Broward Health Special Board Meeting 1/23/18- 2nd set of CEO Interviews
Today I attended and recorded the Broward Health Board interview of the last two of four CEO finalists. That is four of some 4-600 applicants for the CEO job at Broward Health. Both candidates today were exceptional.
In my view, all four candidates – the two from yesterday and the two today all demonstrated the competence, experience, and objectivity that any public board would seek. You can watch today’s interviews below, and I have also posted the agenda packet containing their CV’s.
But, before you review the interview video, you might want to view the Board discussion that occurred immediately after the final interview finished. Let me provide you with some context for the discussion.
Over a year ago, the Board spent hundreds of thousands of dollars searching for a CEO. Candidates were selected and culled down to a manageable list to interview. Then Chris Ure, as chair of the Human Resource committee directing the CEO search, announced to a stunned Board meeting audience that he recommends that the Board “suspend” their search for a permanent CEO until the Board better understand what the CEO job entailed. “He just wasn’t comfortable going forward.”
Commissioner Ure, a glorified insurance salesman, masquerading as a “wealth advisor,” has not provided any evidence that he knows anything about top executive recruiting, let alone hiring a top-level CEO for a billion-dollar organization. One could only imagine the source of his discomfort.
Frustrated with the lack of progress and focus on the CEO search and furious that Commissioner Ure was appearing to advocate for a multi-million dollar “management” consultant instead of a CEO. At this point, Chairman Rodreguez masterfully applied the “peter” principle. He moved Ure out of the CEO search. Chairman Rodreguez then asked newly appointed Commissioner Wellins to serve with him on a new CEO search committee.
The new search committee of Commissioners Wellins and Rodriguez immediately got down to business and refocused the search firm resulting in 4-600 applications. These applications resulted in 10 semi-finalists and six scheduled for Board interviews. Over time, the six became four. I and a fair number of others were skeptics.
Because the interim Broward health CEO was so aggressively modifying senior management structures and personnel during the “interim,” we believed that although feigning that the appointment was temporary, she intended it to be permanent. (I should remind you the interim CEO, together with Broward Health’s corporate counsel, and three board members (2 active & 1 previous member) were recently indicted, in large part, for how she was appointed interim CEO. Those indictments are in the courts with a court date as early as February 9th.)
Chairman Rocky Rodriguez is right when he advocates for an independent, competent, objective, and experienced CEO without entanglements to Jackson Hospital system, Governor Scott, Corporate Counsel Lynn Barrett, or Bill Rubin, to name just a few. Without such a person, the system will never be able to dig itself out of the hole in the public’s trust in which it finds itself, and Rocky intuitively knows that.
Watch as Chris Ure today tried to derail the CEO selection again & Broward Health Staff tries unsuccessfully to put indicted interim CEO Beverly Capasso into consideration. If I were the cynical type, I might imagine all kinds of nefarious motives for both, but I’m trying to be a better person.
Despite these misguided efforts, watch as Chairman Rocky Rodriguez decisively stays on course and sets Board on task to make a CEO selection from the four candidates on January 31st. Then watch the interviews and be as impressed as I was at the quality of the candidates. Just what the doctor ordered!
Board Discussion after interviews
Unedited Interviews & Meeting
Meeting Agenda Packet:
BH January 23, 2018 Special Meeting