Throwing Out the CEO Playbook Amid the Historic Winter Storm in Texas
Growing and scaling a team over the last year — especially in the high-demand digital health industry — has often felt like navigating a ship in the eye of the storm. Then most recently, our Austin-based company faced a literal storm when the majority of our employees were left without power, WiFi, heat, and running water for several days.
The pandemic has created uncharted territory for even the most seasoned CEOs. As a leader with an untraditional background, I was emboldened to find the success of your business doesn’t solely rely on who you know, where you live, or where you went to school. Instead, progress is found in questioning the rules and even admitting when you don’t have the answers.
I’ve also learned many times over that sometimes the moment calls for throwing out the playbook and acting on gut instinct. Last week when the winter storm hit, my mind immediately went to our team and their families’ safety and wellness. We didn’t have time to build out a fully-baked plan. Instead, we sprung into action to make sure they had water, food, and a warm place to stay, quickly pulling together resources while also making sure their colleagues outside of Austin could pick up any urgent work on their behalf.
The intention behind our company values and culture has given us the flexibility and momentum to persevere through one unprecedented moment after another. Here’s what I’ve learned as a CEO over the last year:
Being empathetic and authentic as a leader is a strength, not a weakness.
My job is to set the vision for the company and empower the team to do their best work to accomplish that vision. What I’ve learned over the last year is that I’m a much more effective CEO when I lead with authenticity because it encourages my employees to do the same — allowing me to provide them with the support they need to flourish and do their best work.
When I first lost power in my own home, I bundled up and let the team know their health and safety was our top priority. If they needed to take time off or needed financial help to temporarily relocate to a hotel, we were here for them. We didn’t know how long the winter storm or power outages would last, but we did know that we needed to provide the support and reassurance to focus on what matters most. Soon enough the whole team was chipping in with guidance on the boil water notice, as well as sincere offers to lend their blankets, extra food and supplies, and snow-capable cars. Two of our engineers met in-person for the first time after one dropped off water at his home. Our commitment to keep our culture a priority paid off when it was needed most.
Remote work and distributed teams are not only viable but enable companies to scale.
Prior to the pandemic, we were focused on building a team primarily based in Austin. I had a hard time imagining how to create the culture I had promised, let alone effectively communicate to a growing team, without physically being in the same place. Considering we’ve built our business model around remote virtual care opportunities for clinicians, the pandemic ultimately strong-armed me into rethinking this approach and we began building a distributed team model. This decision ended up paying off in dividends over the last week as our employees outside of the impacted areas kept our essential business up and running with no interruption to our partners, clinicians, and patients across the US.
Rework your recruiting strategy to bring your mission front and center.
I became passionate about expanding access to healthcare after growing up in a small town with limited medical resources, ultimately leading to an autoimmune condition going undiagnosed for 15 years. I realized our pre-pandemic recruiting strategy wasn’t built to easily find people like me: motivated by our mission based on their experiences with the healthcare system. Once we decided to have a balance between a physical and remote presence for our employees, that allowed us to tap into a growing pool of mission-driven talent across the country.
We also make sure our conversations with candidates aren’t just about compensation and benefits — it’s about our values and mission, too. From the outset, we’re engaging in consistent dialogue about how we work together. This includes “Empathy Everyday” and “High Velocity”: two values put into action during the storm, keeping the business running while also supporting our team members in need.
Lean on peers and mentors but also know when it’s time to follow your gut.
Getting advice and inspiration from those who have been on the path before has proven invaluable to me as a first-time founder and CEO. At the same time, the pandemic has created uncharted territory for leaders across every industry. I’ve had to learn that we will face challenges that have yet to be overcome by even the most experienced leaders, including how to best act in the moment when half of the team is suddenly forced offline and thrust into potentially life-threatening conditions for several days.
We purposefully built our company around the idea of collectively accomplishing monumental work that one person can’t do alone. While this concept serves as a strong foundation for our company vision and culture, I also take it to heart in my role as a leader. Weathering a storm — literally or figuratively — requires collective action and the willingness to actively rewrite the rules.
