Innovation, Digital Acceleration, and Trust: An Interview with Mayo Clinic’s Chair of Practice Administration and AFP Alumna, Roshy Didehban

Roshanak (Roshy) Didehban currently serves as the Chair of Practice Administration at Mayo Clinic.?Roshy joined Mayo Clinic in 2002 as an Administrative Fellow and has held a variety of roles in her 19 year tenure. Most recently she served as the Associate Administrator for the Department of Internal Medicine and Secretary of Clinical Practice Committee at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

During this interview, Roshy Didehban (AFP Alumna 2002-2004),?discussed?her diverse experiences as?an administrative?fellow and?administrator,?important lessons she learned as a young careerist, her leadership philosophy,?and?the future of patient-centered care at Mayo Clinic.??

When asked about her top priorities as the Chair of Practice Administration, Roshy answered:?“The first?[priority]?is around innovation and building the capability of innovation, providing funding for trying?new?and innovative ideas, and the resources necessary to do that, ultimately?making innovation a core part of how we behave every day. The second is digital acceleration.?Digital acceleration is about: how are we changing the way we care for patients, how do we provide hospital care for patients in the home, how do we think differently about providing therapeutic care in the home versus asking patients to travel to a Mayo Clinic site? It's really all about how?we use?technology to transform the experience of our patients and balance what care we can provide remotely and when do patients?actually need?to be on our campuses for care. The third priority are the things that ensure that Mayo Clinic remains the most trusted organization and the number one brand in healthcare. We call it our non-negotiables -- it's things we have to do. We have to?do?to maintain the highest quality.?We have to maintain the highest safety. We have to invest in our patient’s experience. We are also deeply committed to issues of health equity. It's really about?maintaining?the things that make Mayo Clinic great and ensuring that we continue to invest in the core of who we are -- as we are innovating and as we are accelerating digital transformation.”?

To learn more about?Roshy’s?fellowship experience,?her?advice for young?careerists, and?her?vision?for the?future of healthcare,?please tune into the podcast?linked below.???

To learn more about?Mayo Clinic’s Administrative?Fellowship?Program, please visit our website.??As a gentle reminder, this year's application will close on September 7th, 2021.

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TRANSCRIPT

(0:05)?Chanice Howard: Welcome, my name is Chanice Howard. I am an administrative fellow for Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Thank you for joining us as we continue our series where we highlight some of our phenomenal AFP alumni.

Today, we have the honor of speaking with Roshy Didehban who was in the Mayo Clinic Administrative Program from 2002 to 2004 and currently serves as the Chair of Practice Administration at Mayo Clinic.

I invite you to listen and engage as Roshy provides key learnings from her career, advice for young careerists, and Mayo Clinic’s 2030 strategy.

We are super excited to have you here to share your experience, learn more about your background, your passion for healthcare, and some of the great things you have been able to accomplish here at Mayo Clinic!

To begin, can you start off by talking about your professional journey and your matriculation to your current role?

(1:07) Roshy Didehban: Thank you so much for the opportunity to meet with you today.?I’m really excited to kind of share my story today. My early years, way back when I arrived at Mayo Clinic in 2002, I was really immediately amazed by the culture: how welcoming it was, how open I found people to help others, and I learned a ton. I was a Rochester-based fellow. My rotations during the fellowship included the hospital, finance, the laboratory, research, [and] quality. I was an interim Operations Manager for Cardiovascular Diseases and then I went to Mayo Clinic in Arizona for my final rotation, which was in the Department of Surgery in Arizona. Although I loved the experience in Rochester, I think the amazing part about Rochester is you really feel the history and the awe of being part of such an incredible organization with such a deep and rich history, but what Arizona provided me was a little bit different in my very last rotation.

Arizona is smaller and it provided this really unique experience that allowed me to, rather than being kind of siloed in an area, it allowed me to broadly understand all aspects of a fully integrated medical center and really understand at a deeper level how patient care education and research come together to benefit the patient.

I also was able to learn and Arizona kind of across multiple functions and then I also benefited from incredible mentorship from there as well as from Rochester. That being my last rotation, I ended up spending the next 13 years in Arizona. I moved through multiple roles: I was a manager, then I became an administrator in surgery, and then I moved to the Emergency Department in anesthesiology, and then I became a senior administrator for the Department of Medicine. I would say that as I think about my 13-year journey in Arizona there were really two key events that formed who I am as a leader today. The first experience was with my first physician partner. Mayo Clinic is very dependent on that physician administrative partnership, and that is really a key part of our business success. My physician partner at the time was the Chair of the Department of Surgery. I was a brand new administrator, only a few years out of my master's program, and he sat down with me and he told me that I was failing, and I was failing at people leadership. Not only did he tell me that I needed to really grow in that regard, but he gave me a pathway on how to improve. What I realized was he cared about my personal success and I realized that he cared enough to give me the feedback he cared enough to give me a pathway and he cared enough to support me as I improved.?That really allowed me to understand people leadership in a whole new way and allowed me to kind of have my first career pivot.

The second career pivot came when I was the Administrator for the Department of Emergency Medicine.?The chair at the time was truly an innovative individual -- he liked to push the envelope, failure didn’t bother him -- and at that point in my career, I was very focused on, “I have to do everything right and has to be A+ work.”?What he taught me was if I’m not trying enough things, if I’m not being innovative enough, I’m not serving the organization.?It’s part of my role as a leader to serve the organization, to move it forward, to be innovative, and he taught me the importance of being willing to innovate and the importance of being willing to fail.?That was the second major pivot for me in the way I approach my leadership.?

A little over three years ago, I was given the opportunity to return to Mayo Clinic in Rochester as Chair of Practice Administration. In that role, I'm accountable for clinical practice across all of our sites.?I’ve been in this role a little over three years and I kind of break my experience into four parts.?The first year I was back in Rochester, it was all about learning.?It was about developing relationships and understanding my role, it was about deepening my understanding of clinical practice of all Mayo Clinic sites.?During my second year, I was given an incredible opportunity to lead the opening of Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City in Abu Dhabi, so I spent basically every other week in Abu Dhabi during my second week in this role.?That was an incredible experience that I never thought I would have, but I feel incredibly blessed to have had that opportunity to lead that effort.?And then, of course, we had the year of COVID, and that brought with it a ton of challenges about how you lead a healthcare organization through a pandemic.?I learned a ton about the importance of how a very focused organization can overcome anything.?Now in my fourth year, my focus is on reaccelerating our strategy around Bold. Forward. “Cure, Connect, Transform” and really focusing on innovation and digital transformation within the practice. So that brings us to today!

(06:43) Chanice Howard: Roshy, you have had an array of experiences, beginning with the fellowship up until recently.?The diversity of your experiences are really phenomenal, to be honest.?You’ve touched a lot of different things and I love the tidbits of, “If I am not being innovative enough, I am not serving the organization” and the importance of being willing to fail and innovate are such important lessons for us all to learn. We’ve spoken so much about the work you’ve done here in Mayo and you spoke a little bit about some great mentorship moments and pivots in your career. But thinking way back as a graduate student in your second year, thinking about what you want to do next, what attracted you to Mayo Clinic to begin with and what experiences have had the most impact on your career?

(07:32) Roshy Didehban: I think first and foremost, the thing that attracts many of us to Mayo Clinic is of course its reputation in healthcare. Mayo Clinic is recognized as the number one brand in healthcare. Even when I was in high school, I remember that I dreamed that one day I'd get to work at Mayo Clinic and so it is kind of that awareness of Mayo Clinic is an organization that of course initially attracts us. As I started to learn more about the organization, though, what really attracted me to come here was our model of leadership and our model of patient care. Specifically the physician-administrative partnership. You know, as I was going through my master's program, I heard repeatedly from healthcare administrators how physician administrators did not have positive relationships and that if I were to develop a career as a health care executive, I'd really have to be prepared that I'm not going to have a great relationship with physicians. As I learned more and more about Mayo Clinic, I realized that that is the exact opposite of who we are as an organization and I have had an incredible number of physician partners that have taught me, that have challenged me, I've challenged them, but the core of that relationship starts with respect and that was something that as soon as I learned that I realized that's the type of health care executive I want to be. I want to be a partner to physician leaders who really understand the medicine and I want to be that administrative leader who really understands the business, and together we can really carved that pathway forward. The other thing that really impressed me about Mayo Clinic that I didn't realize until I started learning more about it, is that all of our physicians are compensated on a salary model and there is no incentive for our physicians to do more do more tests, do more surgeries -- they get the same paycheck every two weeks regardless of that work. That does a couple of things: number one, it ensures that the needs of our patient come first and that they can make the right decision for the patient at the time, but it also encourages investment in the education of others, and we often think about education for residents and fellows, but I really found there was a constant willingness to educate administrators and help us be better and understand more. Then it also supports our investment in research, and so it allows our organization to function in a way that ensures that we have a balance across those three activities, but it's always with the benefit of the patient in mind.

I also think in getting back to mentorship, Mayo Clinic has some of the smartest people in the world. I mean, the level of education, questioning, constant learning, growth, innovation, is absolutely amazing and I found that everyone has a commitment to not only continuously learning themselves, but educating others and challenging the status quo.?I realized I'd be able to have a career of growth and learning at Mayo Clinic that I might not have at another organization. I do think, as far as kind of the experiences that had the most impact on my career, I would say my number one advice to people is being open to opportunities that you didn't expect and just say yes. If someone comes to you and offers you an opportunity, again the most recent one for me was leading the project in Abu Dhabi -- I didn't expect it but at the end of the day, I learned so much, I had such a great time, I learned about healthcare in a different part of the world, and what it takes. You don't really know what you can do until you push yourself, and I think sometimes we resist taking opportunities that we may not know exactly how to approach or exactly how to solve, but it's really leading through that ambiguity, taking it one step at a time, those are the experiences that allow you to learn and grow the most and you become a better leader when you go through hard things. You don't actually become a better leader when things go perfectly. It's important to give yourself that opportunity to take on new challenges and experiences.

(12:10) Chanice Howard: Thank you so much for sharing that. It’s awesome that you dreamed about this in high school!?You are literally living your dream, probably way further than you were imagining!

(12:27) Roshy Didehban: That is very true!

(12:29) Chanice Howard: I appreciate you sharing about the physician–administrator leadership model. With us as young careerists and some students who will listen to this podcast, it is sometimes difficult to imagine what that relationship actually looks like. It is amazing that here at Mayo Clinic that at the core of this relationship is respect as spoke about. It also great to hear more about your journey and some of the hard lessons you learned along the way. Sometimes as young careerists we can oftentimes feel afraid of failing and pressure to reach perfection. Sometimes we stray away from actually being okay with not knowing what to do and being okay with failing, so we appreciate hearing that from leaders.

(13:04) Chanice Howard: So we are going to move on to some questions about Mayo Clinic and its culture. When thinking about each of Mayo Clinic’s values and RICH TIES, which one of these resonates the most with you and why?

(13:17) Roshy Didehban: It’s hard to pick just one, so I'm going to talk about a few. One of my other earlier experiences, when I was actually applying for graduate programs, was when I interviewed for a master’s in health administration at an organization -- ?I won't say which one it was -- and during the interview process, the person said to me, “if you only had one liver and you had a 77-year-old who was insured by Medicare and a three-year-old who was uninsured, who would you give it to?” and I of course said -- and by the way, the 77-year-old in this example was an alcoholic -- and I of course said, “I'm going to do what's in the best interest of the patients I see, which is, the three-year-old has an entire life to live, and I'm going to give it a three-year-old,” and that healthcare administrator, who was a teacher at that school, said to me, “you're never going to make it as a healthcare executive because you always give it to the insured patient.” That was a really eye-opening experience for me and it really caused me to sit back and question the type of leader I wanted to be and the type of organization I wanted to work for.

When I heard of Mayo Clinic’s primary value -- the needs of the patient come first -- I immediately thought back to that experience when I interviewed and I thought to myself, when I joined Mayo Clinic as a fellow, am I actually going to see that happen? One of my very first mentors at Mayo Clinic said to me, “Roshy, if you’re ever in a position where you can't find me and you need to make a really tough decision, do what's in the best interest of the patient and I will always have your back.”?With that, it sort of level-set me on, “Wow, Mayo Clinic really believes this.” There have been multiple occasions where I've had to make the tough call about investing in the care of a patient who was uninsured or who is underinsured for very high-cost care, and I always thought back to that mentor who said, “I’ll always have your back.” and so I do believe Mayo Clinic really, truly lives that primary value.?Am I saying that’s always easy? I am not saying it's always easy. Healthcare is always a balance and you always have to think about the bigger picture, but in those moments when we have an opportunity to change the life of an individual, as an organization I believe we always stand up to do that.

The other two values are incredibly important to me the first is integrity. I think the way integrity shows up for me is: you always do what you say you're going to do. When you promise you're going to follow up on something, you follow up on it. If you're going to be late, you let people know in advance you're going to be late and when they can expect to receive that.?Integrity for me also means accountability. Accountability when there is a mistake or when there's an error, I really personally believe you should always take accountability of leader. It may have been a member of your team's fault or they may have done something wrong, but at the end of the day as the leader, I think taking that accountability, to me, is a very important part of integrity as well.

The last value that I'll touch on is teamwork.?Mayo Clinic is an incredibly team-oriented organization that's really built off of relationships. If you think about the integrated Mayo Clinic model of care, the magic that we bring to patients is all of these specialties under one roof, all working together in concert; a single EHR that is shared amongst those practices. Our very core as an organization is working as a team for the benefit of our patients and you see that across administrative areas, across departments and divisions, and I think really understanding how to be an effective team player, as well as a team leader is really critical to success here.

(17:26) Chanice Howard: Thank you for sharing those stories and I'm happy to hear you continue to carry those words from your mentors. It is so great to have a mentor who trusts your decision-making process because they trust you. ?Moving on, and you kind of spoke earlier about being a Rochester fellow and going to Arizona for your last rotation and I guess in some ways Arizona captured your heart to a degree.?Could you speak to the differences between the Rochester campus and the Arizona campus, and what ways are we same, different, and work together? I would love to hear that perspective.

(17:58) Roshy Didehban: Absolutely. At our core, our values and our culture are very similar. Our commitment to not only the needs of the patient come first, but to RICH TIES, our commitment to a balanced portfolio of activities across clinical practice, educating the workforce of the future, and research, which is really focused on translating new research, new discoveries directly to the patient as quickly as possible. I think those are the things that are shared at all of our sites regardless of where you may be.?Rochester is the mother ship, as we like to say, so it is where Mayo Clinic started over 150 years ago. There is a deep core of history and commitment to the community. I’d also say that because of its size, it can be a little intimidating to navigate and I think in some ways it's really good -- the year and a half that I spent in Rochester very early in my career forced me to really think about the interconnectivity of the organization and how important it is when you're making a decision or leading a project to be much broader in your thinking about stakeholder engagement. It really forces you to learn how to lead in a very large, interdependent organization and how all the pieces fit together. I think what I saw in Arizona that I loved was its smaller size allowed me to develop much deeper relationships and much deeper understanding across the business.?Because of the size, people wear many more hats, and it forces you to have a much deeper and broader knowledge of how things work together. I think both experiences are important and I do think fellows should take the opportunity to really understand both those types of sites. ?I also think if you look at our 2030 Bold. Forward. Strategic Plan, we are making sizable, incremental investments in Arizona in Florida over the next decade and I think those investments, you’ll continue to see those sites grow and I think expansion and growth at that level could be extraordinarily exciting to be part of.

(20:35) Chanice Howard: Thank you for that perspective.?One thing I do look forward to is hopefully doing a destination rotation in Florida just to get a different perspective versus Rochester. ?You kind of spoke into the passion for innovation, we've heard about your ability to navigate ambiguity, and always playing the patient first is always in the forefront in your decision making. Taking a step back, what do you feel is your purpose within healthcare? How have your lived experiences, identities, and strengths shaped your purpose or vision?

(21:13) Roshy Didehban: So I see my purpose as a healthcare executive, and being part of Mayo specifically, to be a driver for encouragement of a growth mindset. I also really want to lead from the perspective of having an openness to question the status quo. I want to create more capacity and capabilities around innovation and change management.?Ultimately if you roll it all together, my core is deeply aligned with Mayo’s primary value: the needs of the patient come first. It presents itself in a different way. We are in a rapidly changing world that is more and more driven by technology and connectivity, and that technology and connectivity come with both the right information and a lot of misinformation. I really aim to ensure that Mayo Clinic remains that most trusted place for health care expertise – that we continue to be the place to go to for care when you have a serious or complex condition and you need that integrated care that Mayo Clinic provides. I also want to ensure that we're driving forward in a way that's not only highly patient focused, but that we find new ways to be highly consumer focused. I want to make sure that that people are getting the right information at the right time to make the right decisions.

(23:49) Chanice Howard: You spoke about some of your goals earlier. Is there anything specific -- one big priority or impact you want to make -- within your role and within the organization before the end of your tenure?

(23:01) Roshy Didehban: My number one goal right now is to transform the way patients access Mayo Clinic, and I'll tell you a little bit of a personal story. I have a really close friend, one of my best friends who I lived with in Graduate School. We've traveled the world together and probably about four years ago, right when I was accepting this role, her husband emailed me because he did not have my phone number at like 11:00 o'clock at night. I happen to be awake and saw his email come through, and he told me that my best friend had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and he was at a complete loss of what to do, and he was really upset, and he was nervous about how to make sure his wife had access to the best medical care. What my dream is, is that for him as a husband or for his wife, in the middle of the night with a new diagnosis, is to be able to go online and schedule their first appointment at Mayo Clinic, and go to bed that night knowing they have access to the best healthcare they can access.?What I'm working on now and what I'm deeply committed to is, how do we create those digital capabilities that allow a brand-new patient with a new diagnosis at 11:00 o'clock at night or on a Saturday at 2:00 in the morning to schedule an appointment at Mayo Clinic and rest assured that we're going to take care of them? I see that as a really transformative opportunity for Mayo Clinic if you think about her, as long as I've been at Mayo -- probably much, much longer – the way you got into Mayo Clinic is either a physician referred you or you pick up the phone and called the appointment office and went through a bunch of questions and request an appointment and it was a long drawn out process.?I want to simplify and accelerate the ability to access Mayo Clinic.

(25:08) Chanice Howard: Thank you for sharing that story. From this conversation, Mayo Clinic is doing so many great things, but there's so much more work left to be done. We've also spoken a lot about the future, and the 2030 strategy, but the next question is a bit more retrospective -- in your professional career thus far, what are you most proud of?

( 25:29) Roshy Didehban: That’s a really challenging question for me. I've been incredibly blessed.?I think one of the things about Mayo Clinic is there are so many opportunities to have an impact. There are so many opportunities to lead in new areas, and so I've been incredibly blessed throughout my career to have participated and lead efforts that I'm all very proud of. I really believe the thing that I'm most proud of as a leader is the relationships I've developed. Relationships -- and I talked about this earlier -- are really a key driver of Mayo Clinic. As we lead in a single organization knowing that our commitments are to our patients, but our ability to more quickly execute and get the right answer to the right patient at the right time, is completely driven by our relationships across the organization.?I've been really blessed to develop great relationships.

I often think of, as a leader, the words of Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel.” There's no doubt in my mind that leadership is really hard -- and I talked earlier about how my first position mentor told me I was failing at people leadership and that was really transformative for me because it forced me to really focus -- and what I learned in that was yes leadership is hard, yes you'll have to deliver really difficult messages, yes you'll have to make really tough calls, but I think it's important to find ways to do that in a way that respects the individuals you work with, that you understand their work, that you listen deeply, that you show compassion, and you provide guidance. That was something that I really had to deeply commit to and learn how to be a leader of leaders, how to be a leader of people, and it took me time to figure out how to do that well, but I was incredibly blessed with great relationships and great mentors who guided me along the way, told me when I wasn't doing well, told me how to do better, and trusted me to continue to grow and evolve in that way.

(25:08) Chanice Howard: Thank you for sharing that story. From this conversation, Mayo Clinic is doing so many great things, but there's so much more work left to be done. We've also spoken a lot about the future, and the 2030 strategy, but the next question is a bit more retrospective -- in your professional career thus far, what are you most proud of?

(25:29) Roshy Didehban: That’s a really challenging question for me. I've been incredibly blessed.?I think one of the things about Mayo Clinic is there are so many opportunities to have an impact. There are so many opportunities to lead in new areas, and so I've been incredibly blessed throughout my career to have participated and lead efforts that I'm all very proud of. I really believe the thing that I'm most proud of as a leader is the relationships I've developed. Relationships -- and I talked about this earlier -- are really a key driver of Mayo Clinic. As we lead in a single organization knowing that our commitments are to our patients, but our ability to more quickly execute and get the right answer to the right patient at the right time, is completely driven by our relationships across the organization.?I've been really blessed to develop great relationships.

I often think of, as a leader, the words of Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel.” There's no doubt in my mind that leadership is really hard -- and I talked earlier about how my first position mentor told me I was failing at people leadership and that was really transformative for me because it forced me to really focus -- and what I learned in that was yes leadership is hard, yes you'll have to deliver really difficult messages, yes you'll have to make really tough calls, but I think it's important to find ways to do that in a way that respects the individuals you work with, that you understand their work, that you listen deeply, that you show compassion, and you provide guidance. That was something that I really had to deeply commit to and learn how to be a leader of leaders, how to be a leader of people, and it took me time to figure out how to do that well, but I was incredibly blessed with great relationships and great mentors who guided me along the way, told me when I wasn't doing well, told me how to do better, and trusted me to continue to grow and evolve in that way.

(27:57) Chanice Howard: You’ve spoken a lot about relationships throughout this interview, which showcases how important it is to you and how important it is here at Mayo Clinic. Briefly, could you speak to a formal or informal mentorship relationship at Mayo Clinic and how that has influenced you, and maybe how you develop into a mentor yourself?

(28:15)?Roshy Didehban: Probably the number one piece of advice that I give to early careerists is to treat everyone you meet as a teacher and as a potential mentor.?Every individual you work with, every individual you interact with, has the ability to teach you something. They could teach you who you want to be. They can also teach you who you don't want to be. Each of those connections, each of those opportunities -- you have to pay attention -- are really critical. I've probably had 20 or 30 individuals in my career that I've considered mentors -- some of them wouldn't even know that I would consider them a mentor -- but it was through observation of the way they led meetings or the way they work through challenges, that I was constantly paying attention to and figuring out how to incorporate that style into the way I work. Yes, I think formal mentorship or sponsorship -- you know we've talked a lot about not in this interview -- but generally we talk a lot about how important sponsorship is and I see those as two very different things. A sponsor is someone who's going to say you should consider this person for that challenging role.?They create opportunities for young leaders to have new experiences, whereas I see mentorship as something that really anyone can be a mentor to you, whether they know it or not.

I also think when you approach mentorship in the way that everyone is a teacher, it's important to them take all of those inputs and think about what resonates with you. Authentic leadership is critical. You have to be yourself because people see inauthenticity in a nanosecond.?If you're not being yourself, people see it and so it's important not just to observe how other people lead, but it's important to then incorporate it and say, “How do I make it true for me? How do I make it part of my authentic style?” and that will mean that there are times that you feel awkward. I'm one of those people that I always say good morning. I work with some people who think it's strange to always say good morning! But it's who I am, it's the way I approach my work, and I'm not going to stop doing it because it's my authentic style. I think that authenticity is really important.

The last comment I'll share on mentorship is the importance of feedback. Feedback is extraordinarily difficult to get and I think it's extraordinarily difficult to get in almost any organization. When you get critical feedback, the most important thing you can do is not be defensive. Start with a thank you because that person took a risk in telling you that they needed to give you critical feedback, and remember that that feedback is for you to then internalize and use in a way that helps you grow as a leader. Those would are my thoughts and my philosophies around leadership. I do believe in giving direct and honest feedback, and it's something that I've really committed to throughout my leadership career because I think it's so hard to get it and I don't want anyone I work with to ever wonder how they're doing. I want to have those honest and direct conversations early and often.

(31:49) Chanice Howard: Authenticity is so important, and I totally agree with the good morning piece, especially being from the South and coming to the Midwest! What other qualities would you like to see in a young careerist going into the workforce post-graduation, and at what stage in your career did you develop these attributes?

(32:08) Roshy Didehban: That’s a great question.?I think first and foremost, I would call out speaking up, and I didn't always do this as a young careerist. It was probably five or six years into my career until I felt that confidence to consistently speak up and contribute, but I do think it's something to develop early on. I think people fear and, I'll say it as a female leader, I think many female leaders feel like they have impostor syndrome -- I know I have throughout my career -- and are worried that their comment won't be the smartest or isn't you know the right thing to say. I do think it's really important to speak up and one safe way to do that is to speak up with a question. You know, “have we thought about x?” or, “I read this article and it said that this organization did X, Y, or Z. How do you think that would work at Mayo Clinic?” That can be a safer way to speak up and contribute to a meeting, but I do think it's critical that early careerists take that opportunity to speak up and contribute and let individuals know that they have a lot to contribute and part of that is showing that you have a lot to contribute, is about speaking up.

The second thing I would say, and this is something I did very early on, is don't ever shy away from a challenge. It was something I definitely came into my career with. I really do like challenges; I like working on new things. I find that that's when I have the most fun, and so I do think being willing to take on a challenge, being willing to say yes when asked to do something is really important.

I think the last thing that has taken me much longer to become, but I think is important, is questioning the status quo. Mayo Clinic, because of our history, kind of has a way we work and sometimes we stop questioning the way we work or stop kind of seeing other ways things could be done. The benefit of the administrative fellowship program is the ability to have very bright individuals join Mayo Clinic with a fresh perspective, and so what’s critical to me is not only are you bringing that fresh perspective to our organization, but you're questioning the things that you see that just don't make sense. You're raising up those things and really talking about how could we do this better and why do we do it this way and how could we change it in a way that's either more efficient, or serves our patients better, or makes the lives of our staff easier. That took me some time to develop, but I think it's also really critical.

(35:06) Chanice Howard: These are all great points. Especially around learning to speak up and not shying away from a challenge. Earlier, in the interview, you mentioned the importance of the physician-admin relationship, but do you have anything else to add in how these physician and admin partners can best work together to advance the health of our patients and our communities?

(35:30) Roshy Didehban: This one is really critical because a partner does not mean an assistant, and I think there are there times where I think an administrator kind of falls into that maybe operating officer execution role, you know? Yes, the physician is the CEO, I'll kind of take it and execute it. What I think is most critical to ensure the physician administrative partnership works really well is to think of it as a true partnership.?What a true partnership means to me is that you can disagree with one another, that you can bring different points of view, that you can challenge one another's opinions; ultimately, I think it's important that physician and administrative partner come to an agreement on the best path forward in private and always support one another in public. I think back on the physician partnerships that I have enjoyed the most, it has been the ones where we deeply respected one another but we had really strong disagreements because I learned a ton -- I hope if you talk to them they would say that they learned a ton -- but we always got to a better outcome together. To me, it's being comfortable with disagreements, having a deep respect for one another, and maybe the third thing is ensuring that there is clarity on intent. Physicians and administrators may come to it from different perspectives and different knowledge bases but trusting that your physician partner has the needs of the patient in their front of mind and that you have the needs of the patients in your front of mind. I think that is so critical.

(37:20) Chanice Howard: You spoke earlier about some of your personal priorities, so from an enterprise perspective, what are the top three priorities for your area, and how do they align with the Mayo Clinic 2030 Strategy?

(37:33) Roshy Didehban: For the [Mayo Clinic] Practice Shield across sites, we have three targeted priorities. The first is around innovation and really building the capability of innovation, providing funding for trying new and innovative ideas, and the resources necessary to do that, but making innovation a core part of how we behave every day.?We're just starting that journey and just starting to understand what it takes to build an innovation capability across the organization.?We are having lots of discussions about how you take it from a leadership level and really embed it throughout an organization. I think that will take us some time, but I see the early fruits of that focus.

The second is digital acceleration, and I talked earlier about the desire to transform patient access, but digital acceleration is also about: how are we changing the way we care for patients, how do we choose remotely, how do we provide hospital care for patients in the home, how do we think differently about providing therapeutic care in the home versus forcing patients to travel to a Mayo Clinic site? It's really all about how we use technology to transform the experience of our patients and really balance what care we can provide remotely and when do they actually need to be on our campuses for care.

The third priority are really the things that ensure that Mayo Clinic remains the most trusted organization and the number one brand in healthcare. We call it our non-negotiables -- it's things we have to do we have to maintain the highest quality. We have to maintain the highest safety. We have to be the best in experience. We also are deeply committed to issues of health equity and we're spending a lot of time really understanding where at Mayo Clinic do we have instances of inequities in patient outcomes or length of stay or access to certain treatments. I think that understanding where there are those challenges in health inequities, and then having a focused effort to resolve them, is really critical. That kind of rounds out kind of that third priority, but it's really about the things that make Mayo Clinic great and ensuring that we continue to invest in the core of who we are -- as we are innovating and as we are accelerating digital transformation.

(40:21) Chanice Howard: Thank you for speaking to that. It’s always great to hear – and is a great reminder for me in the fellowship, as well. Thinking about innovation future of health care, what do you think are some game changers that might revolutionize or disrupt the healthcare landscape? You spoke to digital transformation, but are there any specific pieces of digital transformation you would like to highlight?

(40:45) Roshy Didehban: The thing that I'll focus the most on -- and we often know that the health care industry is 10 to 15 years behind what we're seeing in other industries -- what I think we're just starting to understand in the healthcare industry, broadly, is the importance of a combination of rich data -- which healthcare organizations absolutely have -- with medical expertise and insights in order to drive the transformation of patient care. How are we using AI? How are we using machine learning? How are we using natural language processing to deeply understand the data in our populations? How are we combining that with expertise and insights so that we can continuously transform the care of patients? We've seen this in Google and Amazon and many other organizations, and healthcare's been a bit behind. We've done it in pockets, but through our platform strategy in other activities, I think we will really be focusing on investing in those capabilities in order to further revolutionize and really disrupt healthcare from within. We don't want new players who don't understand healthcare that are outside of healthcare disrupting us. Mayo Clinic really wants to be the organization that ensures healthcare can disrupt from within, in a way that keeps the needs of our patients first.

(40:23) Chanice Howard: That was a great perspective, especially about external disruptors versus healthcare organizations being the disruptor. Thank you so much for that.?Moving on to some personal development questions, what is something new that you are learning?

(42:40) Roshy Didehban: I’m spending a lot of time learning more about health equity, and that's something that although I sort of understood it at a surface level before, I'm starting to really deeply understand how access to healthcare, processes of health care, and outcomes of health care are different across groups within the US, and what is Mayo’s role in identifying and resolving those inequities. I’ve been working really hard -- we have a Center for the Science Healthcare Delivery, our current center is working with our president of platform, John Halamka, to really understand the data and capabilities, and doing a lot of reading just to educate myself on health equity, and inequities and how to resolve them.

Another thing I’m spending a lot of time on is understanding AI and machine learning, and that's taking me down some interesting roads as I kind of learn more about the opportunities there.?The last thing is something that Mayo Clinic’s been working really hard on -- but I think we're going to continue to grow -- is how do we work in a more agile approach? As an organization, you know Mayo Clinic has a deep commitment to the committee structure, which really uses consensus to drive the business decisions we make. I see that changing over time. I think committees will remain very important, but I also think we have an opportunity to use empowered leadership around strategic goals, as well as teams that are working in a very agile fashion to evolve our outcomes over time. I do believe we're going to have a shift in the way we work over the course of the next 12 to 24 months that I think will be hugely exciting, but there is a huge model around how to work in an agile way that I've been spending time kind of understanding and reading more about that I understand really how to support that methodology of work at Mayo Clinic.

(44:50) Chanice Howard: Thank you for sharing that. I had the opportunity to participate in an agile project with the mobile health clinic. It was fantastic; we moved super-fast and it does make you a little uncomfortable, especially for those who have been at Mayo Clinic longer, but we really all enjoyed it and we got a great outcome.

Before we conclude the interview I have one of the most important questions here: What gives you joy outside of work?

(45:25) Roshy Didehban: I absolutely love travel! COVID is made it very difficult, but I have traveled to probably 40 countries, and the opportunity to experience different cultures, connect with people in different ways, see different parts of the world, is something that absolutely brings me joy. The other thing that brings me joy, also limited by COVID, is just being with others and having the opportunity to have a beer or a cocktail at the end of the day at a happy hour definitely is something that brings me joy.

(46:10) Chanice Howard: It is always great to hear about the things that bring people joy outside of work.

We thank you so much, Roshy.?We appreciate you sharing so much about your career journey, your leadership philosophy, and for taking the time to speak to careerists and students who would love to be in your shoes one day and have such a grand impact, so thank you.

(46:33) Roshy Didehban: Thank you so much for the time, I very much appreciate it.