Channel Capacity & Essentialism 9-9-26

0:00This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Today's discussion is channel capacity and essentialism. Two of my favorite business and life concepts. So we're going to talk today about channel capacity and essentialism. If you lead a business or a health system or whatever you lead or your own life, you have endless choices. It's how to allocate your own energy, what to prioritize, where to put people, where to put capital. And it's very, very important that you don't try into everything but really clarify what your system or business has to be great at. What you have to really excel at. Two of my favorite business authors, Jason Seltk, an organized day and tomorrow, and Greg McKeown in essentialism, the disciplined pursuit of less discuss a similar concept in different ways. And this goes to the concept of hard core prioritization

1:01in channel capacity. Jason Seltk discusses the concept of channel capacity. You can only focus on so many things at a time. And Greg McKeown, and talks about the idea of focusing only on what is absolutely essential. Essentially, what is the one or two things you have to be great at. And I tell you what is the one thing. Both these concepts are truly important for business and for health systems. I'll talk about them here in the context of health systems, but equally true in any business. You got to know what you actually have to be great at. And you have to be able to filter out and ignore a lot of the other stuff. A health system leader or business leader has to make clear decisions about what does the system need to be great at. What are its top priorities? And we see some systems do this really well. We see other systems largely regressed to the norm because they end up being very okay at everything and no real reason for being. No clear reason why a patient has to go there or a customer and business has to go

2:02there. There's not something that they're really great at. In terms of health systems, two of the great examples are Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. These are two systems that are extremely good at focusing the resources and their mission in a way that is very different than others do in a way that they do exceptionally well. And I'll tell you what's the story about Mayo Clinic and then tell you what's the story about Cleveland Clinic that exemplifies this. 50 to 60 years ago, my grandmother, Min, was going up to Mayo Clinic for help with cancer care and at that time everybody seemed to do that. You know, if you had a serious illness, you went up to Rochester, Minnesota to take care of it. And what has shocked me is 50 to 60 years later, a of an increasing cadre of people, a friend with one illness, another relative with a type of cancer, and to others that makes the trek up to Mayo regularly for their critical health care needs. This amazes me that 56 years later in this world that's distributed health care, AI systems

3:08every place and you know, high ranked academics, this was every place that people are still going up to Mayo. And this led me to study why do people do it? And I think what I came away with is that there's a reason why colleagues still go to Mayo Clinic for a lot of things and they still go to Cleveland Clinic for a critical cardiovascular care and a lot of things. What stands out to me at Mayo is they've got clarity about having depth and brilliance in highly coordinated care teams around a wide variety of areas. When you go to Mayo, you're essentially swarmed with a lot of specialists and a lot of providers in the area that you need, so that you come away in the most efficient way with a highly coordinated plan of action and diagnosis. It's really remarkable. And they do it better than anybody else, partly because they've invested in the depth, the research of people to do that. Cleveland Clinic is very similar in many areas in particular in cardiology.

4:08They have an absolute depth of brilliant physicians in areas and they're highly coordinated in what they do. So when a close colleague has a serious heart, scare and issue, even with great systems in our area, he goes to Cleveland Clinic for that care. And I find that fascinating, but it's a statement that these systems have really developed depth, brilliance and highly coordinated care that makes them the go to place for difficult, difficult diagnosis. This is true in so many businesses. You have to decide what you're absolutely going to be great at and what doesn't matter and focus all of your energy and resources on what really counts. We see many systems trying to do so many things. We advise leaders that this is a recipe trying to do so many things. It's a recipe ultimately to regress to the norm and everything and then to very average it everything without a very clear reason for being. We see this constantly. The lesson for business, for life, for health systems is to

5:09really do the hard work of figuring out where you need to excel and what to be great at and then to allocate your resources and focus your best people and teams around those areas. Every business, every health system needs to know what they have to be absolutely exceptional at. Thank you so much for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Primary Equity Podcast. Thank you so much.