Speaking

Business today has the opportunity and responsibility to lead the charge to show we can protect our environment and save money and improve the economy all at the same time. While CEO at Gundersen, Dr Thompson’s team decreased disease-causing pollution by over 95%, dropped green house gas emissions over 96% and saved the health system and the region millions of dollars.

In this keynote, he offers leaders a roadmap to take responsibility for their impact on the environment and discusses strategies in conservation, process improvement, and broad partnerships. He shows leaders through his own and others experiences that if you set extraordinary goals, you can achieve extraordinary outcomes: make the air better for people to breathe, control rising energy costs, and help the local economy all at the same time.

Innovation is not just for start-ups and Silicon Valley icons. It is an imperative for lasting success for all businesses. Done poorly, the rate of failure and the costs are high.

Dr. Thompson uses stories and concrete data to explain to leaders his principles for leading innovation: be close enough to the work to feel the moral imperative, provide the structure that supports it, and maintain a disciplined disregard for conventional wisdom. By adapting and expanding on these principles, you create a culture for staff so they feel not only supported in their efforts to innovate, but a responsibility to do so, and the likelihood of sustainably successful outcomes increases rapidly.

We know if we are to successfully fulfill our mission to improve the health of our communities, we must work outside of our hospital and clinic walls. We now spend nearly double that of other industrialized countries on healthcare, yet are failing to make dramatic improvements in the overall health of Americans. Dr. Thompson talks to audiences about emerging and successful strategies as well as the critical roles of partnerships in our communities’ and how to successfully build them in order to improve health.

He discusses the importance of a diversity of approach, shared values and goals, the recognition that learning goes both ways, and the commitment and discipline to follow through. This problem is bigger than any one organization or program, but through many examples he shows leaders that great organizations live their values despite inconvenience or cost—and that together, we find a way.