Today’s guest is John Fernandez, the President and CEO of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, Massachusetts. Mass Eye and Ear is one of the world’s leading specialty hospitals dedicated to ophthalmology and otolaryngology care, or as John says, they take care of everything from the neck up except the brain, but maybe the brain too sometimes.

In this podcast John talks about his journey to leading this world class organization, including his progress into the executive ranks at another world class Boston organization, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Throughout the interview, John talks about his management approach, which focuses on the fundamentals: plan, execute, follow up. While this sounds like a fairly simple formula, I think anyone who has tried it knows that simple isn’t always easy. John tempers his management approach with a focus on kindness, which was something heartening to hear from a senior executive.

One of the things that is clearly important to John is work life balance. We talked about work-life balance both before and during the interview, and one of the pieces of advice he gives to early careerists is to get your personal life sorted out first, and then figure out what you want from work, which was interesting advice. John has a series of questions that he gives people to help guide them through that process. I will post a link to those questions on the podcast web page.

podcast web page: http://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2016/08/john-r-fernandez-president-and-chief.html

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com