Jul 24, 2018
Two Faced and Often Mediocre — but the people are usually nice
Anonymous employee
Health Catalyst Response
7yI have read, pondered and reread your feedback multiple times, and as I have considered your words, over the past few weeks, I can see some important (if difficult) work we need to do to become better as leaders and as a company. First, I want to acknowledge that I have made mistakes, and we have made mistakes as a leadership team. I know that this is true. This includes elements of prior organizational changes -- and I apologize to you and I regret every instance in which it becomes clear to me that I and/or we have made a mistake or have handled a situation in a sub-optimal way.
It is disheartening to me to hear of experiences where you feel that leaders at Health Catalyst have been defensive about acknowledging when they may have made a mistake or fallen short. That runs directly counter to our cultural attribute of humility. And humility becomes increasingly central in its importance as a team member takes on greater leadership responsibilities. I can see that we have more work to do here. As we roll out the Manager/Leader 360-degree feedback surveys during the second half of this year, we will be asking specific questions regarding humility, openness to feedback, avoidance of defensiveness, and for the first time, we will have a more precise sense of how each manager and leader in the company is performing, at every level, along these dimensions.
This brings me to the next item of feedback that you shared, around why people are chosen for leadership assignments (based on family relationships or friendships vs. based on performance and qualification) and, related to this, whether anyone at Health Catalyst is untouchable. First, I want to acknowledge that this feedback has been shared by multiple team members, both in Glassdoor reviews and in the Gallup surveys, as well as through the anonymous feedback channel we have on the intranet site. This suggests to me that we need to pay attention to this feedback, and better understand how to fix any situations where we may have not lived up to the company's values. We also need to be thoughtful about how we gain visibility to where those situations may exist so that we can then address the issues. This has been one of the reasons driving our development of 360-degree feedback surveys for every manager, at every level of the company, no exceptions. I will be the first to receive this feedback, then every member of the leadership team, then the ELT members, and ultimately every manager at Health Catalyst will receive this feedback and participate in this process, before the end of 2018. I will have direct access to all of this feedback, and am committed to carefully reviewing this feedback, at every level, including first for myself (and all the feedback on my performance will be shared with the chairman of the board).
No one at Health Catalyst should be untouchable. Each leader should be in a role based on their performance and qualification, not based on any non-market-based factor, including family relationships, friendship relationships or any other non-market-based factor. As we collect this feedback and as it enables us to identify areas for improvement, we will work to address these areas, including, hopefully in most cases, an opportunity to coach and train and enable managers and leaders to improve, but in cases where improvement is not achieved and/or where there is not an openness to the need to change, we will make changes.
I also want to share our commitment to go through an interview process for every leadership position at Health Catalyst, as the default approach -- and any exceptions to this process need to be approved by the leadership team. This process will include us posting the position, inviting candidates to apply, having an interview team comprised of more than the hiring manager, before leadership positions are filled.
The feedback you shared is hard to receive, at a few levels. But I'm grateful for it. I see significant value in feedback channels that are unfiltered, like Glassdoor, like Gallup and like the anonymous feedback mechanisms on our company's intranet. I may not agree with the feedback in every instance, but often as I work to exercise humility and resist the human tendency towards defensiveness, there are important nuggets of truth that need to be paid attention to, if we are to live up to our mission and our values. I can see these nuggets of truth in your feedback, and for that I am grateful. We will go to work to try to improve in these critical areas. Best, Dan