Lessons from a tested leader: 'Think three-dimensionally'

With years of impactful experiences in the halls of power to his credit – despite, he admits, running for but never winning elected office higher than UF student government treasurer – the head of a major health care system recently came to campus to share hard-won lessons on leadership.

Alan Levine visited FIU at the very time that FIU’s impact on health care continues to soar. He leads a 20-hospital system that serves Appalachia and straddles four states in his role as the chair, president and CEO of Ballad Heath.

Levine also holds the title of vice chair of the Board of Governors of the State University System of Florida, the body that oversees the 12 public universities, including FIU. Previously, he served in the state-appointed, cabinet-level positions of secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals for Louisiana and secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration in Florida.

In those latter roles, he oversaw the health care response to 12 major hurricanes that made landfall in the two states, led efforts to improve the rate of child immunization in Louisiana from 48th in the nation to second, and earned recognition for successfully advocating for the passage of major healthcare reforms and combating fraud in public health care programs.

With that background, he engaged in a conversation with President Jeanette M. Nuñez as part of the Presidential Speaker Series during which he offered leadership advice that transcends both individual majors and industries. The top-five takeaways follow here.

Challenge yourself

“The advice I always give students is, every opportunity that comes your way is an opportunity to get out of your comfort zone and to learn.”

Levine recounted his accepting a position under then-newly elected Governor Jeb Bush of Florida. Employed at the time as a hospital chief operating officer, he thought twice before taking the job.

“Getting into public service, it was a sacrifice,” he recalls. “You sacrifice income, you sacrifice advancing in your career.” Still, he chose to say “yes” and hasn’t looked back.

“The twists and turns have been great,” he says of the myriad challenges inherent in politics. “And every time I've gone into government and taken on a role, I've taken what I've learned and applied it to the next thing I was doing.”

Get out of your silo

“In today's competitive world . . . everything's multidisciplinary.”

Levine spoke of looking at challenges from new angles. This came into focus for him when the health system he runs experienced a severe nursing shortage during the COVID pandemic, a dire situation with potentially long-term ramifications.

“So, we could sit around and wait for somebody to solve that problem for us,” he recalled thinking, “or we can create our own pipeline.” He and his team mustered the resources to undertake an innovative plan.

“We call it Ballad Health Academy, and it's a school that runs alongside the high schools so that we identify kids who have propensity to be successful in sciences, and then get them engaged so they can have work experience while they're in high school, graduate with a degree, and then they have guaranteed employment by Ballad.”

Think ahead

“Whenever you're in a situation where you have a potential crisis, don't deal just with what's right in front of you. You have to think in advance of everything that's going to go wrong next.”

That invaluable insight was gained the hard way. When it appeared that the first case of the H1N1 virus had reared its head in Louisiana, Levine made the difficult decision to close a large private school attended by a student believed to be stricken with the contagion. At a press conference, he announced that a sample from the child was being tested. He said publicly that results would be back in three days, based on the state epidemiologist telling him that it takes 72 hours from receipt of the sample in his lab to verify a case from a culture.

What Levine didn’t know but found out once reporters started calling on day three: The state vehicle that routinely picks up such samples from clinics only passes by once a week. The all-important specimen had not yet left the initial intake site for delivery to the epidemiology lab.

Levine immediately called the police chief to get a patrol car out to make the pickup in Lafayette and delivery in the capital city of Baton Rouge. The resulting lesson stuck with him.

“Think three-dimensionally,” he says, referencing again what could go wrong and, in this instance, the lack of complete information. “If I do this, what happens? What are the consequences? And then how do I deal with those consequences?”

Show respect to all

“You never know who you're dealing with. So always treat people with respect, even if you're not on the same side of something.”

Levine looked at Nuñez as he spoke. The two have had plenty of encounters over the years, both when she worked as an executive at Jackson Health System and he as the governor’s health secretary and when she served as Florida’s lieutenant governor and he as the CEO of the North Broward Health District. 

“She was [at one time] an impediment to me doing what I wanted to do,” he recalls, “and I was an impediment [at other times] to some of the stuff she wanted done. But we always worked really well together.”

Be honest

“If you don't know something, just say you don't know.”

Levine gives Governor Bush the credit for teaching him this: “When you're standing in front of the cameras and you're answering questions, it's okay to say, ‘I don’t know.’ In fact, it's preferred to say, ‘I don’t know,’ if you don't know.”

Levine went on to state that such a straightforward response would have made sense during the early stages of the COVID pandemic, when misinformation flourished due to lack of known facts. He faults the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for not taking a candid approach at the time.

“I would have preferred to have heard, ‘I don't know about masks or vaccines.’ I would have trusted that more.”