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leadership
Start with "Why"
We begin every Accelerate interview by asking about a person’s intrinsic motivation to work in health care, lead a team, or make a change. In other words, we always start with “why.”

An idea worth spreading

Since launching Accelerate last fall, we have learned that talking more about (and listening to) what motivates us as a community reduces the sense of chaos and isolation common in modern health care. We (like many of you) have been influenced by the ideas of Simon Sinek, whose book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action has become incredibly popular. Orthopaedics administrator Ryan VanderWerff and payment innovation manager Zac Watne mentioned Simon Sinek in their comments in a previous post and we decided to bring it to the surface. At its heart, the idea is simple: inspiration comes from shared purpose.

In health care, our shared purpose is clear. Utah’s Chief Medical Quality Officer Dr. Bob Pendleton describes his own ‘why.’

“For me, tying it back to the patient makes it easier…We are always saying transformation in healthcare is SO HARD. We should be saying that it is SO EASY. There is not a better true north than making it possible for someone to live a better life with better health.”

The Golden Circle

If you haven’t seen it before, we—and over 33 million other viewers—encourage you to take the time to watch it. Great design is simple, and it doesn’t get much simpler than this.

No time for a TED Talk? There's a SlideShare for that.

Contributor

Mari Ransco

Senior Director of Patient Experience and Accelerate, University of Utah Health

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