Do you need a health care background to be a great health care CEO?
Anyone who’s been paying attention to new appointments in the for-profit healthcare sector will have picked up on an emerging trend: executives being poached from outside industries. It raises an interesting question: do you need to have a background in healthcare to be a healthcare leader?
Intuitively, you might assume an understanding and knowledge of the sector is necessary to run a health care company. Health is not like other sectors. Lives are literally at stake – and attempts to cash in have not always been successful as a quick Google of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the Theranos scandal shows. Health care is not retail. You cannot simply evict a nursing home tenant struggling to pay its rent. There are different rules and expectations.
The argument can be made that a fresh pair of eyes – and transferable skills in a changing world – is just what a sector that is so often resistant to change needs.
We recently reported on French nursing home operator Orpea enlisting its new deputy CEO from French telecoms company Orange France. This followed the appointment of its new CEO Laurent Guillot last year, who came from a manufacturing and construction background at Saint Gobain.
On this post-scandal reshuffle, one France-based market expert told HBI: “All I can say is that Orpea needs new blood anyway. But the fact that none of them are from the industry is not a good thing in my eyes. It’s about time residents are put back at the centre of Orpea’s priorities.”
Other notable examples include UK health insurer AXA Health, which sourced its new CEO Heather Smith from financial service provider Allianz this month. Seven years ago, elderly care operator Clariane’s (formerly Korian) CEO Sophie Boissard switched from France’s national state-owned railway company SNCF to healthcare. Spire Heathcare’s current CEO Justin Ash was a general manager at UK and Ireland KFC back in the 1990s. Other noteworthy appointments in recent years have had backgrounds in logistics (we can see the benefit there) and breweries!
At the 1968 Summer Olympics, American athlete Dick Fosbury famously reinvented the high jump by applying his engineering background to his jumping technique, winning the gold medal and becoming one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field in the process.
Given that some of the most successful health care CEOs in recent times come from other disciplines too, it seems that talent and business nous can be a match for decades of relevant experience. You may want to look outside of the usual candidates if your current CEO is for the high jump.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Michaila Byrne or call 0207 183 3779.
