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John Stanway Royal Children's Hospital 2021

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john thank you very much again for your

time today and for the benefit of the

students listening it would be wonderful

if you could just introduce yourself and

your role and a little of your history

that would be great

okay no thanks alan uh so john stanway

i'm currently the chief executive

here at the royal children's hospital

and have been chief executive for nearly

five years but worked here for 15 years

my previous role was chief operating officer

officer

so look fairly

fairly

humble background i suppose i've

ended up with a double degree in

economics and then did a graduate

diploma in

industrial relations at victoria university

university

entered into

uh started off japan trade center

as a

just doing some basic research on industry

industry

and then i joined general motors

and worked in the marketing department and

and

mainly though on forecasting and trying

to work out trends

and then thought

i don't want to end up selling cars so i

to wholesalers so i

moved to hr or people and culture as

it's now called and

and [Music]

[Music]

spent some time there and worked

worked

in various areas including up in new

south wales

and then got caught

fortunately in developing a

computerized hr system for the whole of

general motors

and that then led me to work in other industries

industries

which i did move to

other industries including within

within

the department of health

landed there was a bit like landing on

the moon actually

quite different to private enterprise and

and [Music]

[Music]

soon realized that yes they got me there

to develop a system but they didn't have

a budget so that didn't last very long

but what happened was

and this is interesting for the students

i think

i've been at general motors had a little tiny

tiny

what's now called a desktop computer

with a little bit of memory and i used

to strip the payroll system so i could

manipulate data

one day the ceo of the health department

came down i wonder how many doctors are

in each hospital

and the hr staff said oh we'll take

about three weeks to find that

i immediately went on the computer

sent the had the report done in about an hour

hour

the next day i was working for the ceo

which started a career direct directory

so it was a bit of

opportunism but also a bit of knowledge

and then i worked at the transport

action commission and eventually came

into the health industry

now john can i start with the the

interview questions that the students

will be following

so i'll start with the first which is

how do you plan your work day

well i've in a very privileged position

i've got a very good executive assistant

who manages my diary

but i do uh mentally uh have a priority list

list

so if i

and i can look at it now actually it's

not highly sophisticated it's just a

sticky note on my computer screen

actually there's normally about three or

four things that i want to achieve in

the day

and i've got them there

the night before i'm probably also

thinking through what uh how my day will unfold

unfold

in line with my diary of course which

can be fairly busy

and just thinking about that's your your

immediate sort of tasks the things

you're waking up to and coming to into

work and saying this is my day but how

far into the future do you plan in your

job role

well in my role at the moment i'm

looking at three to five years out

my role of chief executive is to have a strategic

strategic view

and

having come from chief operations

officer where i was looking at the

day-to-day operations of the hospital

to move then to more strategic focus is

important so

the majority of my role is

engaging

with the external part of the hospital

whether it's stakeholders like

government or

you know philanthropic organizations etc

etc

so it's a different role to just the

normal running of a hospital daily sort

of role

it's really interesting that those

stakeholders come into your your

planning a bit as it were

that range that you look forward into

the future and i guess as you say that

that's because of where you are at the

the apex of the organization

you're right there the the top

management layer you're the

the strategic planner and thinker so

that does shape a lot of how you plan

i'm going to ask you about your career

john but this is a question that would

normally be for

for

somebody much more junior in the

organization than yourself but i'm i'm

assuming there's still an element of

career planning in in what you do so

how do you plan

how do you and how did you plan for your

career and how far into the future do

you do you look when you're thinking

about that plan

um well first of all my career has been

a bit like a roller coaster

or as i term it like the share market it

has gone up and down somewhat but it's

always gone in a

slightly positive trajectory which is good

good

and i suppose

in planning i really

wanted to experience different industries

industries

not just stay in the one industry which

and i suppose i also planned which i

this is who i am anyway

is to have a good grounding in

whether it's management

hr people and culture industrial

relations because

it doesn't matter whether i'm managing

six thousand staff here at the hospital or

you know two thousand staff for the

transport accident commission

it's the whole group of people and

you've got to get them all motivated to

go in a similar direction so

the grounding in that is important and i

always thought it was important to

have good people skills to be able to

lead and manage

and i

you know fortuitly and with some luck as

well but i built those skills which

which

at the time didn't seem that

relevant in some cases

but became more and more relevant as i

moved up

you know in the leadership hierarchy so

to speak those people skills that you

talk about as you know from the

perspective of ceo looking at 6 000

employees in the hospital um

they're probably just a

developed version of the skills you

would have had when the team you were

managing was smaller

yeah well i started general motors i was

a statistician grade one

and then i became a statistician grade

two and looked after one person um

um [Music]

[Music]

strange enough that person went on to be

ceo of a large organization

as well um and he was quite difficult to manage

there's probably a story in that

yeah i might say no

um that now in that idea of career

setting and this idea of looking at

where to next it takes me to a question

about goal setting so what is it about

your job that makes it difficult to

achieve goals and what makes it easy

um well first of all what's difficult to

achieve goals is people

organizations are full of people and to

get the alignment and everyone moving in

the right direction to achieve the

organization goals is the challenge that

management and leadership has

so that's what makes it difficult but

it's also the positive side of the role

as well if you can achieve that

so in my view sure there can be

other blockers whether it's financial or

you know

digital whatever it might be

but fundamentally

in my view it'll come down to people

so they're the things that make it

difficult what makes it easy to achieve goals

goals

in my view what makes it easy to achieve

goals is to create

a vision and a plan

and then have break that down into what

we want to achieve in the next 12 months

three years

and then

get the organization to own that vision

and then relentlessly pursue that vision through

through good

good

management techniques whether it be

through setting the kpis having regular meetings

meetings

follow-up restrain what can we do to

bring it back on track etc etc um so i

think there's some fundamental vision

setting and then good project management

to deliver it

i really like that that idea of starting

with the vision that's something we talk

about a lot in

the unit we take what we're talking

about now management organization

behaviour that vision setting and

following it is part of what we teach

can i ask then

how do you motivate your subordinates

and how do you maintain your own motivation

motivation um

um well

first of all i'm very fortunate to

motivate myself because i i lead the

royal children's hospital which is

well liked and respected by the community

community

and is pretty well recognized around

australia and globally as well so

people see it as a very positive

organization and therefore

if i'm leading it i must feel some of

that vibe so to speak uh which i do um

um so

yeah i think that um

you know that's what motivates me and

i'm very fortunate that if i'm having a

bad day

i can walk out of my office

walk up to the intensive care unit and

see a lot of challenging

challenging

patients and families and think well

okay my day's not too bad let's go back

to work john uh

so you know you've got to put yourself

in a a place where

where

uh you know it's everything's relative

in life as we know and

and

so to motivate yourself

working in a hospital it's not that

difficult to be honest

so i mean working in a prestigious

highly respected much loved organization

that that's a a pretty strong reward i

guess as you say yeah it is that kind of

it's also a big responsibility

you've spoken in in two

two ways now about leadership

that vision setting and the strategic

planning process and you've talked about

how you motivate yourself to motivate others

others so

specifically how do you come at the task

of leading other people what's your approach

approach

well first of all um

i'd like to think

and

i like to lead by being visible and

and

you know

i like to get out and about and engage with

with

all parts of the organisation [Music]

[Music]

i think to

lead well you need excellent

communication that's just not me

communication team around you to put

together various channels of communication

communication

i think

particularly in these times

any vacuum of communication people fill

it with various

various

theories and options which most of them

tend to be slightly negative so i think

communication is exceptionally important

and more important when things get tough so

yeah i approach leadership with um um

really trying to

uh i suppose engage on a personal level uh

i don't do anger it's just not me i

can't see the point of that if someone

gets angry with me i've already won the

argument so you know

qed thanks very much um

so yeah i just

like to think that

supported and led

how they would want to

do it themselves so to speak

so in in the very high profile

organization it's by definition a very

high profile role

i guess what you're describing to me is

that you you model the behaviors that

you think are appropriate for your role but

but

that others would probably look upon and

emulate themselves

yes and that can be reinforced by certain

certain [Music]

[Music]

initiatives and in our case we are

thinking what's called the compact

where we make pledges to each other

the 6000 staff make pledges on how we will

will

for example [Music]

[Music]

we care better for patients and families

when we care for each other

you know pledges like that

developing those sort of cultural

embodiments of how we want to work

together and live together

is important

it's a bit of a privilege i think being

in a position such as yours because you

can put into practice the principles

that you hold strongly to be important

and and those principles of um

mutuality uh mutual respect and keeping

focus on the goals of the organization

and that that's a really powerful message

message

can be a double-edged sword of course

because you're held up as uh

following those things to the letter of

the law though yeah so the pressure's

never off is it

no what do you look for in the people

that you've been led by and

was it the same method um

well first of all i'd say that

i've learned

just as much

from poor leaders i had from good

leaders so that's 0.1

but in good leaders i look for

their commitment to values particularly respect

respect

i would like to think they're good delegators

delegators

and don't want to control everything

and they

support you professionally and allow you to

take a little bit of risk to get on and

do things um

without being too prescriptive and you

know we work in the public sector

environment so we've got lots of checks

and balances so

our risk appetite is not as great as in

the pure private sector

but you can still

allow a little bit of latitude to get on

and try a few things

and i think there's there's a

sort of an element of what you're

talking about in your own leadership

style there and so much as there's a lot

of trust

and there's a lot of mutual respect

built into that idea yeah

yeah yeah

yeah

so that kind of takes me to another

aspect of leadership and that's

mentoring and

i mean you

you told the story of the

statistician great one who went on to

become the ceo of a large organization

under your care so

who do you see as your mentors and to

whom do you provide mentoring well

well

sounds a bit

i say but uh

you know

my father was also managing director of

an organization

and i used to as a

12 13 year old trail around and he'd go

to work on a

saturday morning

and what he did was

walk through the organisation he'd go

down to the storeroom and he'd play

cards with the storm and

he was

and he i learned a lot from that and

you know when if you

go to an area in an organization when

things aren't right people think oh

here's the ceo thinks things aren't

going too well he's going to tell us off

but if you go there when things are

going well and you engage people

when you go there when things aren't right

right

they know you're there to support and

help them

and i have taken that lesson forward [Music]

[Music]

i also think as i said before you learn

from the very good

ceos and leaders as you do from the ones

not so good so

you learn how not to behave

or do things

lessons i've

gathered is from good and bad leaders

and from my own

family so to speak

so that that's you you've somewhat

answered my next question which is how

do you mentor and

and

i'll let you put it in your own words

i've got an idea of where you're going

to go

well i suppose yes i'd hopefully mentor

i do go to my way now and again to

just to give them that little bit of

extra if i think they're

really committed and doing

you know trying to do very good work um

i don't formally

formally

internally mentor i have actually

strange enough to do some external mentoring

mentoring

uh only you know people have asked and i

say okay help out um

um [Music]

[Music]

so yeah my mentoring is sort of really

as you say by example

yeah and that's a strong thing in your

leadership and your motivation and how

you mentor

that by setting a good model of behavior

it is one of those things we we always

look to the boss for

for

what's acceptable and what's not i think

when we see the behaviors of the boss we

see those as being

what the organization is about in a lot

of ways no matter who we see as our boss

at what level we're operating it's

it right all the time by the way it's casually

casually

get it wrong enough

a bit but you know

now the one of the things we talk about

in organizational management

organization behavior is that

the role of a manager isn't just rolling

up your sleeves and getting things done

on your own

it's often about working with others so

how do you achieve goals

how are your teams around your structure

you are as good as the people around you and

and um

it's a common statement but it's it's

very true so you need to develop a good team

team um

and you need to be able to performance

manage or engage if people aren't performing

performing

and it helps them along the way so they can

can

you know excel

i think as i said before you need to

have a plan develop the kpis key

performance indicators that

you want to hold

your staff to account for and let them

get on and deliver those um

so yeah i think and then monitor it regularly

regularly

and progressively

but you need a good plan

now taking you back to your

earlier days of people and culture human

resource management

that setting of goals

do you see that as being part of the

motivation process as well yeah i think

um you know even in

you know you start off very small but

you've got to have a couple of

goals you're trying to achieve um

and hopefully your goals and fit in if

you've got the bigger plan of the

organisation you can then slot your

goals into those and align them and if

you've got alignment then you should be

able to get on with it

but if you have misalignment

you're going to be

pulled aside and said hang on a minute

heading that way we want to go that way

um conflict

is often seen as inevitable in

organizations and sometimes seen as

positive sometimes seen as negative

so how do you

manage conflict that arises in your organisation

organisation

well i think first of all i said before

you need to develop a culture that can manage

manage

and address conflict

and as you say conflict or having a different

different

you can have a difference of opinion

and not agree with someone and do it in

a respectful manner um

not an aggressive or disrespectful

but down type manner

so i think that um

you know conflict arises

invariably between individuals and

and

the important thing is to address that

sooner than later don't let it fester

and this is where i've been fortunate

working at ha you're always dealing with

conflict between individuals and working

out ways to bring it together and

you know with that skill set it can be

quite powerful to help

manage conflict either

within the people that report to you or

other parts of the organisation

but the important thing is to address it

sooner than later

and don't let it fester and do it in a

respectful open manner

uh but the quicker the better

i'm assuming of course that at your

level you you seldom see um operational

type conflict or even the interpersonal

level of conflict but are there systems

in place for managers that layers down then

then

yeah we've got

a lot of systems

systems

processes ability for staff to um um

um access

access

other avenues to talk about their

conflict and then see how it can be addressed

addressed

and if you go on to our internal website

there's plenty there we also carry a

card that has all the

way you can contact

different parts of the organization

whether it's peer support or hr or

your next up manager

or even external

organization we have an external

organization that staff can contact

and then of course we have to compact

how we are going to interact

the six thousand staff will interact

with each other and we all make those pledges

pledges

there's about 20 pledges and we all make

and commit to those pledges

so the the systems are deeply

embedded into the organization's culture yeah

yeah

but people are people and conflict arises

arises

and we also monitor

through surveys

uh how people are traveling

you know whether they're stressed or

is there harassment going on we monitor that

that

both from a monthly pulse survey point

of view but also

an annual

statewide sort of people matters survey

so getting feedback on how people are

traveling and feeling is also important

some questions about ethics john and

it's i guess again just a reminder of

the context the hospital is a very

complex organization and there's many

layers to the to the operation you

mentioned patients and families earlier

and i think that's the very reason for

the hospital being there but it's also a

place of work

for a lot of people and there's a lot of

work that goes on in a hospital that

would be not dissimilar from work in

other organizations

i think there's uh questions about

ethics when it comes to medicine which

we can assume

uh related to medicine and set aside

from what we're talking about which is organizations

organizations

and in the healthcare sector i think the

the processes around ethics are

extremely robust

but in a business setting um ethical

issues do come up

everything from contracts and granting

of them to

your favorite suppliers and so on are

there ethical challenges that you see as

important for you

um well as i say we do have a very

strong clinical ethics group

and i do rely on them quite a bit in my

role i mean

i'm not a clinician by trade

but i do face a number of clinical

and ethical decisions for example do i

give one child a 1 million drug

or do i

give 20 children

20 drugs

you know the budget's not unlimited

and there's lots of decisions that come

to me around those sort of things

i think the other thing though is that um

um [Music]

[Music] we

as an organization

and as a group of people uh

need to be seen

to do the right thing about even advocacy

advocacy

like um

we had a situation of children in detention

detention

we made a decision with our board and

the executive that we would allow our

staff to advocate outside the front of

the hospital

now if some people saw that as

not a good thing

ethically they should have just been completely

completely

down the middle but we thought we would

advocate for that because research said that

that

you children can be harmed in

you know

in detention so

you know those things come up they're

considered and then decisions are made [Music]

[Music]

and you know conflict

conflict

we're very aware of conflict as well you

know someone might

be approving a contract but they might

have something connected to that contract

contract

it's not really so much an ethical thing

but it can be ethics

and we have what's called the conflict

of interest committee

where we go through a lot of potential

conflicts and make decisions around them

and every meeting we have we ask if

there's a conflict against the agenda

items of anyone in the room

and ironically enough at the conflict of

interest committee we asked has anyone

got any conflicts

um but yeah so

that whole idea of

doing the right thing

has anyone got any conflicts in

delivering decision making

is important

john it's it's um

again one of the things we we look at in

the course is corporate social responsibility

responsibility

one of the the approaches that we

discuss in that is is going beyond what

the law requires and actually taking a

position which the organization feels to

be right and i think it's a really nice

example you gave

of the the refugee situation

advocating on behalf of the group that

the law has one rule about that you

believe that there should be a different application

application

and we did it based on not on politics

but based on the research that

the murdoch children's research

institute had done which showed that the

potential harm

uh and that was why we supported it not

for its political

right or wrong

but for yeah the the evidence base was

there to say that this needs to be changed

changed

can i ask you a little bit about

workplace diversity uh

6 000 staff i imagine that there's a

pretty diverse

work group there

yeah look uh we're

we're

first of all we do embrace diversity we um

uh as you know we're we're the leaders in

our gender service um

we um we support homes glenn we've got a

large intake each year of

students with disabilities to support

you know work experience therefore they

get work elsewhere

we've got one of the state's best aboriginal

aboriginal [Music]

[Music]

sort of health

clinics if you like called our roger or

family place clinic

and then we do embrace all our cultures

but having said that

it's an area where we need to do a lot

more work

particularly in

translating different [Music]

[Music]

if you like assets that we have whether

it's clinical guidelines or things that

are on the internet

so there's there's a fair bit of work to

be done to really embrace diversity it's

not just about

embracing the different people's it's

about then

ensuring they get the same information

that everyone else gets

it's it's a an interesting question for

a a for-profit organization and i find

it's a really you know

interesting question for an organization

like a hospital that has to operate in

the black and it has to keep its budget

but it's not there to make money it's

there to provide a service

do you feel that the diversity of your

workforce gives you a competitive

advantage for one of the better wood

it definitely does i mean having

having

different cultures

creating energy and innovation and

extremely helpful but also

a large part of our patient population

are very diverse so

we need to uh be able to connect with

them very well as well

but having said that look

have got a way to go we

you know

you could say we're we need to devolve

further on our diversity front

well that's pretty impressive i think

there's so many organizations which

which would be far less than others than yours

yours

and to hear that you still feel

you know you've got more to do it just

speaks of a very strong commitment to

that idea of the benefits of workplace diversity

diversity

yeah

john thank you so much for your time

today i really appreciate it and i'm

sure the students will when they start

unpacking this and analyzing our

conversation today

but um for your time and for your

willingness to participate thank you so much

much

all right no thanks adam

ellen sorry and uh

good luck to all the students uh

as i said

sometimes one thing leads to another so

don't block off any avenue to get experience

experience

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YouTube Transcript:
John Stanway Royal Children's Hospital 2021