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This week on the Faculty Factory podcast, we chat with Christina “Chris” Runge, PhD, CCC-A. Dr. Runge is the Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). Learn more.
Transcription
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Kim: Welcome back to the “Faculty Factory” podcast. On today’s episode, we have Dr. Chris Runge, the Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Hello, Chris. How are you doing today?
Dr. Runge: Hello, Kim. I’m doing well. How are you?
Kim: I’m chilly and getting ready for maybe having a snow day tomorrow morning, like I guess you all are up there in Wisconsin?
Dr. Runge: Yes, indeed, we have.
Kim: The whole purpose of this podcast is for us to get to know each other and inspire each other and just take some time out of our regular jobs and conferences to kind of glean some insight. So we kind of wanna start with telling us your personal story. How did you get into faculty affairs and faculty development?
Dr. Runge: Thanks. I actually have to say I was mentored into this role by my department chair. So as a faculty member in the EMT department, I was talking to my department chair about my career and various aspects of what I’m interested in, of course, my science, but he really felt strongly that I would love serving on the MCW Faculty Career Development Committee and he encouraged me to run for a position there. And so I did and I was elected to the, what we call the FCDC. And as soon as I started working on that committee and working on all things faculty development, I absolutely loved it. I remember thinking, and since it’s a committee, then you do have to rotate off eventually. And I remember thinking, I never want to rotate off the faculty development work. So how can I perhaps even turn this into a career?
So it really started there with my service on one of our committees, and I was able to…it was wonderful. I would have the opportunity to chair the committee after a couple of years serving, I was able to chair the committee for a couple of years, and then the Office of Faculty Affairs at MCW then developed a position for Director of Faculty Development and I applied for it and was able to get that role, and that’s where it sort of solidified the rest of my road where I’ve ended up now. So it really started with my service on that committee.
Kim: So for the junior assistant deans and staff folks and people out there who are thinking about academic affairs and faculty development and, you know, in this profession, we sometimes advise our junior faculty members to be very deliberate in things to say yes and no to, the idea that if you say yes to everything, when something good or maybe more appropriate comes along, you have no capacity to take those on. So we teach our faculty how to say no, sometimes. So I’m curious if you could help folks out there think about when you got that invitation to join that Faculty Careers and Development Committee, you said you didn’t really know much about it. But like, what kinds of…can you tell us more about the intensity of the commitment and what kinds of, you know, did you get percent effort to protect you from any other obligations or was this like a once a month obligation? And then what kinds of projects were happening there?
Dr. Runge: Oh, that’s so great. So there is no time like an FTE or anything devoted to my service on this committee. I think it helped that my department chair was the one to recommend me to participate on this committee because that was already an endorsement of understanding that I would be spending some time working on these activities. So that right away was kind of a nice way to yes, for me, because I knew he supported me in that. So I think that’s important is ensuring that you have the support before you undertake something like this, to make sure that your leader will be supportive of you and understand that that’s the place you’re spending your time.
That said, the way the FCDC worked here was it’s a once a month commitment. There was a one hour meeting once a month. And then sometimes, we would…if you’re on a subgroup, if you’re working on a particular project, you might meet for another time during the month, maybe one other hour, for example, during the month. At that time, we were working on…the FCDC was in charge of the faculty development, the career development workshops. So we spent a lot of our time working on those. It wasn’t a huge time commitment because a lot of the aspects to it were things that…there was a template there already. And so you could…there was some work to be done that we knew we needed to do and so it was well organized.
There is also the room though to do…one thing I liked the best about the Faculty Career Development Committee is there’s room to do creative things. So if you thought of a new idea that, for example, a lecture series or pearls of wisdom we did for the basic scientist, for example, series, then you could work on that. And commitment wasn’t very large but it was very impactful for me and for my career, as we can see. But also, even though the time commitment itself wasn’t very large, whatever time I did spend on it, I loved it so much. It didn’t feel like it was taking away from anything, right? So it really felt like it was enhancing my own career and my passion that I didn’t even know I had. So it didn’t feel it was taking away from something else, for example.
Kim: So you had a lot of opportunity for some creative projects on that committee, and you had the endorsement from your department director and you ended up having a lot of fun there. And then you talked about the Office of Faculty Affairs opened up a position in faculty development or was it a Faculty Affairs position when you first had entrée after that committee?
Dr. Runge: Yeah. It was a director or faculty development position that was a new in the Office of Faculty Affairs. And it was a…I think it was a 0.1 FTE, like literally half a day a week. And I remember thinking, “Well, you know, you make it work.” Again, I was so passionate that half a day was great. So that was fine and anything to sort of pry that door open, I suppose. It was a new position for them so it was actually very supportive by our leadership to even have that position open up. And since then, now that I’m in this role, I’ve been able to take that role from the director of faculty development, turn it into a dean for Faculty Affairs position. So I was able to transform that. I think it was one of those, they wanted to invest in so it was like, let’s…it was almost a pilot project of sorts, but it turned out very successfully and it worked really well for our faculty and for the institution. So there’s more investment in that and I understand that approach to doing it that way too. Yeah.
Kim: So when you first got that 0.1 FTE and it was a new position, you were coming from some background on that committee but I’m wondering, was that the moment when you got involved at the AAMC group on faculty affairs or did somebody else in your office have some familiarity with that? I’m wondering how you parlayed that committee work into an official leadership position doing faculty development. How did you learn your way into that official role?
Dr. Runge: Yeah, it was great. Our Office of Faculty Affairs at MCW had a nice…already had a good relationship in the group of faculty affairs. So Alonzo Walker, who was the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Diversity before I took this role, so he was my predecessor, he had a nice relationship in the GFA. Kimara Ellefson also had a nice relationship with GFA and WMC. And we participated in the standpoint survey which was faculty forward back in the day. And so we had a really nice relationship already saved, officially joined to the Office of Faculty Affairs. I became one of the representatives for our institution when I joined the Office of Faculty Affairs. So I was able to participate in the GFA at that point, and it was fantastic.
I went to the GFA meeting my first year with this role, and was able to present and meet a whole bunch of people and it’s been fantastic, a wonderful environment. So really, from the beginning, I was able to participate at the GFA as soon as I had my director role here in Faculty Affairs. And I think that actually, Kim, we were on the same…I was on the Research and Project…
Kim: Yeah. We were.
Dr. Runge: …Development Subcommittee with you. So I joined the city right away and just got my hands right into it as I tend to do.
Kim: So it’s a career booster. How about a plug for the GFA folks. If you’re out there and you’re curious how to make a career boost, go from a 0.1 to being an Associate Provost just like Dr. Chris Runge. Join the Research and Project Development Subcommittee. It’s a career maker.
Dr. Runge: It is. It is.
Kim: So can you describe to everybody, what does your Office of Faculty Affairs and/or Faculty Development Office look like? We try to… You know, all of our offices are so different in terms of FTE or people or size or breadth and depth. Can you give us a…paint us a picture of both those offices or if they’re one in the same?
Dr. Runge: Sure. Our Office of Faculty Affairs is separate from our Office of Academic Affairs, which is really geared toward our learners, medical students, and in particular, we have a graduate school that represents our…that has a postdoc office. So that’s for our PhD students and our masters students and postdocs. And Faculty Affairs here at MCW, we are actually aligned very closely with our Department of Human Resources and we share resources and staff and that’s kind of how we’ve made it work here. There’s so much overlap with our talent development and the career development work that we do with faculty that it just made a lot of sense for us to do it that way. If we talk strictly Office of Faculty Affairs, then I’m the Associate Provost and we do have a director of Faculty Affairs who is Stacey Drifka.
And then Kimara Ellefson is our Senior Director of Talent and Faculty Affairs. And then as I mentioned before, we have an assistant dean for Faculty Affairs, her name is Jennifer Apps. And she is a faculty member and reports directly to me. And so we work very closely on all the faculty development work that she executes on. We have a few, like, probably four staff members or so that really working hard on the different aspects of the promotion and tenure and the processing of the letters and some of the more administrative aspects, and just making sure that we’re very efficient and responsive in that type of work that we do also. So it’s a pretty lean operation but I think we’re very efficient and we’re still able to support all of our faculty, and we have about, at least 1700 faculty or so now and we do continue to grow.
Kim: So why don’t you tell us all about something you’ve lately been doing or you’re excited about, something unique or different or innovative or…? What are you jazzed up about?
Dr. Runge: I think one of the things that I guess I’ve spent most of my time on and I’m very excited about in a lot of ways is the well-being work that we’re doing for faculty well-being. So one of the reasons this is… So we have three strategic focus areas in the Office of Faculty Affairs, and that’s faculty well-being, career advancement, and leadership development. So we have a lot of our career advancement work, we’ve been doing for a long time, also our leadership development. And so some of those are ongoing. We’re always looking to be novel and do new things there. But the well-being piece is so critical and it’s kind of a foundation for everything that we need and want to do here in an academic healthcare.
So the well-being is near and dear to my heart because I have personally been participating in a lot of the work that we’re doing to advance the well-being of our faculty. So we’re doing a couple of different ways. We have now instituted the well-being index as a measure of well-being for faculty and it’s helping us steer our resources and direct ourselves to the departments and divisions that maybe need the most, have the highest distress scores, and that need institutional support.
Kim: You actually call the data for some triggering events or some high scores or low scores, if you will, and you actually design interventions?
Dr. Runge: Yes.
Kim: Wow.
Dr. Runge: Yeah. So that’s what we’re doing now and we have…so there’s a norm…it’s normalized. So we do it for our basic science faculty. They’re normalized against the U.S. workers. And then we also do it for our clinical faculty. They’re normalized against the other physicians nationally. So if they reach a distress score that’s considered at risk and in a department, if their average distress score is considered close to or at risk or above, then, personally Stacey and I have been…and sometimes, and Jennifer, we have been going and meeting with the department leaders to find out specifically what the needs are for their faculty for their well-being and finding ways that the institution can support them and Faculty Affairs can support them.
And coming up with some pretty novel ideas. Some is career advancement, some are very specific issues that might face basic science faculty, for example. And so we have some novel initiatives going around both, hopefully, to support the well-being. The other aspect that’s very interesting to me is as the Associate Provost, I’m in the position now where I’ve been directly interfacing with the leaders from our hospital partners and our practice leadership. And we’ve been going and doing listening sessions for every single department and division to hear directly from the providers, so APPs and physicians, to find out what are the drivers for their distress, for example, what are the [inaudible 00:15:11]? What are the things that we need to change as an organization? And I come at it from a well-being lens.
The other leaders, of course, are also there from an efficiency standpoint and to make sure that the work environment is working for the people delivering the care, also our patients. But I do, I’m very clear that I’m there from a well-being standpoint because we know that these are [inaudible 00:15:34] of distress and burnout. So being able to partner with…this is one of the first times I’ve really been able to partner with the hospitals and do this kind of work. So I’m very excited about it. It’s a lot. There’s some things we can do quickly but other things that are more long term. But I like making this connection and relationship with our partners because honestly, the only way to address this is to truly partner with the folks who are in control of the work environment and do this together. So we all own a piece of it.
Kim: Now, I’m curious. Two things you said, when you find these distress scores that signify there’s a department at risk, you go to the leadership of that department and you ask them, you engage in a conversation. You know, what’s going on? What do your faculty need or want? I’m curious, backing that up, how do you know that those leaders know what the faculty want or need? Like what’s the process? Do you have something that…I imagine there’s a feedback loop. You give those data directly to the department chairman or directors or leaders. And then do they engage in some kind of their own town hall to understand what they need or is it anecdotal or just a gut instinct that when you sit down with them and look at these scores and they say, “Well, we just know that it’s A, B, or C,” or do they have some kind of a…is there a system in place where we conduct the XYZ internal audit or did a focus group and the faculty told us that this is exactly what they…I’m curious how those conversations happen.
Dr. Runge: Yeah, that’s such a great question. I think at this point, we share the data with the department chair or division chief, whoever, depending on the size of the department and the faculty body. And what we try to do is we meet with the person or persons who are most directly engaged with the faculty in their immediate vicinity [SP], right. So if it’s a division chief, for example, because they would actually have a better sense of what happens with their faculty on a day-to-day basis as opposed to…I’m sure we could meet with the chair of medicine but probably wouldn’t understand all the different microcosms. And so we do try to meet with the leader of the closest, who’s closest to that group of faculty.
Kim: Got it.
Dr. Runge: And then also the department administrator. Because a lot of times, the department administrator is the one who actually knows day-to-day or on the ground things that are going on and that needs to be fixed or that might be driving some of the distress. One reason we’re able to…so we do meet with the leadership and that’s just the beginning of it. Because then, sometimes we follow it up and we’ve met with…if we’ve met with the chair and the department administrator, then we’ll follow up and meet with the division chiefs or different groups depending on what we all kind of decide would be the best way to approach it. But yeah, for that particular initiative, it’s really about…it is meeting with the certain leaders and not necessarily all the faculty.
One reason we’re able to do that is because I’m also at the same time, as I mentioned, I’m doing the listening sessions with the faculty directly for all of the divisions and all of the departments. So we’re able to put that information together. Sometimes, we can tell, I can also look in the distress score. We might also get a feeling from the chair or a leader that perhaps they could use some intervention or support about how to best lead the faculty and support their faculty. So that’s another reason I wanted to do it this way is we would go and I actually kind of…then we can come out with a read on, okay, does it seem like this leader could actually use some help in this area as well. And that’s where I might work with that person directly and/or executive coaching or other things. So it’s also another kind of data collection point if you will, just kind of get a feel for how is the department being led also.
Kim: I love that recognition that we have to be a little humble and maybe a little bit gracious and understanding that our leaders aren’t necessarily as equipped with, as you mentioned, resources or education to have their finger on the pulse of all that’s going on. The pressures on leaders in our departments and divisions is so extreme that I think we can come down hard on them for not being up on all the latest this or that or feeling like they’re not supporting their faculty. But they have these pressures of the bottom line and finances and revenue generations and all these regulatory mandatory compliance things and the pressures they have are immense as well. And so I love that you are sensitive to the whole systems approach of involving staff and faculty and leaders.
I think that’s wonderful. And just as soon as you started talking, Chris, I had a conversation this morning with a young faculty member and she was talking about how she had scheduled a vacation four months in advance, purchased the tickets, purchased a vacation package and out of the blue, an administrator emailed her a couple of days ago saying, “We don’t have enough people on deck. You need to be here and your vacation is hereby rejected.” Disapproved after it had been approved and all the plans were made. And so she said, “I took a deep breath. It was very upsetting. I wrote an email to the leader, the division director. I had a friend look at the email for tone.” And she said, “I sent it and I was very careful to be respectful, saying, you know, prefacing I understand staffing is hard, we’re short, I get this. However, is there any way we can reconsider because blah, blah, blah, tickets are purchased or whatnot.”
And she said, within 30 seconds, she got a reply that was, started with, “I am incensed. I have worked as this leader for the past 30 years. I have not had a Christmas break off. I’m an Orthodox observing Jew. I’ve had to work the past 30 years and this is the first Passover where I won’t be able to go home and be with my family.” And it was just…I felt horrible but it…so we talked about turning that into an experience where this leader was expressing feelings and perhaps anxiety that he was not advocating for himself as well as maybe some junior faculty…we’re training our junior faculty members to advocate for themselves and set boundaries and say no respectfully. And here in a moment of emotional overdrive, he just responded clearly without thinking of the tone and starting out with, “I’m incensed and you have no idea. I’ve worked and I do this and I’ve not done that.” And it kind of, you know, we turned it from a defensive posture to being a little bit more, you know, just being humble and thinking, “All right. Let me put myself in this guy’s shoes.”
So it opened up opportunities to be a little bit kinder, gentler, practice some civility. And I just think we ended up having a great conversation after that. But what you just said made me think exactly that, of there’s so much opportunity for all of us, the whole system.
Dr. Runge: Yeah. I’m so glad you brought that up because that’s always…yeah. The pressures facing our leaders is just, it’s all sides and it’s immense. And I agree, my first thought when you recounted the email response from that leader, I thought, “Oh my gosh, is that person okay?” Like, “Oh, that is not…” And we try to think that’s the first thought. If something like that occurs, it’s like, “Oh, gosh. Okay, this person.” And one reason too I start with the well-being index approach to the well-being aspect for our faculty, that’s the other reason I do meet with the chairs and with the department administrators and division chiefs first is because, yeah, you’re right. Our chairs…this is also in coordination with the dean’s office because the chairs are held accountable for this well…they’re accountable for the engagement scores when we do our engagement surveys, and then also the well-being scores.
And if they look like they’re at risk, then the chairs are going to be asked, “What are you doing about it?” And so part of this is…for our faculty, for us to reach out and say, “We’ll help you and support you.” And then when the dean asks you, “What are you doing about it?” You can say, “I’m working with Faculty Affairs and this is the plan.” This is also a way…it’s also why we’re going directly to the department leaders with this piece of it so that…and then also, it’s just all coordinated throughout the whole institution and really, it’s not…accountability is a good thing. It’s the way we get real change but it can’t be accountability in a vacuum. There needs to be support with that and I think that’s a role that we can have.
Kim: I love that you do that. That’s a challenge for us at Hopkins working at the local level. When I first came into Faculty Development at Hopkins, one of the leaders said to me, “Faculty development is local, it’s like local politics. You’re the federal government, we’re the states and a lot of this happens at the local level.” And so it’s building those relationships, like you said, and creating an environment where people recognize that we want to harmonize with you, we have resources, we’re here for you. Let’s not reinvent the wheel. Let’s not have 33 departments creating their own leadership programs or tools or assessment instruments when we have people who are trained and are happy to do that for you. So I love how you are deliberately building those relationships and demonstrating that we’re here for faculty, and that includes the leaders who are also faculty further down the career trajectory, but they’re still are faculty.
Dr. Runge: Yes, yes. Sometimes I see them and I say, “How is your well-being because you’re faculty too, you’re in my…”
Kim: Exactly.
Dr. Runge: And do some check-ins there as well. And yeah, I think everyone’s really honestly showing up every day doing the absolute best they can and really just doing a great job, and I wanna honor that as well. So everyone really cares and they’re really here to do great things for our patients and for science. And so, yeah.
Kim: The second thing you said that kind of raised my eyebrows was you said, you go into the hospital, and this has been a unique opportunity for you. And you said, you talk to the providers. How is that, you know…I don’t work in the hospital. So how have you been able to navigate those relationships and building trust and confidence and having that credibility in the hospital out of the dean’s role or out of the provost role to have these conversations?
Dr. Runge: Yeah, it’s interesting. So I’ve been at MCW for 17 years. I started here as a postdoc in 2002, January 2002. So I do know some people. One thing that we’ve done is the Office of Faculty Affairs, we have our core values but our core, core value, really our foundational value, is building meaningful relationships. And any chance we’ve had, especially in the last couple years since I’ve been Senior Associate Dean, we’ve been very intentional about building relationships with our hospital partners whether it be with employee relations, because we have…sometimes it’s an MCW employee and then a hospital employee, but they’re working together and there’s an issue and we need to sort it out so we work together…or on the legal side.
So any chance we get to build a positive relationship with our partners, we’ve been taking…we’ve been very intentionally doing that and working together. So I think it’s been a gradual process but it’s been intentional. I don’t wanna say it’s accidental but it’s been intentional where we really cultivate these relationships everywhere we have the opportunity. So when this opportunity came up, I have a good relationship with someone who, the enterprise CEO, and the hospital is very interested in improving their engagement scores with our faculty. And so there was motivation there and they had teams going around to do this. And so it’s sort of serendipitous. We were talking about it and I was asked to participate in these listening sessions as the MCW representative. And I think it’s been very meaningful to the folks in the room.
So when we go see faculty, you have someone from the hospital leadership, you have someone from MCW, which is me, and you have someone from the practice, a leader from the practice. And so the three of us are there saying, “We all own this and we all wanna help you do this and we’re all working together.” So we’re very clear about that. And I think that that is giving people the optimism to think, “Okay, we might actually see some meaningful change,” and then we’re able to work on that together. And then we leave the room and we immediately talk about what can MCW do, what can the practice do, and what can the hospital do. And we all go back…and our Faculty Affairs team, I’ve actually…now we have monthly well-being meetings where we sit down and talk about here are all the things we discussed in these listening sessions. Here are the priorities. What can we do and which things are we gonna take and what are we gonna solve and help support people with? And so it’s been kind of a nice process.
Kim: Now, have you considered your institution going down the Chief Wellness Officer route, because this sounds like quite an investment with, you know, like as you just described, these three folks, getting the meetings organized on the table, having the discussions, debriefing. I mean, this is a serious investment of time and I’m curious if you’ve explored institutionalizing the well-being into a Chief Wellness Officer like some of us are doing.
Dr. Runge: Yes. That’s exactly what the plan is. And so I do have a proposal in for a Chief Wellness Officer which the dean is in support of. That’s actually in process now. And before the…when we were first talking about it, the idea…the thought was, “Where would the Chief Wellness Officer live,” for example. And I kind of argued for it. I think the Chief Wellness Officer would be great to have in the office of Faculty Affairs. This person, then being in Faculty Affairs, would be in charge of overseeing the well-being initiatives for both clinical and basic science faculty then, being in Faculty Affairs. And so they’d collaborate and work with the practices and with the hospitals, but they would be doing this for all faculty. So that is actually something that is in process right now. So that’s a great question because, yes, this has taken…yeah, I’ve done myself probably maybe 20 of the listening sessions. Each one is at least 45 minutes to an hour, a lot of them go over and that’s just the listening sessions themselves.
But it does fall in the category of this is important work and really needs to happen, and I’m happy to push this forward in my current role to get these things going and to own it as well and I’ve been enjoying it, as hard as it is to hear my colleague say these things. It is hard. You wanna solve it all right away. Even when you know how to do it, it still takes a little…it’s gonna take some time but we do have a sense of urgency. But yeah, I care about it deeply so it doesn’t feel like it’s been an additional thing, I guess if that makes sense.
Kim: Well, you sound like you’re always passionate about everything. So from the committee you served onto this, you get into it and I know that’s true from your personality. I love the mantra of building meaningful relationships and that’s, to me, is just, you cannot put a monetary value on that and I really don’t even think you can truly measure or evaluate that concept of just reaching out heart to heart, human to human, walking each other home, building friendships and that’s what, to me, it’s all about and I love how you’ve made that your true north of your office. I was talking to somebody, interviewing them for a position as a director of one our departments this morning and she, you know, everybody wants to talk about leadership programs and everybody has leadership programs and I was describing all our programs. And she said, “Well, how do you handle the criticism that we create these leadership programs and graduate all these leaders, but there are so few leadership positions available?” So are we not creating this fake or hollow cadre of people for whom we’re never gonna have the position, because there are only a handful of leaders and we can’t just knock them off the pyramid?”
And so we got along that conversation of recognizing that, yes, there are limited leadership positions but leadership is also taking advantage of where you are at leadership by your current position and not by some title necessarily. And then we got on this discussion about networking and socializing and building relationships. And so when you were saying that was your office mantra, really, it reminded me of time and time again, at the end of all of our leadership programs, the important feedback is that participants say, “I just loved meeting people like me. I just love the opportunity to build relationships with people who are in a similar stage of life and season of life and have the same challenges and thoughts and doubts and are curious about things.” And just so many things come back to that just reaching out to each other and building relationships and community. So I think that’s really unique that you have that as a guidepost. And I love it.
Dr. Runge: Thanks. Yeah.
Kim: So can you tell us…yeah, interesting, anything else you wanna share or something that you’re excited about or new or a spinoff of what we’ve just been talking about?
Dr. Runge: I guess, just to tack on, because you had said this and I think it’s really important to drive home. I agree with you 100%, Kim. The leadership development and the leadership academy and all of the things we do, it’s not about the title that you’re gonna have some day. I completely agree. We learn so…not only do you get to network with people and get to know people who…yeah, from my leadership academy days, I’m still friends with folks who went through it with me but also, it’s about leading meetings and there are opportunities for people to lead every single day and to do these things, and these are skills that if you bring them in, there’s no telling all the things you can accomplish just for yourself no matter what your title is and for your colleagues. And that just…it just builds on itself as well and I think it makes for a great…it actually builds culture and I think that…and it brings us all to a common place that we can really do our best work together and serve our patients and do our best science. So I really think that that kind of is the underlying for all of that as well.
Kim: I love how, as a leader yourself, Associate Provost and those of us in this field who’ve come to just love serving faculty, you said something that just made me feel yes, exactly. And that is when you said, you just wanna get in there and solve it and fix the problem and it hurts you when you step into somebody else’s pain or someone comes to your office. Many times, you just went, “All right, we gotta fix this. We’re gonna take care of it.” And yet, of course, that’s true. There’s the importance of just hearing someone and being with them and listening to them and a lot of people will acknowledge. I know you can’t fix things, I know you can’t throw a million dollars at my department and hire five more administrative assistants or I know that’s…you don’t have that kind of power. And yet, just to be able to sit and be with someone and hear them, I think it just goes a long way to just being validated.
And yeah, I understand that this…you know, I’m hearing you. And that cannot be overlooked in the importance, not only in the policies that you’ve like, for example, you’ve said about really building meaningful relationships but also in all the programs that we put together for our faculty that yes, of course, we all wanna do our best and develop quality programs, and also rest knowing the fact that we just provide space and are with people and build those relationships. That’s what people are gonna remember at the end of the day. So what’s next? What do you think the next challenge, you know, well-being, you sound like you’ve hit this beginning to end and it’s a serious investment and you love it. What do you think your office or your faculty might be kind of peeking around the corner coming up?
Dr. Runge: What I would love to do, I’ll tell you my dream…
Kim: Good.
Dr. Runge: …of what’s next because the well-being, I think that’s gonna take some time. That’s at least a couple of year plan on cycling through and that’s something that is infinite. We’ll never take our eye off of any of these strategic focus areas actually. Here’s what I would love to do and is, you know, we do our engagement surveys, we do all kinds of things, survey here and there, and sometimes, there is survey fatigue but at the same time, we have really good participation in those. My dream is to get to the point where we can get the right data, ask the right questions, and listen, and find out all the things we need to know so that we can predict what we’re going to need to do instead of doing a survey, finding out the data, figuring out this is something that’s been an issue for a while and then trying to tackle it when it might even be over by the…
Kim: Proactive versus reactive.
Dr. Runge: Yes. So it’d be nice if there was some way to be able to get some sense of where things are going or do something predictive to say, “Hey, this is where this is gonna go and why don’t we get out ahead of this and we can communicate better, we can anticipate better, and we can truly help faculty again, not just after some things have already happened and been stuck there for awhile and then unstick them to get people back to normal, but to really pave the way and let people be as innovative as they can and do their jobs and do their great work they come in to do without even having to think about some of these other things.” And honestly, as we all know, the landscape is changing in modern healthcare and however you want to describe the different generational differences, for example, of what incoming generations might want and how we anticipate that, however you wanna do it or frame it, this is something that…
That’s my dream is to be proactive, to be out in front of things, to be understanding to almost say, “Hey, your department now is staffing…is gonna have faculty at clinics all over because we’ve just expanded. Wow, you might not see your colleagues as often. How are we gonna make sure that you can [inaudible 00:40:00]. How are we gonna make sure that we can…that you still feel connected and that your care teams are intact and how do you feel about that?” And do some of that work even just something “as simple,” I’m doing this in air quotes, “as simple” as getting a new chair. If you’ve had a chair for 20 years and then you’re getting a new one, that’s a big change for the department. How do you help with that change? What are types of things that we can facilitate? So there are some things that are a little more obvious but some things that aren’t. And I would like to be ahead of things and more predictive. That would be my dream.
Kim: What a vision to be able to come up with some kind of indicators of a healthy faculty person, a healthy division, a healthy department, and like you said, to be a dashboard of looking at these risk or your distress scores, as you call it, but broadening that to say, “Yeah, that might sound like a good change, but let’s keep our eyes on that because we know that one of the X15 factors associated with this is one of these and if we’re changing that, that might change that trend line or that slope.” And as you mentioned, the generational differences, that is, you’re really keen and visionary about that, that we designing everything from protocols to physical environments and work groups and workflows will undoubtedly change with newer generations, how they’ve become accustomed to learning and communicating and thinking and discovering information.
So that’s something I think that is brilliant. That would be a great prognostic tool. Talk about preventive wellness like we do population health, a tool to figure out, like you said, how to hit that off at the curve and head it off…gosh, that is really, really super smart, Chris.
Dr. Runge: Oh, thank you. Well, and even to anticipate something. So even to get out ahead of it and say, “We know this is gonna stink but we know it. We’ve got our eye on it. We’re trying to work on ways to minimize the impact for you.” Even just how you communicate things and empathize with people on their day-to-day when, you know, and yes, if we can get a sense of some, like you said, the trajectory, I like that, of okay, this is heading this way which means that this is where we’re gonna end up so why don’t we get in now. Or even just, like, keeping an eye on the background noise. There’s always [inaudible 00:42:42] something, if you’ll see a little spike somewhere, it’s like, “Oh, something’s changed. That is not background anymore. That is the thing and what is that and what can we do? What’s that signaling and what can we do about it?” So, yeah, I don’t know how to do that yet but I think that that would be really powerful in just how we can support people.
Kim: There’s a title of your book, “Signals.” I think that’s really provoking.
Dr. Runge: I’m gonna write that down. Thank you for the title.
Kim: Well, just go to the podcast and you’ll be able to hear yourself say it over and over again.
Dr. Runge: That’s right.
Kim: Well, Dr. Runge, is there anything you’d like to leave us with or any other thoughts?
Dr. Runge: Gosh, no, other than thank you so much for inviting me to have this chat today. I’m really honored and I think it’s been really fun and I appreciate this and I love…I really love this project and I’m excited to hear all of our colleagues that go along with this too and the wisdom that they have to share. I’m very excited.
Kim: All right, everybody. So that was Dr. Chris Runge, 17 years from postdoc to Associate Provost.