Technology
Moving forward
How to take better action in your company
By Kristy J. O'Hara
Smart Business Atlanta | February 2008
Frank Murphy
President and CEO, HealthPort
When Frank Murphy
merged his company, Smart Document Solutions,
with Companion Technologies
last year, the president and CEO
of the newly formed HealthPort
had to act quickly to get 2,700 employees on the same page. He
knew he had a limited amount
of time before the blame for
ongoing problems would shift
from past management to him,
and he wanted to make sure
everyone understood what he
expected and where the health
information services and products company was headed.
Smart Business spoke with Murphy about how his penchant for action made the transition successful.
Take action. When I was first
appointed to my first CEO
position, my boss told me as
we were walking in the front
door, ‘My first boss told me
this, and it’s served me well —
hire somebody, fire somebody
and paint the lobby.”
That is not as literal as some
may interpret it. It’s a figurative
penchant for action. What he
meant by that was take noticeable action, and do it quickly.
When you take over a new
role, you have 90 days, after
which you own everything that
happens — good, bad or indifferent. There’s no more blaming the past manager or team
for what you inherited for the
culprit for business woes.
You own it, so take noticeable
action, and the people that are
going to help you make the
business more successful will
quickly join in. Get somebody
doing something that they
weren’t doing before, and people stand up and notice. ‘Hey,
this new team is taking action.
The new leader is taking some
action that needed to happen a
long time ago.’
Be decisive. A leader who does-n’t make decisions, who waffles, gets his management team
into a position of standing still
— ‘If he’s not going to make a
decision, I’m not going to make
a decision because I don’t want
to go out on a limb.’
When you start getting that
groupthink of, ‘Inaction is what
he or she wants,’ then you develop a company that is focused on
inaction. Then you have your
customer facing managers who
need something to happen and
confused about what corporate
is doing. Then the frustration
starts to build, customers start
to feel it, and your business
starts to go sideways.
Delegate. If the CEO holds too
much responsibility or decision-making authority (himself or
herself), you start to develop a
management team that isn’t
going to challenge themselves
or challenge their team or think
outside the box. They’re going
to come back to you for everything.
Delegate a portion of the
responsibility all of the time,
whether it’s research this or
decide which way is the best
way to go, and go do it. It
depends on how important a
decision it is. Some of that depends on the experience of the
particular manager or management team member that is handling that particular initiative.
Gauge the priority of the initiative, the financial impact of the
initiative. As CEO, be involved in the large decisions always
and in the decisions that don’t
have the major financial impact
but may be new online marketing initiatives. Give your managers the opportunity to try new
things without constantly coming to you. Allow them to be
inventive, creative, think outside
their zone.
Help people make decisions. I
empower my management
team and encourage them to
make decisions but quickly tell
them, ‘If you have questions,
ask. If you’re unsure, come to
me — I’m not going to make the
decision for you, but we can
talk through different angles
that I may have experience with
or where I see a hole in your
analysis.’
So [I’m] getting them to the
point where they’ve looked at
the ins and outs of a particular
decision and then make a recommendation to me where I
say, I agree with that completely.
That instills confidence. Now,
it may fail, or it may be wildly
successful. Either way, they
looked at it, they analyzed it,
they brought questions to me,
so we’re in the decision together,
even though it was their decision.
Then a CEO has to be careful
to place blame. If someone tried
something creative, and it didn’t
work, you have to encourage at
least the self-initiative. I had a
boss once tell me, ‘It’s OK to
make a mistake — just don’t
make the same mistake over
and over again.’
That allowed me the feeling
of freedom to try things. If it didn’t work, do something different the next time. Just don’t
keep trying the same thing. I
think it was Einstein that said,
‘Insanity is doing the same
thing over and over and hoping
for a different result.’
Address personnel issues. Recognize when someone is
going to be more successful in a
different company because
they’ve lost the passion for the
business. You hurt your own
business by waiting to outplace
someone too long.
It’s a delicate balance. What I
look for is when does that person stop trying? I will give people a lot of opportunity to be
successful as long as I see
they’re continually trying to get
it done.
HOW TO REACH: Smart Document Solutions, (800) 367-1500 or www.sdshealth.com or
HealthPort, (800) 999-0788 or www.healthport.com
