Model of the Future
Spectrum Health has created a culture of learning
Bill Selles
Stallions run with stallions. That’s a favorite expression of an HR director with whom Bill Selles used to work.
“It means, if you can create an environment where people feel they are making progress, more people will want to join,” he says. “It’s energizing. And those who don’t want to run too fast – they tend to self-select.”
Selles works to keeps the energy flowing in his current role as director of supply chain sourcing at Spectrum Health, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He gets plenty of help from the IDN, with its strong culture of learning, training and development; and he credits some key people and organizations in his past with helping out as well.
Consumer world
Selles’ passion for training and development comes from years of experience, beginning with Pizza Hut in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was an assistant manager.
“The restaurant was set for closure within six months from when I started, and the other leaders and I were able to turn it into a top 25 restaurant nationally for three consecutive years,” he says. “This was accomplished through establishing standards, hiring and training to those standards, and engaging the team in improving operations and results.
“My key learning at this phase was how to meet people with their specific training needs and tailor communication. Many employees had less than a high school education and several did not speak English, meaning training had to be very individual. One-to-one training improves engagement, but is a major investment in time.”
In 2006, he joined Target, assuming management positions in stores in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and metro Detroit. Target proved to be a great learning environment, for several reasons.
The company believed in helping managers improve not just what they said during training sessions, but how they said it. “Target has a robust feedback culture,” says Selles. “When you finish delivering a training session, you get graded on it.”
Target insists that its managers pay attention to “housekeeping” items associated with training presentations. Examples: How do you keep people from getting distracted? How do you let your audience know when they should be taking notes? How do you “reset” the session if things start to go off the rails? How do you get people back to their seats after what was supposed to be a 5-minute break?
“They also talked a lot about frame of reference,” says Selles. “It’s very easy for someone who knows a subject to assume that everyone else does too. But I’ve been to training sessions in which people got lost in jargon within the first three minutes.”
He learned something else at Target – the value of investing in the “average” employee or leader. “Most leaders closely manage the bottom 10 percent (out of necessity), and the high-performing top 10 percent (out of enjoyment), leaving the vast majority of employees with little skill growth.
“Target graciously put me through a program to certify me as a field trainer and equipped me with formal training skills. That certification and the structure of Target Corporation gave me the skill set and desire to coach the 80 percent. I’ve subsequently leveraged that to identify specific competencies needed for success in roles, and grow them through foundational learning blocks and reinforcement over time.”
Creating healthcare leaders
In 2012, Selles joined Priority Health, a Michigan-based nonprofit health plan. There, he gained still more insights about training and development.
“I joined an organization with significant longevity among both front-line staff and leaders. Employees had incredible knowledge, but professed most jobs took years to learn and longer for mastery – a problem in a growth environment.
“I specifically worked to automate low-skill tasks and strip away complexity from roles by creating more job aids, resources and standard work, which allowed new employees to become successful in a much shorter time. This allowed the business to be more nimble and attractive to younger employees.
“Not to forget the top 10 percent, we also created a development cohort to feed a pipeline of future leaders, and used cross-functional subject matter experts to train on essential skills needed for higher level roles in the organization. We then tied that work to succession plans and mentoring relationships to close the development loop.”
Selles became director of supply chain sourcing at Spectrum Health in February 2017. Spectrum Health comprises 12 hospitals and 180 ambulatory care locations in western Michigan. There, he leads sourcing and procurement, and has responsibility for $700M+ in total spend for medical, surgical and pharmaceutical products as well as purchased services. Responsibilities also include value analysis and supply chain analytics.
Turns out he came to the right place. The IDN has what it calls Spectrum Health University, which offers training workshops on professional presence, communication skills, change management and providing feedback.
At Spectrum Health, Selles has seven direct reports – two managers, two RNs who lead value analysis, two analysts and one project manager. Total staff numbers approximately 40 FTEs, comprised mostly of buyers and sourcing specialists. “As we’ve added more value, this team grew by about five last year and will grow by about five more this year,” he says.
Breadth and depth
“Sourcing professionals are called upon to leverage an incredibly broad skill set and carry out a wide range of tasks, and they often have to shift quickly from one initiative to the next,” he points out. “Training to breadth and depth is important.”
“When I came to the department, the team had deep product expertise, but needed training on some of the core skills associated with sourcing,” he says. He put together a list of 26 attributes and skills, then asked each person in the department to rank their proficiency in each. From there, he began building solutions. For example, he sought help from Jennifer Dunn, PhD, in the department of management at Michigan State University, who offered training on negotiation skills. Presentation skills, communication skills and change management were – and remain – areas of concentration.
Each member of the team also selects a quarterly development focus – a hard skill or soft skill – and zeroes in on that for 90 days. Selles records these and looks for opportunities to engage people in that activity through stretch assignments, books and articles or work groups. “This ensures that while the team builds new skills as a cohort, each individual also has an opportunity to develop the specific skills necessary to grow in their current role or progress to a next-level position.”
When it comes to communicating the value of training, Selles leverages a cartoon. Two guys are sitting at a table. The first guy says, “What if we train them and they leave?” The other guy answers, “What if we don’t … and they stay?”
“As I recruit the next generation of supply chain leaders into entry level roles on my team, the top two questions I consistently get from millennials are, ‘What is the culture like?’ and ‘What kind of development programs do you have in place?’” he says.
“Leaders who invest in creating a culture of development will win the talent arms race taking place as boomers retire.”