"Alignment between our people, our systems and our strategies" - Reggie Newson of Wellpoint Care Network

Dr. Josh Elmore (00:00) Welcome to the Land and Lead podcast, where we explore the real stories behind leadership transitions, the setbacks, strategies, wins, and moments of growth, all aimed at helping other leaders land well and lead effectively. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore of Court Street Consulting. The Land and Lead podcast is supported by my advisory work at Court Street Consulting. I work with new presidents, executives with expanded mandates, and leaders facing complex change to help them think clearly, learn in real time, and make consequential decisions. If you're navigating complexity where the stakes feel high and the path isn't obvious, that's the work that I do. Today we're speaking with Reggie Newson, President and Chief Executive Officer of WellPoint Care Network, a leading nonprofit organization committed to helping children and families thrive through trauma-informed care, mental health services, and community-based support. Under Reggie's leadership, WellPoint continues to advance its mission of transforming care and improving well-being across Wisconsin and beyond. Prior to joining WellPoint, he served as vice and chief community impact and advocacy officer for Ascension, Wisconsin, responsible for the development and implementation of state and local advocacy strategies, increasing the visibility and influence of Ascension, Wisconsin and advancing relevant legislative and regulatory priorities, as well as national healthcare policy. Reggie brings over 20 years of executive leadership and operational management experience across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. He has also served as of business services for Wisconsin Energy Corporation's Illinois market. Reggie held key roles in state government, including CEO, Secretary of Labor in the Department of Workforce Development and for the Department of Transportation. Reggie holds a BS and an MS degree from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MBA with a focus in corporate communication from Concordia University of Wisconsin. He also has certificates in project management and Six Sigma, and nonprofit leadership experience from leading institutions such as Duke University and the National Urban League. He is married to Kawanza, and they have one son Caleb who is a college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Welcome to the show, Reggie. Reggie Newson (02:14) Thanks, Josh. I really appreciate it. I didn't realize that was such a long bio. Dr. Josh Elmore (02:18) No worries. We're happy to have you and learn so much about you already. So can you share a little bit about your background ⁓ and how you landed at WellPoint Care Network? Reggie Newson (02:28) Sure, Josh, well Certainly in my career, I've always wanted to follow the purpose of building opportunities, strengthening the community, and enriching lives. And I've always been focused on impact, not just talking about impact, but making sure that we're delivering on outcomes that help people, again, strengthen themselves, build opportunities, community, enrich lives. And certainly I've always been fascinated in a section of administration and operations, people and systems driving execution and outcomes. And so throughout my career, I've had opportunities to be able to do that, which led me to WellPoint right now, because I've always had a fascination with young people. And at WellPoint, the core of what we do is we strengthen communities and we want to create healthier communities. So I really thought it was a really purpose-filled opportunity to come here to continue to drive impact for the Milwaukee community in state of Wisconsin. Dr. Josh Elmore (03:20) Yeah, I mean, and, so can you tell us more about WellPoint Care and the situation when you entered the organization? Reggie Newson (03:27) Sure. So WellPoint Care Network is celebrating 175 years of existence. The daughters and the sisters founded WellPoint. It was two orphanages that were founded during cholera. And ever since then, we've gone through several iterations of branding and name change, but now our WellPoint Care Network. And at WellPoint, again, our core what we do is that we want to strengthen families and create healthier communities. We do that by our work in the foster care space, supporting families, connecting families in foster care, finding adoptive parents, and certainly families that are challenged. We want to work with those families to bring those families back together, reunify them. We a behavioral health outpatient services. We have behavioral health on our campus and we provide all sorts of therapeutics, you name it, occupational therapeutics, group therapy, family therapy, you name it. We provide that therapy to our families and community members focused primarily on adolescents and children, but we do support and serve adults both in our patient clinic on our campus and in community settings. And then lastly, we do a consultative work and we have consultation business that we do trauma informed care and trauma training. We do train a trainer, we train everyone, police, doctors, lawyers, fires, lawyers, you name it. And we are, in my humble opinion, the national leader in trauma-informed training, training over 80,000 individuals over the last 10 years. Dr. Josh Elmore (05:02) That is a big impact, for sure. And important work, certainly. So as you entered the organization, how long have you been there? Reggie Newson (05:10) I just completed my one year anniversary a few weeks ago. Dr. Josh Elmore (05:14) Congrats, congrats. And so when you entered, what did the organization look like from being a leader, entering it, in role? What was the moment, what was happening? Reggie Newson (05:26) Well, certainly 175 years of existence that means that the organization has some strong roots. And certainly the biggest opportunity is a room for improvement. So coming in, I wanted to focus on making sure that I drove alignment around our teams, alignment of our staff, our leadership team towards very specific priorities and outcomes. One of those being that here at WellPoint, we want to focus on creating a community health hub on our 110,000 square foot campus. And so part of that was to drive alignment and priorities around that. Continue to focus on our culture. Again, culture is really, really important and really driving culture and accountability. And certainly in my focus over the year, if you have accountability without care, that's going to drive chaos and care without accountability will And so, I've been focused on making sure that we continue to drive culture, making sure folks know what they're doing, who owns what, who's focused on what, who has responsibility. And again, focus on that driving of alignment Dr. Josh Elmore (06:32) Mm-hmm. And so, right, 175 years, long time, and you mentioned this idea of culture. You know, I always think about, you know, the founder's fingerprints or, you know, if you drop a drop of water in a pool of water, you see the ripples and how culture can really, from like the beginning of the organization, still have roots in the ways of working, the ways of doing things, the ways of thinking about helping. And so, you have this 175 years of how we've done the way that cultures talk about, the way that we do things around here. And so you're coming in and you're seeing the way that we do things around here and what inevitably to your point, there's things that work and there's things that don't work. So how do you figure that out? How do you determine or prioritize what's helping, what's getting in the way? Reggie Newson (07:27) Josh that's a great question. I know for me, it started with a lot of listening. So I spent a lot of time doing rounding or what we call GEMBA Go out and take a look. I'm doing a lot of rounding with our associates, our leaders, our community partners, our stakeholders, our donors, and those that support our organization and support our organization for over many, many decades. Asking a lot of questions about, what they see, where are the opportunities for improvement, and how we can continue to enhance culture around what I like to call high reliability, making sure that we have people, systems, and strategies aligned to make sure every day we're functioning at a high level. So I spent several weeks, dozens of weeks going out and doing lot of listening and talking to people and then bringing that information back, spending time with our leaders, with our associates. And again, refocusing those priorities and really this first year, Josh, I've been really focusing on that alignment piece and the piece around accountability and culture and making sure again, if we want to have high reliability day in and day out, that we have that alignment between our people, our systems and our strategies, making sure that folks are responsible and making sure we have clarity, clarity of purpose, clarity of expectation and outcomes. Dr. Josh Elmore (08:54) Hmm. So I hear a lot of different words around kind of maybe in the circle around the idea of reliability as kind of like a foundation piece. But in the name, WellPoint Care Network Network, right? It's in the name. And as the president and CEO, that outward focus, the external look is really important to kind of lead the organization and manage stakeholders both within and without the organization. It even sounds like, right, the work you do is connecting various constituencies and folks to, resources that they need, folks that can help, how you can help the helpers, and how you do it reliably is kind of this idea and then from the internal perspective, I hear this idea of alignment, accountability, culture, you know, swirling around these various words. Where do you start? You you did your listening, you went out and take a look, GEMBA, you started, you talked about culture. You know, how did you start? Where did you start as it relates to kind of, okay, now I went out and took a look. Now what was next? Reggie Newson (09:57) Well, as relates specifically around culture, had our net promoter score. And I put that net promoter score and then the feedback from our associates, our leaders, and really focusing on those thematic things that we could continue to do to drive and enhance culture. And from there, we've worked to set some really clear expectations of our leaders in terms of how we want them to drive culture, to continue to break down silos across organizations. Because that was one of the themes that I I saw in those surveys is that there was an opportunity to have alignment between various departments within WellPoint that serve our families. And again, I've shared with our team that our families don't care about bureaucracy of process. They care about impact and how we can serve and create opportunity for them. So who's going to own various aspects of down silos? And we set some really clear expectations, both in our performance goals, but also we've created some incentives for our associates, particularly our leaders, that are driving the breaking down of culture in terms of team meetings, in terms of follow-up. And so all those things have been set in performance goals for this annual cycle. Again, and if we hit those things, we're going to create some significant incentives for our associates and our leaders and reward things through the next year cycle, the net promoter score. Dr. Josh Elmore (11:18) You know, it's interesting. I was listening to a podcast with the thought leader, HR thought leader, Josh Bersin. And he was saying, he was talking about AI and how, as it relates to kind of having AI help on the talent side. And he said, you know, customers don't experience vertical organizations. They experience horizontal organizations. They experience product, the sales, you know, the customer service. And it's not this hierarchical experience that they have. they have this, because they have a horizontal experience, technology is going to go in that direction of kind of building more horizontal organizations. But what I hear from you is this idea of the external stakeholders are having an experience of our organization. And that experience may be disjointed between different dimensions of it. And so we need to come together and get aligned on how people experience the various ways that we can serve them and help them out. Is that right? Reggie Newson (12:12) That's exactly right. That's exactly right. How our families and our community members are experiencing the impact and the service delivery. And again, they don't care about process bureaucracy. They care about the experience, they felt and how we made their life better and lives. And again, through that clarity of responsibility, for our associates who's gonna own that, that's really helped drive, driving behavior. Because when you talk about culture, simply it's behavior and making sure that that behavior is aligned with a responsibility for the outcome for the people that we're privileged to serve. Dr. Josh Elmore (12:54) Yeah, and I hear, you you talked about this idea of working with your leaders and setting expectations around building that culture. And you're a year in, how did you build the relationships with your leadership team and so that you can influence to drive this new kind of culture of accountability, alignment, et cetera? Reggie Newson (13:15) Again, Josh, it went back to a lot of listening, a lot of one-on-one time with them, asking them what they need from me and how I can support them and help them break down barriers for the individuals that they're leading day in and day out. And again, how do I provide resources? How do we support culture? But again, providing decisive clarity of communication, clarity, clarity, clarity. And I'm constantly focusing on sharing my expectations and the expectations of our donors, expectations of our board and our community members and make sure I keep that in front of them day in and day out. It could be as simple as, and what I've done is I've created something called Wellpoint Mission Moments, where every two weeks I'm sharing vignettes and testimonials of things that I'm hearing when I round with our associates throughout the building. I talk to our leaders, and I talk to our community members and our donors and our stakeholders, and I tie those stories back to the expectations and the outcomes that we set around culture, and how those things are creating impact for our families. Again, I'm constantly putting those stories and information out there, either in our one-on-one meetings or just when I do rounding and I talk to our leaders and our Dr. Josh Elmore (14:28) Hmm, really powerful practice storytelling from the showing the impact and kind of keeping it connected to way forward and how you want to do things. And so kind of speaking to that, you you've shared a lot of strategies that have been helpful, right? Listening, getting a lay of the land in terms of the external stakeholders and turning that around and communicating it, what's working and how it's making an impact. What other strategies have you employed as you've navigated this transition now a year in? Reggie Newson (14:58) Again, simply put, Josh, spending a lot of time with our associates, I'll give you an example of something I'm doing. We have a field office that's not connected to our main campus. And culturally, those associates out there at that field office don't feel connected to what's happening at the main corporate office or the main hub. So one thing that I've done is I've instituted a pizza party where I go out there just to have lunch with them once every several weeks, just to sit down and have lunch. I buy them pizza and we sit and talk and I ask them what's working, what's not working and what can we do differently? What do I need to be aware of? And again, I think that practice is really connecting them back to what's happening. They know that they feel cared for. And again, when we talk about culture, that again, their behavior in terms of the individuals they serve, again, they're not connected to the main campus, but again, they know that there's an expectation that from a high reliability that they do and focusing on driving impact and owning the responsibility of that. Dr. Josh Elmore (16:00) Yeah, that's critical, Helping folks have a kind of similar experience the different locations. You you could even think of remote, but even being kind of that other place where you're not kind of part of the main action and going out there and hearing from folks. And I imagine what you hear is informing what you do next. Is that right? Reggie Newson (16:23) That's right. That's exactly right. And taking that information back and sharing it with our leaders, what we need to do next, again, real time, and continue to make good decisions and being decisive about how do we approach it. Dr. Josh Elmore (16:36) Hmm. And sounds like there's certainly a great momentum as it relates to hearing from folks, updating the way that you do things. Are there some, you know, a year in any wins and setbacks and how did they manifest? Reggie Newson (16:50) Sure, I would say a couple wins that we can talk specifically about is that as we think about our behavioral health service line and creating a long-term financial sustainability and viability for that. One of the wins that we talked about is that we worked with a strategic partner that will enable us to be able to provide great quality for our behavioral health services, but with the financial power behind it. And again, no margin, no mission. And so we were able to negotiate with that partner, additional resources to create financial sustainability for our behavioral health service line. So I think that's a very, very positive thing. Certainly, ebbs and flows as it relates to creating our community hub. We have some very specific programs and services that we want to create inside a community health hub on our campus. And we continue to have great conversations with partners. We were, at least I thought we were at very close at the finish line of being able to bring a partner ⁓ to our campus that would lease space to provide some services around early childhood education. And we were not able to make the numbers work from a performance standpoint. So we haven't given up on that and we continue to have conversations. Dr. Josh Elmore (18:05) And so it sounds like, again, I just I'll keep going back to it, but the idea of the network in your name, right? I think it goes back. A lot of what you're doing relates to bringing disparate parts of an intermeshed community of folks that are helping and figuring out ways to bring those services to folks who need them. Reggie Newson (18:25) Exactly right, exactly right. And again, we want to make sure our families have dignity in the services that we provide. And again, the families don't care about bureaucracy, they don't care about process, all they care about is the impact and how they feel and experience and how we're making our lives better. Dr. Josh Elmore (18:39) Wow, yeah, really powerful work. And so there's a question that I like to ask all of my guests. In the 1980s, John Gabarro ran a few studies focused on general managers and presidents as they pursued new roles and wrote the results up in the book, The Dynamics of Taking Gabarro explained that an executive has fully taken charge when they have mastered the new assignment in sufficient depth to be managing the organization as efficiently as the resources, constraints, and the manager's own ability allow. Thinking about this definition where 100 % is having fully taken charge in the role, what percent would you say you are at now? Reggie Newson (19:16) That's a great question. And I was really, really reflecting on that. Again, the biggest room is room for improvement. I would say I would give myself seven out of 10 or 70 % right now. I still have some work to do. And WellPoint is a very complex organization, so I'm still learning about the organization and where our strengths lie, but also what the opportunities for improvement lie. Again, focusing on a high reliability, being able to provide a high level day in and day out and really focusing on culture. So I would say I'm at 70 % right now. Dr. Josh Elmore (19:54) Yeah, and 70 % a year in, you have kind of the lay of the land from your external stakeholders. You're getting the lay of land from the field and having the pizza parties, bringing those back to the leadership team and iterating as you go along with kind of that future focus. What's on your radar for the year ahead? Reggie Newson (20:14) For the year ahead, again, continue to drive our financial sustainability, our financial outcome, continue to align our people, our systems to our strategy, continue to drive culture and continue to reinforce with our leaders that again, clarity and making decisions. One thing that I've learned Josh, in my leadership role is that roles in my past, is that indecision is worse than making not perfect ones. Again, I constantly share with my team, we know we're going to make decisions, best on the best information. We'll learn from those decisions and we'll ideate and we'll iterate decisions and we'll adjust and adapt as new information becomes available. Dr. Josh Elmore (20:58) Yeah. I mean, that, you know, staying flexible in that way allows you to kind of take the best route. Certainly. so speaking to kind of the way with which you're pursuing this leadership role and what you've learned and what's worked, advice would you share with other leaders currently entering a new high stakes role? Reggie Newson (21:04) I would say to those leaders again, in my case, I understood that WellPoint had 175 year history. So I didn't want to come in right away and turn up, you know, turn over the apple cart. But again, I focus in on the alignment. I think alignment is so critical because once you have alignment, it's going to drive and impact performance and improve performance in the way that you want it to improve based on your goals and expectations. So the focal point for me was alignment, making sure I had alignment of a leadership team, from the leadership team to other people leaders around those expectations, those goals, and constantly clarifying those things. And again, focusing on the culture. What's the culture? And where are the opportunities to continue to enhance and improve the behavior of our associates that leads to great impact for our families. Dr. Josh Elmore (22:09) Hmm, yeah, certainly. Wonderful. Well, Reggie, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. Is there anything that is coming up for you or WellPoint Care Network that you'd like to share with listeners? Reggie Newson (22:21) Well, again, we're celebrating 175 years of strengthening families and creating healthier communities for any individual that's interested in doing that. Walking alongside us, I encourage them to go to our website and certainly reach out to me directly. I'm happy to talk to them and have a conversation about that. Dr. Josh Elmore (22:40) Amazing. Well, thanks again for joining us, Reggie. Reggie Newson (22:43) All right, thank you, Josh. I really appreciate the opportunity. Dr. Josh Elmore (22:45) Certainly. Land and Lead podcast is supported by my advisory work at Court Street Consulting. I work with new executives with expanded mandates, and leaders facing complex change to help them think clearly, learn in real time, and make consequential decisions. If you're navigating complexity where the stakes feel high and the path isn't obvious, that's the work that I do. Thanks so much for listening to the Land and Lead podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore. Tune in next time for more stories from leaders navigating high stakes role transitions.