In a recent interview with Dave Edwards, Vice President of Supplier Relations/Business Development at Premier, Inc., I asked him to describe his leadership role. As Dave enthusiastically described his leadership approach and specific responsibilities at Premier, I began thinking, “Dave is describing a guaranteed principle and formula for personal and professional leadership success.”
From Dave’s comments I could tell that he has a laser-like focus on three things:
Proven, timely, and innovative solutions:
“My role is to help our hospitals (who are also our owners) to reduce costs, improve efficiency, deliver better outcomes and better patient care, and to improve the patient experience. I work with the supplier community, which is largely the source of the innovative products and services that are the means to helping hospitals and healthcare systems (again, our owners) achieve their objectives and mission.”
Connecting people and developing excellent relationships:
“My job is to find those suppliers, link them up with those customers, and then work with our sourcing team to create contracts so that all parties win; so that our members get more value than what they could have gotten by going out and doing this on their own. Essentially, my role is to help generate value for our customers faster, because we can find and identify those opportunities and those connections sooner than our customers can on their own.
In turn, we show suppliers we can escalate their ideas, their innovations, and their new concepts to an executive audience and help make those connections faster than they can on their own, and we can therefore accelerate their sales cycles and overall success. We can also help suppliers more quickly determine if a given program or product for service will not be successful in the marketplace, thereby saving everyone precious time, energy, and money.”
Assuring win/win scenarios for all parties involved:
“Simply put, my job is to find or create win/win solutions. My leadership role is to help identify customer needs, match those needs with supplier solutions, and create win/win scenarios and relationships where our customers win, the patient wins, and the supplier with the best product-service combinations wins. If my team and I do that right, then Premier wins in the process.”
Without a doubt, a laser-like focus in these three areas will lead to personal and professional leadership success—in any industry or any area of life!
How about your leadership? Do you maintain a laser-like focus on (1) proven, timely, and innovative solutions, (2) connecting people and developing excellent relationships, and (3) assuring win/win scenarios for all parties involved?
