Acknowledging that there can be “a fine line between crazy and visionary,” if “you are willing to be called crazy,” he told himself, “people will call you a visionary once you are successful.”
Stephen K. Klasko
The search committee for a new chief executive of the Jefferson health system in 2013 had narrowed the field to three candidates. Each qualified, all respected, the recruitment ought not go wrong whoever the finalist.
Yet as an afterthought, the search committee retrieved an unlikely CV for an outlier named Stephen Klasko, an obstetrician-gynecologist serving as dean of a Florida medical school – and co-author of this article. Like the frontrunners, he came with many of the givens for running a healthcare enterprise, including thinking strategically, communicating persuasively, and acting decisively. Solid though not standing out on any of those traditional markers, in the view of the search committee, Klasko had so far ranked, in his own telling, “as 16th of 15 candidates by the traditional metrics of operations, focus, and discipline.”2
Yet in other ways Klasko did stand out: restless, determined, even a flame thrower when it came to righting the fixable wrongs of organized medicine. His “no limits” mindset displayed a readiness for heretical actions and confidence in their long-term payoffs even if others disparaged such actions now. Acknowledging that there can be “a fine line between crazy and visionary,” if “you are willing to be called crazy,” he told himself, “people will call you a visionary once you are successful.”
A CANDIDATE FOR GOOD AND TRYING TIMES
Though Klasko’s lesser operational credentials – he had never run a hospital let alone a health system or an entire university – initially placed him below the top tier of the applicant pool, his leadership capacities were actually more comprehensive than those of many of the otherwise more highly ranked candidates if wholesale change was also to become a priority for Jefferson.
As of the time of the search, though change was desired it was not the modus operandi at Jefferson, which had been living with interim leadership for more than a year.
Still, Jefferson was coming off a successful year as it searched for the new CEO in 2103, and did it really need a new executive with
