Bred To Lead | With Dr. Jake Tayler Jacobs
Ep 028: 90 Days to Make or Break: A $60M Leadership Collapse
Mon, 27 Jan 2025
90 Days to Make or Break: A $60M Leadership Collapse In March 2014, North Adams Regional Hospital shut its doors with just three days' notice, leaving 37,000 residents without healthcare and hundreds jobless. In this gripping episode, Dr. Jake Tayler Jacobs breaks down how critical mistakes in the first 90 days of leadership set the stage for a $60 million collapse. You'll discover: ✓ The fatal first moves that doom new leaders ✓ How to build credibility when stakes are highest ✓ Why most leaders misread organizational reality ✓ The hidden traps in the first 90 days Perfect for: New leaders stepping into critical roles Organizations managing leadership transitions Executives facing turnaround situations Anyone responsible for leading change Through this real-world leadership autopsy, learn the crucial moves that make or break your leadership legacy in the first 90 days. 🎯 Ready to master your leadership transitions? Get the blueprint: Grab 'Bred to Lead' on Amazon Join the community: Visit bredtolead.com Connect: Follow Dr. Jake Tayler Jacobs on LinkedIn Share your journey: Rate us on Apple Podcasts Don't let your first moves be your last. Learn from others' fatal mistakes. #LeadershipTransition #OrganizationalChange #CaseStudy #BredToLead
Chapter 1: What critical mistakes can doom new leaders?
It's packed with strategies to elevate your leadership game. Got questions or ideas for the show? Visit us at breadtolead.com. And if you're finding value here, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple podcast. Your support helps us reach more leaders. Now let's dive in and continue breeding excellence and leadership. Today's episode awaits. Bridge Builders.
Bridge builders, bridge builders, bridge builders. If you are new to the show, everyone that's a part of this community is a bridge builder because in some form or fashion, you're taking somebody from where they are to where they could be. And typically, if you're in leadership, you're typically leading multiple different generations at the same time. So in order for you to communicate.
With different generations, you first yourself must be a bridge builder, somebody who can be a bridge, build bridges of communication that can allow for you to get to those steps. So if you're new to this podcast, it is a podcast. The whole purpose of this podcast is to make sure you're getting actionable steps.
If you're looking for interviews and different type of things, there are plenty of amazing shows on podcast platforms all throughout the world. that interview. This podcast is solely for the leaders that want to learn, that want to grow, that want to develop and need information that they can take, they can apply, and they can move forward. One of the newest things that we added to the podcast
cast because we're always just tweaking it and touching it up just depending on what your feedback is so if you have feedback go to bread to lead.com leave a comment on what you want us to talk about um or information that you want us to share on the show or follow me on linkedin at jake taylor jacobs on linkedin and it's jake taylor jacobs j-a-k-e-t-a-y-l-e-r j-a-c-o-b-s on instagram
For those of you that are following on YouTube, we're trying to build our YouTube platform kind of from scratch, although we have subscribers, which is going to be a fun thing in itself. I'm excited about that. So today, Bridge Builders, we are diving into something that can make or break a leader's success. And it's the first days in a new role.
And to illustrate just how critical this period is, I want to share with you a powerful case study that shows exactly what happens when leaders get this wrong. In March 2014, North Adams Regional Hospital in Massachusetts abruptly closed its doors. With just three days notice, 37,000 residents lost access to their local hospital. Employees lost jobs. The community lost its healthcare lifeline.
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Chapter 2: How did a $60M collapse happen in 90 days?
And this wasn't just a business failure. It was a leadership failure that began in those first crucial 90 days. What makes this story so important for every leader is that it wasn't inevitable. The warning signs were there. The opportunities to change course were there. But a series of critical mistakes in the leadership transition period set the stage for failure.
The episode that we're going to share today will explore how this case study illuminates the four crucial elements of leadership transitions and provide practical strategies for success. in new leadership roles. So for some of you that are newer to the podcast, I just want to let you know, again, um, we're always kind of changing and adapting what we do with this podcast.
And the reason why we're changing and adapting what we do with this podcast is simply because, um, it's simply because we want to continue to communicate with you. So if you have information that you want to share with us, go to bread to lead.com, leave a comment. Um, uh, information or, or case study that you want us to look into and apply our principles to it.
If you have a case study at your facility that you want me to break down dealing with leadership organization operations, please, I will implore you to send that information to bread to lead.com. And then the second thing is if you have specific clinical information, things that you want us to address, we're starting a new podcast called SPD 911.
It's really helping the period of anything in surgical services from OR down to surgical instruments is helping us be able to get together. So let's break this down. What happened at North Adams Regional Hospital? Because it reveals something crucial about leadership transitions. When the new leadership team took over, they made a huge mistake that I see repeated across industries.
they misjudge the reality of their situations. Typically, when this happens, everything begins to shift. So when this new leadership took leadership of North Adams Regional Hospital, there were signs, but the mistake happened when they misjudged the reality of their situation.
And so many leaders and business owners typically misjudge how long it takes to actually make something stick and make it great. It's because we're in this nuance of new information all the time that's telling you in 90 days you can turn it around. Your last opportunity you did it so you can do it again. Just because you did it before doesn't mean you can do it again. This isn't that song.
If he did it before, he'll do it again. Yeah. Same God right now. Same God back then. This ain't that situation. If you did it before, if you did it just off sure effort and momentum and luck, It's hard for you to reverse engineer and create a success story in every opportunity that you face.
And so what happened with these leaders with this case study is that they believe that just because they did it before at another hospital, that it meant that they can do the same thing at this new hospital without considering the environment or the space that the hospital was in. So so so the new executives looked at the hospital challenges through lens of their past experiences.
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Chapter 3: What are the three levels of reality assessment?
So you have to create this level of engagement amongst your peers, your team and your stakeholders that can ensure that when you're moving the organization forward, you have an ecosystem or a circle of people who trust you. to get a job done, to strategize the job, to get it done, to get the result and bring it back to them because they know that you're a winner.
And then the third thing, when it comes to the trust triangle, the first part of the trust triangle was transparency. The bottom was engagement. The other bottom are early wins. But here's the key to early wins. They need to be meaningful to your upline. You coming into a department saying, man, I got rid of this and we did that. We we stabilize the instruments or we streamline operations.
If your stakeholders, your upline, if that wasn't their main concern, it could be a win for you, but not a win for them. So you need to find out what's meaningful for your stakeholders, your upline, your senior leadership or even your customer, who your customer would be in that space. and getting them a win that they find valuable.
The second thing in early wins, achievable with current resources. See, a lot of leaders like to create, a lot of leaders like to complain and want to create early wins with resources that are not available. Meaning you come into a hospital, you come into an organization like, if we just had this, this, this, this, and this, we can do it better, but we don't. Can you fix it?
If we had this much staff and we we don't. Can you still fix it? If we can just get a budgeted a half a million dollars more. If we if we don't. Can you still fix it? The question is, can you turn around the organization or start getting early wins with the current resources, staff and things now? That's all they want to know.
And then the third thing when it comes to early wins, is it aligned with the long term needs? So when I'm coming in as a leader, I want to know what are the long term wins for the organization? What are what's meaningful to our current leadership? What do they see as something powerful? Cutting costs, getting more efficient, operational work, a workflow optimization.
OK, if those are my three things, I'm not going to come talk to them about. Anything else but those three things. And at North Adams, the leadership focused on cost cutting as their early wins. But these weren't wins at all. They were just delays of the inevitable because they weren't paired with a strategy for future sustainability.
The number one thing I see hospital executives make and many executives in every industry, actually, the first thing they do is go cut costs with staff. If your current staff that you believe is overstaffed is inefficient. What do you think your organization is going to do when they feel understaffed?
A lot of time was in front of you to cut costs isn't necessarily the primary move we should be making. But it's easy to say, well, the largest resource here. It's human resource. So let me cut our staff by 20 percent and then tell everybody to work more. And that's that should be greater cutting costs. No, no, no, no, no. Cutting costs also means cutting. Down on errors.
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Chapter 4: What is the trust triangle and why is it important?
You're never going to fix the root. It's always going to seem like you can't catch up. So the best thing is to get to the thing that nobody wants to address, which is the root. Once you fix the root, it immediately fix the fruit. The next thing is how you allocate your time. I'm allocating my time as a leader in the areas that matter most.
If I'm an aspiring leader, I want to I want to allocate my time, my extra time to helping my leader in areas that they want to focus on. what you celebrate and what you connect correct. You have to have energy management on what's going to make you mad and what's going to make you happy. So you're not always up and down.
And at North Adams, the leadership cadence created anxiety instead of confidence. Their irregular communication, reactive decision making and crisis focused energy spread fear throughout the organization. Spread fear. Spread fear. We'll get back to you after this commercial. Bridge Builders, developing transformational leaders is crucial for the future of healthcare.
At Sims Healthcare Solutions, we offer comprehensive leadership development programs designed specifically for healthcare professionals. From executive coaching to immersive workshops, we can help you cultivate the transformational leadership skills your organization needs to thrive in today's complex healthcare landscape.
Visit SipsHealthcare.com to explore our leadership development offerings and take the first steps toward transforming your organization. Hey, what's going on, guys? Hey, what's going on, you all? Listen, welcome back to the show After Commercial. Now, let me share the specific strategies that successful leaders use in their first 90 days. Okay. So we're going in that first 90 days.
That's our learning and assessing. So I gave you the frameworks of learning and assessing the deep diagnostic of the organization, stakeholder mapping and engagement, cultural and capability assessment. That's what we're focused on in that first 90 days. We're really trying to figure out what the cadence of the organization is and then start slowly just shifting it to your tick.
You shift it immediately, it messes up everything. But if you shift it slowly, they get consumed in it. Perfect example is the example of the frog. You put a frog in boiling water that's already boiling, it'll pop and jump right back out. But if you set the frog in room temperature water that it's used to and then slowly begin to heat up the water, it begins to be what?
Comfortable in the water and it eventually burn up. Same thing it goes with when you're in the shower. During that water, it's a little warm, but you stay in it longer, your body adjusts. You start to slowly raise the temperature until it gets too hot. And then there's death. Like ladies always like to have their water on scorching hot. I don't understand that.
The second 30 days, you're going to focus on strategy and alignment. Vision and direction. Setting. Team alignment. Quick win identification execution. And then the final 30 days is momentum and sustainability, system and process refinement, capability building, long term planning, initiation. Those are how I'm breaking down my first 90 days. I'm boom, I'm boom, I'm boom.
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Chapter 5: How can leaders create early wins?
So when I'm looking at the assessment of that first 30 days, quick wins, identify problems that can be solved quickly, find opportunities for immediate impact, spot low hanging fruit. And that builds credibility. You want to do what my coaches say in basketball. Just put the ball in the hole, get a layup, get a free throw.
You just need to see the ball go in to build that confidence to say, OK, I'm ready. But in this crucial phase, you're not just gathering information, you're building relationships and credibility through how you gather it. The questions you ask, the people you talk to, the way that you listen, it all sends signals about your leadership style. The second 30 days is strategy and alignment.
This is when you start making your moves. You set directions, articulate your understanding of the current reality, share your vision for the future, define the path forward. Then you build alignment, create a shared ownership of the challenges. Once you find it, you get everyone involved in creating the change. When they feel involved in creating a change, change happens faster.
When they feel like you're another leader coming in, trying to tell them what to do, you're going to be in and out three years and they're not going to where you're the staff becomes like bad students. This teacher is not going to make it. This sub ain't going to be here long. So we're going to do whatever we got to do to get you out of here and get out of here.
You want to develop that in a collective solution, establish your priorities. See, when you build from frameworks, you can teach your team how to use the frameworks to come up with the right answer. But if you're only coming up with an answer and not teaching them how to think as a leader, you are crippling your organization. My biggest function is always in frameworks.
If you can make your decisions in this framework, it'll be easier for us to be on the same page and communicate a result. But if I'm just asking you, hey, do this, do this, do this. And I'll say, OK, give me a result. They can't regurgitate. One of your best the best skills or the best job responsibilities that you have as a leader is the art of developing leaders.
Your job in true leadership is people management, not task management. So I want to learn how to manage people and get us to collectively move together. You may say, Dr. Jake, I don't have a team right now. I'm kind of like a team lead, but I don't really have a team. How can I do this? You practice collective solutions before you manage people. And if you have.
If you need somebody to explain to you how to do that. Maybe you're not the leader that you think that you are. You want to establish those clear priorities. Third. With those quick wins, don't forget. You want to implement solutions to identify problems, not problems that you found. Demonstrate progress, build confidence, your leadership.
Listen, I'm always an advocate of marketing and branding the changes that you're making. Too many leaders are quiet with the changes that they're making and mad that people don't recognize them. Everyone is inundated in their world, their department, their space. If you don't market and brand and sell yourself and the changes that you're making, nobody's going to know the changes are occurring.
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Chapter 6: What is balance urgency in leadership transitions?
Not just the surface levels issues, but the root causes of problems and the real capabilities of your team. Have you built true genuine credibility, not just through your decisions, but through how you've made them and how you've engaged with the stakeholders? Have you created meaningful impact?
Not just quick fixes, but sustainable improvements that set the foundation for future success, even if you were to leave abruptly. And have you established the right tone and pace, not just for immediate results, but for long-term cultural health and organizational success? Let me leave you with something crucial about leadership transition. The first 90 days isn't just about what you do.
It's about who you become to the organization. Every decision, every interaction, every response shapes not just your immediate results, but your long term ability to lead effectively. Think about North Regional Hospital. Their closure didn't just happen on that day in March 2014.
It happened through a series of decisions or lack of decisions that started in those critical first days of new leadership. The community didn't just lose access to health care overnight. They lost it through a gradual erosion of trust, capability and sustainability. And here are five commitments I want every leader listening to me right now to make. The first commitment. The truth commitment.
Commitment to seeing and speaking the truth about your organization's reality, not just the comfortable truths, but the difficult ones that need to be addressed. Number two, the people's commitment. Commitment to engaging with your people, not just managing them, understanding their perspectives, leveraging their insights and building their capabilities.
Number three, future commitment, commitment to building for the long term, not just solving immediate problems. Every decision should serve both present and the future. Number four, the learning commitment. Commitment to being a learner first, then a leader. Your first 90 days are as much about understanding as they are about acting. And five, the legacy commitment.
Commit to building something that lasts. Your decisions in these 90 days will echo long after you make them. And listen, the 90 days isn't just you being new to this space. The 90 days is any time you decide that you want to create change and wherever you are to remember bridge builders.
Your first 90 days of creating change or being new into a space to create change sets the trajectory for everything that follows. The habits you form, the relationships you build, the tone you set. These create the foundations for your entire leadership tenure. This is Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs signing off. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Bread to Lead.
Until next time, keep leading, keep building and keep breeding excellence in everything you do. Remember, Bridge Builders, your first 90 days aren't just about you making your mark. They're about you creating the conditions for lasting success. Make them count. Listen, leadership. This is what we do here. If you truly find value in what we do, please share it. Please like it. Please comment.
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