Matt Harrington 0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the A Train of Marketing podcast. My name is Matt Harrington, and today's guest we have Lou Zeitner, CEO of EOSIS and executive board chairman of Family of Kids with extensive experience leading behavioral health and addiction treatment organizations. Previously vice president of mental health and addiction services at Fairview Health Services, Lou specializes in turning strategic ideas into real operational change, building stronger teams, and improving access to quality of care. Lou, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Thank you. Looking forward to it.

Matt Harrington 0:33

So let's start at the beginning, we'll say what drew you into behavioral health?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

It was interesting. I was a psychology major in undergraduate work. And actually the movie one flew over the cumee. And I was doing a rotation in a psychiatric hospital at the time and was very gung-ho in the work. And went to see that movie, we've heard of it, but it was a situation where Jack Nicholson was in a psychiatric hospital instead of prison and showed some of the cruelty of the nursing team. And I was indignant that the nursing team was seen that way. And so very much became interested in how those situations worked and have been with behavioral health ever since.

Matt Harrington 1:15

Okay. So at what point did you switch kind of from the clinical side of psychology into the operational side of leadership where you are now?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Pretty early on, within the first few years, recognized that I had some skill in operations and that I could impact more as a leader than perhaps as a clinician.

Matt Harrington 1:34

Interesting. A lot of the folks I talked to sometimes tripped and fell into leadership. It seems like you pursued it. What were some of the skills that you noticed early on that told you that leadership was the route for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

And I think when you can do that, it's easier to lead within these contexts.

Matt Harrington 2:20

Are there any specific pieces of advice you'd give the clinician who wants to step into leadership, how to gain that language skill, how to become the person who can talk spreadsheets?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

You know, it's not unlike clinical work. Okay, the one of the early lessons in clinical work is listen more than you speak, and listen carefully for what are the issues driving the person on the other side of the room from you. And I think the same is true with business types, is understand what drives them, understand what reef reinforces their work, et cetera. And only through doing that, not looking at it through your own eyes, but looking at it through your patient's eyes or your business partner's eyes allows you to speak both languages.

Matt Harrington 3:11

So now that you've shifted into leading behavioral health organizations, you're a CEO, what is some of the big challenges you have when you develop an organizational strategy and then producing objective results out of it?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

You know, I think the the first lesson I learned and learned the hard way is that having the vision is about 10% of the work. 90% of the work is creating the steps to get to that desired outcome. And oftentimes, particularly when leadership teams sit around a table and create great vision, they don't include the people who do the work. And sometimes the obstacles are very well under by the people who do the work and less understood by the people creating the vision. So I think having the vision, but then you know, testing it with people who are going to do the work, having some trials, some pilots, and working through the obstacles rather than simply saying, I got a great idea, go make it happen. That rarely leads to success.

Matt Harrington 4:12

Do you find it's necessary to have those executioners at the table at the same time as you're coming up with the vision?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

I think soon thereafter. I think too early in the process and you get a lot of pushback, you know, we've done that before, that won't work for this reason or that reason. So I think establishing the vision, thinking through the vision makes sense. But pretty early on, before you commit significant dollars or significant timeline kinds of commitments, is testing it with people who are closer to the work, who understand the work. So I think it's a fast follow kind of thinking.

Matt Harrington 4:49

Do you find that there are certain groups or types of or maybe experience levels of clinician that are maybe more amenable to organizational changes and reaching towards that vision?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah, I you know, we all have different styles, and some of us feel very comfortable having the very same breakfast cereal every day, and some people want a different experience every day in life. And understanding, again, who we're working with. I think folks who you know may have some reticence about change, who feel very comfortable with what they've been doing, maybe a little bit slower to adapt, and you want some early adopters to try some things, perhaps have some obstacles, but but work through those obstacles. And so I think finding your likely early adopters in your group, folks who are a little willing to a little more willing to stretch in terms of what they've been used to. Makes sense.

Matt Harrington 5:43

Now, as EOSIS expands partnerships and programs, imagine you're growing fairly quickly. How do you balance growth with quality?

SPEAKER_00 5:52

I don't think that's a real dichotomy. If you are not focused on quality and you're not maintaining quality, you have no business growing. The only thing that makes sense to grow is when you can sustain your quality. So I think where that often comes to be is in terms of focus. Where does your leadership team focus? And if you lose really to focus on quality because you're growing, that may be more of the question. And I think the reality is if you've really got a business, then you really need to ensure that your quality processes, your your normal everyday processes are sufficiently robust and sufficiently able to be sustained, whether your leaders are focused there or not. I think it's important that the quality on a Saturday afternoon is no different than the quality on a Wednesday. And the the difference there is when is your leadership team most likely focused there? I think you have no business growing if you don't have sufficient processes to sustain quality when you're not looking directly at it.

Matt Harrington 6:57

What are some of the tools you've used to make quality more visible as you scale?

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Metrics help a lot. You know, I think we often in clinical work are very focused on what makes our work unique and therefore what makes statistics less viable or less reliable. All of that's you know often true. We we focus on the variance between our patients, but at the same time, metrics are critical. And so I spend a lot of time understanding what we are measuring, why we're measuring it, and then you know, talking about that every week in our leadership meetings, in our staff meetings, in our clinical meetings, that tell us a lot about our patients, tell us a lot about our quality. I think that's that's critically important. And it also enables me to shift my focus. If we're looking, for example, in your last question at growth, I can still be tracking that around the efforts I'm making to grow.

Matt Harrington 7:52

That is very insightful. The the more individualized clinicians feel, the the more they almost devalue the stats and the more the organization has to bring in the metrics as various topics. As you've been growing, what has been the primary driver of that growth? What's been bringing clients into the front door?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

I think reputation is probably the single biggest first started talking with uh various folks out there who might be uh referring a patient into us and talking about what what we believed, what we believed in quality, uh how we measured quality, how we measured outcomes, what we believed in in terms of our theoretical constructs, uh, and then continued to talk with them through the process uh as they referred patients, whether we had success with the patient or sometimes didn't have as much success as hoped, but continuing that conversation so that they understood how we tracked what we were doing, why we were doing it, how we continued to continuously improve, and how much we valued the relationship that we were going to send that patient back to that other clinician. So I think building that reputation for quality, uh honesty, integrity, all those things that we banter about easily, but I think are really shown in our daily work. That's how we've really built that reputation.

Matt Harrington 9:15

Yeah. I love the uh focus on metrics throughout and applying it even to the referral relationships that you're developing and the way you view your reputation in the community. What has been some of the harder parts as you've grown?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

You know, I think continuing to build a leadership team, continuing to add folks, you know, I think companies go through stages of development, not unlike humans. And so those early stages, you know, everyone's doing everything, everyone's fully committed emotionally. There's an excitement at the end of every day that we got through it, solved this problem. And as you get bigger, you know, that the team evolves, the team changes, there are more defined roles, there are more separation between various roles, and with that comes a change of culture. And now you shift from that sort of entrepreneurial stage where everyone's running hard and excited about the adrenaline to more process-oriented work, consistency of work, metrics measurement of the work. And that sometimes requires different styles, different humans. And despite the fact that someone may be really good in the entrepreneurial phase, they may be less excited or less find less joy in a metrics-driven consistency. And so understanding your team, understanding what they need and what you need as you fit, you know, go through those different phases. And I think one of the obstacles that sometimes happens is that companies stay in that entrepreneurial phase past the point where we don't want to lose that feeling, we don't want to lose that excitement that comes with those early stages. Um, but yet you can't keep your arms around a business when it gets to a certain size without metrics and without process and without consistency. Uh, and so that's when it things start to fall apart because you know, you need different ways of doing business.

Matt Harrington 11:12

What signals do you think people should look for if they're feeling a little bit like they've scaled fast and they're wondering if it's time to put up the entrepreneur hat and put on the metric hat?

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Well, I think one is is it working? You know, when you're starting to see the business crack in places to start to see things not working the way they should, when the team starts to have conflicts that they didn't have before, you know, the finger pointing and the the challenges that come when folks are feeling more stressed than they used to, some of that often is signaling that what was working is not working anymore. And you need to re-look at what are your processes and and how are you managing that business. And sometimes, you know, as you look at various ways of investments coming into a company, sometimes that's when the board says, you know, great founder, not great CEO. We need to make a change. And sometimes that's something that people can adapt, change their behavior. But I think if you're trying to run it the way you did in the first weeks, you know, a year into the business, you're probably stretching that entrepreneurial.

Matt Harrington 12:21

Well, I can't think of a better insight to end it on. So, Lou, thank you so much for your time and your expertise and your knowledge. And I hope if you're out there listening that you enjoyed our conversation. See you next time. Thanks very much.