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Bedside to Boardroom: Lessons From a Doctor Turned CEO

by | Nov 18, 2024

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What does a doctor learn going from the bedside to the boardroom? As the president and CEO of Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis knows better than most. Before landing on the administrative side of the house, Allen-Davis worked more than two decades as an OB/GYN. Now, she’s using that experience to lead this world-renowned rehab hospital forward. Craig has a unique focus, exclusively treating people with spinal cord and brain injuries, serving nearly two thousand patients each year across inpatient and outpatient efforts. In this episode, Jandel dispenses key leadership lessons she’s gained from her patients, shares how to champion diversity in the health care space and offers ways to buck that pesky imposter syndrome.

Show Notes

Jandel Allen-Davis is the president and CEO of Craig Hospital.

Table of Contents

1:30 Why being an insider helps
4:30 “I’m only here because people saw in me what I couldn’t see in myself”
5:47 How to beat complacency
8:04 Craig’s strategy for hiring and retaining its people
The challenge of building diverse teams
15:35 Finding time to volunteer in a busy schedule
18:16 “Just say yes”

In this episode:

Related articles and information:

Bonus Clip:

Transcript

Nick Greenhalgh:
Today, on the Voices of Experience Podcast. What does a doctor learn going from the bedside to the boardroom?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
“What you’re going to learn about seeing people at their best and at their worst, at their most joyful and at their most fearful, will help you in spades.”

Nick Greenhalgh:
Okay, so now you’re leading a hospital. In this… challenging health care climate, how do you find the right staff and retain them?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
I mean, it’s corny to say, but it’s true that people really don’t care what I know until they know that I care. And I mean I. There is work for all leaders to do. My job is not just to model what I think that looks like, but to encourage and expect that we treat each other super well.

Nick Greenhalgh:
That’s Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis, the president and CEO of Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado. Before landing on the administrative side of the house, Jandel worked more than two decades as an OB/GYN. Now, she’s using that experience to lead this world-renowned rehab hospital forward. If you don’t already know, Craig has a unique focus. It exclusively treats people with spinal cord and brain injuries, serving nearly two thousand patients each year across inpatient and outpatient efforts. In this episode, Jandel dispenses key leadership lessons she’s gained from her patients, shares how to champion diversity in the health care space and offers ways to buck that pesky imposter syndrome. Jandel, welcome to the show!

Jandel Allen-Davis:
Well, thank you. I’m really pleased to be here.

Nick Greenhalgh:
Thanks. I want to jump right in. You have a fascinating career progression that is unique to those we’ve had on the show previously. Before moving to corporate roles at Craig and prior to that, Kaiser Permanente, Colorado, you’re a practicing OB/GYN for 25 years. When you made the transition to the administrative side, how much of your skill set transferred over? Did being an insider help?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
Being an insider absolutely helped. And I’d start with a little story. When I made the big switch, which was in 2009, the two years before that, I was still doing a little bit of obstetrics. I was delivering babies at St. Joseph Hospital. But when I made the big switch and stopped everything, became a vice president on the health plan side for the first six months, I was a mess. And what was messy about it is I thought, did I do the right thing, I get drama, some nights I look at my hands and say they’ll never do surgery again, and crazy stuff like that.
But one of the questions I’d actually asked myself a few years before that when I did make this big jump was what are the transferable skills that you learned from caring for women for 25 years that are going to help you in this work? And I said, well, let’s explore. What did your patients want? What did they expect? I said, well, first is they expected you to know your stuff. So that’s that whole commitment to lifelong learning. The second was that they wanted you to treat them as if you were their only patient. It’s the idea of being completely very much focused on them.
Third, I said that you had to have a lot of integrity. You had to follow through and do what you said you were going to do. That was also important. You had to have the ability to form instant and trusting relationships because all day long, you’re meeting strangers, all day long. So that ability to really connect to people at their most vulnerable, whether it’s a routine exam or there really is something going on. And then the last one was no matter what happened, because we didn’t always have good news to share, that no matter what the news was that you weren’t going to abandon them.
And I said, so don’t you think every community leader, every business leader, every person on your team who you’re now going to serve in a leadership role, don’t you think those are some of the things that are expected? And I said, yeah. I said, you’ll be all right. You can learn the rest. And besides that, you’re not hired to… At the time at KP, I was the vice president for government external relations and research and I said, you can’t get a thirty-year career in policy and advocacy. You’re going to wield skills and bring strategy and questioning and learning and be a partner with the folks who are the experts. But that’s not what you’re hired for in these roles. It really is those five things. So that’s what I’d say that it was the training ground. And I tell young folks, whether they’re physicians who say, “How the heck did you do this?” Other than the simple answer, I don’t know, I tell them it’s like spend plenty of years at the bedside caring for patients. First of all, it’s sacred. It really is sacred and really good work. But what you’re going to learn about seeing people at their best and at their worst, at their most joyful and at their most fearful, will help you in spades should you choose or find yourself at the precipice of being able to consider a role like this.

Nick Greenhalgh:
Love that you said in a past interview, “I’m only here because people saw in me what I couldn’t see in myself.” What does that mean?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
I think we all walk around, in fact, we were just talking about this just a bit ago. I think we all walk around wondering, are we really good enough? Do we really have all that’s required to do whatever the thing is in front of us or that people seem to think we want? I call it, and as do others, I didn’t make it up the imposter syndrome. We keep wondering, when is somebody going to figure out, I really have no clue what I’m doing. And that’s even the case today. And so I think it’s what people can see in us reflected back to us if they’re feeling uncomfortable or confident or moved to do so that gives us just enough confidence to keep working. I jokingly say, and then if there’s not people who do that, there’s that thing by the door that when I swipe my badge, the door opens up and lets me in. So I’m still employed. So I say, okay, I guess I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing. They haven’t figured it out yet. And there’s something really, I think both it can be paralyzing if you’re not careful around the sort of sense that I’m not good enough or I don’t have the goods, but it also can be energizing and keep you on your edge that you’re never done. You’re just never done.

Nick Greenhalgh:
Craig has a sparkling reputation. Well, let me start that. Craig has a sparkling reputation being named a top rehab hospital by US News and World Report for, I think I just saw 35 consecutive years. So congratulations on that. But it’s easy to be complacent when you have history like that. So how do you maintain such a high standard?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
It is very easy to become complacent and to begin to believe, I don’t know if this will get cut out or not, your own BS. And I think the way that you don’t is sort of recognize that at any given day based on the fact that perception is reality, someone can come along and eat your lunch or eat you. So I think that’s a part of it is the requirement that we stay in constant learning mode because there’s always more to learn and it doesn’t take long. I’ve been in the situation where an organization can begin to think that they’ve got it. Their model is so perfect, or how they do things is so perfect that they’re not willing to listen to learn from others out in the community, other organizations. And that’s when you find yourself surprisingly behind because it catches organizations. It can catch people up short. It’s also, I know a part of being a great doc is that the field’s constantly changing and evolving. And so I was actually just talking to my team about this last week when we were in, we do a monthly, we call it, where we sort of dig into some of the bigger messier things that you really can’t do on a weekly staff meeting. And I said, I’m paid to look around corners and I’m also paid to see the ghosts, which can be anxiety provoking if you’re not careful. But risk is the way I look at it and opportunity is too. And if you’re not connecting dots, looking out there and thinking, what are the implications of that for us? Or having just a moment to say, if what just happened, is that the thing that could eat our competitive edge or is that the thing that could actually accelerate even better performance? If we’re not thinking that way from these chairs, then that is how you become complacent. And we’ve watched great institutions and certainly in a business school environment, everybody’s heard the Kodak story or the Blackberry story, the Sears and Roebuck story. You name these great places that you just thought they’ll always be here. Polaroid, which thankfully, is figuring some cool stuff out now, but it can be really easy to begin to believe you’re the best. And there’ve been days I’ve wondered. So how is it that, what’s a nice gynecologist like me doing a place like Craig Hospital? And I do mean that in the, I get to do this every day in a really positive way, but I think it is based on past experience to bring the outside in because the moat is drained and the castle wall is down in healthcare and in a lot of other businesses. And so our job is to bring, my job, I feel what I can uniquely contribute is that voice of what’s happening out there that helps us not necessarily expand or change our mission, our focus, our purpose, but to deepen it in ways that ensure that Craig’s around for another a hundred at least years. It is 117 year old place.

Nick Greenhalgh:
There you go. I want to continue down that path. So we started seeing this during COVID-19 and maybe even a little bit before, and it’s become more evident in recent years, but healthcare is facing a workforce crisis. The US is projected to face shortages across the entire field as demand has rapidly outpaced the supply of healthcare professionals. With that in mind, how are you creating a workplace at Craig that retains its best people?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
Yeah. Well, I think when it’s all said and done, and one of these days, which probably won’t happen, I’m going to write this book and I’m going to entitle it, Everything I Ever Learned About Leadership, I Learned At The Feet Of My Patients. And I already wrote chapter titles some years ago. And the second one, which will be the first one, is It’s All About Relationships. It really is. I mean, it’s corny to say, but it’s true that people really don’t care what I know until they know that I care. And I mean I. There is work for all leaders to do. My job is not just to model what I think that looks like, but to encourage and expect that we treat each other super well. From the perspective of retention, we know that people don’t leave places, they don’t leave missions, they don’t leave great places. They leave bosses. And so the importance of people, first, I like to think I’m a people first leader. That’s where I start. So what are some real specific and insane things that I do? First of all, Craig is a place where we work hard and play hard. And this is the time of the year where in fact next Saturday or this Saturday, we’ll have our annual fundraiser that’s a cycling fundraiser called Pedal for Possible. I’ve rode in that thing every year. I’ve decided not to this year, but I ride in it every year. But there’s a trike race, adult trike race that we have at Craig a couple of months before that. And I’m on that thing, part of the relay team for the administrative team every year. And I jokingly say, well, I could have won, but it would be really bad if the CEO wins. So we let others win. Or this other thing I do that’s just really both. It’s going to sound some way, it really fills my heart. And I also think I am the craziest person on Earth, is I actually write a handwritten anniversary note to every employee sometime the month of their anniversary. So Tuesday and Thursdays, typically at four o’clock are my warnings to get up and write notes. And they don’t know that it means more to me than perhaps even to them because it gives me that moment as a leader when I’m writing those things to slow down and think about the work they do, how it aligns to mission and purpose, and actually write about that. So to think that a physical therapist gets to witness those moments where a person gets movement in a finger to be able to do that or to be an occupational therapist who reconnects people to things we take for granted in terms of things as simple as how to get your pants on or how to feed yourself. Or therapeutic rec who reconnects people to the love of cycling or horseback riding or finding new things that they get to do because it also gives them a chance when they read it because you never know where their head may be at a given time. A reminder that you are part of what makes this place special. And so I think the first thing around how we keep workforce is to make it a really great place to work, which Craig is. And the rehab is one thing for sure, but we also get recognized as one of both Colorado’s top workplaces and America’s top workplaces. And that’s more important. At the same time, we do all the transactional things you have to do. You want to make sure you’re paying people well and that your benefit packages are competitive and that you’re investing in their growth and development in really important ways. And I think those things together create the kind of loyalty and stickiness that we want. And I’m really unapologetic about it. There are people that Craig is not the place for. You got to love this work. What we do every day, seeing people at these traumatic times where they woke up with one reality and went to bed with a very different one. And they come into our places with invisible backpacks full of all sorts of assets and a ton of limitations, and we’ve got to work with that. And if that floats your boat, it’s a great place to work. If not, and it is for some people just not the place that they want to work, then they find other places. But we’ve got good loyalty and I love that.

Nick Greenhalgh:
Yeah. Is that trait something you’re able to identify in an interview very quickly if someone starts?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
I don’t think so. We all talk about hiring for fit, and I think we need to be frankly careful about even what does it mean to hire for fit? Because before you know it, you got everybody who thinks and walks and acts and frankly looks the same. So we have to be careful about that. But I think it’s harder than you think. Where I see it is the sparkle in eyes. We go to new employee orientation every couple of weeks, so these are people who’ve already chosen Craig. And we talk about Craig, I talk for about 15 minutes about the culture and what our expectations are around supporting that culture. And then we go around the room and have them introduce themselves and talk a little bit about why Craig. And you can see it often it’s word of mouth. It wasn’t every now and then you say, oh, I saw you on whatever that.

Nick Greenhalgh:
You mentioned being careful of hiring for fit because it can create a uniform look across an organization. I know this is something that you’ve talked about before, but according to a 2023 McKinsey survey, women of color make up only 4% of C-suite healthcare executives. And furthermore, only 8% of healthcare board members are women of color. I know, and I saw you talk about this in a previous interview, that you disagree that you’re a unicorn in the field, but how are you creating a more diverse and inclusive environment at Craig and beyond?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
Boy, it is the million dollar diversity or inclusion question is how do you do it? I have watched over the six years that I’ve been here, the literal complexion of Craig change over time. I don’t know that that’s necessarily work that we’re doing. I think there’s some changing demographics that’s pulling some of that in. But I also back to word of mouth, I think that that’s a big piece of it. The other is there’s the passive slash active way that just being a woman of color changes people’s sense of what kind of place is this. In fact, I have said it still is amazing that Craig hired me. Now you could say that for a lot of reasons because as I said, they haven’t figured out yet. I’m really still trying to figure this whole thing out, but that Craig was able to see and look beyond the prototypical or the archetypal CEO and president role and see something in me that they thought would be useful and helpful. It speaks volumes about who they are in ways that we don’t talk enough about because that would sound weird. You guys chose a black woman. How would I say that, Craig, you kind of can’t do that. But it does. Every now and then when I think about it, I said, gosh, they chose you not Jandel Allen-Davis, but this person who lives in this shell of brown skin or black skin and who’s a woman to do this work, says that they were looking for the factors that are going to fit culturally more with them than anything else. How we are doing it is, I think, and I’ve said this for years too, is that you have to hunt in different places than you typically do. We are disadvantaged here. We’re not on the coasts where there’s a lot more diversity than here. So you do have to hunt in different places and in different ways and use different strategies and tactics. And I think the other one that’s super important is to tell the story of what a welcoming and warm place it is, but also root out if there are issues where it isn’t welcoming and warm and we have in healthcare, but for sure, I’ve learned in rehab, we’ve got some work to do on pipeline. One of the physical therapy schools here in town is practically all white and over 90% female. So there’s different kind of diversity or inclusiveness that’s needed there. So we’ve got a pipeline issue that we’ve talked about for decades that at some point I hope we’ll get serious about because it really does have to start in grade school.

Nick Greenhalgh:
Let’s kick it over to a Daniel student for a student question.

Michelle Timmons:
Hi, Dr. Alan Davis. My name is Michelle Timmons. I am pursuing an MS in marketing, and I see on your LinkedIn page that you have pretty extensive volunteer experience, and I’m curious what inspires you to volunteer and how do you make time for volunteering amidst such a busy schedule?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
Well, thank you very much for the question, and it is a terrific one, and there are a lot of places I could take this. The first is, I’ll make it intensely personal. I grew up in a pretty much, I’d say Black middle class family in the 60s and 70s. And it could even be argued, especially when I think about my mother’s family. Her mom was a maid at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC for 30 years, and she made time to do so many things in community on a maid’s salary, including working in the church, the Catholic Church. She baked cookies for an insane asylum and delivered them every month. She worked on voter registration. She was a block captain to get people registered. And I grew up around folks who really did believe in giving back. But the really personal part for me is that I’ve been given gifts that, and opportunities that by all rights, it’s amazing that I get to do what I get to do. And so I do believe to those who much has been given much is expected, and I do volunteer work joyfully. The other power of volunteerism as a leader is you get to see how other organizations are led. And in my head, there’s two lists in terms of leadership because I love watching leaders, and one is do that, don’t do that. And you have the, I can’t tell you how many things I’ve had the opportunity to pick up new skills developed just by sitting at tables as a board member and involved in other organizations that have helped me at Craig and even at other places. So that’s the second reason. The third is it has this way of refreshing and renewing that we all need. It’s funny, nobody knows you better than your own organization. They see all the warts and the good stuff, but the warts. But there’s something about the ability to be a volunteer where there’s a new level of how you’re appreciated that also is generative and generating in some really good ways. So that’s why I do it. How you fit it in? Oh my gosh, I have no idea. I have no idea if anything, and I do mean that that part of it, which is a privilege, is that as a CEO, which I had to look up what was the difference between CEO and President because we’re both in this role, that’s the external facing part of my job, and the president is the operational day-to-day parts of my job. And so there’s an expectation that I do this as well. But out there, again, you’re viewed as thank you. You’re helping us grow and nurture wonderful nonprofits in the world that I, again, have the opportunity also then to talk about in the appropriate way, not in that network-y, what’s in this for me or for Craig, but also to make sure that as appropriate, there’s opportunities to introduce people to this wonderful, wonderful place that I want no one ever frankly to need. So I hope that answers the question. We just hearts stretch. You just make it work. You really do.

Nick Greenhalgh:
Love that. And thank you, Michelle, for the question. Our last question here, one that we ask all of our guests as a Voice of Experience, what is one piece of advice you’d like to give to our listeners?

Jandel Allen-Davis:
It’s so funny because I just said in terms of the answer to the question about board service is somehow or other you make it fit. And what I would give to your listeners, I’ve said this a few times, it’s just say yes. Just say yes when asked or invited, it would be easy to say, what can I possibly contribute? When I became aware of this role, it was from a recruiter who wanted to talk to me about that he was doing this recruitment. I’d helped him a couple of years before identify somebody for a different CEO role. So I gave him a couple names and hung up the phone, and somebody texted me and said, “He wants to talk to you.” “He wants to talk to me?” And I knew I was feeling hemmed in, and it was time to stretch and wanted to do more. And so when he said, “Will you just have dinner with me?” I said yes. And it’s made all the difference. It really has. And so I’d say, just say yes. Don’t start to doubt yourself. None of us show up complete and ready or complete and having all the pieces. When I started my internship at the tender age of 26, they didn’t give me the scalpel on day one, but I was Dr. Alan Davis on day one. And then I had years to learn how to become a good surgeon and a great doctor to my patients. And the same goes for every single one of those opportunities is that just trust that they see something that you can’t see. And then your job is really just to show up, be wholly present. And as I think it was, Sammy Davis Jr. said, “And don’t trip over the furniture.” So there you go.

Nick Greenhalgh:
Love that. Well, Jandel, thank you so much for joining the show. We really appreciate it.

Jandel Allen-Davis:
Oh, thank you for this opportunity. It was terrific.

Nick Greenhalgh:
If you’d like to hear more from Jandel on how Craig is using technology to stay on the cutting edge, go check out our show notes for some bonus audio.
There, we’ll also share more on Jandel’s last visit to campus, as she sat in on our 2023 in-person Voices of Experience panel, Exploring the Metaverse.
You can find those show notes and past episodes at daniels.du.edu/voe-podcast. The VOE Podcast is an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the Daniels College of Business, sponsored by U.S. Bank. Sophia Holt and Patrick Orr are our sound engineers. Joshua Muetzel wrote our theme. I’m Nick Greenhalgh and we’ll talk again soon.

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