A modern-day Gideon from Maine

Lessons from Everyday Life By Theodore Lewis

 Bridgman, Mi—The success of any organization or business is almost always a result of choosing the right people. One of the earliest examples of this is found in the Old Testament Book of Judges.

God had called upon Gideon to lead the Israelites into battle against the Midianites, an enemy army that had been oppressing the Israelites. Gideon started with an army of 32,000 and God instructed Gideon to send home those who were afraid. This reduced the size to 10,000. Then God told Gideon to take the remaining soldiers to a stream to drink. Those who knelt to drink were eliminated, and only the last 300 who lapped the water with their hands while keeping their eyes on the horizon were selected for the mission. 

With just 300 men and using the strategy of surprise, Gideon's army surrounded the Midianites at night with trumpets, torches and empty jars. By breaking the jars, utilizing the torches and shouting, Gideon's 300 shocked the Midianites into turning on themselves and fleeing, winning a great victory for God's people.

In my career as a hospital CEO, I learned that selecting the right people matters. My first major flub as a CEO came when I was assigned to a small rural hospital in Louisiana. We needed to hire a nurse executive and since I wasn’t familiar with the area, I gladly turned to an experienced recruiter in the state for help.

After several interviews, one candidate stood out above all the others. He interviewed very well with me, the board chairman and the chief of the medical staff.  Our notes showed that he was clearly the strongest of all the applicants. I couldn't wait for him to start.

On his first day, he showed up wearing Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt underneath a lab coat. At the end of the day, I had a chat with him about his role as an executive and the importance of setting an example through his attire.

During our conversation, I indicated that the sharp attire he wore during all his interviews would be a great example of the office's professional dress code.

Day two arrived, and he showed up in professional attire, much to my relief. However, the inappropriately casual dress reappeared on day three. I began to feel heartburn. Toward the end of that day, my secretary asked me if I had heard about the spittoon in his office.

“What is a spittoon?” I asked, being quite ignorant regarding the use of chewing tobacco.

When I visited his office, sure enough, there it was. I didn’t need to call the hospital's utilization review manager to confirm that the ugly bucket on the side of his desk had been used frequently that day.

Three years later, after being appointed CEO of Parkview Hospital in Brunswick, Maine, better fortune would shine on me, with one of the greatest talent acquisitions of my entire career.

The hospital didn’t have an IT director and its IT ratings of Maine hospitals were the lowest in the state. 

Having only been on the job for a few weeks, I was invited to join a team of staff members participating in an annual event where staff from several Maine hospitals raced hospital beds down the ice and back at the Portland Ice Arena during intermission at a local professional hockey game.

After the preliminary matches, only the teams from Parkview and Mercy Hospital remained to determine the bed race champion.

Parkview's team was led by a young man named Bill McQuaid, who joined Parkview's IT department staff from his previous employer, LL Bean.

Bill was a genius. I was amazed by the esprit de corps that developed under his informal leadership. As any savvy employee would do, he asked me, as CEO, to participate with the team in one of the practice runs. Having seen my level of expertise, he wisely excluded me when it came time to select team members for the championship race.

As a result of Bill's leadership, we excelled, and everyone at the hospital was excited about this achievement.

Some time later, I had an important board meeting and had prepared a set of statistical slides for an overhead projector to use for my presentation. I asked Bill McQuaid to bring an overhead projector to the boardroom.

Before the meeting, he set up the projector for me. The projector screen was supposed to be pulled down over the blackboard.

During my talk, when it was time to show the overheads, I asked Bill to turn on the projector, then walked to the blackboard to pull down the screen so the board could see the slides I had prepared. As I lowered the screen, something snapped in the mechanism that kept it in a lowered position.

The screen would not stay down on its own. This was a troubling moment, as my presentation had been flowing well and I really didn't need any interruptions to distract from my message.

Without missing a beat, Bill, who was sitting in a corner of the room, got up and went to the blackboard where the screen was hopelessly wound up at the top. He picked up one of the black erasers from the chalk tray, pulled a piece of string from his pocket and tied one end tightly around the eraser. Then he tied the other end of the string to the small loop handle used to lower the screen and pulled it down.

Lo and behold, the weight of the eraser tied to the screen was enough to keep the screen down so that my presentation could proceed. Wow. What an Einstein. Here was a young man who saw a problem and quickly looked outside the box for a solution.

I didn't need to search any further for Parkview's next director of information services. After being hired, Bill was promoted to Parkview's CIO. He went on to completely transform Parkview's IT program, from being one of the least competent to ranking 23rd among over 5,000 U.S. hospitals, and the smallest in the country at that time to achieve HIMSS Analytics Stage 6. This was an extraordinary achievement that brought significant financial and reputational gains to Parkview.

Bill McQuaid is currently the chief technology officer at Mid-Coast Hospital in Maine and is truly a modern-day Gideon.

Theodore Lewis is the former CEO of Guam Memorial Hospital and has a healthcare consulting business in Bridgman, MI. He is collecting stories about lessons learned in life and can be reached at theodorelewis@yahoo.com.

Subscribe to

our digital

monthly edition