Good morning. Grace Wolf, Vice President of crisis services
now, Mr. Hunter, I've already spoken with you and giving you your instructions. Did you have any questions before we started writing? Mr. Sims, floor is yours.
Okay? What methods have you used to motivate your staff in the past, and how would you foster teamwork within the entire organization? Thank you for having me, and thank you for the opportunity to present today and ask answer any questions you have. So I want to start by saying that I rely a lot on my years of experience as a manager and an executive and my formal training in human resource management, so I try to reach people where they are and look for their strengths and look for where we can promote people's strengths and use them so that it will forward the agenda of the organization. I always say we should have a win, win win approach when we're doing business and when we're interacting for the consumers that we're serving. So there should be a win for the employee, a win for the consumer, which becomes a win for the organization. So encouraging people to take advantage of any staff development opportunities we have, I believe that the more confident they are with training that they can do the job, then that will encourage them. When they see that the organization is promoting them and their individual success, they can begin to see themselves in the collective of the organization. And I really try very hard to make sure we don't have an us versus them scenario. A lot of times, when employees are disgruntled, they begin to refer to the management as them, and they Well, we don't want that. It should always be us. When they see the organization in in the in the perception of the people we serve, they should see themselves. When they see us on the news and stories, they should see themselves. They should see that the work that we are doing collectively is what gets us over the hump. I think that when we don't include everybody, when we don't make a conscious decision to be inclusive with everybody. That's when you get fragmented, people doing their own thing, and you lose efficiencies, and then you got turnover, which is very expensive. So making a purposeful effort to make sure that we recognize people and encouraging them for the individual best when we're doing something innovative in the organization, I like to remind them that when we accomplish that particular task, that's a resume builder. So make sure you update your resume and send a new resume to the HR department so that you can have that on on your resume, because now you've taken another step forward, even though you're with the same organization, so making sure we do a conscious job of making people feel a part of is important for building them up and making sure that we have A very strong human resource. Thank you.
Do apologize hours for Miss. We do have a panelist joining us virtually. Ms. McGee,
good morning. Angel. McGee, data analyst on the quality improvement team. My question for you is, what is something that you hope to see change within the organization, and why?
I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Well, can you repeat the question?
I'm sorry. Hear me now,
I think so. Okay,
I said, What is something that you hope to see change within the organization, and why? I'm
going to repeat the question so you make sure I got it right. Okay, you want me to name something that I believe should be changed in the organization. And why? Yes? Okay, in the 20 years of experience that I've had in this network, navigating this network, I have been a part of an organization that opened its doors initially with a cardboard box as the front desk because we were that eager to serve. I think that when I step into this role, I will be looking for that same passion. I will be looking for that same tenacity. I would be looking for people who are getting the vision, so that we can see who does not get the vision. We can see who has not bought into where the organization is trying to go. When you think about the organization and the industry that we're in and where it's leading us on best practices and what's going to be the most effective for the people that we're serving. You can't look at that and not see CCBHC. You can't look at that and not see care to the juveniles in our in our communities. You cannot approach that without thinking that we can do this in a silo when we know there's opportunity to work with the commercial insurances. So I would like to see everybody get the vision and make sure that we are doing what it takes to educate everybody in the company, so that everybody knows this is what we are doing. And it's not they're doing that over there, or the administration is doing that up there. It's everybody. So we don't have a process where that is intuitive, and we don't have a process where that is second nature or part of our corporate culture. That's what I would be trying to change, is to make sure that when you interact with anybody at D win, then they feel like we are D win and not them over there and us over here.
Thank you. Applause. Good
morning again when major decisions are at stake, how do you handle disagreements or conflicts within your team?
I think it's most important when we are collaborating, that everybody feels like they have a voice without persecution. There's no wrong answer when you are collaborating, it's just different, and all of us bring our differences to the table together, or all of us bringing our differences to the table together is where we gain our most strength. So the fact that we are diverse, the fact that we can sit in a room and bounce ideas off of each other, and we can begin to massage it, and we can begin to change it, and we can be again to say, not that way, but let's tweak it a little bit. Here is a strength that we should cultivate, and we should make sure that people feel like, Hey, you didn't get your way, if you will, this time, but your input was valuable. Never make somebody feel ostracized, never make them feel stigmatized, because if only the people at the at the table are giving us ideas, we're going to run out of ideas. We need to make sure that every person in the organization feels like their voice counts, that their voice is as valuable as the voice next to them. And then we can resolve conflict amicably, because when we leave a meeting and we leave a topic even though it didn't go your way, then we can still be on the same page. So I've gone to many meetings and said, Okay, I think we should do it a green wall. And somebody says, nope, yellow. When I leave that meeting, somebody says, What color are the walls gonna be? I'm like, we're gonna do yellow, and I never talk about the fact that I wanted some other color, because we've already done that. We've already massaged it, we've already done the collaboration back and forth. And now it's time to have a united front, and people should be very comfortable in having that united front. And more importantly, the people that we are leading should have confidence in us, that we have that same ability too, when we need to change, when we need to do something different, when we need to not do it the way we've always done it and be open to that as well. And so I think that helps us with resolving conflict, because we can be very proactive with it if we set the right corporate culture.
Thank you. What do you believe should be the main goals of D win over the next year?
When I when I talk, when I think about navigating this network, and I think about the last 20 years of where we've evolved to, when I think about how covid was supposedly the eye opener for the world. It was not the eye opener for D win. It was not the eye opener for the providers that work within our network, it was an eye opener for people who didn't know. So we got to make sure that we close those gaps of ignorance as a priority. I think that we need to make sure that we take advantage of the CCBHC opportunity in front of us, because it's going to broaden and expand our ability to help those people that don't get help yet, anytime we see a barrier, anytime we see a silo to any service delivery that somebody in our network can have, then we need to be urgent about fixing that and making sure that it doesn't get bigger, that it doesn't remain a barrier. So we got to pull those things down, because as a certified community behavioral health center, we also get to help make sure that the people we're serving get the social determinants of health covered. They get the physical health piece covered. We get augmented revenue to cover it and sustain it, so we can't lose sight of those kind of things as a priority. And we also have to make sure that we are taking care of these youth, the juveniles, the children and adolescents. We can't let that fall by the wayside. We have to take that momentum and keep pushing that agenda so that we make sure that we are ready to provide every care that they need, so that they are living in recovery from all the trauma that they've had up to till date, that they are living in recovery so that when they become an adult, they're not necessarily a bigger burden on the network, but they have some civic capital now, because they've been in treatment, because they now have jobs now they can see themselves in the Future, and we're fostering that as a priority, because we see the future. We know their future, even though they don't see it yet because of their age. So we need to make sure that we're on top of that. And as we begin to do those things and become the leader in the industry, not just the network, in the industry, in the state of Michigan and beyond, then you say, Okay, well, what happened to those other providers, or those other payers, like the commercial insurances, what are they doing? Well, we should partner with them, because there's so many similarities and so many things that we can do cohesively together, where we can begin to be the real champions that this is not a us versus them again. It's all of us better together. So I should be able to see myself thriving. You should be able to see yourself thriving. And collectively, we should see ourselves better. So the priority will be to make sure that when people see us, when they interact with us, that we are better, better than what, better than yesterday, better than last month, better than a year and so on and so forth, because we want to environment of continuous improvement. We don't want to be the status quo, the status quo. We want people to begin to rely on us, like they rely on the Mayo Clinic, like they rely on Cleveland Clinic, they should rely on D win. That's where our mission has to be headed. Thank you.
Mr. Hunter, if you were selected as CEO, how would you advocate now for D win? In order to ensure that it is well funded in the next three years and 10 years,
I would advocate for D win first by highlighting all of its successes, then I would really turn up the emphasis on the vision for those next three years, the vision for those next 10 years, because again, we've seen where this is going. We will be the the leaders in this in this industry. We will be the ones saying, here's how you do it. It's so untraditional. It's not like it's always been. It's like it's going to be and we will be that Pace Setter. Have you ever gone to a conference or something and sat under a prolific speaker and they talked about their organization and you said, Wow, man, I would love to have been a part of that organization. We are that organization. People should have that impression when they are done interacting with anybody at this organization, especially anybody in this room, they should be able to say, Wow, that's something somebody to look up to, that's somebody to admire, that's somebody to follow. And so when we're saying we're leading this charge, what we're asking the legislators to do is get on board fund this thing so that we have the momentum and don't lose it, and that we can get us to that next level. And we will get the outcomes, and we will get the people in recovery and maintaining recovery, and again, those same people will begin to give and gain civic capital instead of being that drain on the system, if we can look at all of the success stories, if we can promote those and say, listen over and over, over time, these people were initially coming into the network like x, and now they're thriving. I think about a person. I'm not going to say her name. I've said her name publicly before by permission, but I'll say it like this. I remember that we were at a we were having a late evening session at the clinic, and it just happened to be also on a Sunday. It was a special time that we were trying to catch up, and they were tailgating in Eastern Market, and suddenly the door burst open, and this lady came in, and she was inebriated, she was belligerent, she was filthy, and she was just out of control. And she was causing a lot of problems at the tailgate, where people were getting violent and ready to, you know, attack her physically when we finished helping her, it just it is most remarkable story, because today, she is a Fully licensed LMSW clinician specializing in substance use disorder treatment with a cadc, and she is leading a department of recovery and has been in recovery over 15 years. That's what we would show that's what we would tell the legislators. There's so many more like her that we can showcase for you, but because of their privacy, we won't, but that's where our passion is. That's who we want to help. Those success stories, is why we're funding this industry. Those are the people that we want to see make it when we see people telling us that they have they committed or tried to commit suicide, and now they're part of the team that is advocating and teaching and being there as a peer so that others don't go down that same dark path and succumb to their own trauma. Then you say, okay, 20 years, this was worth it. Now let's see what the next 20 is going to bring. Thank you.
