 Hi, I'm Ben up to breezy. My calling vision statement is I stand for unconditional love, infinite and abundant passion and energy and charismatic presence to transform people, organizations and countries while upholding my highest integrity. My mission is to transform 100 million people that in turn would impact billions around the world. Since my mission, I feel like I've never worked a day in my life. I've published six books on transformation, have studied over a thousand transformation organizations that have gone through transformations and have coached over 100 organizations around the world. Since working at Stanford University, I've worked with tens of thousands of people through online teaching students and training the executive programs on campus. The book that is the focus of today is Rapid Transformation Book that's published by Harvard Business School Publishing. It was the most popular book in the Harvard press for 11 months. I was very lucky and over what we did, we studied over 500 organizations that went through transformations and we had a panel of experts in finance and industry at academia and we had over 12 students, graduate students that helped me codify the data and as a result, we came up with a cookbook of what successful transformation was about and what were the detailed steps to a successful transformation. A friend of mine, Dan Walker, who was the chief talent officer at Apple working for Steve Jobs, told me that the way they came up with iPad and the iPhone was exactly as described in the book and he told me you put in $20 million worth of consulting in this book. The book was also translated in 20 languages. The Chinese translation was for two years the best business book in China in two years in a row. After that, what I've realized is that the biggest obstacle to organizational transformation is what goes on in leaders head. So I wrote my book called Inside Out Effect which is really about personal transformation. In this book, I also chronicled my personal transformation journey through some spiritual breakdowns that I had and the vision and the mission that I finally aspire to that I talked about. Continuing on that mission, the last year together with PMI, I was the chief architect of Brightline Transformation Compass where you can find, if you Google Brightline Transformation Compass, you can find all the details on the compass there and it's basically a combination of the rapid transformation book and the inside out effect book. Today, I have incredible panel of people that I've worked with and I've had the privilege of coaching their organizations. They will impart their knowledge of rapid transformation to you. And one thing that I love about working with this panel is that you will notice that in part because of rapid transformation, their career has had a meteoric rise if you will, since the application of rapid transformation. To begin with, I'd like to introduce to you Yvonne Law, recently senior vice president of Lee and Fong and her job in Lee and Fong has been defining the supply chain of the future. Lee and Fong is the largest supply chain company in the world. It's a global company, spans hundreds of thousands of employees and contractors in over 40 countries around the world. And Yvonne is going to be talking about the transformation she was involved with when she joined as a program manager in their beauty division of the Lee and Fong. Well, thank you, Benham, for inviting me to be able to share my experiences on the transformation program. I'm very honored to be part of this prestige panelist and happy to share with you a little bit more on our experiences. Before I get to that, let me explain to you a little bit about the beauty business of Lee and Fong. So we are essentially a supply chain service provider to the beauty industry. So we range from providing the complete products such as the lotions and the potions and the perfumes and cosmetics or even product displays that you would see in the department stores or even packaging like the bottles and the caps. And the beauty business was established through six different acquisitions that took over the course of five years. So while on paper it looks like a great organization, but in fact it was never really integrated. So not only there was no synergy but the business actually performed worse following the acquisition with no view of the situation improving. So I remember joining that part of our organization just after all these acquisitions were done. And I saw that there were just a very odd business altogether, they were sitting together but there is no communication, there were silos, there were duplications, people were not talking to each other. At times I would hear about teams competing with each other for resources such as the supporting teams on their time, fighting for capacity on the production, et cetera. It was battling to me being a new part of the team. In parallel, the business was under huge pressure not only because the business were not performing but our customers are expecting more. They were not only looking at us from a cost perspective but they were expecting us to deliver innovation at the same time, great quality and also complete transparency around our total operation. So it was very stressful time for everyone. While there are some people who are trying to do the right thing, they were being punitive, they were being punished for not doing, for speaking up. Everybody was overworked. There were so much gossips and I would even hear that people were just, they wished that they were never really acquired. And there was clear need that a change has to happen. And as a result, we had a new leadership. And when the leadership told us that there was change, everyone was nervous because everybody thought, oh, it's just gonna be another group of consultants trying to change the way we do. And they didn't know our business. So why should we want to work with them? So it was actually pleasantly surprised when I was nominated to be the program manager and to have the opportunity to meet with Benham, together with our leadership team. At that point, we actually, many of the leaders have already been trained by Benham under the record transformation. We just didn't realize that we were selected to undergo this. And my work as a program manager at that time was to try to just move the process along. I read the book, we all did, but we never really understood what that meant for us. And being part of this program, that is actually published in the Harvard business, a publication. It was actually a very honorable thing for us, but it was a little intimidating. But on the other hand, what we also saw among each other is that we all wanted to change. And what we underestimated and what was emphasized in the book is that it's really the idea of building that one culture. It's about different people from different organizations working together under a common goal and building that culture. So when Benham started working with us, the first thing he addressed was not about how to do it. He was really there to help us define our culture. So collectively, we actually defined our seven values. What are these things that really drive us as a team as we continue to do this 90 day transformation? And I can say that those seven values really underpin the way that we engage and communicate with each other. And when somebody is stepping out of the line, we can always refer back to the seven values. So from that perspective, we held each other accountable and we also show commitment to each other as well. In addition, because there were such clear roles and responsibility on what to expect from one another, we were able to really hold each other accountable. And because we were so focused on communicating on the changes that were being done, everybody knew that we couldn't just walk away from the work that we were doing. And most importantly, we have the support of the ability leadership team. We have the support of Benham traveling to Asia every 30 days or so, just to, and we have that very clear deadline from the get go that we have to deliver. No matter what the busyness, the daily priorities and the emergencies that we have to deal with, we always knew that we have to carve on to each other because we don't want to disappoint each other in missing the deadline. So I would say that it was very hard for us. As I mentioned, we were a little intimidated, but because of that, we also show to each other some vulnerability and through vulnerability, we learn to trust each other. We learned that we were doing this together no matter what. As a result, it was very clear within the middle of the transformation, a movement has already started. The energy in how we work together has spilled over to other parts of the organization because of the nature of the work we were doing itself. The decisions that we were making during the transformation, there were repercussions to the other business units and the operations, such as the sales, such as the finance team and everything else. And they also, more importantly, they saw that we were singular in our focus. We were building that culture that actually drive our interaction with each other. And everybody noticed. And as a result, I was invited as a program manager to present our learnings and our findings to the top operation leaders of Lee and Feng. As you can imagine, it is very intimidating to present to the C-suite on this little project that we were embarking, but I was surprised to see how amazed they were. Not only were they shocked at how quickly we have achieved in such a short time, they were wondering how we were able to turn around the culture that is so complex and in fact, the similar problems were happening in the other parts of the business. And following that really, supposed to be a really short meeting, which turned out to be a multiple sessions separately with our CEO and CFO, it also inspired them to really make change in the organization at large. So together with the CFO, and of course with Venom, we were also looking into how we might be able to start that in the finance organization. Thank you, Yvonne. And I remember the transformation that the CFO went, which was 500 people across 40 countries, much, much bigger even than LF Beauty actually led to the CFO headland becoming the CFO of the year amongst the thousands of public companies, CFOs, because of his work through rapid transformation. So thank you for sharing that inspiring story. And we'll come back to you because we wanna hear what happened to you next. Next, what I wanna also present to you is one of my most favorite transformation leaders in the world, Vernon Irvin, is currently Chief Revenue Officer at Everbridge, he's a public company, he's a top performing SaaS based company in the world. He's been executive VP of Verisign Communication, it's a case that he's gonna talk about, which I by the way, instantly I talk about it in the book quite a bit. And my students who actually just, we came up with the ranking and the students end up ranking the top companies that went through transformation, pick Verisign as one of the top transformations that we looked at in the book. Vernon has also was the president of CenturyLink, their government division, small mid-sized division, 3.5, 3.5 billion dollar telecom organization, he's been a business development leader at an 800 million dollar blockchain. So Vernon is really a privilege to have you and we would like to hear your thoughts about what went on as a leader of transformation of the Verisign. Vernon, thank you so much for inviting me to this panel and being part of this August body, truly exciting time. And I had so much fun working with you at Verisign and even working with your students in Stanford. When I joined Verisign, what I realized was it was a 350 million dollar business going to about 280, wrong direction. And they brought me in to make sure we were able to reverse that direction. And I told myself and the team, why go reverse the direction in the middle of communications, commerce and content, all the things that are changing the world, why don't we go transform the business? And one of the first people I did that reached out to was Venom. Because what I wanted to do was to deploy a rapid transformation. I didn't feel like we had a whole lot of time to get this business reversed. And so we subscribed to the rapid transformation program. And what that led us to go do is actually start with a manifesto, which is what if we could actually turn this business from one that's shrinking to a billion dollars in two years and became the billion dollar team. Now let me tell you about the problem we were solving though. So when I stepped in, there were three disparate organizations in different parts of the United States not working together, but supposedly all part of the same group. Well, it turns out that nobody understood the common thread around customers and around go to market, around blue oceans, not shrinking red oceans. And so the work we did was really sort of, let's go figure out where the blue oceans are and let's get focused on growth. I'm talking about meteoric growth. And so one group was focused on communication products enabling carriers around the world to do inter-carry messaging and piss and messaging. Another group was focused on delivering bills to carriers. And yet another group was actually focused on building content. Well, I said, wait a minute, why don't we put that together and get after what we think is sort of the next generation of modern communications in the marketplace? And so we did. So after we got the manifesto written, Ben and Hampless helped us go through sort of a vision mission program. Now it's interesting, I use that program to test out the leaders I had. By the way, 50% of the leaders didn't make it, right? So part of rapid transformation also means you got to make the tough decisions on people. And as a result, we ended up with a vision mission statement, a billion dollar program that not only did we meet, but we beat it and we did it before two years. So it was pretty exciting to see this rapid transformation program actually get used. And by the way, I want to tell folks, brand your rapid transformation program because people will want to be part of this, right? So you give it a brand, you win minds, spirits, attitude, and everybody wants in. Now everybody can't get in, but everybody wants in. And once you got that kind of passion going, now you got something behind you is you've created alignment. And not alignment creates amazing, amazing effort and focus and results. So that's what we engaged in at Verisign. We did this by the way, could have been more than 90 days, which I know sounds ridiculous. So buy lots of pizza, plan on staying late, getting up early, but at the end of the day, watch the stock price go up, watch your people get excited, watch us win in a marketplace and be disruptive, right? And I think that's the other thing my team wanted to do is they wanted to be disruptive in the sense of changing the world. And that's what rapid transformation will do for you. Thanks, Beno. Thank you so much, Vernon. That was awesome. What we have for you here in the panel is a collective list of people who actually went through a transformation within their organization. So you heard from two leaders of what I call private organizations. Now we're gonna completely switch. We're gonna go to a completely different world. We're gonna go to a governmental agency, a nonprofit agency. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is one of the largest hospitals in the county and also across the United States. It covers the two million people living in the Santa Clara County, including Silicon Valley. With working in the county government, you do not have a traditional carrots and sticks. So it's a different type of problem and we wanna talk about the application of rapid transformation in the county. So the guests that I have for you are Dr. Sanjay Kurani, who's the Hospital Medical Director at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, leader of transformation and a co-leader of the transformation is Dr. Clifford Wank who's the chair of the Department of Medicine at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. They're both clinical professors of medicine at prestigious Stanford Medical School. And what I like to, by the way, through their transformation and the follow-up rapid transformation that happened with other parts of VMC, VMC actually was able to save near the two, the whopping $200 million in savings from the subsidies from the citizens. Thank you, Ben, for inviting both Cliff and myself today and allowing us to share our rapid transformation story and the monumental challenges our organization was facing and innovative solutions we developed that continue to help us through the COVID pandemic. A little bit about Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. It's the second largest public health care system in California. It's an essential safety net organization serving Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley. And several years ago, we were in a crisis that although at a smaller scale had many of the same themes related to the current COVID pandemic crisis. In 2013, we're in the middle of a perfect storm. We had major hospitals shut down in our county that served the indigent. We had a surge in the number of new Medicaid patients our hospital was responsible for as a result of Obama care. And the overall population in Silicon Valley was increasing, resulting in a large wave of patients hitting our emergency room and filling up our hospital. We had a supply-demand mismatch. Too many patients needing acute care and creating excessive demand on our system coupled with a limited fixed supply of hospital vet capacity. As a safety net hospital and trauma center for Santa Clara County, we can't shut our doors. But we were turning away ambulances because we were full, posing a major public health and patient safety concern. In 2013, we shut down access to ambulances equivalent of 24 days. Sick patients were sitting in the emergency room waiting for admission, sometimes for 12 hours. Or more, waiting for a hospital visit. We searched for solutions and the decision was made to look externally and involve large outside private consulting firm to help us. But after 15 months and multiple interviews with middle management staff and instituting their recommendations, the effects were transient and very expensive, costing several million dollars. Finally, I recall a winter day in the middle of the season. The other hospitals around us were filling up, were at Capacina and walked through the emergency room on the way out. It was full, and I remember an elderly woman with pneumonia by herself waiting to be admitted. She had been in the emergency room for over 12 hours in a gurney waiting for her vetting the hospital. The staff were tired. A culture of blame had developed with staff pointing fingers at each other. There were departmental silos and learned helplessness that permeated the culture. We urgently needed a change. I remember that day, I took the hospital census sheet that shows which patients were in the hospital. There were 250 at that time. I looked to see if anyone could get discharged so we could move the flow along from the emergency room. I made a list and they put patients into two buckets, red men's thick, green men's able to discharge. And as expected, most of the patients in the hospital were red, almost none were green because if they could have gone home, they would have that morning. But there was a third category. These were patients who didn't need to be in the hospital but were waiting for a test or a consult that had been delayed. That could have been, and they could have been discharged otherwise. Also a fourth category emerged, which is a group of some of our most vulnerable patients who were homeless, elderly and demented, underinsured that did not need to be in the hospital but were too unsafe to discharge the streets, they would have that. There were 50 of these types of patients, so a glimmer of hope. We had found an opportunity, but how are we going to engage in the entire organization develop a solution? As a public institution, it's our duty to collect the community. But as you said, Venom, without the care and sticks of a private organization, how could we quickly transform through the county executive sponsor of Patient Flow Rapid Transformation Program, we met Venom. Cliff, do you want to talk a little bit about our transformation story? Thanks, Sanjay. Well, we really had to reimagine a better healthcare system. It started with creating a world-class hospital flow program. As Sanjay mentioned, morale was low, there was a lack of empowerment. We really needed to look inwards and inside out approach using the rapid transformation model. For us, this meant we had to flatten the hierarchy and lead from the middle to empower frontline staff and give equal voice. We took a holistic approach rather than piecemeal. This is a complex process with multiple bottlenecks. If we only fixed the emerging department, it wouldn't fix the whole system of flow. We recognized that and failed in the past. We brought over 80 staff from 10 different departments and used a scientific approach to break down the process into five key areas and then created these cross-functional teams to address each area. We created our own digital platform. We call the Flow Accelerator to know the location and status of every patient in real time during their hospital stay. And this allowed us to prioritize care more efficiently and improve communication across the whole organization. We centralized the information and using insights from Air Traffic Control, we developed a logistic center so to track everything in forecast earlier who could be discharged and anticipate bed capacity issues. We used data analytics to drive our improvement and identify new barriers then experimented with lots of pilot interventions. One example was this improving physical therapy service turnaround so our patients could be functional more early and be ready to go home sooner. Most importantly though, we changed the culture. We have this motto, no sacred cows, no scapegoats. Don't blame anyone. Don't rely on dogma or legacy processes and don't jump to solutions before really figuring out the problem. Sanjay, you wanna talk about the results? Thanks, Cliff. The results were significant. We were able to increase access to ambulances by 50%. We had a 30% decrease in the amount of time patients waited in the ER for a hospital bed. And we reduced the number of vulnerable patients who were difficult discharged by 80% by transitioning them to nursing facility beds that we leased. And then staffed with a specialized team that specifically focused on vulnerable patients. We've been able to share our story and our strategies to improve patient flow nationally, which is one of the most rewarding things to watch, watching other systems change. And recently we were awarded several state national top quality awards, including the C-Dame Duane Donner and California Association of Public Hospitals top quality award. And we were one of the first public hospitals to receive the HIM Stage 7 designation prestigious industry award given to organizations who reached the highest level in moving to a digitized paperless system. I'm truly proud of you guys and thanks for everything that you do for our community. Next question is, you guys have worked with different coaches, you've worked with me during transformation. What are your suggestions about either people who aspire to be a great coach or wanna work with a coach? Maybe we start with Yvonne and then we go to Vernon and then to the doctors. So prior to this program, me, as I mentioned earlier, many of us actually knew Benham. Benham was training over 1,000 leaders across Lee and Feng through our executive program. As a result, he already understood our organization, the complexity and the challenges that we were facing. And more importantly, he really understood the nuances and how to navigate through the organization. So I would say that in order for a good coach to really be successful, I think one must really understand the challenges that we're all facing. I think many try to jump into a conclusion and try to fix things, but have a good coach to really help you see the situation from a very neutral perspective. I think that is very important. And then the other aspect is that not only Benham understood our challenges, he in fact also challenges us to really meet those circumstances. So lead us to say, Vernon has a very high expectation in terms of what we need to do, but he was also so bold and inspiring. He really mobilized us and really made us feel that we are empowered, that we can solve this in our own hands and we can do it together. It's really obvious that Benham really loved the people that he was working with and he's really able to see our own potential and really try to kind of exemplify that through his coaching. Thank you so much, Yvonne. That was very kind of you, Vernon. One of the things I remember most and you and I have worked together now on multiple multi-billion dollar corporations across the United States. What I liked about what you were able to inject in our culture and in those engagement was actually the fact that we took your coaching with our chief HR officers. The combination of two then we went down the organization to figure out how do you actually create a repeatable process with many other people and create multiple coaches in the organization. I used to call them ambassadors. How do you make sure you have ambassadors for change? And this rapid transformation program actually creates those ambassadors with the right coaching. And then I'd say, as the coach, I'd say one of the things I tried to strive for is to remain the center of calm. Whenever there's sort of chaos and all sorts of things going on. And in today's world, here's plenty of that, the coach has got to remain pretty calm. I think it's all, the coach also has to be able to sort out the noise. There's gonna be a lot coming at you as a coach. And so how do you make sure what you're focused on and what you want your team to focus on is relevant to what you're trying to accomplish. And the last thing I'd say is, of course, you need to make sure you build that process and make it repeatable. So that you don't consistently have to go build this over and over again. In fact, what I tell folks is, I'm not gonna cook the food. I'm gonna teach you how to cook. I'm not gonna do the hunting. I'm gonna teach you how to hunt. And this rapid transformation program is I've created so many great leaders because of this program because now they've adopted it. And now I'm watching them do that at some other great companies. And I'm really proud of that. And that's why I can say it was been a truly a pleasure to partner with you on that. Thank you, Vernon. That truly speaks to the multiplying effect of this process, which is about developing leaders who will in turn develop other leaders. Let's now go to the doctors and hear their thoughts on this. Hey Ben, a role of a coach. I think the role of the coach, especially in our institution, which is incredibly large, is to help break down the silos in the organization and build trust between the executive team, the middle management and the front lines. If you don't have that then you're not gonna have an organization that's running off in the fashion. And then not just breaking down those silos, teaching the science, teaching the principles and the science that in transformation, you finally make it fun. I remember meeting with them, very, very upbeat as you guys all know, and just really kept the whole thing very light but very serious at the same time. I think the coach also has to have credibility and buying from the organization and not just care about coming in and transforming but caring about the problem, the product and its stakeholders as well. Cliff. Yeah, I think Venom really helped us navigate the political barriers within the organization. I mean, you really helped us set the urgency and continue the momentum up with weekly meetings and then quarterly summits that really allowed us to communicate across all our teams. But I think Vernon, you mentioned this, we did a lot of personal coaching and we had to have some tough and honest conversations to get past obstacles from some individuals. I remember Venom, how you rolled up your sleeves with us when we were having a lot of difficulty with the logistic center and how we had to have a major cessant with staff to break down the silos. At the same time, coaches create that positive environment that really shows staff that we care about the success of all. I think you can really see the transformation when other departments start to ask to come to your meetings and be part of the program rather than instead of having to push people to come or do things. Thank you so much, Cliff and Sanjay. When you have an environment where you can't force anyone to come to any meeting, you just got to make sure the meeting is so much fun that it's the best meeting in town so everybody participates. Moving to our next subject, Yvonne, something amazing happened, which is one of the highlights in my career when you got to present to the senior staff and the leadership of Lee and Fong. Tell us about what happened. So as I mentioned earlier, I was invited to present and share our learnings from the RACP transformation. And I would say it really turned heads at the whole organization. We were not only the envy of the rest of the business units, but the CEO and the CFO really want to see how they can scale that through the rest of our organization. As Vernon just said earlier, it really helped, there's a trickle-down effect once a movement is created. So I got to spend a bit more time directly with the CEO for him to really learn how the program actually works and how that could be applied to Lee and Fong. And as a result, we slowly engage into other conversations about how it could become a key part of the organization's future. So with that, after the program, after we saw through the transformation, I was invited to take part to lead the corporate development function for Lee and Fong where at the industry level, there is a huge disruption around retail and consumer goods because of change of the consumer behavior. So I became a Silicon Valley transplant from Hong Kong and really had to learn quickly the new ways of technology and how that really can disrupt the entire industry and really work in hand in hand together with the CEO and our ecosystem partners to chart a new path for the organization. So definitely without this transformation program, without the different risks that we were taking at an organization level and to really feel empowered through the culture and momentum, I don't think I would ever be able to have this opportunity. Thank you, Yvonne. You're very humble because what happened after you presented, you directly ended up in Silicon Valley reporting to the CEO of a over 100,000 organization with their network of contractors and others. So you had a meteoric rise and for the program managers and others who are listening to this, realize that Yvonne really worked on this transformation as if her life depend on it. She gave it all she had. She was so enthusiastic and an opportunity opened up and then she went for it and just so, so proud of her. Vernon, you have done this in so many different organizations, so tell us about it. Yeah, so I will say that one thing you do have to get right in this culture. My experience in Silicon Valley, I remember when I started and it was just time to go charge hard and get it done. And I remember many of the executives came back and said, hey, we can go do that, but most of us are already multimillionaires and we're not really interested in doing a whole lot more hard work. We'll do the hard work, but it has to be because I can go brag about the digital transformation and the disruption we're doing in the marketplace when I go sit down with my buddies at Google or Sanam Talk or what have you. Coming from the East Coast, where there's all about hitting your number, holy smokes, I had to completely pivot how I approached it, which is why I've been, I reached out to you, right? Sort of, we've got to do something transformative or I'm not going to get the hearts and minds of people. When I brought you over at CenturyLink, it's a $20 billion company that's been around close to 100 years old. There are people that have been there 30 years, yes, 30 years in one job. And so how do I get them to be agile and quick and responsive and beat new competitors in the marketplace? Well, that transformation was something completely different. As you recall, we came in during our planning session and said, look, what's the imperative to change? Well, the imperative to change is your, your pensions are in jeopardy, your retirement's in jeopardy. We better change and we better change fast. And as a result of that, I think we got alignment from that. Then we're able to adopt the rapid transformation approach because we created an imperative for folks that want to actually become part of the effort. Perfect, thank you so much. Now switching to the doctors, boy, you guys have been at the eye of storm with the pandemic. And there has been a lot of coverage about Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and Santa Clara County being the most innovative county in the country, saving tens of thousands of lives. And in part because of the great transformation that you've been involved with. So what I'd like you to talk about is, how were you able to respond to this unpredictable pandemic that happened early this year? Hi, Ben, so one of the good things is our, you know, even though we start our patient flow transformation project, gosh, almost seven years ago, we continue to meet every two weeks, our patient flow team, that's a good thing. As some of the same things that were occurring back then emerged during the COVID pandemic, but at a larger scale, of course, we were again dealing with a supply demand mismatch. But in this case, the challenge was a total demand of COVID patients on our system was uncertain. And the supply of beds remained fixed. We also had unreliable supply chains of personal protective equipment for our staff and limited supply of testing. So because the infrastructure we built with our patient flow rapid transformation program was the foundation was already there to handle the spring and the summer wage of COVID patients non-COVID patients accessing our hospitals. So it's a good thing we continued, not just in 13, let it just kind of die out. We continued the momentum all the way going up to a pandemic that we didn't even know was gonna occur. Also, we leveraged relationships, having relationships, not just internally, but externally was incredibly important. And these were relationships we had built during our rapid transformation project. These were relationships that now we had developed with the public health department to determine the extent of the disease at the start of the pandemic. And through our partnership and using science, we recognized community spread of COVID-19 early and became the earliest and effective shelter and place order in the county, which as you know, ultimately saved thousands of lives. And just as importantly, it bought us time. The order ultimately was instituted, as you know, from the state and throughout the country. We also partnered with the public health system and our lab to increase testing capacity. And we partnered with our charitable arm, BMC Foundation to help attain PPE. We actually had community, people from the community building PPE and bringing it to our charitable arm. And we actually were using some of that PPE to help us early on when the supply chain was unreliable. Yeah, I think although we started with the hospital flow program, our transformation didn't end there. We actually used it to transform primary care and then also our whole person care initiative. And that linked to our public health staff, social workers and nurses to build a better healthcare system that allowed us to connect all those dots when the pandemic hit. As Sanjay mentioned, we actually used our primary care clinics to help public health with a rapid surveillance survey. And that's where we determined that there was community spread and allowed us to then have the data to say, hey, we need to shelter in place right away. I also remember that we knew that the SNFs were very vulnerable in our county. And we decided that we would go out and help them. A lot of people were afraid to come to work or go to the SNFs. A lot of workers were staying at home because they were scared of the COVID pandemic. But we recognized early on that if we didn't help in our community, this would get out of hand. We had limited testing at the time. So we really had to work with public health to maximize the efficiency of that testing so we could really hone in on those patients that really needed it and protect both the staff and the patients. But this is the power of the inside out approach. The conventional wisdom is that government is slow to adapt and can't perform like the private sector. But I'm really proud that I work in one of the most innovative counties in the country. And I think this is a model that we can use in other parts of the government. Thank you, Cliff and Sanjay. In fact, the New York Times article and San Francisco Chronicle said that we had really the first effective shelter in place in the country and let Sanjay say to the state but all over the country would save the tens of thousands of lives. So thank you. My last question, it's really about your own leadership skills throughout this process. I'd like to know how your leadership skills have changed throughout this process and what suggestions do you have for the leaders transitioning through this pandemic and trying to reset, re-imagine and transform their organizations? We'll start with Yvonne, we'll go to Vernon and then we'll end up with the doctors. Thank you, Ben. So the reality is rapid transformation doesn't start at the organization level. It really starts from the person within. So when I was going, when I first was asked to be the program manager, it really forced me to really think about what can I bring to the table. I really had to examine, who am I? What can I really do for other people? How can I really drive impact and change of this transformation that the outcome is still very much unknown? So, and the second thing that it really forced me to really see is to see the vulnerability in others. When I saw that everyone was a little intimidating to be part of the program and everybody was fearful of the outcome that might take place, I learned to really understand where they're coming from beyond the business level. And it also taught me to have a little bit more empathy on other people and not just thinking about myself. Thank you, Yvonne, Vernon. Yeah, I would say that I echo many things that Yvonne said. Sort of the five principles that I try to espouse in my leadership and that has changed over the many years I've been at it is to one, tell people to embrace change, right? In a very volatile world and will continue to be so, that's pretty important. A successful leader knows how to adapt. Have an optimistic out view. I heard that from Clifford and from Sanjay as well. Look, I think at the end of the day, you have to have an optimistic view on the world. And as you opened up and you lead with love and you lead with treating people the way you wanna be treated, and I think that's important. Be inclusive, right? And around the world, we've seen a significant movement going on in the world. And I would say that embracing inclusiveness just makes all the difference in the world. I mean, look at this, the Gus body on this call. Don't be afraid to fail, right? Look, you gotta take some chances. Now, I will tell you, fail fast and that's important, but don't be afraid to fail. And then I hold myself accountable and I expect accountability. So there's a sort of my five leadership things that I'm focused on here at Everbridge where we've been able to put up four straight quarters of incredible growth in the business. So hopefully that helps them. Thank you, thank you. That was great, and the doctors. I'd go first, Sanjay. Well, before I used to think that physicians were the most important staff and now I recognize it's really the whole team that's more important than any one group. You know, when I go into every new transformation project, I think about this and try to get everyone to understand how they can help each other and be a team of equals to recognize that we're all really on the same boat and that if we row together, we're gonna get to our destination faster and more smoothly. It's less about me and more about others. Sanjay? Thanks, Cliff. You know, for me, this has been a journey for me when it comes to growth. Well, as I engage in the rapid transformation project and it's really shaped the way I lead. It's made me more aware of my biases and I understand the importance of empathy, especially for the frontline staff. I'll give you a story. During this COVID pandemic, we all get screened before we come to the hospital. Screened for symptoms, temperature check, we're similar to what's happening in other industries. Now, remember being in line, I need to get into the hospitals with long line. I looked to the front and the screener was on her phone and she was typing away on her phone. And of course, my bias is kicked in. I'm like, gosh, what's she doing? Is she checking Facebook? Is she on Instagram? What's going on here? And as I got closer and closer, I could see on her face, she looked just really concerned. I just remember that look on her face and worried and anxious. And so as I got closer, I asked her, I said, hey, is everything okay? And she said to me, my son is at home. He has asthma and the whole summer he's been at home. He hasn't been able to go out so I'm so scared to allow him to go out. And now we're doing remote learning and he's having a hard time accessing the platform to allow him to be able to go to class remotely. And he's just getting more and more depressed. And I have to go to work. I gotta be able to provide. And here I am trying to do both things at the same time. And that was very sobering for me. We can build the best processes. We can transform things. We can reinvent. But at the end of the day, these are human beings and we need to have empathy for them who are on that frontline staff. Our business is still humans caring for humans. And that's what this rapid transformation project has helped me realize. Thank you so much, Sanjay and Cliff. Personal transformation journey as the panelists talked about is a mountain with no top. In my inside out effect book, I learned that our heroes like Mandela, like Martin Luther King, like Mother Teresa, like Gandhi, they were not born perfect. They actually worked on themselves. As they grew older, they had a bigger vision of humanity. And personal transformation is really something that is accessible to everyone in this world. Now all of you who are listening to this podcast know why I don't just admire this four leaders, but I really adore them. I want to thank them for the wonderful, wonderful sharing. This went really, really well. Let me give you my final thoughts. And this might be provocative. My final thought is that organizations are more malleable than most people think. What one needs to do is really, as the panelists said, combine the rapid transformation with the inside out. Or as we talked about in the Brightline Transformation Compass, is to create a movement by aligning the inside out of every employee to the outside in. Thank you so much.