Welcome to How Leaders Leave Where Every Week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, get ready because you're about to hear one of the most dramatic turnaround stories out there because my guest today is Dr. Bob Grossman, the CEO of NYU Langone Health. When he took over in 2007, the hospital had a structural deficit with rundown facilities and a team that wasn't really tuned in to a bigger vision. Now, fast forward to today, their rank is the number three hospital in the United States. He's grown their revenue from $2 billion to $11 billion and they're studied as the model of how to run a patient-centered, successful health organization. You're going to hear how it happened today. And as you might expect, Bob shares a lot of wisdom about culture and vision. But you know, you need more than that to make big things happen. You need accountability because that's how you make sure those big ideas are actually showing up in the work day to day. If you want your team performing at the highest level, if you want them to really own their actions and decisions, then keep listening and learn how to create more accountability for your organization. So without further ado, here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Dr. Bob Grossman. Bob, we're going to get to your amazing turnaround story in a few minutes, but I always like to start out at the beginning. Now, you went into radiology and I know you were at NYU and you built one heck of a department there. It was one of the departments that was very highly rated. Tell us how you got the CEO job of NYU. Well, it was interesting. So I came to NYU in 2001. I had been at University of Pennsylvania at Penn Medical Student and then I came back there. I actually was in neurosurgery, came back there in radiology. And then went to NYU. And NYU at the time was a rather weak department of radiology and they had lousy equipment and equipment and capital in radiology. Very important. Somebody said, "Well, we're a Siemens site for imaging." I said, "Well, what do we get from Siemens?" You know, we're right in the middle of Manhattan. And they said, "Oh, we get pulse sequences and pulse sequences are the software that really drive the M.R.S.C. and I said pulse sequences." I said, "Let's see how much we're really worth. Let's do an RFP and have Siemens in general electric compete to see who could be a single vendor." And that was pretty interesting. And we got them to compete. Ken Langone accused himself because he had been on the board of general electric. And Siemens won and we got a hundred plus million dollars in the deal and Ken Langone, that caught Ken Langone's eye. And Ken was the chairman of NYU. Correct. Yeah, absolutely. So you're running the radiologist's plan. It's interesting. You're in a hospital that basically is not doing well, okay? But you excelled with your department. How did you build a department of excellence in an overall environment that was on the decline? I created and tapped into the aspirational vision of individuals in the department who wanted to be great. Who yearned for that. And I said, "We're going to be the best department in the world." And people, I remember when person saying in the department, "Bob, let me get this right. We're an ocean liner and you're going to turn it on a dime." And I said, "Yeah." And I only accepted excellence. Everybody has to ask the question, whatever they're doing is this world class. And they got it. And we were able to recruit great people and it turned around. And one thing begets another if you do it correctly. Did you really want the CEO job when it came up? I didn't think about it. I've always been in the moment. I never looked over my shoulder for the next job. And they just came to me as opposed to me trying to be a CEO. I never thought about it. And somebody asked me in the search committee, "Would you apply to be the dean and CEO?" And I thought about it. And I said, "Sure." But it wasn't in my thinking at all. So you're like a great athlete. You just kind of stay in the moment, the president. And don't stay more of a neutral stay. Correct. And I never, I think, I always say, "We run our own race. I'm not reactive. We're proactive." So I'm sure in why you looked outside for a CEO, you are insider and you get the job. Do you think having that experience inside was a big, big plus for you? Huge plus. And I think it's very important because traditionally academic medical centers and businesses look particularly at your curriculum vitae. And I have to say nothing very little in my curriculum vitae or anybody's curriculum vitae predicts how well a leader they're going to be. It's very interesting. But it did help that I understood some of the issues as I saw them. I knew the people. I knew the good people and the not so good people. So it enabled me to be very aggressive early on in my tenure. Yeah. And you know, the NYU Langone story really begins with adversity. Can you kind of set the stage for us on what it was like even when you were CEO ? Yes. So I started, I was named the dean and CEO in March 2007, but I started in July . And I asked for all this information and they had these books, these thick bind ers full of books and they couldn't give me all the information. I said, "There's something wrong with this system. I'm going to be..." It's like flying. And at that time we were about $2 billion business and it's like flying a 747 without any control panel. And on top of that, when I started to dig into the finances, we had a structural deficit of about $150 million a year, which was backstopped by a royalty from the drug Remicade, which was very dangerous because if you have an event like Vioxx, the drug is out and you're going bankrupt. And so we were confronted with financial instability. Our bonds were about junk-rated and the facilities were old. That's what it looked like. And I didn't know anything. Other than that, it's great. Other than that, it's perfect. Well, this is where your optimism had to be a big plus player as well. Why did you have a strong belief that you could turn the business around? Because you had to. Well, I wasn't afraid of the job and I never thought I was going to fail. I thought I knew what I wanted to do. And I said, "We are going to be a world-class patient-centered, integrated academic medical center." And people, at first, were negative and not believers. But that was the vision we tapped in, again, tapped into the aspirations of the people who worked there. And I said, "We're not going to accept anything except, again, what does it take to be excellent?" Bob, that phrase "world-class" is thrown around a lot. And loosely, how did you make it mean something to NYU? So actually, in my investiture speech, I spoke about what it meant to be world- class. And I said, "You can tell by the metrics, by the people who come here, by who we recruit, how we feel about ourselves." And it would be proclaimed by external metrics, not us just saying it, by deeds , not words. You talked a couple times already about the importance of having an aspir ational goal, because people want to be a part of something great. Talk a little bit more about that and how you really came to that conclusion. Well, I think it's part of me. I always aspire to be a part of something great. And I think, in general, a lot of people do. And many individuals have it in their innate ability to do something great. I was speaking to the head of neurology who came and transformed a horrible department into maybe arguably the best neurology department in the world. And he didn't realize he had the gifts to be able to do that. And so a lot of people, you give them the confidence in the institution and what you're doing. And actually, they're wonderful and they can do the job. I know Bob, you describe yourself as an unfiltered leader. What do you mean by it? Right. So that came out of this book by Godam Makanda. What it means is a lot of people come up through organizations and are sort of nurtured by the organization. And those are generally people who do okay, but they're not going to be either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. And then there are the people who are unfiltered leaders who don't come up the ordinary way, who have different life stories, if you will, and different experiences. And you put them in a position of leadership and either they could be very great. Abraham Lincoln was considered a giant unfiltered leader, Winston Churchill unf iltered leader. A lot of leaders who come up say in general electric are filtered leaders, great leaders, but can either be very good or very bad because they've been trained in the system. And I clearly, I had no business experience. I didn't know what a board was. I had no idea how they operated. I had a little management experience. So you're basically didn't have any biases that got you in the way of really pursuing the truth of what it would take to turn around the business. Is that a good definition? I think yes. I also think I was much more audacious. You know, I was at Harvard Business School. They did a case study of what we had done after Hurricane Sandy. And I remember sitting as a fly in the audience and the case is presented. I'm thinking, if I went to business school, I would never have been as aud acious. I was scared to hell out of here. Right? Because these guys were. Well, speaking of audacious, you said you knew a lot of the staff when you took over a CEO and it encouraged you to move quickly. You made some big calls. You took out a lot of people very early on. How many people did you move out? We took out the top five people in the sixth person resigned. So the CFO, the president of the hospital, the vice president of the hospital, the chief medical officer, the head of HR and the senior vice dean on the school site. So all the management left. How'd you get the courage to really follow your conviction on that? Because obviously you knew there had to be changed. But you could go in there and be a little tepid. How fast did it take you to do this? I did it in one day. I fired all of them in one day. As soon as you became CEO? Yeah. First thing. Now, that takes a real strong conviction that you know. Or, well, I didn't think about it. It's interesting. I knew I was right. And, chin sickly, I just said, we're going to do this. And, of course, I spoke to Ken Langone and he agreed. You know, that was the thing. The Harvard Business School, they didn't get that. But it was the right thing to do. You clearly shocked the system and people knew there was a new sheriff in town. There's no question about that. How important do you think that is as a leader when you take over? I think it's very important. One of the things about leadership is it starts when they push the button and you have to get going. You can't take a while that people are expecting changes and the expectations are very important. They're very high and to sit there and just wait and wait and wait. You lose that reservoir of support that you have initially. I learned that much. Because you're listening to this, I can tell you're the kind of person who wants to learn how to lead well. But there's a lot of companies out there who want to take that desire and charge you $500 or $1,000 or heck, even $20,000 to try and show you how to lead. That's just not right. If you want to be a better leader, I believe you deserve to have access to something that will truly help you and it shouldn't cost a fortune. So I want you to go to howleaderslead.com and start my leadership class. It's really and truly free. And after you take this class, you're going to feel more confident in your role and you'll be on your way to getting big things done with your team. Go check it out at howleaderslead.com. Besides letting those top people go and replace them with talented people, you took some real specific actions to let people know that things were going to be different around here and drive home the belief that you could actually become world class. Can you share a few examples? Yeah, I would just make that observation. So one of the members on our board was John Stewart who had been the former CEO of Mackenzie and when he heard what I was doing, he said, "Bob, it's never going to work. You can't do all this change. Organizations can't absorb it." A year later, he came back to me. He said, "You're exactly right." So I thought that was pretty interesting. But we changed in three dimensions. So again, the missions of an academic medical center are education, research and clinical care. We measured, we became very matrically driven on the clinical side and on the research side. And that's very important because previously a lot of the investigators had lived in the ether of ambiguity. So if you don't measure it, they think they're great. I love that ether of ambiguity. That's a great phrase. Thank you. When there's no transparency, everybody thinks they can do whatever the hell they want and they just can proclaim themselves being great. And then on the educational side, we said we're going to transform the curriculum to the 21st century. And on the clinical side, as I said, we held people accountable both on the ambulatory side and the inpatient side. Well, tell us a story about the elevators, for example, in terms of the specific action. So the Tisch hospital, which is our flagship hospital, Tisch Hospital had these elevators. And the metaphor was they were so out of date that in order to go up, you had to go down. Because you couldn't get in on the first floor because it was too crowded. And it was horrible because doctors were then reluctant to see patients because it took 20 minutes to get up. I said, we're going to do elevators. And everybody looked at me and said, you can't put in elevators. I said, of course we can. We got a wonderful gift from the Tisch family. And we put in external elevators outside the building. And it transformed the way patients were seen and the whole workflow because nurses and doctors, et cetera, didn't want to take 20 minutes to go up and down in the elevators for lunch breaks. So you saw very quickly a problem that had been occurring for years. 50 years. 50 years. And it was so visible that it probably had as much impact in terms of telling everybody things are going to be different as anything you could have done. Correct. That was one thing. Definitely. And then I said, we're going to build a new hospital pavilion. And everybody said, and there were a lot of those type of moments where you had all the naysayers. And I said, of course we're going to do this. You make it sound so easy. You know, organizationally, you talk about replacing silos with clouds. That's an interesting concept. Explain that one. Right. Well, in health care and in businesses in general, people tend to be siloed. And in order to really create value and energy, you have to break through the silos and enable cross pollination, if you will. And so we incentivize people to work together. And again, part of it is creating transparency. And everybody sees what they're doing. And understanding the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and incentiv izing that. Yeah. And you talked about the importance to move to being patient centered. You know, that seems like, well, of course, why wouldn't you be customer focused? Was that a big insight? Did everybody say, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. Let's be more patient centered or would you have to sell that up bill? They liked the idea, but they didn't know what patient centered was. And I think that's very important because in health care, once you change the construct when you're the patient, you understand what it means to be patient centered. And that means caring for the patient in a way that you wanted to be cared for and being empathetic and compassionate and being excellent. You know, Bob, vision is one thing, but you got to close the gap and really, really execute. And I understand you had like a one page roadmap. Can you talk about that? Yeah. And really on, I decided because again, academic health systems are pretty interesting and complex. And I thought, well, I'm going to try to articulate everything I wanted to do in the next five to 10 years on a one pager. And I sat there and I wrote out this one pager. And I think I got it pretty right. It's handwritten. Yeah. handwritten. Did you share that broadly with the organization? Was some of you kept in your desk? I kept it in my desk. You know, when they said I shouted, this is what a consultant, a low paid consultant. You know, you've talked a little bit about it, but I know that you made metrics instrumental to your turnaround and your passion about what you call your dashboard. You know, tell us about that. Right. So as I said early on, this was like flying a plane without control panels. So I got a hold of the head of IT. And I said, I want to build a dashboard. And he said, of course, yes, or we'll build a dashboard. And I said, get the people who own the data because that's their silos. I'm going to put them in a room with you. And I said, I'm the only person from the administration who's going to be there because I'm going to design it. Because if you put five people in the room, everybody's going to say, I want it this way, this way, and nothing gets done. So I took the responsibility, took two years to design and build in the process . I fired him to got another head who would be much more effective. And I built it the way I wanted it as I saw it. And of course, there were naysayers in the room and it turned out to be organic and it was dynamic. And to this day, we have dashboard meetings every month to refine it. And everybody now, it's the only source of truth in the entire organization. Now, you said you built this dashboard the way how you wanted it, but you had to get a lot of input from other people so that they could own it, right? Well, right. In the end, everybody owned it. And part of it was just using it as a means for evaluation. So they had buying it. It sounded like this was one of those things where you just personally had to champion and then bring people along later. Exactly. Exactly. You just knew deep down it was the right thing to do. People kind of went kicking and screaming. Exactly. You should determine when those things are versus taking the time to make sure people are aligned. How do you look at that? That the sightiness versus alignment? I think you just know it. I think good leaders have a lot of emotional intelligence. And your emotional intelligence has to you when you have to bring people along and when you just make the decision. You know, a lot of CEOs kind of sit back and they kind of have the people bring stuff to them and you know, they don't get involved in really making it happen. You seem to be a guy who rolls up their sleeves and get into the detail and really, you know, if you want it done, you're in there to make sure it's done right. Right. Where'd that come from? You know, again, I think it's just part of the DNA. My wife would say, I'm unusual because I'm pretty visionary and I'm into the details. The details are really important for a CEO. If you don't know the details, you really don't know what's going on. But you shouldn't be a micromanager. People want to be successful and feel good about their jobs. So I think that's the resonant frequency you have to find. Now, you know, obviously you managed out a lot of people. You had to bring in a lot of talent. Did you own the talent process? How involved did you get in recruiting the top people? Yeah, I was involved in recruiting the very top people, every one of them. And then of course they, if you get good people, they beget good people. And I replaced, I think, 31 of the 34 chairs. Can you tell us a story about a talent that you recruited that really made a big difference? And what's your most proud of? Sure. I'm proud of so many people. But I'll give you the story of Steve Galera, who is the head of neurology, a fantastic neurologist. And I knew him at University of Pennsylvania. He did research for me as a resident. And he was a great guy, fantastic student. But I was doing a research project on multiple sclerosis. And he came to me and he said, "Bob, I want to work with you." And you know, he didn't know that much, but he was a great runner. He was all IV in the 100-yard dash. And I said, "Steve, you're going to park the cars." I'm the patient. And he did a fantastic job. And then so many years later, I recruit him. And he comes to NYU right before Hurricane Sandy. I spent forever trying to recruit him. And we had a horrible neurology department. And he built it into just the most amazing neurology department. We're over 250 neurologists now. That's amazing. You know, when you had a lot of success, people go, "Oh, man, look at that success. That's really great." You know, and obviously it is great. Did you have a failure along the way that really ended up being a blessing in disguise? Well, I think I had a lot of failures. When I was at University of Pennsylvania, I was passed over to be the chairman of the Department of Radiology. I thought I was pretty good. And that's one of the reasons why I left Penn and went to NYU and made lemonade . Definitely did that. You know, how would you describe the culture that you've created? And how do you gauge that? Well, I'd say our culture is an aspirational culture. And I've heard the term, I think this is a great term, we're an ad hoc-cracy, not a bureaucracy and a meritocracy, but really an ad hoc-cracy. And an ad hoc-cracy meaning, "If you have a good idea, we're going to partner with you." And the difference is at NYU Langone, we created a structure. And I would say, very important in business and in academics, function follows structure. If you don't have a great structure, you can optimize the function of the organization. And so we created a great structure with minimum barriers and the minimus administration. And that enables us to really function as well as we have. You know, you mentioned Hurricane Sandy, when you have a crisis like that, that 's really when you probably find out how good your culture really is. Can you tell us that story? Sure. So that's a great story. And it's a great story about the heart and soul of an institution. Hurricane Sandy was something that nobody was prepared for. And we find out within 12 hours, we have 15 million gallons of contaminated water in our basements and subbasement. None of the backup systems were, nothing's working. And the first thing we had to do was evacuate the 320 patients. And once you evacuate the patients, it's all about time and money and leadership. And with Ken's help, he convinced the Democrats and the Republicans to work together in the Congress for this Hurricane Sandy bill for New York in the surrounding states. And then it was just about piecing everything together. And part of the decision-making early on, I was confronted with the fact that the institution was going to be shut down. And actually the emergency room was shut down for two years. And the hospital was shut down for over 60 days. And I said, we're going to pay everybody. And that's a really important decision. And Ken, Langone, agreed with it. And it totally made an enormous difference in how everybody felt about the institution. Because when the chips are down, you see your character and the character of the people who work their character, the institution, et cetera. And in the end, I said, we're going to make lemonade out of the lemons. And we were very strong going into Hurricane Sandy already. And we emerged even stronger. Yeah. Well, that's amazing. And what's the responsibility of a leader when you have a crisis like that? So I think it's very important to be there. One of the early things I did was move the senior management team right to the lobby of the hospital. So everybody saw what was going on. And all day in, day out, seven days a week, they saw us functioning. And that, I think, provided some confidence. But leaders have to lead and make decisions. And it was all the time about decision making. And an anecdote about that on a plane ride, I was sitting next to a guy who was a guy who was a fighter pilot. And I said, what's the hardest thing you do? He said, it's all about instantaneous decision making every minute, every second. And I think that's what a leader is. They're making decisions all the time. And those decisions ultimately determine success of failure. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Dr. Bob Grossman in just a moment. You know, Dr. Grossman had to take some pretty big risks to turn around NYU Langone Health. And he couldn't have done it without the support of the chairman there, the one and only Ken Langone. Now, Ken is a mentor of mine and a dear friend of Booth. And it's funny, in our episode of How leaders lead, Ken's supportive style of leadership comes through loud and clear. You want to have an environment where you encourage people to take chances. And if it's an honest, legitimate mistake, their careers aren't at risk. You want people to stick their neck out. Who knows when the next greatest idea is going to come from? To me, it will come out of those calls that I hope I encourage these kids to stick their neck out and take chances. I got to tell you, the whole conversation with Ken is full of wisdom and it's one of my favorites. Scroll back in the feed and give it a listen. It's episode 89 here on How leaders lead. If you had to boil it down, Bob, and I know this is hard to do because we've already talked about a number of things that you've done, what would be your secret ingredient ? The secret ingredient is having the right people. And with the right people and the right vision and being able to execute that vision, it's going to auger for success. I think the right people are so important because one person doesn't do anything. Really, it's a team of people and that team has to be focused, driven, and if you have those ingredients, you're going to have success. What would you say is the most unique people challenge you have in your industry? How you deal with a lot of thoroughbreds. Okay, you have doctors and scientists. I think they're the most brilliant people in the world and they're all going to win the Nobel Prize. In general, academics are more negative than positive thinkers and sometimes that's a problem. Exitions, in general, because they are so focused, they sometimes have difficulty seeing the forest. And yet you've been able to get everybody aligned around this one patient, one chart, one experienced focus. What really drove that and how did you bring your people together to make this a reality? Well, I tried to get people to buy into the vision and 15 or 16 years ago, a lot of people couldn't see it and I thought we could be the best institution in the United States, but it would take a lot of work. And you know, David, people want to be at the best. They want to be associated with the best and especially in healthcare. And so to get the majority of people in our organization to think that they could be the best, have confidence, if we did X, Y, and Z, that actually they could see that we were going to move up the rankings and be one of the top institutions in the world. And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You really coined this one patient, one chart, one experienced focus and you really used in technology as an enabler to make that happen. You know, what advice can you give to leaders on how to make technology an enab ler? You have to have the correct technology. Let's begin with that because there's a lot of technology out there and you have to understand what actually works. And for us, when we originally looked at electronic health records, we wanted an enterprise solution. We wanted no interface. And the technology became one of the foundational elements on which we could build a health system. So technology is foundational. It's not the solution, but it helps you get to where you want to be. You know, you've expanded from two in-patient facilities to now six, I believe. You know, I would imagine every time you expand, there's a big discussion about how far you can really stretch your brand. How do you expand your brand into these new venues? Well, you have to be very careful. And brand is very important to us. And we try to be as deliberate as possible. And with respect to brand, we also want one culture. And so part of it is the electronic health record helps us because it also enables us to have one type of practice across the entire system. And you have to be careful. You want to add the correct doctors. You want people who buy into the understanding that this is very patient- centered. And we expect excellence. We have very high standards. And a lot of people like it. Some people, we not like it. You mentioned culture, and I know you're a big believer in culture. And you summed up your core values with the acronym of PRIDE. Tell us about it and how you drive that deep as a leader. Well, we are a very accountable organization at the same time, very transparent . And we are associated with that. We care about performance. We care about respect. We care about integrity, diversity, and excellence. And we live by those values upfront and, as I said, totally transparently. And your values really form your culture. You have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, if you know what I mean. And you have to have a lot of people, examples that you can use as teachable moments to express your values. Off the top, can you remember one of those tangible moments where you did exactly that? Sure. We do it every day. We care when somebody violates our integrity. We take appropriate actions. When care is less than excellent. We discuss it openly. We try to learn from our examples. And we try never to make the same mistake twice. And that happens on a daily basis, actually. You say, and I love this, only the lead dog sees new terrain. What's next? What's next for NYU Langone? First of all, every day is a new day. As you know, in any business. And what got you there doesn't keep you there. So you have to be very hungry. Everybody has to always be alive. So for us, what's next is we did, we're in the process of doing a merger in Suffolk County with a small community hospital. But we think it's an important hospital on Long Island. We hope to have a new hospital around Minneapolis, which will take five to six or so years. As you said, we're in Florida, particularly in the Palm Beach area. And we hope to build our practice down there. In terms of science here, we're investing in science, investing in science. We want to organically grow our scientific endeavors. In terms of education, we've been on the bleeding edge of changing education. So this year, our medical school is an all three year medical school. Traditional medical school is four years. Arizona is going to three years. I think we reformed our entire curriculum, which I think makes it even better for students coming to NYU. So there are a lot of things on our plate. And we're a very aspirational organization. You know, that's a radical thing in a very established industry to go from a four year degree to three year. I mean, that is a great, that is a major breakthrough. I mean, how in the world did you pull that off? So we started about seven, eight years ago. The students coming to medical school today are different than when I went. They have far more experience and taken more courses. And it doesn't necessarily make sense to follow an edict from the earliest part of the 20th century. This is a flexner report, I think in 1912 or something like that. And all the medical schools were locked up with that. And we said it doesn't make sense for students who are different. And actually the fourth year of medical school was a time where most of the students auditioned. They went to other places to see if they could get residency. So they weren't even at your institution. And I thought the crime was that the parents are paying the tuition for the students to be all over the place. It really didn't make sense for a lot of the students. So we started a three year MD program where about 20% of our students took that pathway and they became very successful. We have a lot of data for over 100 students who did that. And then a couple of years ago, four years ago, we started another small medical school for primary care out in Minneapolis. And that was an all three year school and that was tuition free as well. And all of those students did great. They just the first class just graduated. And we said, what the heck is wrong? We should be all three year. And we made that radical change this past year. And I think it's going to work out fantastic. Ken and Elaine Langoone, I know surprised you a few years ago with the announcement that NYU School of Medicine was to be renamed the NYU Robert I. Grossman School of Medicine. That sounds pretty lofty. But tell us a story about that. Yeah, well, I was shocked. So it's a good story because I'm at this event, which is in the hall of Denver at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's a beautiful setting. And this was an event to honor Ken and Elaine. And as you can imagine, all of Ken's friends were there. It was incredible. Yeah, I was there actually. I remember it. And I'm sort of the master of ceremonies and we do the first part of it, and then the second part. And Ken gets up there and I'm looking at my watch and we try to get out by nine o'clock and the second part didn't start. I'm saying, oh my God, people are going to be so unhappy because these things start drowning on. And Ken gets up there, it is usual, man, or talks about what a great country. And I'm thinking to myself, oh my God. That he says, and now you're going to hear from my wife, Elaine, and Elaine gets up there. And I'm actually not focused on what Elaine is saying. I'm focused on the clock. And this is about 9.30. And then I see my name up there, the Robert I. Grossman School of Medicine. I couldn't believe it. It's beyond belief. And I'm so grateful to Ken and Elaine. As you know, David, they're the greatest people in the world. Yeah, that's great. And a well-deserved honor and everybody. Everybody loves standing up and giving you the ovation that you deserve. I like to get into the minds of leaders to learn how they make decisions. And we've talked a little bit about this already, but it's your school of medicine. Students get free tuition. Where did that idea come from and how did it become a reality? So the idea actually came from me. And I was a scholarship kid from the time I started college through medical school. And when you have significant needs, you live from hand to mouth a lot. And I thought, you know, it's just unconscionable and moral imperative for students not to do not to feel the dead burden that they've accrued over years of education. And this became honorous where you had students graduating with $200,000 worth of debt, $300,000 if doctors married doctors, you know, $500,000 worth of debt. And you just can't get out from under that dead burden. So it was really something I felt strongly about Ken bought into it. You know, it's interesting, David, I'll give you one anecdote here. We used to have lunches for students. Everybody shows up because they are living at the margin, these students. And so for us, and Ken agreed, it was critically important. And the question is how to do it. And you have to be focused. And it's a long term objective. And why haven't so many other schools done it? Because it's very difficult to do. Because the easy thing is to take philanthropy and put it into buildings. Put it into something where you can get your name on it. And here, getting a corpus for tuition takes a long time. It took us, I think, 12 years. Just raising the money and getting that done. And plus, you turn the hospital into a real profit generator too, which had to help, right? That absolutely helped. But this was from philanthropic and amazingly generous donors. Yeah, that's great. What do you remember, Bob, about the day this was announced to the students? The students couldn't believe it. Students and their parents, it's impossible to really say they give you the feeling in the room. And I remember one student's father yelling to a student, "You made the right choice." That is great. But the truth was, it was overwhelming. And what it did for the students, we surveyed them. And one of the things they said, it decreased their stress. And it's been almost five years since the day that you made that announcement. And what's been the biggest challenge that you face as a result of that decision? Well, the question, it isn't a challenge. It's a question, and when you get something for nothing, do you appreciate it as much? And I hope the students do, because we worked very hard for it, and it was very meaningful to the donors. And sometimes, you just take it for granted. And that's something we... I don't think they take it for granted, but I hope not. Yeah. It's an interesting insight, and it's true in so many places. But you're just taking such an overwhelming burden off their hands. I'm sure they'll be grateful forever. I hope so. And as Ken said, I hope they remember when they become successful to get back. You know, Bob, this has been so much fun talking to you. And I want to have some more with my lightning round of Q&A. So are you ready for this? Sure. What'd you have for breakfast? Cereal and peanut butter and jelly. The breakfast of champions and a true doctor. What's one word others would use to best describe you? Maybe focused. What would you say is the one word that best describes you? Interesting, fun. The best word to describe your golf game. Frustrating. If you could be one person beside yourself for a day, who would it be and why? LeBron James. Why is that? Well, I can't imagine what it is like to be such a consummate athlete. He really is, you know. And what's the best word you'd use to describe being a doctor? I think passionate about what you do. The best word to describe being a CEO. Driven. Your biggest pet peeve. Government. Describe your last, "I can't believe this is happening to me" moment. Do you mean the answer is Hurricane Sandy. We talked about that. Your most famous patient. Well Ken Lango. What leader do you pull a lot of inspiration from and why? I like Terry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. They were both great leaders and they led in spite of a lot of negativity and tremendous odds. What would I hear if I turned on the radio in your car? Probably Frank Sinatra. What's something about you a few people would know? I have a very good eye. An eye for everything. It's a radiologist. It's all about vision and I think I see things differently. I have a different aesthetic pace and things like that. Interesting. That's it for the lightning round. Thank you very much. Keep eating those healthy breakfasts Bob. A couple of final questions and I'll let you go. You've had such a remarkable career. When you look at your own being, your own person, what's your unfinished business? I want to continue what we're doing here because we have a lot of unfinished business and I'm pretty happy with me where I am in life. Great, great. What's one piece of advice you'd give anyone who wants to be a better leader? Find things you're passionate about and care deeply about them and focus on them. It's very important. I think that leaders, it's not good enough to have vision. You have to be able to execute the vision and the combination makes you successful. Bob, you are so passionate and you are such an extremely gifted leader. I actually think you're instinctually one of the best leaders I've ever ever talked to in my entire life. What you're doing is not only changing NYU Langone, you're changing medicine and you're making the world a better place and you're really leaving a lasting mark on the world. I love the fact that you've got so much more to do and I know you're going to get it done and I want to thank you for sharing your story and being with us today. I truly appreciate it. Well, I don't know about you, but my mind is spinning with all the leadership wisdom Bob just shared. How you got to harness the power of belief, tap into people's aspirations and just be yourself. You can see how all those lessons have played a role in the incredible turnaround at NYU Langone Health. But it's not just talk. Dr. Grossman doesn't just let people say they're doing a good job. He needs to know those results are really happening and the dashboard he championed has given everyone a clear picture of what's really working and what's not. It's brought transparency and accountability to their work and it's really made a difference in their overall performance. When you're in charge, it's not enough to have just strong values and ideas. We've also got to create accountability so you can make sure all that good stuff is truly happening in your organization. This week, I want you to come up with one idea to bring more accountability to the work you do. How well do you measure what's working and what's not? Are your metrics visible to the people who need to see them? What kind of structure do you have in place for follow up and review? Dig into one of those questions this week because when you find ways to bring more accountability to the work you do, you'll find new levels of excellence too. I'm absolutely sure of it. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders create accountability. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Ben Weprin, CEO of AJ Capital and graduate hotels. When you're trying to manifest something, you have to be able to tell that story. You have to be able to articulate your unbridled passion and interest very clearly and people have to believe that you're going to do it. We're building something that's in the future. You have to be able to believe my story or you're not going to invest in being part of that journey. And so the story is everything. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]