We invited a wide range of friends and colleagues to an upcoming concert featuring a principal that plays minstrel banjo, octave violin, and viola. The second musician plays piano, accordion, frame drum, tamburello, lute, and cello banjo. There’s a few things we love about this example of music:
1) Music is similar to math which underpins both engineering and finance. You find a lot of musicians in the ranks of engineers.
2) Teams — whether at work or in sports are a lot like bands and that they have to know the songs, know their instruments, and play well together. This happens with a lot of practice, focus, and passion. We love that these musicians are playing multiple instruments, or multiple positions, as we would say in sports.
3) We expect to see a diverse audience at this kind of performance since the music isn’t strictly one style or genre.
The Dailyquotes.com
To be successful in our mission to save hundreds of thousands of lives, delay disability for millions more, and help hospitals improve financial performance, we at Medigram need to increasingly master the art of leading a multi-style or multi genre band, then orchestra and broader type of team.
A study carried out by the University of British Columbia found that in 2015, not only do people from similar backgrounds like the same kinds of music, they also dislike the music that those from different backgrounds like. We would expect similar divisions in clothing styles, for example or perhaps even UI elements of our mobile app. When you understand yours and others’ mindset, you can understand when they have brand preferences.
What do people get out of affiliating with brands? It’s important to understand!
Music taste can be a signal to others about group identity. In this study, “The least-educated people in the study were more than eight-times more likely to dislike classical music, compared to the best-educated respondents.”
The reason why we focus on understanding group dynamics because of the nature of the work and challenges in training hospital based employees and clinicians onto technology. We think carefully about who they are as individuals, how they prefer to learn, and what their fears -including valid ones- may be. We also desire and work to become a unified team with them, no matter their position as the union nurse, the case manager, the medical department chair, IT director, and CxO. Corporate America has tried to focus on “political correctness” which does not allow for an honest dialogue on these real challenges. We also have to be able to include both on our side and the customer’s side — everyone from technical staff to the most sophisticated data engineering and AI talent. What worked yesterday, doesn’t work anymore for this range of stakeholders.
Yesterday’s “leadership” and “management” techniques don’t work anymore
Not only is relating between various in groups and out groups a worthwhile challenge, there is also the human performance aspect of managing the state of “belonging” as pictured above in Maslow’s hierarchy. Without belonging, there is no esteem, without esteem, there is no solving tough challenges through actualization.
Why belonging within the context of diversity has to be stated as a goal and managed
When you consider such things as the politics, economy, and group relations you can quickly see how group dynamics are central to serving customers that are diverse. There is no single controllable or uncontrollable factor related to “belonging” such as personal identity, nationality, or a genetic trait. We work hard at creating belonging for all our stakeholders and welcome your ideas on how we continue to do so.
We’re in the middle of some of the largest social shifts in history
With terms like “me versus you” and “us versus them,” these concepts can be understood through the lenses of social science and neurology.
As we reviewed in a prior blog, bias is disabling the effectiveness of AI and political polls today. This is because many biases are based on psychological attitudes toward groups we are or aren’t a part of.
The most famous of these biases is the set of familiar prejudice and discrimination related “social” biases (be they implicit or explicit social biases).
Why are we talking about social biases? As many forces come to a head ranging from unexpected election results to the #MeToo movement, and harmful, invalid forms of AI, and the real and worthwhile challenge of technology adoption in legacy industries such as healthcare, you have to have team alignment. There is no real team alignment without an honest, yet compassionate, review of class, race, and gender in these contexts. We have to stand up and be willing to address these topics, not just huddle in our bubbles and pretend “others” don’t exist. Why? Because when you touch workflow in a place like a hospital, these differences don’t just exist, this IS what defines the “customer.” One start is to make sure we treat all stakeholders with respect, no matter what their position or life opportunities, for example to travel have included. We intend to set the example for the tech industry on this front. Join us.
Eric Roth brings a wealth of relevant experience to Medigram as player coach and winner of numerous industry awards. This is in leading business operations and taking our culture game to the next level. As Head of Human Capital and Business Operations, Eric is excited about building a radically new kind of company in Medigram to win in the marketplace.
Together, with Medigram leadership, we have built the best team positioned to do what no one has been able to do. He is bringing his own recognized expertise to build and develop the strongest possible organization to deliver for physicians and patients. Eric is an expert in talent development, including management and leadership, having built proven programs in these areas. To win in our market, Eric enjoys also developing our extended team of collaborators.
As a business-oriented people leader, Eric Roth has driven rapid hiring and scaling for incredible 3x growth over two years. He is distinguished by his competitive drive to win. Further, he led people operations, systems, and compliance. Roth is committed to leveraging data and balancing it with common sense to drive successful employment and business outcomes.
Some highlights include having ensured target exit and funding events through leading people, operations, and organizational messaging; led the team to industry-wide recognition through awards by respected media.
Eric Roth is a transformational coach committed to developing people to their greatest potential. He has successfully led execution of several reorganizations and acquisitions, possesses a superb risk management record.
Most recently, Eric Roth was VP of Human Resources for a leading health care SaaS analytics company, Mede/Analytics.
Prior, Eric served as Vice President, Human Resources for Edelman, Inc., the world’s foremost global PR firm, and as Regional Manager, Human Resources for Paul Hastings, LLP’s US western region and Asia offices; a leading global professional services firm specializing in employment law.
Eric specializes in attracting and retaining top talent; charting, tracking, and measuring key performance metrics; and driving the success of an organization’s most important asset, its people.
Eric earned his M.S. degree in Human Resources Management from Golden Gate University with High Honors in 2003, his B.A. degree from San Jose State University in 1994, and is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources.
Out of the office, Eric enjoys time with his family and traveling.