A colleague of mine recently shared with me a conversation he had with a CEO of a large health system in Chicago. The CEO was asked the following question:
“If you could sit down for lunch to have a candid conversation with the leader of any organization, then who would it be?”
Hmm. Let’s all think about that. Who would you choose? Would you want to know the leader of Mayo Clinic? How about the leader of your foremost competitor? You may, or may not be, surprised by this CEOs answer. He wants to meet the leader of Domino’s Pizza.
His reasoning was simple. The leader of Domino’s Pizza not only has an understanding of connecting with consumers in a more retail setting but has also worked to transform the public’s image of them through outright candor and unexpected outreach tactics.
What Healthcare Can Learn from the Retail Industry
I was meeting with leaders of a healthcare organization that is known as being very physician centric. In decades past, driving physician loyalty provided huge competitive advantages. It still does. However, the conversation I heard over and over again was how that centricity of messaging is shifting away from physician and towards patient/consumer. Healthcare stands to learn a lot form the retail industry in that regard. Recent lessons learned include how to use the retail setting as a medium for providing care and how to engage consumers outside of the care setting using technology. What is often neglected when assessing the tactics used by the retail industry is their core competency of using data insights to motivate and incentivize changes in consumer behavior.
We recently did a webinar entitled A Real Retail Strategy for Healthcare. Here is a peek of that webinar, which dives into what healthcare can learn from the retail industry.
