The health system was, as he describes it, “a very strict holding company,” with a hospital and nursing home in Nebraska, a hospital and nursing home in Wisconsin and its largest acute-care facility in Zanesville, Ohio.
“As a system office we tended to watch them [the facilities] operate individually, and really only involve ourselves when there were big issues on the line,” Mr. McConnaha told Becker’s.
Today, employees in most of the system are on a single payroll system. Additionally, Franciscan has formed a capital project committee — comprising the CEO and CFO of each entity — to collaboratively weigh in on major funding decisions.
As president and CEO of Franciscan in 2018, Mr. McConnaha has shepherded these organizational changes. His tenure will conclude Dec. 19, with Tim Loch, CFO and vice president of finance since 2019, stepping in as interim CEO until a permanent successor is named.
Mr. McConnaha reflected on the past six years and offered insights on leadership, focusing on governance, strategy, decision-making and more.
He noted that his tenure with Franciscan began in 2008, initially serving as director of corporate relations and then as vice president of mission and strategy. Leaving the CEO role, he said, was a difficult but appropriate decision.
“I love working for the sisters with the long-term care and the acute-care facilities that they sponsor. It’s been a very fulfilling 16 and a half years for me. Even the last six and a half of being CEO have been wonderful, but it’s just been a lot,” said Mr. McConnaha.
“It’s a very taxing job, and we’ve made a lot of difficult decisions over these six years. A lot of big things have happened in the system, and I’m feeling worn out that it’s time to hand the reins over to somebody who’s got energy.”
Reflecting on his time as Franciscan CEO, he shared a piece of knowledge he wishes he had known in 2018: not to measure himself against other healthcare CEOs.
“I have the habit of comparing myself to or setting expectations based on what I see others do, and that’s the way a CEO ought to act, or that’s the way a CEO ought to lead an organization,” he said. “When the reality is, everybody in a leadership position is chosen for the skills that they bring to the table, as opposed to the skills that are expected of you after you get there. So I am feeling much more comfortable in my role now than I did six years ago, when I was a brand new CEO, simply because I compared myself to others, and that can be a dangerous thing to get into.”
Mr. McConnaha said his plans after leaving the CEO role involve an “open-ended sabbatical.”
“Open-ended doesn’t mean I’m going to give myself five years, because then I put a retirement age, but I’m giving myself at least a couple months, maybe two or three months, to not even dwell on what am I going to do next,” he said.
The time, he pointed out, will allow him to focus on writing and spending time with his family, free from the challenges and responsibilities of leadership.
He shared a specific message for the next generation of healthcare leadership. While industry knowledge is important, so too is motivating, encouraging and gathering people around a common idea or goal.
“I’m a liberal arts major. I was a mission leader. I was a communications guy. I did advocacy work on Capitol Hill, and then found myself in the CEO role,” said Mr. McConnaha. “And I never ran anything in a hospital, but I have found recently — well, over the past couple years — that my job isn’t to operate these organizations. My job is to make sure we’ve got the right people in place and they have the right tools.
“And part of that is just being able to mentor young leaders around things outside of operations and finance and how to communicate well, how to deliver a message in a way that’s going to give you positive returns and not have people running for the hills, and that sounds like a simple enough thing. But sadly, there are too few people who have those skills, who think that the only skill you need as a CEO is to have been in operations or finance,” he said.
