Michael Dowling has been a part of the Northwell Health system (formerly North Shore-LIJ Health System) for the past two decades, serving as president and CEO since 2002. He cites his proudest element of the organization as being its very strong emphasis and focus on people. With over 50,000 employees serving an area of approximately 7 million people, there is no doubt that people—both employees and patients—are the absolute most important priority and asset to the healthcare system.
It all starts with hiring the very best people, then treating them well and giving them opportunities for training, education, and advancement. With the right people with the right attitude, experience and education on staff, excelling in serving Northwell Health’s customers—the patients and families—becomes second nature.
Dowling explained that he learned the importance of teamwork and having the best people through his experiences playing sports. A very competitive athlete in his youth, Dowling played the Irish national sport, hurling, and was on the team that won the national championship when he was young.
“So back then I learned that the only way you can have a good team is to have the best players. You don’t pick all stars; you have to have the right mix. You have to have the grinders, the offense guys, the defense guys—but they’ve got to work as a team… because nobody wins by themselves.”
Dowling explained that sometimes hiring the right people means thinking outside of the box and intentionally reaching outside of the healthcare realm to hire the best people for certain positions, such as human resources. More and more the healthcare business is becoming all about the consumer experience, so “you’ve got to get away from the old traditional way of healthcare thinking. To do this, you’ve got to infiltrate your organization with new blood, which will then eventually change what you currently have.”
As an organization, Northwell Health is the picture of diversity, both among the employees and the communities they serve. With approximately 175 different languages spoken within their service area, you can expect to see hundreds of different ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds within every realm of the healthcare system and surrounding area. Dowling loves the diversity, saying,
“It’s a wonderful place to work because you are dealing with this multiplicity of cultures and ethnicities and religions and languages. We can get a PhD a week if we care to learn about one another.”
Learning is something Dowling has always been passionate about, and it’s a passion he has instilled into the core of the organization he leads. He insists on learning from the environment and people around you, noting, “If you don’t learn about one another, how can you provide service to that community that has a different perception of health, a different perception of authority, and different religious beliefs about what you should do and not do in different circumstances?”
In addition to his belief that you should always be aware of and learning from the diversity around you, Dowling strongly believes in training and education, and it’s something that begins as soon as a new hire walks in the door. Every new employee at Northwell—from valet to janitor to nurse to physician—starts his or her work at the organization with an intensive orientation program, which includes a session with the president and CEO himself. “I meet every Monday morning for three hours with all of the new employees. I’ve been doing it every single Monday for over ten years.”
The new-employee orientation is mandatory and taken very seriously; late-comers are turned away at the door, and anyone observed not paying attention better heed the warning or risk being terminated on the spot. Dowling explains, “I don’t ever fire anybody, I never terminate anybody. I say, ‘By your actions and behaviors you have indicated you do not want to work here, and therefore I’ll gladly oblige you.’” It’s all a part of the critical process of weeding out those who lack the right attitude or passion to fit the culture of the organization and to serve the patients and families with excellence.
After new employees have gone through orientation and are incorporated into Northwell’s growing family, the training and education doesn’t stop there. The organization encourages and provides opportunities for its employees to further their education by getting bachelor degrees, master degrees, or even doctorates. One example of the health system’s emphasis on higher-education is its policy to only employ nurses who have already attained their bachelor degree or are committed to attaining it within five years of being hired—with tuition covered by the health system.
While Dowling actively seeks and hires the best new employees, he also strongly believes in building from within by challenging and advancing exceptional employees. Every year he selects 100 people as high potentials for leadership advancement, and in his office keeps a book filled with the names and profiles of those individuals who have been identified as potential future leaders in the health system.
Dowling is a firm believer in treating all employees like the valuable assets they are, noting, “The most important asset you have in any organization are the people who come in in the morning and walk out at night.” Whether it’s taking the valet parkers out to dinner or giving the maintenance crew tickets to a hockey game, Dowling frequently finds ways to thank his staff for their service. It’s this continued commitment to people—both inside and outside of the organization—that makes Northwell Health stand out from the crowd and continue to excel in the highly competitive healthcare industry.