Big Outcomes Start With Brave Decisions

Jon Clifton:
[0:08] Great things are happening in Omaha, Nebraska. Specifically, great things are happening for kids. Children's Nebraska is an award-winning children's hospital that has adopted one of the most important missions on earth, to improve the life of every child. I went to Children's Nebraska and met with their CEO, Chanda Chacón. Chanda's enthusiasm, energy, and compassion have created a leadership brand that inspires trust in the physicians, nurses, staff, and most importantly, the patients and their families. Let's hear more about how she develops people and programs that truly make a difference.

Chanda, thank you for being here with me today. Can you talk a little bit about your own personal strengths journey when you first learned your top five strengths and what stood out to you the most?

Chanda Chacón:
[0:53] Absolutely. It's actually newer to me. I came here to Children's Nebraska in September of 2020 and I had never done my Gallup strengths and it's common language in Nebraska and common language at Children's. And it was very intriguing to me because I had been sort of a learner of leadership from a much more old school framework where you just focus on the things you're not good at and try to be better at that. And I thought how inspiring to actually know what you're great at and to be able to build teams in a much more purposeful way that surround you with strengths you don't have. And so you create this really amazing group of people. And so when I first did the StrengthsFinder, I thought, oh, what is this going to say? Like, what if it says something that, like, I didn't know that. And it was not shocking to me, but almost reassuring when I saw it, like, wow, to see it on paper that the things I had been told for most of my career in leadership were things that I had to mitigate. This actually said, that's why you're a great leader.

So for me, looking at my top 10 strengths made me feel more confident in who I was as a leader. It's things I always knew, but to see it on paper and then looking at my top five, I was like, oh, well, this explains it. Now I have the language to tell people why it is that way or describe it a little bit more. And I knew where my derailers were in that, but to see it on a piece of paper explained in a way that was really about how I answered things and felt more scientific for me was really powerful.

Jon Clifton:
[2:28] When you say derailers, sometimes we refer to that as basements. And it sounds like something in there resonated with you, that you've been told over and over again that this is something that maybe you needed to work on, especially when in reality it was one of your strengths. Of your top five, what's an example of that?

Chanda Chacón:
[2:45] Woo. Absolutely, Woo. People for me are the most important part of my leadership. I don't think you can be a leader if people don't follow you or if you don't inspire them to want to be better for themselves and the organization. And so I've always cared very deeply about people, and I've been told that that can be very exhausting. And I'm like, well, that's so great because my top strength is Achiever. So I have a lot of stamina around doing the right thing when I believe in it. And I'm really lucky to do a job and be in an industry that I'm very personally passionate about. And so for me, the caring about people has always been a part of my leadership and seeing it be a strength that I've leveraged for me was like, oh, thank goodness. I mean, I felt like I'd been training to be a leader in a pandemic my whole career because caring for people is exactly what people needed during COVID.

And being in healthcare doing that and having those close relationships, like for me, Woo is, I think, kind of misunderstood. My team loves Woo because they're like, of course, because I'm very outgoing. I said, it's more than that. It's about connecting with people and knowing how do I understand who you are better, not only to help us as an organization, but because I actually genuinely care about you. And I want you to be great at what you do here and understanding people. I just, I love kind of the, I don't want to say science behind it, but a little bit to understand what drives people and motivates them.

And it's funny because I think that links with communication and our chief medical officer sort of always chuckles because he'll be on calls when I was here for when I first started. We were on Zoom. And it's hard to connect with people on Zoom, especially when you're new and they don't know who you are. And I always had really unique questions that I would try to help people understand that I was a real person first and not my title and understand who they were. So I ask about family and where they grew up, and it just changes the dynamic. And I love that part of understanding who people really are, because we're so much more than our title or our role or what we do in work. We're so much more than that. And that part, for me, people said, oh, Chanda, you know, CEOs don't answer like you do on leadership surveys. And I said, good. I don't want to be like other CEOs. I want to be the kind of CEO that healthcare needs now, not who healthcare needed 20 years ago. And we're in such a different place that it feels now for me like we're talking more about how the connection with people is more important in leadership.

Jon Clifton:
[5:36] But can you talk more about that difference from the past 20 years? Because certainly healthcare has always cared about people. So how has that changed? And why do you think your top five strengths uniquely position you to lead now?

Chanda Chacón:
[5:48] Yeah, so I think healthcare, 20 years ago, our focus was putting patients first. And we talked about that a lot. And that is really important. The way we care about patients and families is by caring about the people who do the work. And our focus had always been about taking care of patients first. Well, that's important. We have to really focus on our people. And so I think that is, for me, the shift in it is about the core work we do. But the core work we do only happens with amazing people that know that you care about them, that they're individuals and they matter. And that, for me, is very emotional when you care deeply about people. And it can be overwhelming because people come to work and come to life with lots of things and experiences. And for me, having an individual connection with people and them knowing about me personally and knowing something about them personally helps people be committed to what we're doing as an organization. And so that for me during COVID, knowing that, I mean, I would tell people I'm struggling too. Like the work we do is hard. This time is hard and life is hard, and the more authentic I was and the more connection I had with people the more resilient all of us were as an organization.

Jon Clifton:
[7:15] So people with Woo are unbelievable at doing that in one-on-one situations but of course as CEO you're not only working with many employees, many patients but also the community, so how do you care at scale?

Chanda Chacón:
[7:31] I think it's making it personal, right? And it's being genuine. And I think, you know, appropriately authentic. I mean, I also heard like, don't be too authentic as a leader. And I'm like, okay, I'll be appropriately authentic. But it's, I mean, we talked earlier about, I talk to any group that wants to know more about me, wants to know more about our organization, because that to me is what it looks like at scale, is that lots of people have learned something about me, some tiny nugget, some tiny nugget about our organization that makes them interested in who we are or what we do. And it creates a connection. And then our job is to make it so inspiring they want to know more and provide the resource to be able to do that, whether it's through social media or online or an event we do where they can learn more about us. And so I think it can scale. And can it be exhausting? Sure. But I think Woo is what keeps me. I enjoy it so much, meeting new people and talking to new people and being able to share what we do every day when I'm passionate about it personally. I think it's an honor to do it. So that doesn't wear me out. That doesn't make me tired. It actually energizes me to say, oh, sure, I'll go talk at that meeting, I'll meet new people. Because I want people to know who we are before you need us.

Jon Clifton:
[8:56] One of the big leadership challenges of today is effective communication. I think one of the surveys that we did here in the United States found far less than a quarter actually believe that the leaders within their organization are actually effective communicators. You've excelled at this. You have it as one of your top five strengths. It's your number three, which is Communication. What advice would you have for leaders everywhere to be better communicators?

Chanda Chacón:
[9:19] I think you have to find the lane that works for you. I think watching other people, you can learn pieces from, but you have to craft your style. So for me, I like telling stories. So that's how I connect with people is an experience I've had, something I've seen, a question I've heard people ask before. And it's communicating in a way and at the place where someone's willing to listen. Because if you're just talking and no one's listening, you're not actually really communicating. And the listener is so important as a part of that. And so for me, I pay a lot of attention to the audience. And there's different audiences that make me more nervous than others.

Jon Clifton:
[10:02] Which ones?

Chanda Chacón:
[10:03] So I was laughing about this. I was asked to speak at the Young Professionals Summit, which means that you are no longer a young professional when they ask you to speak at it. So I had to work through that. But I also was like, these are young professionals, and I thought, am I relevant? I was talking about leadership and my leadership journey, and I'm like, am I relevant to a young professional? And so I started, like, thinking about, well, how would I figure that out? So I got a bunch of young professionals in our organization together, and I said, great. Here's what I think is really important to talk about with leadership.

Does this resonate with you? You're a young professional. And now I've learned so much better about how to prepare for this because I showed them the presentation and I said, tell me if this resonates. And they looked at me like, I mean, you're the CEO. I'm not going to tell you that this does not resonate with me. And so I said, okay. I was like, just take this presentation and let's talk through it. And I watched them as I was like, this is what I want to say and this is what I want to say. And when they'd get really animated, I knew that that was, they liked that. And when they just sort of were like, I mean, that's good. I was like, I will remove that slide. And so I prepared a lot for that group because I was coming in kind of as an outsider to their group. They didn't know my history. They didn't know that I'd been in healthcare for more than 20 years. They were just, I'm standing on stage talking about leadership. They're like, I hope you say something amazing. And so I prepared to speak to them in a way they could hear and something that was meaningful to them. Because if it's meaningful to me and it's not to them, then what's the point? And so I think about that a lot as we communicate across our organization is meeting people where they are. What's important to them? We talk a lot about how you build relationships in an organization that's 3,800 people. It's hard to have an individual personal relationship with each person when you're in my seat.

But it's important for me that people can feel they have a connection. And so we ask people, okay, when executives are rounding the organization, what do you want to know about? Like, how do you feel connected? And they're like, we don't really want to ask you to ask us all these technical questions about how we can make it better. We want you to round for relationships. We want you to know who we are. And so I round with mints, with individually wrapped Lifesaver mints, because we're in healthcare, so we're going to be safe. In a basket. And I normally ask people if they want a mint and they're like, I mean, do I want a mint? And I was like, well, these are special mints. These today are commitments.

And I want to thank you for your commitment to the organization. And then they laugh and it's like a terrible dad joke. And then we actually can start a conversation because it kind of breaks the ice and we just talk about life or I ask them about what they're cooking for holidays and those things where they also see that I'm real. I also go to orientation and talk to every new employee about our values as an organization. Because I think that when you come into a new organization like a Children's Nebraska that has a really powerful mission, it can be overwhelming to think with our mission to improve the life of every child. I mean, how do you do that on Tuesday? That feels like a lot. And orientation's on Monday. So I say, what are you going to do tomorrow? They all look at me. And I was like, so our values are how we live our mission out every day. And I just talk like a real person to new people to our organization to make it real in the moment that they can connect with it. And so for me, that communication is a really powerful tool if you realize that at least half of the communication is the listener.

Jon Clifton:
[13:55] I mean, it's amazing to hear from a perspective of someone with Communication, which is really sending that message first and seeing how it resonates before it goes to a much larger audience. But in the process of doing that with young people, were there any patterns or anything that was picked up that you feel like others can learn from when they're communicating to young people specifically?

Chanda Chacón:
[14:17] They don't think I'm funny. I mean, they don't think I'm funny. You know, storytelling to me is powerful. And that was where I connected the most is telling stories of early in my career. Because you're not always successful every time. When you're a leader, it's hard and you fail often. And people don't want to show up and just hear how amazing you are. I mean, clearly you're amazing. You're standing on stage talking to the group. They're clear on that. But they want to understand your journey. And I think what I learned is being authentic and talking as much about the times where I stumbled or where I demonstrated something or used a tactic that often would make some other people uncomfortable was, I think, refreshing to a group of young professionals who want to know more about the journey and not as much about the destination because they can see that. They can't see the journey part and so, I enjoy telling those stories as well because it kind of brings me back to gosh when were the times I did something crazy that I wouldn't go and do and sometimes it was crazy and I'd absolutely do it again because it got an outcome in the long term and I think that's empowering for people to hear that the path isn't always linear.

It sometimes is, you know, you move out of an organization to a same role to be able to move up and that it's not about title. So I tell those stories about when that happened to me and how powerful that can still be. And that for me is always the way to connect with people is when they hear about when you weren't perfect, when they to hear about when you're excellent or when you make a mistake.

Jon Clifton:
[16:04] Now you'd mentioned a person's story, your own story. Before there was Vanderbilt, before there was Yale, before there was 20 years in healthcare and pediatrics, you have a remarkable story. Can you share that?

Chanda Chacón:
[16:19] The reason I am in pediatric healthcare is because I had a terrible experience in healthcare. I was in a car wreck when I was 11 and had a back issue that being 11 at the time, I was in the Dallas area, 11-year-olds didn't have back issues. And I was in a car wreck, so they were like shuffling me around to wait to see if I had whiplash, all sorts of things. I'd really committed parents, and they worked really hard to try to shuttle me around the medical system to find someone who could help me. At this time, I was a sixth grader. I couldn't stand longer than 30 minutes. I couldn't sit longer than 30 minutes. I was in chronic pain. And for two years, probably went to over 20 physicians and all sorts of alternative therapy.

And it was basically told to me at the end of that, you're just going to have to learn how to live with this. And my parents were like, she can't. Like, she's not the same child. I was a very calm, quiet, introverted kid, and I'd become really mean. And my mom was like, she can't live like this. And so a friend had called my mom and said, there's a physician who helped my husband with his back issue. You should go see him. And I remember thinking, like, we have come to the end of our rope. It was in a bad part of town. We should go sit in the exam room, and this was before we had pets in healthcare, like therapy dogs. The door opens and these two Sheltie dogs run in and I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Like dogs, like we are cat people. What are the dogs doing in here? I'm like, who is the guy that's going to walk in here? And I will never forget, I wrote my college entrance essay on this interaction. He walked in, he sat down, and he talked to me. And it was the first time ever in two years that anyone in healthcare had talked to me first.

And I thought, like, there's hope. And he helped figure out what was wrong and said, we're going to do these invasive tests. You're going to have to go through all these classes. And I think you're going to need surgery. And I was like, great, let's do it. As my mom was trying to hyperventilate standing next to me like, what? She's 12. She can't make these decisions. But I knew I couldn't live like that. And for me, what was the most profound thing about that is he was not a pediatric surgeon, but he knew how to talk to me. We had never gone to a children's hospital, and we had one in our community, because we didn't advertise great in pediatric healthcare 30 years ago about how we're trained to take care of children and families. And I knew from that moment I wanted to do something in healthcare to make it easier for families that were not like mine. Because my parents were committed and were running all over Dallas trying to help me.

And a lot of families can't do that or don't know how to do that or are afraid of the medical system. And I thought, if I can make an impact on that, then I've kind of paid it forward. And so I've always been in pediatric healthcare for that reason. So I feel, for me, showing up every day is living our values. One of them is excellence. And I'm like, okay, were we excellent today? Which isn't perfect. It's are we better today than we were yesterday? Because for me, my family needed that. They needed someone who was striving to be better every day and who we could have known before we needed them. And that for me is super powerful. So, I mean, I show up every day to work and I feel like, I mean, I feel lucky to have my job. I feel lucky to do the work we do. And I feel so committed and so passionate about what we do because families need us. It's their worst time ever to show up here. And we have to do better than they would do, better than they would do for their kids. So it's not just about the care we provide. It's how we care about them. And that for me is, I mean, who doesn't want to show up every day to do that?

Jon Clifton:
[20:24] Now, these kind of formative experiences help shape a person. And so you've talked a lot about caring about each individual person that walks through these doors, not just patients, but employees or the community. Did that moment where the doctor walked in and said, took an interest in you, helped shape who you are and how you interact with so many that walk through the doors of this particular building? And also, how did that help shape your Positivity? There are a lot of people who have Positivity who say, this is actually my strength of resilience. And even in the worst of times, it helps me see things that are positive or here's something that I can look forward to. So how did that moment shape those two strengths?

Chanda Chacón:
[21:06] I think in bad moments you can take that and like slug it around with you forever about this was so horrible. I just don't think that way because, I mean, life can be hard. There's a lot of hard things that happen. And people are by nature resilient. We do things every day that are big, big changes. We move cities for jobs like I did. You get married to someone and you didn't know them for only a couple years and you do that. You have kids. I mean, we make big, life-changing decisions all the time. So I think we're built to be resilient. And so I choose to look at the things that have happened in my life as an opportunity to do it better, right? To not say, gosh, I'm going to be miserable because of this. But I look at it and say, gosh, look at that experience and what it's allowed me to do and the impact on people that I've been able to have. I didn't sit when I was 12 years old and think I'm going to be the CEO of a children's hospital. I thought I want to make an impact and I want to make an impact in these experiences. And I want to work with people that were like Dr. Selby, who sat down and said, you're important as an individual. And I thought like that aligns with how I was raised, where individuals make an impact and that I could do whatever I wanted to do when I grew up.

And for me, him making it personal for me allowed me to see that you could be a big, fancy surgeon and still make it personal for a 12-year-old little kid. And he related to me as an individual and communicated to me in a way I could understand. And so I knew that was a possibility, like that could happen. And so I just choose to look at the things that have happened to me and that I've involved myself in as great opportunities to make it better for other people. And frankly, me too. Like to be able to, you know, pay back and give gratitude to other people, there's so much science that it does better for you physiologically if you show gratitude, meaningful gratitude to someone else. So I think that's what feeds my Positivity more than anything is that I can see the opportunity. I can see what it could look like. So I'm like, why would we not chase that? If we can see it, let's just go down that path.

Jon Clifton:
[23:31] So your entire team has done strengths. Can you talk about what that journey was like and also how do you use their strengths on a daily basis?

Chanda Chacón:
[23:40] Yeah, it was entertaining. I don't know if they would say entertaining. I found it entertaining. It explained a lot for each of us about each other. And I think it was a really powerful tool to have language to understand what someone was really strong in and it gave a freedom to talk about it. Where I think before when I got here, the senior team had not done strengths as a group and talked about it and looked on a grid of like, what are we all good at? It hadn't been as transparent. And I was like, we're just going to all look at it. We have to be great as a team. And so we should see where everyone's strong. And for me, it was by giving language, it allowed us to kind of joke a little bit about it and be like, oh, now I know why you do that.

And it also helped us pull together. We had a huge culture change to go through in the organization, and knowing each other's strengths allowed us to leverage them to be able to say I am really positive and I will always find an opportunity and a path. Groups don't always want to hear that at that time, and so we would bring in someone on the team that was much more analytic and brought the data to show the path depending on the group. And for me that was so powerful focusing on strengths rather than saying oh you can't do this because you're not good at that and that's normally what we would do versus saying you're amazing at this could you go talk to this group for me. And so it felt to me like we were actually able to be strategic about how we led and how we led the organization on a pathway to let them know that they were important as individuals.

So for me, I thought it was like the science behind leadership is pretty powerful because it's hard to dispute that when you see your strengths. And we're so different as a team. And I love that too. I think it's harder on the journey when you go through the stages of a team, but the most powerful teams that have gotten the most impact I've been on, we've all been very different. And I told my team, we're all very different. So the journey is going to take a minute, but when we land and we all understand it, it's going to be like no other team you've been on because we know each other well enough to capitalize on our strengths. So ... I feel like we're at that place now, which is pretty amazing, and it gives us kind of freedom to go, oh, okay, now I know why Chanda was weird in that meeting. It was a very negative meeting, and she's trying to be positive. Or I know her strategy of how she was trying to connect with that person and why we took so long to talk about backgrounds and people and lives, because she needed to figure that out to help pull this person down the pathway of where we were going. And so I think it's made us better communicators with each other by being on that journey.

Jon Clifton:
[26:46] When you first saw the results of everyone on your team, was there anything that really surprised you about what their results were?

Chanda Chacón:
[26:54] You know, in healthcare, I hadn't really thought about this before we'd seen that, we all have Responsibility in our top 10. And it makes sense in healthcare because we're responsible for people's lives, right? It feels heavy. So that was interesting to see that. The strength that for me has been the most powerful to understand is Harmony.

Jon Clifton:
[27:19] Why?

Chanda Chacón:
[27:20] Because it is one of my lowest. And I have people on my senior team that have Harmony as in their top five. And understanding that and knowing that, I can see it so much clearer when the room or the topic is disruptive and people are, they are the most uncomfortable and I can see it. And I pay a lot of attention to body language in a room. And that's so much more helpful for me to make them not feel so unsettled because I need their voice. I need their opinion. And so that Harmony for me is it is the one that I'm like, oh, because it's so low on mine. So I normally, I try to bring those people with me for intense meetings because they kind of always help to amp it down a little bit when I kind of amp everything up.

Jon Clifton:
[28:09] And speaking of, you know, how people are doing within a room, everyone on your team, number two, you have Arranger. How do you use Arranger in healthcare?

Chanda Chacón:
[28:20] Our work is so complicated. And it's patients experience us on a continuum. And we have probably one of the most interesting business models for any business. And so it can get really, really complicated. And for me, Arranger helps me step back and say, are we making it more complicated than it needs to be? How do we find the most direct path, the simplest way to do this, rather than trying to make it harder? I mean, healthcare is hard already.

And so Arranger for me helps me kind of in all of this morass that we deal with. How do you organize things in a way to get to the outcome? And so I find that pretty exciting to see that because I can always see beyond, like, what does five years from now look like? That's my most favorite thing to do is like, gosh, what is that? And it's possible. So how do we organize ourselves to do that in the quickest, easiest way? Because my Achiever strength, like, really wants me to go quick. Like, I want to go fast. And I feel like we're in the kind of business that I'm not going to tell a family that we didn't do what we knew we should do because it was hard. Like, we are going to go quick, and we're going to learn by doing that. And so for me, the Arranger part of my strength helps me kind of find the path in the midst of all those pieces and organize us in a way that isn't disruptive to the team, but also helps us simplify how we do work in a complicated environment.

Jon Clifton:
[30:03] You mentioned Achiever, your number one. I have Achiever as well. And of course, one of the things that makes our colleagues want to go insane about us is because we work all the time. How do you confront that so that you don't feel like you're pushing your colleagues too hard?

Chanda Chacón:
[30:20] That has absolutely been one of my derailers. And how do you, or my basement things of how do you, how do you work like that and tell other people it's okay to have work-life integration? How do you do that? Because people watch what you do as a leader and your actions often are much louder than what you say. And so I have been really thoughtful about that because I have built my life to be able to lean in hard at work because I'm so passionate about it. So I made decisions early in my career to intentionally design my life in a way that I can do that. I can work as much as I want, whenever I want, on weekends, and it's fine, my life supports that.

I've had to explain it that way to people to say, not everyone is like me. And if a lot of me is too much, more than one of me might be too much in a room, I need people who can balance that out and that don't work the same way that I do because that's what makes us great as a team because I can't be here 24 hours a day.

I have more flexibility in what I do, but we have to look together as a team and say, how do we do this together and not just as an individual? And so it does, it can make people, I think, kind of crazy because I can be at rounds at 10:30 at night or here at 7 a.m. But I want people who have kids that they have to take to school in the morning, who have family members they care for and have to leave early because that's what makes us different as a team. We care for patients like that. And I want us to have all those perspectives. So I'm just very upfront about it with people is, you know, if I send you a text at some crazy time, I don't expect you to reply. And I did this in a, when I started here new at Children's Nebraska, I wrote out all these questions that if I was getting a new boss, I'd want to know, like the real questions. What do you look like when you're stressed? What are your signals? How would I know that? Like, do you text at weird times? Do you send emails? Should I answer them? And so I just answered it for everybody. And I had people who worked with me in Arkansas read it to make sure I was not lying.

And they gave me a lot of feedback. And so I handed that to people and I said, here's what I would want to know. And so read this and ask me, like, tell me if you have questions. So that for me, being open about it was helpful. And I do think that people can be a CEO and be different from me. You don't have to have Achiever as your number one strength to be the CEO. It's just how I lead. And I'm so conscious of it. And ask people to tell me to back off. Like I used to tell my boss at a previous job when I was an operator and she had been an operator, like as a COO, and when she would get stressed, she'd become an operator. And I'd look at her and I'm like, can you please go to the capital and save Medicaid? Go do that. Go be strategic. I am doing this. And so I told my team here, if I'm in your business, it is because I'm stressed. I'm going to what I know really well. Please tell me to go to Lincoln and save Medicaid. So I intentionally give people the language that will trigger me to go, ugh, and then I apologize. Sorry I'm in your business. I'm just stressed about something else. And that openness and being connected with them and freely giving that and recognizing it and they know it has made it so much easier to get stuff done.

Jon Clifton:
[34:14] Now, in your leadership, here as CEO, which started in the fall of 2020, you've taken on some very big challenges. Like, for example, the large hole that's outside. I don't know if sledgehammer is one of your top five strengths, but what is it that inspires something that big so soon?

Chanda Chacón:
[34:37] Because kids need it. I think in healthcare, we're a little late in addressing mental health in children. COVID accelerated it so quickly. And I can't imagine being a family member, a parent, and not having a place to take my child and not knowing where to go and showing up to an emergency department because I don't know what else to do. And for me, it was a we have to. And we have to figure it out. And I was willing when I got here to figure it out in almost any way. And so I just started talking to people.

Anyone who was doing anything that impacted pediatric behavioral and mental health, I talked to them. I talked to donors. I talked to people in the work already. I talked to nonprofits and said, how could we work together? We shouldn't compete on pediatric mental health. That's horrible. Why would we do that? It helps all of us if we take care of our kids. It helps us as a community, as a state to do that. And so it was powerful when you just start talking that way and saying, we're in a competitive business and we're not going to compete. And if you want to compete, you can't be at my table because I want to go fast and I want to make a difference on the whole continuum, not just in one piece. And so we pulled together an unbelievable group of people who said, okay, I'm in. And it was this community in Omaha and the greater Omaha area just leaned in so quickly to say, what can we do to solve this? And thank goodness I'd been in several different pediatric organizations where I had seen some of the journey and I could say, okay, here's who we should talk to, and here's what we could do different that we hadn't done well in other places, and how could we make this better than what we'd seen? Not the same thing, but better than that.

And I was so impressed by leaders in this community leaning in. And so when we started the journey, I don't know that we imagined what we will be able to open here. We are building something that is going to just transform how we care for kids. And I think, like, what's that impact going to have 10 years from now, 15 years from now? And that, for me, is why we do this. Everything we do is big, right? it's always big. We're impacting kids' health. So it's never for me how big it is. It's let's go. Like, let's go. And if we start now, we have a chance of finishing it. But if we don't make a decision, we're making one. And I don't like to be on that side. I want to be in it. There's that Teddy Roosevelt quote of being in the arena. I'm always in the arena because that for me is where you connect with people. It's where you connect organizations. It's where you find new possibilities. And it's, I mean, to me, it's the best part of leading is when you're standing next to someone saying, we got this. Let's go do something big. So I am so proud of that work. And I never would have imagined when I started in September of 2020 that we would be doing what we're doing now. And that I think is even cooler. We're doing better than what I thought we would do.

Jon Clifton:
[38:07] Have you always been able to make a decision, even if it's the unpopular decision, or was that something that you had to grow into?

Chanda Chacón:
[38:16] I think I've probably always been able to make it, only because my dad is a really strong leader. He's an entrepreneur, and I watched him and knew that you don't go into leadership to be popular. You go into leadership to do the right thing, even when it's hard. And I knew getting into leadership would be hard, but my passion for what I was doing is so much stronger than the hard, right? It's where we're going and the outcome to me is like we have to do this. Like it's not about should we, we have to. And so I kind of knew when I got into leadership that, It wasn't about everybody liking me. And so I don't like making decisions that everyone isn't like, wow, that's a great decision. But someone has to make those decisions. And depending on the seat you're in, you have to make bigger decisions that make more people upset. But I think it's understanding the why when I'm doing it. If I can understand the why, then I can make a decision about that. If the why doesn't make sense to me, I seek out the why before I'll make a big decision.

Jon Clifton:
[39:30] One big decision that you made was change the name of the organization. What of your strengths brought that out, and why did you feel like that was an important thing to do?

Chanda Chacón:
[39:42] For me, I mean, it really was about, I think, the Communication and probably in the Woo a little bit, too, because I want people to know what our team is doing here. Like, that is so important to me. And I want families to know that right in your backyard, you have this amazing organization, and our name didn't tell people where we were. So we were doing all these amazing things across the country and getting great recognition for research and education and great operations and innovation. And it's been unbelievable. And I'm like, how does anyone know it's us? How do they know we're in Nebraska?

And so for me, just having been in pediatric healthcare for so long, I'm like, let's make it easy for people to know where we are. Where do you find us if you want to know about this innovative work that we're doing or if you want to be a part of a research project or if you want to be a student here and spend your career at Children's Nebraska? They have to know we're in Nebraska. And so, this was probably, I've been a part of name changes before, this was one of the most thoughtful, well-planned, seamless name changes I've ever seen. And it absolutely was not because it was me making all the decisions. It was because we have very smart people that we intentionally put in positions who know how to do this work. And I got out of their way.

And I will tell you the thing I'm probably the most proud of is we announced this to our team on our 75th birthday, which was also part of a very smart guy who leads our marketing PR and comm team who said, Chanda, we have to do this on a day that's meaningful. We can't just like change it on a Tuesday. Like we have to do it on a day that makes sense where people remember. And so our 75th anniversary has meaning. We are different than we were 75 years ago, and there's a story about why this matters now. And I thought that was the why. I mean, it was so clear about the work we do. We announced it to the team at about 8:30 in the morning and literally there was a crane at 84th and Dodge who within 30 minutes placed the first sign that said Children's Nebraska. And I'm like, oh, just drop the mic. Like, we can all go home. That was amazing. I mean, it was like your brand in action, right? Where we thoughtfully change things in a kind of a weird market where healthcare isn't super stable.

We knew that it would create stability for the families we serve, for our team, if they could go out and tell about the amazing things we're doing here, and people could find us. And so it was so powerful because the why made so much sense. We care for people and patients from almost all over the United States come here for different programs we have and we're doing unbelievable research and academic and training people. And it made so much sense and so it was I mean the team would be like, Chanda was not easy but it felt easy. I mean we made it look seamless to the community and I've had business leaders come up to me and say you know how did you do that? And I'm like we hired the right people and we got out of their way and the team came up with this plan. And one gentleman said we've been thinking about changing our brand. And when we saw how seamless yours went and how elegant it was, it made us go back to the table to do ours different. And I was like, what a great compliment is that? So I ran back here and told the leader of our marketing PR and comm, I was like, listen to this compliment you got. It's amazing. I'm so proud of the work we did.

Jon Clifton:
[43:33] But a few things that you've said, so that decision inspired others because it went so well. When you talked about the new Center for Mental Health, even though it was potentially an unpopular decision or some of the unpopular decisions that you've been forced to make, you did it because it was the right thing to do and that you often lead with what's the purpose behind it? Why is it that we're doing this? Everything that you've said is around mission and purpose. But right now, when we look at our national metrics on mission and purpose, they're in decline across the board. What advice would you have for leaders all over the country, all over the world to make sure that they're leading with mission and purpose and making people at every organization actually feel like they're a part of that mission and purpose?

Chanda Chacón:
[44:18] I think it's knowing your own why, like why you're leading, why are you in the industry you're in. If you believe it, others will too. When I talk about the story of why I'm in healthcare and how you could talk to my mom today and she would start crying and you'd think she had a kid in the hospital today because the memories are so powerful, people connect with that. And every industry has a story. Every person who's in leadership has a why they're doing it. And I challenge people, if you don't have a why, why are you doing it?

Like why would you do that? This is hard work. So I think when you can communicate and when you understand your own why and you can communicate it to others, that's just really powerful. People can connect with that. It's a story, right? People remember it. People don't always remember where I went to school or, you know, where I worked. They always remember the story I tell them about being in healthcare as a kid. They always remember that. That's what sticks for people. And I think making things personal and being authentic about who you are and being vulnerable about your why, that's powerful. No matter what industry you're in, people want to work for leaders like that. That's the kind of leader I want to work for. And we're creating an organization here at Children's Nebraska that's the one we've all wanted to work at. And that for me is so amazing to say to the leaders, what are the things you've learned about other organizations that you want to do different here, that you want to be unique and be able to say to people, we have built something unlike anything we've ever seen. Gosh, who doesn't want to work at that place? Like that's where I want to work. And so that for me, that connection and that knowing your personal why, I think is always inspiring to people.

Jon Clifton:
[46:19] And when you declare a big mission like tackling the mental health crisis that not just Nebraska's facing, but the whole country is facing, what are the markers that you use for success?

Chanda Chacón:
[46:29] I hope that this facility never has to get bigger. That we do so great getting upstream and helping children early in the diagnosis of a mental health issue or depression or anxiety so early that they never need to come here because this will be the highest end care, the most acute care, we can provide will be in this facility. It's the full spectrum of care, but it will be the highest acuity. I want that to be as few kids as possible, that we are doing such amazing work across the whole state, getting so far upstream that we're helping kids before they need us. And that isn't just going to be Children's Nebraska in that game. It's going to be working with partners. It's going to be working with other nonprofits, other healthcare providers. We've started that work now, and it is going to take all of us to do that. And those partnerships are what's the most powerful. Because 80% of healthcare happens outside the walls of a healthcare organization.

I mean, that's a lot of healthcare happening outside of this facility in the hospital. The only way you solve that is by working with partners who are already there to say, you're doing this great. How do we accelerate? How do we go faster? So that to me will be what success looks like when we say, gosh, we don't need this unit. We can close one of the units because we don't have enough kids to fill it. I mean, how amazing is that? I want to be here for the kids that need us, but I want to make sure we can get far enough upstream that if you don't need us, you don't have to come.

Jon Clifton:
[48:15] Now, one of the surveys that Gallup does is looking at burnout across professions. And the profession that ranks number two on this list are nurses. What advice would you have for healthcare facilities, practitioners, leaders across the entire country to help confront that crisis?

Chanda Chacón:
[48:36] If someone tells you they're burnt out, you've already failed. Because they're already burnt out. Like, how do you get ahead of that? How do you take care of people before they get to the end, where they're like, I have to step out? And that for me, and I'm just lucky to have a team of people that also believe this, that investing in our people is the best thing we can do because buildings don't take care of patients.

Equipment doesn't take care of patients, people do. And so if we take the very best care of our people, then they use all those amazing tools we have to take great care of patients. And so as an organization, I can't solely be in charge of somebody's wellbeing and their wellness. It has to be a dual effort, but I can make sure as an organization that as an employee you have all of the levers to pull in how you define your wellness and that it's not just about you waiting to reach out to it, that we reach out to you, and that we provide those tools. And then we also provide an environment that you want to show up at every day, which is where we actually care about you as an individual. So when I started at Children's Nebraska, I was very deliberate with my language. Because for me, people are so important to what we do. It is the only way we accomplish our mission. I started here and I said, I want to be in an organization that puts people first.

Not a person first, but people, the team, the patients and families we care for, the people. And we started deliberately talking about that and saying, providing this benefit or doing this cooking class online or doing yoga or having a thrive program that reaches out to teams who've been in a stressful situation with a patient or a family or a team member. Those are all the things that describe how we're going to live in a people-first environment. And we just started languaging that and talking. It was like two years of a journey of, here's all the things we're doing to invest in you because you matter. And it's more than salary and benefits and money. It's the other things. People stay because they have a best friend at work, because they're connected to their boss.

They leave for salary all the time. And that only lasts a little bit. So you have to be in the game, right? You have to be competitive. But it's all the other things that make people want to stay at an organization. And so we intentionally did that work. And then we said, okay, what are our, is it working, right? So we took in two years our employee engagement from the 50th percentile to the 89th percentile. Our provider engagement when I got here was like at the first percentile. I mean, I had to ask, like, I mean, that's bad, right? That's at that end of the scale bad. We're now in the 80th percentile because we did what we said we were going to do and invested in people and cared about people.

And then this year, we named it as our culture. We said we are a people-first culture here. That is what it should feel like when you're walking around the halls, is that we put people first. And by doing the journey before we named it people can feel it, they know it now that that's who we are and it's gonna be a constant journey because the world changes, people change and we're gonna have to look at how we meet the needs of our team members. But for me it's the most gosh it's the most rewarding thing about being a leader is being able to take care of the people that are in your charge and say, it's my job to be able to invest in you and take care of you and have you be the best person here because you're caring for a family like mine. And that little girl needs someone to care about them. That family does. And I mean, I think about that and it makes me emotional because the work we do is challenging and we have to take care of the people that are doing that work.

Jon Clifton:
[52:51] Chanda, you mentioned four words, which were best friend at work. And of the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of questions that Gallup has posed to the world, that one is one of the most controversial. But you just mentioned that it's an important aspect at work here. Why?

Chanda Chacón:
[53:11] Because our work is personal, and it's hard. And having a connection to someone who you can walk up to and say, this is hard, and I am stressed out, and be real with who you know understands your work, I think is so powerful. In healthcare, we do work a lot, and we can't predict how many patients are showing up today. They just all show up at the same time. And so there is a level of stress that you have because you have to be agile all the time, and having the connection of someone you know understands you that you can talk to and be authentic with to me is a reason you show up every day because you don't want to let your friend down.

Jon Clifton:
[54:00] Chanda, thank you for telling your strengths story and thanks for everything that you're doing for the state of Nebraska.

Chanda Chacón:
[54:05] Thank you. It's an honor.

Transcript autogenerated using AI.