Building a team

Marsha Powers saw the passion and the energy right from the start. Her new employees at Tenet HealthSystem Medical Inc. cared about their work and were willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to provide the best care they possibly could.

“I just remember one of the hospitals I went into when I first came to Florida, I had no idea where I was going,” says Powers, who heads up the health care provider’s 10-hospital Florida region. “I had two or three people saying, ‘Let me help you.’ There was an energy level, a commitment to doing the right thing. You walk in and everyone knows what their role is.”

Passion for one’s work is something Powers loves to see, especially in the area of health care.

“I’ve been in hospital management for 30 years,” Powers says. “The only thing I know how to do is run hospitals. We’re in the business of taking care of people. If our people don’t understand that, if they think we are making widgets, then they are in the wrong business.”

But it wasn’t a lack of understanding job duties and responsibilities that concerned Powers. Instead, she felt like the hospitals were each trying to go it alone and lacked a true sense of identity under the Tenet brand and with other hospitals in the region.

“I think every hospital had their own vision, but I didn’t see that there was a vision for all the hospitals of Tenet in total,” Powers says. “Everyone needs to know where we are, where we’re going, how we did and where we’re headed.”

Powers wanted to change that and bring them together. She believed that as one powerful organization, Tenet Florida and its 11,175 employees would better be able to grow the business and improve market share. The company would be able to communicate in one clear voice to those who came in contact with the organization and share what Tenet is all about.

“Every hospital has been awarded numerous honors and has numerous things that they do very well,” Powers says. “How do you get that information out to the public? How do you work in a collaborative manner with your physicians and employees and with each other to build market share? We’ve got great hospitals and they were doing great, but they could be greater.”

The trick was to take those good things, that high level of energy and willingness to go above and beyond on the job and harness them for delivery as a cohesive and concise message to the community.

“Every hospital has their strengths and their core services,” Powers says. “It’s working together to not only identify those strengths but to have all the hospitals work together so that they know each other’s strengths.”

Here is how Powers worked with her people to create a sense of both team and common purpose at Tenet.