In this Priorities, Plans & Perspectives interview, Skilled Nursing News sits down with B.J. Boyle, Senior Vice President, Product Management, PointClickCare to learn about how he approaches his priorities in developing new health care technologies to serve the post-acute care market.
Read on to discover how Boyle’s perspective has changed over the course of his career, and where he gets his inspiration to lead his team and company forward.
Skilled Nursing News: What was your first job title in health care or health care technology?
B.J. Boyle: I’ll answer your question and I’ll tell you a funny story about how it happened. In my first job after undergrad, I was an implementation consultant at a software company that was building products specifically for skilled nursing facilities. That’s how I got into this space. Essentially, we had two products and one involved being in charge of the skilled nursing facility’s inventory control system. There’s a supply closet, and the product aimed to track who gets what supply.
We brought to market a point-of-care solution that was really good, and we were finally getting in front of helping the nurses and the nurse aides. That’s how I started.
The funny story is that I got engaged when I was in college and I was set to get married in July. I graduated in May and my dad said, “You know, now that you’re going to get married, you need to have a job to support this new family of yours.” I’m like, “Oh, shoot, I better do that.” I knew I wanted to work in technology and I took the first job I got, which is how I ended up digging this company and into health care.
I wish I could tell you, “Hey, I knew I always wanted to do that,” but that’s how I got there and I’ve been here ever since.
SNN: How do you think your perspective has changed since your first day in the industry?
Boyle: I love this question. It’s been 20-plus years for me. I used to think about technology as, “Hey, I’ve got a product, and I’m going to help you solve a problem.” I think the difference in health care is that we can all be so personally connected to it. When you get out there, you see the work that a nurse or CNA is doing in a skilled nursing facility, and the work they are doing is the heart and soul of those facilities.
Now I think about technology as not just “here’s a product we’re trying to sell,” but as “how are we using technology to help provide better patient care, to help our frontline workers be better and more efficient and have the time to do what they need to do?” For me, my perspective has changed in that I’ve become really passionate about the mission, versus just technology. I think that shows through the products we build, and in getting up every day and getting excited to go to work for that purpose.
SNN: Whom do you consider the greatest influence on your perspective?
Boyle: For me personally, there are three that come to mind. All have been, directly or indirectly, someone I’ve worked for or with. In my first job, my boss was Larry Triplett, who was the founder of our company, Resource Systems. He still impacts me today as a leader, in terms of how I organize, how I prioritize and as an entrepreneur, what he taught me was this relentless pursuit of the goal.
There are a lot of hard days and [it’s important to] find a meaningful mission. Sometimes it’s a grind; sometimes it’s exciting, and you’ve got to get through that. What I learned from him was this: be passionate and have a relentless pursuit of that goal and coach that.
My second influence was when I spent a short period of my career at Cerner. At that time I didn’t really know him, but Neal Patterson was the CEO and founder, and I was awestruck by him and his ability to have a vision, and connect that big, broad, innovative vision, straight down to value. In health care and in health care technology, it’s so easy to get stuck by the regulatory challenges and other barriers, so having that vision and tying it into value is critical.
The third is actually one of the co-founders of PointClickCare, who has been my boss for the last couple of years, Dave Wessinger. Amongst all those other things he brings to the table, he has this passionate connection to the human side of what we do — our users, and their patients, residents and loved ones. People are critically important. Those three: relentless pursuits and stick-to-itiveness, having a driving vision to value, and putting people first are really three that stand out to me.
SNN: How do you define and execute on your professional priorities?
Boyle: That’s changed a lot for me over the years. As I’ve taken on different roles and responsibilities, I’ve learned as a leader that the way you evaluate yourself or the way you set priorities is no longer just about what you can accomplish on your own. It becomes about how you can execute and deliver through others, through your team, through your peers, through your partners, and that’s critical.[1] How I define and execute on my priorities starts with what I said earlier, I think about vision to value.
What’s our vision? Where are we heading? How do we deliver value on that, and set priorities around that? We have a saying in the product world in my role, in driving our product strategy, where we have to “ruthlessly prioritize.” What that means is that we’ve got to be really challenged where we’re spending our resources, where we’re investing our time and let’s focus on what has the biggest impact to our end users, to the company, and delivers the most value.
SNN: Can you name three of those priorities?
Boyle: Yes, thank you for making me keep it to three. In the current state, for me, as a leader, I put these priorities not necessarily in a 1, 2, 3 order: are we setting up our teams for success? Are we organized the right way? Are we empowering the people on our teams to be successful? Maybe it’s counterintuitive, but as you rise on a leadership scale, it becomes more and more critical to empower that team to be successful.
People organization is No. 1 for me. The second priority, is making sure that we have a solid vision and plan. In my role around product vision, this means, “do we have a clear vision of where we want to head, that’s both innovative, and aggressive and can inspire, but it also can be simplified and broken down in a way that we could go and execute on that?” People, number one; vision and plan, number two; and then the last one being: are we delivering?
SNN: How do you look at planning when a large degree of uncertainty is involved?
Boyle: Great question. If I could have an easy answer to this, we’d all be excited. For me, you’re never going to get certainty. I do two things. One is to have as much data as possible and be as data-driven as we can, and then use that to prioritize. I think there is both an art and a science to planning. How? Again, as soon as I echo back: have a plan, make sure you have data to support it, and/or either support where you’re heading or support a change.
Not being afraid to pivot is the last piece. Make sure you have data, make sure you’re being honest about where you are, and pivot to make sure that you head back to that issue.
SNN: How do you keep track of your professional plans and progress?
Boyle: At a macro level, I’m a big believer in goals and we, at PointClickCare and in other places I’ve worked, have been supporters of the OKR process. The OKR is “Objectives and Key Results,” to make sure we understand, A: where we’re going, and B: what are the key milestones and key results we expect to get there. Think of that as our dashboard to how we’re progressing. That’s really important, not just for me as a leader, but for a team to make sure that we know how we’re doing.
I’m still an old-school to-do list note taker, that translates in every day and every week, making sure that we’re working on the right things. I still like to cross things off my list. I balance that with the systems we have in place to track our milestones and our key results.
SNN: What do you do when something does not go according to plan?
Boyle: One thing in leading a product organization or frankly, leading any team, is that things don’t ever really go with the plan. It’s how you show up, how you react, and for me it’s, “can we address it and recognize it sooner rather than later?” Confront the facts, be honest, look at where we’re at, what went wrong, and then pivot and address and go back after the plan.
SNN: Leaders need time to process and gain perspective, what do you listen to, read and watch to gain that perspective?
Boyle: There are three areas that I tend to focus on. One is, I’m a real geek around health IT. There are several publications and/or mailing lists, or even frankly, people I follow on social media or others who are specifically geared around what’s going on in health IT. Almost my entire professional career has been here. I love it. I am passionate about it.
Second, I try to read and [listen to] podcasts on both functional areas around leadership and product leadership. A couple of my favorite authors are Simon Sinek, Patrick Lencioni and Geoffrey Moore. What’s great now is that they don’t just write the books that we’re all familiar with, they’re blogging and have podcasts, too.
Then lastly, I think it’s not just about the industry. It’s really important to network with other professionals and read other things. I’m excited to get back into some conferences and some local user groups and have conversations around the water cooler if you will, just see what’s going on.
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