- Lead a strategic assessment of the medical center’s operations. Following broad acceptance by the Board of Trustees of the resulting recommendations, lead the implementation of multiple, end-to-end departmental transformations over a two-year period;
- Implemented comprehensive Human Resources policies, systems, and procedures spanning all aspects of talent lifecycle management for a 120 person organization (including medical and administrative positions);
- Implemented comprehensive Financial department services delivery: budget creation and stewardship, authority structures, automated GL and cost center management, performance reporting and analysis, AR/AP and cash flow management, and unqualified external audits 3 years running;
- Overhauled procurement and logistics processes, implementing enhanced sourcing, forecasting, and supplier relationship management;
- Enhanced the service delivery and reliability of Information Technology services (servers, databases, applications, networks, PC’s, security);
- Program Managed the successful implementation of a hospital-wide, electronic integrated patient records, pharmacy, laboratory and inventory management application system;
- Collaborated with my executive peers (Medical, Programs, and Executive directors) to transform the governance and leadership model for effective execution of the organization’s mission.
- Coached and mentored the growth of five senior management Malawian staff heading the Finance, Human Resources, Supply Chain, Facilities and Information Technology departments;
- Designed and implemented a client service excellence program that was delivered to all medical and facilities personnel of the medical center;
- Oversaw the successful implementation of several building expansion projects to enhance the facilities and infrastructure of the medical center; and
- Successfully transitioned the Operations Directorate leadership to a local Malawian executive leader,
I need to mention that my wife Sonya accompanied me on this posting and was instrumental in keeping me focused and encouraged when the challenges of taking on so much systems and process change would often overwhelm me, given the context of the day-to-day living challenges in this developing country coupled with my deep passion to grow senior leaders and pursue a legacy of excellence that would serve the mission of Partners in Hope to truly become a national leader in providing “Quality Healthcare for Everyone” (their vision statement).
My years of progressive senior and executive management of larger departments in national and global organizations gave me the business process acumen I needed to lead the policy and process redesign effort and pursue integrated, standardized systems that could scale with the growth vision of the organization.
The times spent coaching each of my five department heads of the Operations division of the medical centre were personally very gratifying. Being able to watch these junior leaders grow in confidence and competency over the space of three years was nothing short of amazing and also left me with wonderful friendships that we maintain through regular communication to this day. Some of my favorite resources that I used to feed into not only my direct reports but also other senior leaders from other divisions of the Centre were John Maxwell’s “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, Les Hewitt’s “The Power of Focus” and Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People”. The 36 months provided many opportunities for “OTJ” mentoring and overall I believe that I was able to deposit leadership principles into the lives of these young leaders that will serve them and the organization very well for years to come. What a blessing and privilege to be a part of!
That’s really how I feel about the whole volunteer posting – a privilege and a blessing to have had the opportunity to combine my passion for helping make quality healthcare more accessible to every Malawian, to grow leaders, to transform teams towards their highest performance, with an organization that needed a “make-over” in their back office systems and processes so that they could continue to meet the growth challenges that would afford them to reach their vision.
Some of most rewarding moments I recall during my time with PIH, in addition to seeing transformation in my team’s leadership and competencies progressively get baked into the operational fabric of the organization, was to tag along occasionally on “house calls” out to rural areas surrounding Lilongwe with members of our medical staff and community outreach leaders. Whether going to the home of a single mom struggling with HIV or a child too sick with malaria to be transported to the medical centre, I saw competent medical care being served out with love and compassion. Not only was I able to see patients’ complete recovery in follow-up visits, I was able to see how strength built into the back office and customer service training with our front-line staff begin to pay off with proficiency of service delivery and the promise that we could continue to scale up medical services to take on hundreds and even thousands more needy patients and maintain the quality of care to the highest standard.
As I opened my story, my experience was the first under HFI of what I hope will be hundreds of other Christian professionals getting their hands and feet into action in volunteer service with other service delivery organizations like Partners in Hope, applying their deep business and technical experience and know-how with a personal passion to make a difference in a needy part of the developing world. So I don’t have any suggestions for improvements to HFI’s processes and approaches as they stand today, only to say that I, along with our Directors, have endeavored to take all the learning’s from my posting with PIH in Lilongwe, Malawi and incorporate them into what we hope to be a great launch of our excellent policies, processes, guidelines, templates. All for the purpose to help more people like you reading this story to make a difference like I did! Check out our Opportunities to serve with one of our Partners today!
