From Popcorn to Operating Rooms: Thank You, Paul Breslin

From Popcorn to Operating Rooms: Thank You, Paul Breslin

Paul Breslin has been with The Innova Group since 2016 and is getting ready to (mostly) retire. Thoughtful, thorough, humble, creative, and always professional, Paul inspires us to continuously learn and improve our work.

To thank him for this gift, I asked him some essential questions (one of his favorite terms), which he graciously answered while pointing out how one of them could have actually been a better question. If you know Paul, this will not surprise you. Then we talked about his responses, which are lightly edited to serve as parting advice from our irreplaceable friend and colleague.

You have worked as a consultant for 40 years. As you look ahead to retirement, what will you miss most about this work, and why?

Yous guys. That is a phrase I grew up with often used by my Jersey brethren as well as Long Islanders. The extra s is added for no reason whatsoever. My point is that what you value most and will miss the most when you retire is always going to be about the people.

What is something you learned over the course of your career that may be helpful to share with people just starting out?

It’s rare to know exactly where you want to end up. There’s a somewhat famous quote by Lorenzo Pietro (aka Yogi) Berra that goes “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” My point is that’s not really a bad thing. You’ll get to where you’re meant to be, even if you meander your way there through different types of jobs at the beginning of your career.

Don’t be afraid of taking the first exit that might make sense to you. For me, that meant working as an industrial engineer for a company that made flooring, with a side gig consulting for a company that made popcorn.

My good friend was an orthopedic surgeon, and he complained about the hospital’s administration all the time. Then my co-worker quit and went to medical school. That got me thinking that improving healthcare processes may be more satisfying than improving popcorn sales.

If you find yourself drawn to a consulting role, you eventually learn that you need to care about your clients’ missions and the industry they serve. For me, healthcare is that industry.

What are the two or three most important skills consultants should continuously work to improve?

I actually think the first question we really need to ask ourselves is “What are the two or three most important skill sets for the position I play on the team?”

As part of a consulting organization, the skill set that is most important to develop and maintain depends on the position you want to play. If you’re not a solo consultant, and even if you are and work as a sub to others, consulting is a team sport.

A consulting team’s success requires strengths at a number of different positions, and each different position has a few key skill sets that are different. What I’ve learned over my career about myself, and from my colleagues, is that our individual natural skills, interests, and passions will always end up dictating at which position on the team we will excel. From my son’s football career, I learned that some athletes may be special teams skills players, but they are actually very versatile.

What is the best response you recall a client giving to a question? What was the question?

Thirty-plus years ago, a private-sector health system client CEO gave me an answer to a question I asked that has always stuck with me. After he asked me to step into his office while I was there working another project, to explain the business planning help he was looking for with respect to starting up a new service, I asked him if the next step should be me summarizing what we just discussed in a proposal for him to review first and then we could get started. He responded, “Do you really think that’s the best use of your time, or can you just get started?”

The takeaway from this story is: Win the client’s trust, and then they will trust you to do the right thing.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our community?

Assuming by our community you mean all of us who are in the business of helping our healthcare clients to continuously improve their strategic thinking, service delivery planning, and the facilities that support them; then what I’d like to share relates back to my popcorn story. For the past 40 years I’ve maintained a desire to keep working within healthcare because it’s worth it to help providers make incremental improvements toward creating the most effective and efficient healthcare system possible.

What I think people in our community have in common, which helps make this rewarding work, is that we care a lot about the mission of the industry we serve. It’s a big and perhaps impossible dream to think we can help to create a perfect healthcare system in our lifetimes, but it’s a quest worth our time. To paraphrase some old Tom Waits lyrics, “The obsession’s in the chasing and not the apprehending; it’s the pursuit you seek and never the arrest.”

Fair winds and following seas, as our Navy friends say, Mr. Breslin. Thank you for 40 years of service to our clients and their patients, and for teaching us all how to do better.

By Kelly Soh | November 2022