clean and accurate data exchange, GHX has taken on many edges of disruption since it was founded. GHX has been involved in some of the toughest problems in the industry: e-commerce in the company’s early days; then contract synchronization, price accuracy, data sharing, and interoperability; and, more recently, new opportunities in vendor management and cross-industry solutions for challenges like accurately tracking implantables. Its CEO, Bruce Johnson, feels that GHX has learned through experience to deliver on the basics really well, earning the right to take on the bigger challenges that matter even more to the industry by proving its ability to deliver value to “both sides”—suppliers and providers. In doing so, the company has built robust knowledge and insight no one else has, giving its leaders an elevated perspective on the healthcare supply chain.3 They are using that perspective to get the access to the people and relationships they need to create high-value, impactful solutions that involve many different players in the industry—the solutions no one company can craft alone. The result? For implantables, the industry has collectively defined a solution and has taken the first steps to clawing back some of those lost billions in waste, loss, and expiration, among other improvements. And that’s just a small (and recent) part of GHX’s business and the value it has delivered over the years.
We see GHX as a clear example of a company that invests in and delivers on an elevated perspective that uniquely positions it in the industry. Ever since GHX was created, its leaders have continually sought new edges of disruption for themselves and their industry. For example, in 2010, the executive team set out an incredibly ambitious goal, what Bruce and his team called “5 in 5.” In five years, they wanted to drive $5 billion out of the cost of healthcare. How? By tackling some of the biggest cost challenges and inconsistencies in the supply chain. With this singular goal in mind, the company set out to create systemic change that would deliver these savings, and in the process would also improve patient outcomes and experiences. You will learn a great deal more about this fascinating company and how it uses its unique position and perspective to continually define new edges of disruption in the chapters to come (spoiler alert: GHX not only delivered on 5 in 5; it exceeded its goal). For now, though, let’s turn to you, and think about how you might define your edge of disruption—the first step in developing an elevated perspective.
Take a minute and think about critical questions your buyers might need answered about a new market they are entering, legislation that is changing your industry, or a product they are developing. Like many in the healthcare industry, maybe they need to solve three apparently conflicting problems: lowering cost, improving outcomes, and making customers happy. Perhaps they are evaluating a new technology, or trying to figure out next year’s business risks. Your buyers are looking for someone with an elevated perspective to help them think through those types of questions. Where do they go for answers? Who do they ask? Would they come to you? Are you or your company known for an elevated perspective, or as a trusted partner who can bring a different vantage point and can ask good questions that they aren’t thinking to ask for themselves? Are you someone who knows what’s happening at the edges of disruption that are most meaningful to them?
If your customer asked you a question like, “Why is it so hard to . . .” and the honest response is either “I don’t really know much about that” or a more superfluous set of generic ideas and observations that don’t really create progress toward a scalable solution, how likely are they to continue the conversation? Not very. But what if your response is “You know, we’ve been studying that exact question for a while now, and here’s what we think about it,” or “Funny you should ask, we are currently co-creating a solution to that very problem with some of our customers. Would you like us to come and talk to you and your team about what we are discovering?” These answers would very likely lead them to bring you in to talk to their boss. Or even their boss’s boss. You would comfortably move right up the chain to the organization’s decision makers, because you had a definitive point of view, grounded in reality, that you were willing to share.
We believe there are things that matter to buyers, and there are things that matter more. An elevated perspective that comes from the edge of disruption matters more. Your ability to have insight at that edge, and to share it in a compelling and applicable way, will matter in the most influential rooms of your most important clients. Clients can leverage that perspective to help differentiate their organization and solve their most complex problems. This is what is truly meant by the phrase thought leader.
Your ability to offer an elevated perspective from the edge of disruption is critical to gaining access to the right people, and to influencing them in a way that opens an opportunity for you to create more value than your competition does. GHX uses its elevated perspective to persuade partners in the industry to participate in joint problem-solving for challenges that matter most to their investors and customers, and that have the biggest impact on the industry’s Triple Aim goals. Your goal throughout this section should be to define for yourself the right edge of disruption and build an elevated perspective around it. It is a critical first step on your journey to becoming the obvious choice. This is especially true when clients can better identify opportunities for themselves to be a part of something much larger, as is often the case with the work GHX does. We need to work together now to define what it is for you.
An elevated perspective that comes from the edge of disruption matters more. Your ability to have insight at that edge, and to share it in a compelling and applicable way, will matter in the most influential rooms of your most important clients.
After we are done defining your edge of disruption—the place where you can add the most value to solving the most important problems your clients face—we will shift our attention to how you can go about learning as much as you can about it, and then critically sharing the point of view you develop there from a strong platform. By the end of this book, you should have an elevated perspective in an area that matters to your most important clients, and you’ll have the reputation and access you need to develop the next capability, elevated relationships, which in turn will allow you to have an elevated impact. When you have all three, you will consistently matter more than your competitors and will be creating the capability and culture to stay that way. And that is what will result in you being the obvious choice, year after year, for your industry, your employees, and your community. Let’s get started.
DEFINE: Discover Your Edge of Disruption
AS WE DISCUSSED IN THE INTRODUCTION to this section, if the most value is created where complexity reigns, healthcare certainly has a lot of value creation opportunities. We could start with looking at how the insurance industry works (both patient coverage and practitioner malpractice), move over to the ways physicians and nurses are educated, skip along to hospital care and the outcomes hospitals deliver, maybe spend some time in rural community access, tally the overall cost of delivering care (plus there’s the fact that the United States typically spends more on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than almost any other nation), and perhaps throw in changing patient expectations (admit it, you’ve diagnosed yourself via Google search—we all have), and we wouldn’t even scratch the surface of the massive changes that are happening. There are lots of places to go to find interesting and meaningful edges of disruption in healthcare.
No one knows this better than GHX, which you met in the section opener. GHX was founded during the heady days of the internet boom. Healthcare buyers were being bombarded with what Bruce Johnson, current GHX CEO and member of the founding executive team, calls “PowerPoint Promises” that sounded something like this: “Sexy startup from the Silicon Valley promises data nirvana. Every transaction and piece of inventory in your system will be instantly trackable and traceable via electronic data interchange, and there will be no more waste in the system.” Bruce and the founding team at GHX knew better. That vision described in
