher level of performance
 Searching for the magical “Silver Bullet”
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14. Connecting the Dots to
High Performance Culture
• Attracting/motivating the right people … requires great
organizational culture…
• Great Organizational Culture is … determined and driven
by great leadership…
• Great leadership … worked on EVERYDAY...
• Everyday … the laboratory offers new opportunities to
lead
____________________________________________
“ Attracting, retaining and motivating good people is
directly proportional to your organization‟s culture.”
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15. Attracting the Right People
“Hiring for Dummies”
• Being customer service minded and a hard worker
are personality traits and NOT learned technical skills.
• Most organizations hire people for what they know…
then they fire them for who they are
• Spend more time in the hiring process finding out
who people are
• Hire for behavior; train for performance
____________________________________
“To select the wrong person for a job is a common mistake;
not to remove them is a fatal weakness.”
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16. Customer Service Culture
“Why is it so hard for many laboratories?”
One Possible Theory
• Technically Driven Culture vs. Customer
Driven Culture
• Management – Total Commitment to Internal
and External Customers
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17. Service Culture at Sunrise
“Top Down Philosophy”
• #1 Priority is our Internal Customers
 Management recognizes our staff as
customers
 Strong emphasis on both teamwork and
responsiveness to individuals
 Senior Management is accessible and places
strong emphasis on work environment
• “Perception is Reality”
We understand that our staff‟s perception of culture
is their reality – no matter what we think.
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18. What Motivates Staff to High Performance
“A million things to do in your spare time”
• Giving Verbal and Visual Recognition
 Say thanks to someone everyday
 Smile - Keep the workplace friendly
 Give recognition in front of peers
 Walk the 4 Corners
 Praise someone everyday
 Give credit where credit is due
 Non-monetary awards
• Asking Questions and Listening Carefully
 Listen to your staff. Listening tells you what staff needs
(“Perception is Reality”)
 Listen to staff ideas and act affirmatively on those suggestions
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19. Other Things That Get People Working
• Opportunities for Growth
 Within the position and, if possible, beyond the position
• Empathetic and Thoughtful Leadership
• Do what you say you're going to do
• Keep all your promises
• Involves staff in decisions that directly affect them
• Go out of your way to help staff
• Be sympathetic to personal problems
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20. How do we get the right people
and get them working?
Thru Leadership that is …
• Effective
• Passionate
• Emotionally Intelligent
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21. Passionate Leadership to
Achieve High Performance
• Be purpose-driven
 People will follow and embrace that passion and purpose as their own
• Know your people
 Leaders know the people who work for them
 Commit to developing skills and helping them reach their full potential
 People want to contribute meaningfully; create an environment where they
can do so.
• Get people involved
 Participation vs. “Following Orders”
 Creates a personal interest in the decisions
 Enable people to contribute
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"High-performance organizations are purpose-driven, while all others
just operate day by day.”
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22. Is Leadership Genetic?
Survey of 300 CEOs Worldwide
• "Is leadership predominantly something you are born with
or something that you develop through experience?“
• 40% said leadership was born
• 60% said it was gained through experience
• “What they considered to be the most important aspects -
- and the most difficult -- of being a leader?”
• Most Important: Having the right people was second only to
creating vision
• Most Difficult: Having the right people just behind maintaining
momentum and developing people.
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23. Emotional Intelligence for Beginners
“With Apologies to Daniel Goleman”
Key Traits of High Emotional Intelligence
• Optimism
• Self-Awareness
• Empathy
• Impulse Control
• Reality Check
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24. Basic Competencies for
High Performance Leadership
• Know yourself (Self Awareness)
 Leaders serve to remind people what is most important,
but first they must know what's important to them.
• Be optimistic and empathic (Social Awareness)
 You set the tone for those around you.
• Connect with others (Relationship Management)
 Understand what makes your staff perform at their best
and what they need to help the organization succeed.
• Self Control of, and responsibility for, your actions
(Self Management)
 Assume responsibility yourself.
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25. Basic Competencies (Continued)
“Vision without action is daydreaming.”
• Make timely decisions
 Make a sound decision and move on.
• Communicate
 Perhaps a leader's most significant function - the
good news and the bad.
 “Intent vs. Impact”
• Develop a vision
 Leader's job is defining the vision for others and
inspiring them to follow.
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26. Leading the Change to High Performance
“Change is good – you go first.” - Dilbert
Guide people toward the desired objective:
• Say what you mean. Be straightforward and credible. People
who understand what the leader wants stand a far better
chance of working things out on their own.
• Empathize, don't disdain. Strive to understand a person's
circumstances and help him develop a plan to improve the
situation.
• Have respect. People should feel responsible for their own
actions and ideas. Respect their personal values, rather than
forcing your own upon them.
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27. The Role of a Leader in High
Performance Organizations
• Strategist for Future
 Look three years out into the future
 Ask the most important strategic question: “How will our
organization survive and improve in the future?”
• Ambassador to important staff and customers
 Increases staff‟s trust in you and establishes your credibility
• Inventor
 Finding your staff and external customer‟s pain and develop new
processes or services to relieve it.
 The inventor function ensures that the strategic direction of the
laboratory aligns around the staff‟s and customer‟s pain
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28. The Role of a Leader in High
Performance Organizations
• Coach, teacher to your direct reports
 Culture of learning al all levels
 Teach the big picture perspective you have
 Teach some basic financial/budget facts so staff understands what
is really happening from a financial standpoint.
• Investor
 Treat your organization as an investment of a life time
 Strive to constantly increase it‟s value
 Striving to increase value leads you to good decisions and creates a
stable work environment for people
• Student
 Stay active in some form of continued professional development
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29. Organizational Trust Theorem
“The level of motivation in an organization can
never rise above the level of trust.”
• Staff accepts and executes decisions even if they
don't fully understand them.
• Staff gives up short-term benefits for long-term,
mutually beneficial rewards.
• Staff shares the burden in difficult times
• Staff responds with understanding to work
emergencies
• Staff invests their ideas and suggestions in the future
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30. Harness Your Team„s Creative Energy
Conditions Necessary for Creative Energy
• An inspiring purpose
• A sense of urgency that is shared by all
• A "we're all in this together" attitude
• Goals that broaden people„s abilities
• A belief that teamwork can meet these goals
• Know what your team really wants
_____________________________________________
“For 25 years you‟ve paid only for my hands when you could have had my
brain for free.” – Retiring General Motors Worker
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31. What People Really Want
• Want to feel like members of a great team
• Want to know the work they do is necessary
• Want to know the work they do is important
for the organization's survival.
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32. Does all this Cultural Stuff really
lead to High Performance?
You Decide
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33. Sunrise Cultural Results
• Productivity Metric - Annual Transactions/Full Time Staff Member
 Quest is 3,639 and LabCorp is 3,820*
 Sunrise is 3,776
• Financial Benchmark – Revenue/Full Time Staff Member
 Quest is $151,053 and LabCorp is $143,632*
 Sunrise is $206,220
• Financial Results - Similar to Largest US National Labs
• High organic growth rates
• Low staff turn-over at all levels
• High customer retention
* LIR April 2007
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34. One Final Theory
“The Ultimate Quality Metric”
“The quality of a person‟s life is
in direct proportion to their
commitment to excellence,
regardless of their chosen
field of endeavour.”
– Vince Lombardi, US Football Coach
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35. Contact Information
Larry Siedlick
Sunrise Medical Laboratories
240 Motor Parkway
Hauppauge, NY 11788
Email:Lsiedlick@sunriselab.com
Phone 631-435-1515
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