Love What You Do

The past couple of weeks have been a time of reflection as you will see. This past Tuesday I completed three (3) months in my new position at North Shore LIJ. I now have 50 hours of vacation time accumulated although I haven’t thought of when I will take it off or where I will go.

But what I want to be able to reflect on is the experience I have had over the past three (3) months. It starts with adjusting my internal alarm clock a little bit. After many months of waking up between 6:30 and 7AM; I now wake up at 4:45 and am out the door by 5:45. I have to admit that I usually stay in bed until 4:50 something about stealing those extra five (5) minutes.

The commute or drive to work is no longer an ordeal – I know that I can make it into the office before 7AM even with my usual stop at the Starbuck’s for my venti skim latte. Those of you who have worked for me or know my routine; yes, I still multi-task in the morning by reading my three (3) newspapers, looking at my emails and having my breakfast of a piece of cheese and my latte. That has not changed and I very much enjoy the routine. What I am getting used to is being the first one in the office and having to walk down a long hallway in the dark to get to my office and then turn on the lights for the entire area.

I have gotten into a routine with my office eating. If I know I will be able to leave my office between 2 and 2:30; then I generally have a piece of fruit and a cup of hot chocolate around 11:30 and eat my dinner when I get home between 3:30 and 4. If it is a day when meetings will run a little late and I may not leave until 4PM or later then I will have a sandwich or a salad with a lemonade drink from the truck that delivers food to our building. This has worked out well for me and as you saw last week I am maintaining my weight; although, like most folks I wouldn’t mind dropping a few more pounds.

I am able to work two (2) to three (3) days a week from home letting me sleep a little bit longer – until 6AM and to hit the gym for a workout. It also lets me get some errands done (like the laundry) while I am on calls or drafting proposals or messages.

But this wasn’t to give you a rundown of my day; but, instead to discuss what I have submitted to my Management over the last couple of months and the outcome of it.

I was hired to run the Enterprise Video Infrastructure for North Shore LIJ. In that capacity I would be responsible for managing the current infrastructure and technology, making recommendations and making this a seamless service to the Health System as currently anyone from a Janitor to a Chief Resident was responsible for the video equipment at their respective hospital.

After a few weeks of understanding how meetings were reserved (via an email with a request form) and hearing that people had been waiting for over four (4) weeks to get their meeting scheduled I knew there had to be a better way and a need for human interaction.

The solution would be to implement a “Managed Service” process which would take all our reservations, launch our calls, and provide Help Desk and onsite support for complex or Executive meetings. The task was to now get Management to buy into this program and financially fund it. That was problem #1.

On to the next was that there was no web conferencing standard within the health system and there was a major need for doctors and the administration to collaborate and communicate with each other. In that respect we are piloting a web conferencing application which we look to roll out to 1000 doctors. To ensure that we can get the best price, support, training and materials I wrote an RFP (Request for Proposal) which is now with our Procurement department for sending to three (3) vendors. I expect that by the end of October we will have selected a vendor and will start the implementation process.

Lastly, in reviewing our bridging infrastructure to put all of our endpoints in conference calls we realized we had a single point of failure in this environment. There was only one (1) of every piece of hardware meaning should any one (1) piece go down we could not have a meeting. Through a couple of weeks of design and meetings we were able to put together a design for a redundant, resilient and scalable bridging backbone – now I had to sell it to Management.

So why am I so happy??? Management saw the need for all of the proposals and after a few weeks of meetings and “gentle” reminders I have received approval and funding for all of my projects. NOW the fun begins as we start the project management of these initiatives.

I guess my real focus was that I don’t think that it has taken that long to present and obtain approval and funding for three (3) major programs. More importantly, I know that each of these programs will provide all Health System employees with the tools that will make them more productive and bring a better balance to their lives. No longer will they need to drive from one hospital to another for a meeting or consultation; but, will be able to do it from their offices.

The best part of my job is seeing the transformation of how people work. How people are realizing that these tools will bring information to them and will hopefully make the patient experience a good one – as that is our ultimate goal.

In the end I am passionate about my industry and what I do – that is what work should be – not just a job; but, as my CEO said we have an obligation and a responsibility.

We spend anywhere from 8 to 14 hours a day working and we do it for 45 years of our lives.

With that in mind; love what you do and do what you love.