Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): Too often, we reserve the label of leader for someone with a fancy title before their name.

Logan Pause (Intro): But great leaders are everywhere in our midst.

Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): I'm Gaurava Agarwal, but everyone calls me G.

Logan Pause (Intro): And I'm Logan Pause.

Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): On Anatomy of an Everyday Leader, we believe that everyone has the potential to be a great leader on a healthcare team.

Logan Pause (Intro): To find out what it takes And what it means to lead in healthcare, we talk to people from around Northwestern Medicine who are doing just that.

Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): Whether you've just started your career in healthcare or are a seasoned professional, have a leadership role or hope to take one on someday, this podcast is for you.

Logan Pause (Intro): Join us as we peel back the layers of leadership to ultimately make healthcare better.

Logan Pause (Host 2): Dr. Kannan Mutharasan is the Medical Director of the South Region of Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. We have him on the show today, because he has been a leader in system integration. When Northwestern Medicine expanded to the south suburbs of Chicago, Dr. Mutharasan was responsible for making sure patients in that area had access to the best heart and vascular care. He is passionate about building systems with soul, focusing on developing a culture that prioritizes people, collaboration and innovation. Welcome, Dr. Mutharasan.

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Logan, thanks so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation with you and G.

Host 2: Listen, I'd like to just kick us off with having our audience get to know a little bit about who you are, your background. And so, would you mind just sharing a little bit?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Yeah, absolutely. My name's Kannan Mutharasan. I'm a cardiologist here at Northwestern Medicine. I also serve as an Associate Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University. I'm proud to be affiliated with Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. I'm a dad, a husband. I got twin girls who just turned 11, and are getting ready for school as we kick off the school year.

And for a long time, I've been really interested in understanding how we can best deliver care to patients. And the particular lane I find myself in is really integrating that care, putting that care together so that each of us who is doing the best we can for our patients can do it together as a team and really deliver an exceptional experience.

Host 2: You mentioned being an academic physician and starting downtown, and you've migrated to the south region where you're the Medical director for Bluhm. Tell us a little bit about what that process has been like for you.

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Yeah, it's been a really amazing experience. And for our listeners who may not have that inside knowledge into Northwestern Medicine, we have our academic medical center in Northwestern Memorial Hospital downtown in the heart of Chicago. And we are now a network of 11 hospitals across the Chicagoland area. And one of our main hospitals on the southwest side of Chicago is Palos Hospital, where in the last three or four years, I've had the privilege of helping build and lead a team that is really here to deliver the best cardiovascular care we can really close to where people live and work. And that journey has been nothing short of exceptional and interesting and engaging for me for many reasons.

One is it's a new environment, a different environment. I spent a lot of times roaming the halls of Northwestern Memorial Hospital ever since I was a medical student. And so, to walk into a new hospital and build those relationships has been a lot of fun. And my role has been, I think, to serve as an ambassador in many ways for Northwestern culture. And also, be a listener to what the Palos culture has been like. These two institutions with a lot of legacy and history merged about four years ago.

And when I think about integration and when I think about how do we align a service line across multiple campuses, I think about something I learned about in engineering school as an undergrad, which is that concept of an alloy. So, an alloy is a mix of metals that together ends up being stronger than any one metal. So, a perfect example of an alloy is steel, right?

Steel is iron, but sometimes it's got carbon in it, but it turns out to be a much better metal. And for me, when I think about integration in my role, it's really how do I take the best of both worlds, both cultures and put them together into something that exceeds the sum of the parts.

Host 1: I love that. I love synthesis. I think it's a beautiful thing. We named our cat Hegel after the philosopher who basically said, "Hey, we can take two opposing things and find out how they relate, and that's how we can make true progress." And even growing up, first generation immigrants, my parents had a certain Eastern philosophy of what they thought the world should look like and how we should be raised and what our values would be. But we grew up in a southern Illinois town, and so I was basically exposed to Western culture and trying to say, what are the parts of Western culture and what are the parts of Eastern culture that I can come and bring together and hopefully bring the best of both of those cultures to create my own worldview. So, I love this idea of integration, synthesis, and bringing things together that are better than the sum of their parts.

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Thank you. And we don't have cats named as creatively as Hegel. We have twin cats, twin girls, and twin cats.

Host 1: No, that's amazing. We have two cats as well. They're not twins though. I grew up in the same place until high school. Truthfully, when my parents made me move, it was brutal for me. I really liked my habits, I liked my comfort. Talk a little bit about, are you wired differently when you said, "Okay, I'm going to leave Northwestern Memorial Hospital and go to a new place, make new friends"? Is that how you're wired? Or did that take certain mindset shift for you?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Yeah, I think for me—well, first of all, I still get my fix at Northwestern Memorial teaching in the intensive care unit and coming down from meetings. So, I get to run into familiar friends like both of you from time to time. So, it's not a complete different environment. For me, I think it's all about relationships and meeting people and forming bonds. And I think you can do that wherever you are.

And one really amazing thing about Palos Hospital and the specific microculture here is that everyone says hi in the hallway even if they don't know you. Even if you're passing another patient or another physician, someone from the staff, they'll always wave and say hi. And I think that says a lot about the community in which this hospital is founded. It's a special place with a unique microculture, even within the broader culture of Chicago.

So, that made it easy. That made it easy to make friends is because people wouldn't let me not be friendly. And I think that's really important, whether you're a leader—we're all leaders I think—but whether you're a member of the team, or you're in a position like mine, you have to have relationships with the people that you're working with because it's not just about the work that we're doing or trying to deliver clinical care or working on a budget. It's about every day connecting to the people that you're sharing space with and having that human relationship.

Host 2: I just want to pick up on something that you just said. You actually caught yourself saying we're all leaders. Specifically, what do you mean when you say we're all leaders, is that a responsibility?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Yeah. I think that leadership isn't a title. It's a frame of mind. It's an idea that I can make a difference or the world can be susceptible to my influence. And therefore, if there's something that I see needs doing, it doesn't matter. It certainly helps if you have a position, but it's not about position in order to have the ability to engage others and move people towards a common purpose.

I have a patient of mine who—if he listens to this, he'll recognize this—as I was stepping into this role, he said, "Kannan, you don't want position power. You want people power, right?" And leadership is really possible for anyone who has that ability to engage other people in a common purpose.

Host 1: Now, you know why you're on the Anatomy of an Everyday Leader. We believe the exact same thing. I want to pick up on a different thread as well. You talked about the superpower of where you work now, which is everyone says hello, everyone won't let you get away not knowing their name and having a relationship. And I have the privilege of being able to look at wellness data from our organization across all our hospitals. When I give talks at our community hospitals, that's what I tell them as well, is your superpower is the community. And when we look at our wellness data that seems to be sustaining at places like Palos. If there's no relationship to work, it loses some of its meaning in my view. And so, any tips on how to think through that?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Yeah, I think you hit upon something really important, which is that sense of community that we all want to feel. And I think there's some certain tactics that I've seen people use. I try to emulate it in my leadership style, but things that I've really seen help. A good example is our clinic manager. Now, she has a very strict open-door policy. Unless she's in a closed door meeting, it's an open door. I think that signals everything.

When people have a door open, it might not be as efficient, right? You might be trying to get through an email or some clinic notes, but I think it is profoundly effective because it signals that "I am here for you. I am here to serve you. If you need something, come in." I think that's amazing. And I think it reflects if you were to look, G, at our clinic engagement scores, perhaps you'd see that's reflected in her very personal, empathetic style of leadership. That's one example.

I think another thing which I think a lot of leaders at NM do is just walk the halls, walk around, talk to people in their environments. I think that what reflects something that I learned about, I spent one year away from Northwestern Medicine academically, and that was studying British History at University College London. And I took a class on Anglo-Saxon, England, right? The period before the Norman invasion, about 400 to 1000. And there was this idea in that class called peripatetic kingship. Peripatetic means walking around, right? Now, I think they did it because it was very expensive to eat, and they just wanted to go to all their dukes and earls and eat all their food. But it's a really good way to understand what people are up to, is to just kind of walk around and say hi to folks.

So, I think that's another really important tactic. It's interesting because the meta conversation here is that leadership can also be taught or refined or enhanced, right? Logan, you spend a lot of time coaching people, including me, and these are little tactics that people use that really can bring out what's already inherent in people. I'm curious what you might have seen, G or Logan.

Host 1: The word that we use to describe your observation is going to gemba, right? You go to where the people are, you go to where they're working, then you walk with them, you walk beside them. You see how they are going through their day, how they're making choices to accomplish the tasks, and then that's what gives us the true insight. No survey can do that. No focus group can do that and substitute for that. I totally believe That is what leadership presence means and being a part of it, being present, and with the people and understanding the processes.

Host 2: Yeah, it's a blend, Kannan, of what you mentioned. So, you started the conversation talking about an open-door policy where it's an act of listening to more kind of static space. And then, you talked about the leader going into their space and talking and meeting with their staff.

And I think one of the challenges we can struggle to think that it needs to be an either/or as opposed to a both/and. And then, there's another aspect of working with leaders that I think is something important for at least us to comment on is this idea of consistency, right? If, Kannan, your door or your practice manager's doors only open once a week or once a month, that tells a different story than if it's open a couple times a day. Or if you're going to round on your team, it tells one story if you go once a month and it tells a different story if you go a couple times a week. And so, this idea of consistency, I think, is really important as we continue to unpack, whether it's the tactics or the aspects of leadership that are really important.

Host 1: I hear a lot about this idea of rounding, of being visible. And obviously, that's the price of admission, but I view it as necessary but not sufficient. It's one thing to walk around, it's another thing, as you're walking, do something or ask something or seek something, whether it's input, et cetera.

Can you talk a little bit about that and when you are going around, when your practice managers are going around, what are you doing? Because that's the question I get a lot from leaders, is I walk around a lot, they know I'm around, but then they want some assistance on what should I be talking to them about and how can I get them to share with me? Because when I ask them, they say, "It's fine. Everything's fine." How do we get past that superficiality and really have it be a useful conversation of gathering input and ideas, et cetera?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Yeah. So, this was maybe two or three years ago, maybe about a year after I got to Palos Hospital and I was rounding one of the weekends. We all take turns as the cardiologist rounding. And I noticed one of our echocardiography technicians in the hallway just kind of waiting. I walked by, saw a patient, maybe two patients came by and I said, "Hey, I'm just curious how you doing?" I just noticed that you're kind of waiting." And she said, "Yeah, I'm waiting for a computer." And I said, "Waiting for a computer? How come? There's a lot of computers around here?." You know, what I have to do every time I do an echocardiogram, I have to process the pictures. An echocardiogram is an ultrasound of the heart, like same technologies we do on babies. I have to process the pictures to do certain measurements, And that needs a dedicated workstation so that then the cardiologist can read the study. And where I'm at, on this floor, there's only one computer with that software package. And that computer's occupied. So, I have to wait for that to be ready. And it's too long to walk 10 minutes down to the echo lab, and then come back up. That's not efficient. So, I'm waiting.

So, we're able to take that feedback back and I was able to connect with our manager that said, you know, the echo techs are waiting, that they have this pebble in their shoe, as we call it, right? And the software package, I don't think it costs anything. We just have to deploy it on every computer, on every floor. I think that was maybe an overreach, but they put it on three, four, five computers, maybe at least half the computer, so that now the techs don't have to wait at all.

And so, some of it is noticing, right? If you ask someone how you're doing, they'll say they're fine. If you notice something about them, even if you're off, say, "Hey, you look a little upset or disturbed," that invites the ability to open up. So, maybe the tactic there was just noticing that she was waiting. And that led to something new that I didn't know about, that I don't know that she would've volunteered if I just said hi.

And then, I think the important thing is then what do you do with that information? Do you execute and follow through and make a difference? That's where it really matters. And I was lucky enough to have some of the connections and relationships to make that happen. So, I think that's the kind of thing that I like to do when I walk around, is just kind of notice, understand, and see is there something in the environment that I can make better?

Host 2: And I think you've provided a lot of rich insights into your mental model around leadership and how that comes to life in your environment. I want to get into how was that mindset formed and you used the language of leadership mindset. What are the experiences that you have had and gone through that have helped shape your leadership mindset?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: I guess I come at it from this idea of, as the leader, I'm not the person in front, I'm the person supporting everyone from the bottom, right? And I really believe that if I have to think of what's formative, I mean, the first thing that came to mind when you were talking was my time in scouting and scouts, actually as a kid. I grew up in Philadelphia, the western suburbs. And we were camping in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. And I was probably 12, 13. I was one of the older kids in the troop. And it was a very kind of wet, rainy May, something like that. And we couldn't get the campfire lit. And I remember us all trying to figure out how to get this thing lit.

And our scoutmaster, his name was Don Johnson, which was really cool because that's the Miami Vice name, right? He said, "Why don't we just raise it up off the ground because the ground is really cold and wet?" And so, he kind of got this pallet, wooden shipping pallet and we lit the fire on that. And I remember his leadership style was, yeah, he would show us boys kind of what to do, but he would pitch in and help us too. That always stuck with me that if you roll up your sleeves and help and there isn't a job that's too small for you to do, then that example really can kind of follow through. So, I think formative things like that may have made an impact.

Host 2: Have there been any challenges or struggles throughout your personal or professional career that have really driven the growth and evolution of your leadership mindset as well?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Yeah, I think so. And I think one is a big career pivot. I took around 2014 or 2015. And this was a time when coming out of medical school residency fellowship. I was very interested in research. I was in post docs actually for eight years—two different ones—studying microRNA, these little molecules in the heart and everywhere else, and their response to oxygen, and in a lab studying nanotechnology and how that might be used to create better good cholesterol in our body.

And I loved science. But I recognized to myself that it wasn't something that drove me to the degree that it needs to drive you to persist in funding and getting papers and staffing a lab. And so, I had to look at myself in the mirror after putting a lot of effort into this, say, "Hey, I need to do a career pivot."

And this is where I think leadership really matters. Not just your leadership, but also the leadership of the people around you who are mentoring you. Junior faculty at this time saying to my division chiefs, "Hey, I want to make a pivot away from the lab. You've supported me for a long time. I think I need to move on to something else." And I could never thank these two gentlemen enough for the way they approached that conversation with me. They didn't have me come to their office. They came to my office and said, "Hey, Kannan, what do you want to do next? We're here to support you."

I actually found a great project for me to work on heart failure transitions of care. That really got me interested in linking systems together, transitions of care, being that vulnerable period from when people are in the hospital to when they need to transition to outpatient care. That was a challenge. Because I had to look myself in the mirror and say, "I'm not going to be a physician scientist anymore. I'm going to do something else, and kind of transition to something different." That challenge, I think, was benefited by the people around me, wanted to see me do well, and saw things in me that maybe I didn't see in myself. And I would hope for that for anyone who's pivoting and changing and transitioning careers.

Host 1: You said, "I got to look at myself in the mirror." That self-awareness, that self-reflection is really important in my coaching of physician leaders in particular. Sometimes I think that is a core skill that we aren't trained in. There's a path to becoming a doctor that's pretty prescribed. Every four years, i've got to do the right things to be able to go on the next four years. And then, we get into work and it gets busy. We haven't built that muscle. How important regular self-reflection is to being a great leader and to obviously, in my view, living a life that you want to live. And I see it all the time as you wake up and you're 45 and you're, like, "What am I doing every day?" And why am I doing this? And so, I love that you were willing to do that. And as you mentioned, it's scary, when you've been committed so many resources and so much time to one path to be able to have the courage to pivot. So, kudos to you on that for sure.

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Oh, thanks, G. And just to reflect, I think in medicine and in many healthcare professions, there's such a long and prescriptive path that when you get to the end of that path, sometimes it's a lot later than people in other fields when one realizes that my professional life is pretty open-ended actually.

And that existential dilemma is an important thing to be aware of and think through because it is amazing, but also a little scary that you could pretty much do anything that you would want to do. I'm sure when you entered psychiatry residency, you wouldn't particularly imagine the role that you have now in our health system. But it's an amazing one and a much needed one.

Host 1: Thank you very much. I had a hundred percent no idea this is where we'd be ending up along the experience road. So, I will say the other thing you said in the story you told about the software fix. You said I think the key was noticing. I would say the key is curiosity. Because I think I notice things a lot. But I'm like, maybe that person's just an inefficient person. Maybe something else is going on. Or most importantly, what I'm usually thinking is "I got to get. X, Y and Z done," and they'll figure their stuff out. And so, the curiosity is such a key thing.

And, you know, what I notice about you, what I see on your LinkedIn is—and you're always learning. I don't even know what the number of letters that are behind your name are, but I'm guessing you've got an MD and MBA. Talk a little bit about this curiosity, this love of learning, this continual growth journey that you go on, and how do you do that. How do you manage that and how do you make time for that?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: I think it's incredible the resources we have now for all of us to be able to learn about almost any topic that we want to. And for me, it's about understanding the world and the people around me. I think that's just something inherent in me, instilled in me, I think, by my parents. My dad retired now, chemical engineering professor. My mom stayed at home and raised me and my sister. And we always had books in the house. We always had questions around the dinner table. And those things have stayed with me. And I've been lucky to be able to learn multiple problem-solving frameworks, I guess I could call them as an engineering student, studying British history for a year now, medicine and business school. And I've always been interested in learning different ways to approach challenges or issues to kind of overcome them.

And my journey, I've been very fortunate to be able to do that. And I guess that comes up. Because when I'm around other people, especially in the role that I have in leadership, I just want to understand what their day is like and how I can make it better. In addition to the big picture of where we're going as a health system, what do we need to do in order to continue to thrive? At the end of the day, we are a strong system that's populated by really amazing people, and it's the people that makes us go, not the buildings or the technology that we have.

Host 2: Kannan, can you share with our listeners what some of those problem-solving frameworks or models are? Maybe the things that you think about of how you approach a problem or a situation.

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: So, one is an engineering school in our mechanics class, which is basically the study of how objects either stay in one place or don't. So, there's this really powerful technique called a free body diagram. So, let's just imagine you have two pendulums connected to the ceiling and one is hitting the other, and that's the diagram that's setting it up.

One of the things in a free body diagram that I think about all the time is you have to establish what the boundary conditions are. What are the things around the problem that you're not going to be able to fix? And I find resonance in that framework when we teach people in our quality improvement methodologies, you want to understand what the start and stop of a particular process are.

So, one of the things I'm often careful to do is, okay, what are the parameters of this problem that I can't change? And then, within that, that's the sandbox that I can change, right? A good example might be if we are looking at, let's just say hospital readmissions. One of the things that I can't do is say readmissions aren't important. Because even if intellectually, I know from my research that hospital readmissions for heart failure might actually be a fraught thing to look at because there are many different things that impact it, that are directly outside of our care, well, it's something that our government payers are looking at. That's what our contracts are tied to. That's a boundary condition. That's a fixed thing that, as much as I might be interested in, adjusting the wider world, I need to work within that. So, that's one example.

And then, the other example comes from my work every day as a physician. And that is the core problem-solving methodology that physicians use and other healthcare providers, which is trying to get to a diagnosis, right? So, you have a problem. You have a set of chief concerns of a patient. Let's say it's a patient who's coming in with chest pain or pressure. It might be many things. It could be they have a blockage in one of the arteries of their heart. It could be that their heart is not pumping well. And so, the pressures inside the heart are higher, which is leading to pain.

Once you have that first idea or question, or what the problem is to the patient, that isn't yet the specific pathophysiology. That is not yet the specific biological thing that is actually the problem. I have to ask questions, do tests to understand what the diagnosis is, meaning what is the actual issue. And once I understand the issue, it's a lot easier than to come up with a solution.

I find resonance in a problem-solving methodology that we also teach in quality improvement called the five why's, right? That's a lovely framework, which is usually you don't figure out the answer to something until you ask why five times. That teaches you to get to the root cause of something. And it's once you know the root cause of something that you can actually constructively address the problem. So, I've been lucky to be able to accumulate little frameworks like this over the years and also, more interestingly, be able to see the connections from one field to another.

Host 2: Dr. Mutharasan, that first framework sounds a lot like the Circle of control GE framework that you unpacked for our listeners in the first episode. I think Dr. Mutharasan did a much better job of—

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: No.

Host 2: A more sophisticated job of unpacking what that framework might look like, but a lot of similarities of focusing on the things that are within our control and being diligent and disciplined in that, and really leaving the things outside of our control where they should belong outside of our control. But thank you for sharing. That's great.

Host 1: Just a simple man, Logan. I want to get one more framework out of you. I heard you have a leadership acronym called  VOICE framework. Can you tell us a little bit about what  VOICE stands for?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: VOICE is a reminder to myself mostly, not just about the things I feel like I do a good job at, but also a reminder for the things that I need to keep working on.

And so, it stands for Vision, Opportunity, Innovation, Communication, and Execution. So, those are the things that I think about when I think about leadership, especially in a space like cardiovascular medicine where technology is moving so quickly, and a big part of what we do is innovate in order to care better for our patients.

So, V, Vision. That means as a leader, it's my job to talk to people and come up with a commonly created vision for what we want to do, where we want to go. Opportunity, that comes from me learning actually a lot from my basic science career, that you have to pick the opportune moment in order not to change, right? I read once that the Greeks had two words for time. One was kronos, which is time, and kairos, which is timing. And you have to catch the wave where it is. And for me, what that looks like is tying things to broader system initiatives if I want to advance a goal, find the right moment for things. So, opportunity is really important.

I for innovation, I think the world is changing very quickly around us with the sophistication of generative AI, as one example of how quickly the world is changing. So, we always have to keep an eye on innovation. Not that the old methods don't work. It is that we have to connect the new methods to the old methods to really make breakthroughs.

C is for communication. When I write this down, C is in a big red letter because that is the one thing that I always want to work on more. General Mattis had a quote and he said, the three things about communication are: what do I know, who needs to know, and have I told them? And I try to remind myself and I still fail. I try to remind myself every time there's an action, I need to communicate that action. Pretty much every time there's someone who needs to know about it.

And then, E is execution, which is where it all comes together. Because execution is really, I think, what makes the difference among leaders who are able to strategize and to be able to make a difference.

And it all comes together in the word  VOICE, because that's a reminder to myself that I have to use my  VOICE as a leader. I have to put my skin in the game. I have to expend political capital, whatever I may have gained. Because without trying to make a difference, you can't make a difference. And I'm lucky enough to have connections and relationships in this organization where I'm fully aware that my  VOICE will get heard, and it's my job to use it on behalf of patients and people under my care.

Host 1: Love it. People love Warren Buffet and I do too, but his right hand man was Charlie Munger. And he talked about mental models and people that have the most mental models can make sure they don't look at every problem as a nail when all they've got is a hammer. If you've got all the different stuff, you can now use the right tool for the job. And so just hearing your stories, your references, all the different frameworks you've collected over time, those are huge in your ability to lead when the timing, as you said, is right for the particular tool that you want to use at the moment. Kudos.

Host 2: Kannan, what I also appreciated about that acronym or that leadership philosophy, and you touched on this, is that you even said it's not just the strengths and the things that you're good at, but the things that you knew you need to be good at or maybe some opportunities.

And I think one of the challenges that you see just broadly across leadership is we just so oftentimes see people over index on their strengths and not think about the areas of opportunity or consideration that they need to factor in or build into their mental model. So, you know, you can see this and hear that a value of yours is continuous improvement and continuous learning. It's built in how you talk. It's built in your leadership style and your philosophy of pushing yourself to continue to learn and be curious, which I think is just fantastic. Kannan, you've described your passion as—and I quote, building systems with soul. Can you share what that means and what that is for our listeners?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: For me, when we think of healthcare systems, a place like Northwestern Medicine, there are many healthcare systems now across the country where it's an integration of maybe a practice group and various hospitals. I think it's very easy to think of it as the buildings and the physical assets. To me, it's really about the people that animate it, breathe life into it and give it spirit.

And to take it a step further—I'm a cardiologist. I think about the human body all the time—the system has to have soul. It has to take account for the fact that there are healthcare providers and staff that work within the system that we have to care about. And even more importantly, there are patients that the healthcare system is trying to help. And every human is an individual. And we will never get to a place of standardization like a motor company might be able to, where every widget is exactly lined up in a certain way. We have to account for, give people the latitude, the grace, and in fact empower people to treat individuals as individuals and recognize that sometimes the textbook answer isn't the right answer for a patient. And so, that's what I mean by soul, which is that can't come from above or below or can never fully be written down. We can have values. But if people have that sense, then I think we can really do wonderful things for our patients.

The other part of it is, when I think of the system, it's not necessarily buildings which are generally thought of as static, but is a body, a living organism that is growing, continually adapting, readapting itself to the environment it finds itself in. And I think a lot about how we as a healthcare system are so much like that. If the people are the blood, the body is the buildings that we inhabit and populate and work and try to do good things for patients every day.

Host 1: Every guest that comes on our podcast goes through a couple of rapid fire questions. If you hadn't chosen a career in healthcare, where might you have landed instead?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: I think it would've been a historian. I think it would've been amazing to understand how prior civilizations lived and breathed.

Host 2: And who has had the greatest influence on you as a leader?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: I would say my parents, because I think the way they led us as children have been enormously influential. I think a close second would be Abraham Lincoln.

Host 1: Is there one perceived failure throughout your career that has helped shape you as a leader?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: So, not necessarily my career, but an example from an activity about 25 years ago when I was in the South Asian Student Association. Suffice it to say we had a 2000-person conference that we were woefully under prepared for. I slipped one hour in the span of about four days trying to help patch it together with the team. And what I learned from that was anything I do, I need to be a thousand percent committed to. If the answer isn't "heck yes," it's got to be no. So, I think that was very formative for me.

Host 2: What was your first job?

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: My first job was in a basic science lab at University of Pennsylvania between my first and second years of college, and that's where my love of biology was really cemented.

Host 1: Thank you very much for giving us the time today. We've learned so much from you. We're lucky to have you. And I look forward to our friendship and continuing to see you in the halls here downtown when you're here as well.

Dr. Kannan Mutharasan: Thank you, G and Logan. And thank you both for your friendship and for the privilege of being on this podcast. I think it's wonderful and I hope I've been able to share a few insights with our listeners.

Host 1: Thank you for listening to Anatomy of An Everyday Leader.

Host 2: Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss an episode.