Time 29:33

An Open Letter to President Obama,

Mr. President, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Given your comments about health care reform in your weekly radio address yesterday, I thought you would enjoy Mr. Levy’s perspective on building a culture of improvement in health care, articulated in this Marketing Edge podcast. As one Twitter user to another, you both understand the dynamic created when leadership, ideas, and communication come together.

Mr. President, you clearly understand social media from a challenger’s perspective. Mr. Levy has had considerable practice with it in a leadership position. He’s been blogging since 2006 and has faced medical, labor and financial crises in transparent and thoughtful ways. Mr. Levy has built a culture of improvement in large part because of the shared desire among the health care professionals at BIDMC to provide quality care, to always improve their performance. They have done this by being transparent and committed to the ultimate goal of providing excellent health care. Mr. Levy believes, as I believe you do, that the status quo in health care needs to be more open to the concept of improving through a discussion of failures, the uncovering of vested interests that prevent attaining a shared goal, and a clear focus on long-term solutions that are in tune with the changes in our world.

Social media can be used as a partisan echo chamber which will produce little if any positive change. For those who want the status quo, this will be a good thing. Used in this manner, social media will die a quick death as soon as the next Shiny New Object comes along. However, in the hands of individuals in a society committed to being better, lustful for learning, and accepting of the synergy of ideas exchanged around the world in real-time by any individual, not just the ruling classes, then social media holds potential far beyond its role in health care reform.

The conversation in this edition of the Marketing Edge podcast will benefit every CEO regardless of the industry, even the CEO of the United States.

I have thought for a long time that for society to gain the maximum benefits from social media many current cultures in a typical corporate structure would need to change. From legal to finance, HR to PR, the ways of the last 100 years would need to change if transparency is to be rewarded, and improvement was to be an accepted continuing process.

I also believe that social media is more a movement than a marketplace. Not just a tool for someone to exploit, but an opportunity to engage in more of our shared humanity. Today, the actions of one courageous healthcare leader solidified that belief.

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has been a prolific blog writer since October 2006. Levy’s blog is called Running a Hospital.

On it he has had an open discussion about his hospital, its work, and his own performance. This openness about successes and failures has received acclaim in the press, praise from many and murmurs of dubious wonder from others. I know from speaking with many in healthcare during presentations and meetings there are some who wonder how Levy can get away with being so transparent.

It’s simple, he is about improving, every day, throughout his hospital, profession and life. He is also, it seems, sincere about caring for people, both those in the care of BIDMC and those employees who are on the frontlines of healthcare delivery. This has infected the other cultures around him so that they too are committed to a cause of caring in an environment that rewards improvement.

Paul Levy, President and CEO Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

credit Globestaff/Pat Greenhouse

This however, is not a rose colored glasses story about how social media is improving medicine, while it maybe true, this story is about how social media is making better people of us. It is a story about the human desire to be a part of something larger, to be acknowledged as of value and connecting to each other.

Levy doesn’t use corporate speak; his writing is about real situations, from surgery procedures to improving the use of protective equipment, from the joys of a moonlit backyard to numerous stories of hospital employees.

It is with this foundation of candor, this unprecedented transparency that Paul Levy stood at the front of an auditorium full of employees who came to hear his decision about laying off workers during difficult economic times.

Instead of an announcement, he asked for their opinion of a potential solution that may avoid layoffs. Levy travels his hospital corridors plenty, enough to know how many people it takes to deliver quality care. To keep the level of personnel that he believes necessary to deliver quality care, he asked the following as reported by Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe.

“I’d like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners – the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them. “Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,” he continued. “It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.”

The reaction according to Cullen was “Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause. “

The seeds of this applause were sown in the many places and people that Levy has touched. A fertile field for all to see is his blog with hundreds of posts. I believe this body of work, the hundreds of comments, and the dialogue he has participated in with patients, employees, supporters and critics are a measure of the man.

Which brings me to the cultures that need to change, for transparency to work in an organization, there needs to be a mutual respect and a commitment to improve. In reading the comments submitted to the blog from the Boston Globe story, listening is a major quality of Paul Levy. It’s not a coincidence that listening is also an important quality to have in a successful relationship and I believe social media is merely a channel for relationships.

Much of America has a very long way to go to eliminate the culture of “gotcha,” of confrontation, a culture of “keep the info, keep the power.” All these insecurities and tactics of greed will hinder the benefits of what social media can bring to an organization and our society. With each blog post, each honest answer to a criticism, each good idea raised and implemented, the organization becomes stronger.

This defining moment is an example of how powerful social media can be in the hands of people who are committed to make things better. Thank you Paul Levy and the wonderful people of BIDMC.