Session Information:

Value Management: Get the value from your transformations

Are you tired of investing resources into transformational initiatives that fail to demonstrate the outcomes that were promised? Do you have reservations when you approve investments, because you worry about whether anything will change and improve on a sustained basis? Does it frustrate you that leaders are not consistently accountable for the promised and targeted outcomes of their initiatives?

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has built and matured a model where value and outcomes from initiatives are consistently realized and demonstrated. You can improve the success of your transformations with a disciplined approach to managing the value associated with your improvement efforts.

To be successful, it requires culture, active and rigorous initiative oversight and communication. Join us to learn how BCBSM applies Value Management across its portfolio of transformational initiatives … with some simple processes and tools that you can use. Key takeaways that attendees at this session can expect:

• The importance of culture and accountability in managing value
• Tools to identify the sources of value in projects and initiatives at the outset and getting leadership commitment to deliver the value
• Tracking and affirming value through execution
• Proving the value upon completion and capturing it to ensure sustainability
• Celebrating the successful execution … AND the delivery of value

Session Transcript:

Very excited about our next guests, coming from Michigan today. We have met timber though with us. Matt is the Director of Business Efficiency at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. For the past 11 years, he has led significant, enterprise wide redesign efforts across Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan companies that have delivered nearly one thousand individual initiatives and more than one billion dollars in business value.

Matt has a finance background and has been instrumental in developing Blue Cross Blue Shields practices for managing and maintaining the value outcomes of the initiatives within within the Blue Cross Blue Shield Portfolio. So we're gonna talk about healthcare. We're gonna talk about value in health care for process improvement and innovation. Matt, it's a real honor to have you with us on behalf of our global audience. We're very excited to hear about your journey and transformation in healthcare.

Thank you very much Josie.

I'm sharing my screen, let me know if it's all set up.

Looks great.

All right, Excellent. Well, good morning, everybody. As Jose Josie, I mentioned, I'm talking to you today from Novi, Michigan. That's a Western Suburb. kind of halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor.

Uh, chose I mentioned that I started in finance and let me give me a little additional info.

I actually started as an auditor or a CPA while in one of the big six, well, that's how it was known in the eighties when I was there. I think they call it the Big four Now.

And then I moved from there and I spent 17 years at one of the big three automotive manufacturers. And about halfway through the trip, I got diverted from Finance and Accounting and was asked to begin leaving a strategic program.

I didn't have any background in program management. So I didn't know much and I learned a lot from others and through trial and error.

And I often joke with my team that you can see my learnings from the scars on my back.

But I've persevered. I've been working at Blue Cross now for 11 years, continuing to lead our enterprise wide transformation programs.

And part of the success that we've had in our programs is our laser focus on measuring the results of the initiatives and the improvements that are part of those programs. And we call that value management.

And I'm going to share with you, uh.

That information today.

So as I started working in these large-scale programs, I saw a common problem to create transformational change.

It almost always requires a significant investment of money, time, and human capital.

And lots of people, I would like to say, everyone had a hard time articulating what that change would look like at the end, and even more difficulty describing how people would see that change once it was complete.

And I saw, over and over, executives were quick to ask for funding and resources.

But couldn't always provide a vivid description of how the company would operate differently and more effective at the end.

Then, when times are good, these requests seem to get approved almost on the word of the executives, and when times are tight, there's more scrutiny. And these types of significant transformations are more likely to get deferred or denied. And that's an interesting irony because it's when the market is challenging or when performance, maybe isn't as strong, that we really need those transformational ideas the most. And what I saw was it's not so much that we didn't have the right ideas. It's just that there was a higher standard.

two convince everyone that that was the right investment, because we had a difficult time, really describing how it would work and convincing them that it would work, and that it, that, it wouldn't be different, in the end.

And, our value management process really works to address that.

So, at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, we can, and we call it a value journey. Winton, I've been there 11 years, but the, some of the first programs, and started a couple of years before I got there, and we've been on this journey the whole time.

We've had a variety of programs over that time, programs that focused on cost reduction, some on our corporate culture, some customer experience, others on core operational performance. And we didn't have all the answers At the start. We started small. And we built our experience and our expertise around this over time and over these programs.

We put the initial pieces in place with our first program.

that was called Performance Transformation back in 2008. And we saw what worked. And we saw what didn't. And then we continued to add pieces that were needed through the additional programs.

And we were critical of ourselves about what didn't work as well. And we worked to adjust those and fix those.

And here we are now in 20 21.

I'll tell you what it feels like if we have a fairly mature process.

But, I also will tell you that we continue to evolve and, you know, in five years, I might look at the way we're doing it today and it may feel like it's still rudimentary. So, but that's how it's been for us. We'll just continue to advance the model, refine it, and and make it work better all the way through.

Um, this page here starts as part of our real foundation. And when we first started working with our value, we realized that, even amongst ourselves, even amongst the Program Office folks, we didn't speak the same language when we talked about value. And so we worked to create a common vocabulary.

Then, enable us to talk about this and understand each other real consistently. We work to identify, you know, may be clear about like, what is administrative savings and what is cost avoidance, and all of those things. And, it resulted in these value drivers and these are really the the elements within a project. Or an initiative where we can drive value where we can derive value.

This page here is our financial drivers. These are all drivers that we've been able to ultimately quantify in economic terms.

Usually, these have some direct impact on the profit and loss statement.

Um, and, wow, this is not an exhaustive list, and it's surely tailored to whatever industry you're in. For Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, we're looking at those margin and cost elements that are really separately identifiable and traceable into the financial statements.

Similarly, we have what we call the strategic branch of our value tree. And these value drivers are much more difficult to convert to a dollar base measure and trace to the P&L.

But they do represent value, and they help us answer the question of why we might embark on an initiative.

So, you see on this list here, there are performance attributes, like cycle time, and there's data quality elements, and there's satisfaction. But there's also things that relate to Blue Cross. Like our social mission. We have a calling to improve the health of the general population, not just our members, but we're where we are called to help improve health throughout the state of Michigan and even the country. And so we've, we've worked to identify these and projects that deliver on those outcomes, do represent value to us.

So, you'll see there list there with some of the examples, But we we work very hard to articulate the value, especially that's that's not economically measurable.

And usually we try to do this with some manner of a metric or a measurement, that we can show a change in, in the positive, correct direction that will represent that value.

So, over time, this is the process, our value management process, that we use. There's, it's a six step process that you see here. We're gonna, I'll go through these real quick, first off, and then we'll dive into them a little bit, all the way through.

So, the first step is identify, and that's really all about getting clear about what are we doing and why, And we start to identify what's the opportunity for value that's within this idea?

Next, we go in and we spend a lot of time estimating. This is happening kinda as the solution design is getting detailed and we take that design, and we work to understand how does it change the process? How is it going to change? The work that happens in the process, How's it going to be different, and we work to measure and identify how those differences will translate into value and those outcomes.

The next step is own and we spend a lot of time.

We're pretty range, are rigorous about getting ownership for initiatives. So we make sure that we identify who's responsible for delivery of the initiatives.

But also, who will end up owning the outcomes? There are lots of projects that we do. We're a big enterprise, and there's a lot of projects that are done in one functional area.

And for whom the outcome and the benefit is derived in a different area. And we need to, we need to have both of those folks on board, through this ownership process.

Then we go to deliver, and this is where the initiative would get implemented, and we have some additional steps that we do through this process to help manage and maintain, maintain the value.

And then, once it's done, we go into an evidencing phase, where we work too capture evidence that demonstrates that the value has been delivered. And then lastly, we spend a good chunk of time to recognize the folks and celebrate the theaters that have made a difference in our continuous improvement programs.

So we're going to start let's see.

I'm talking about the identifier.

Really, all, we're talking about it.

Matt, I apologize. But your audio got very faint momentarily if you could double check just Joe microphone to make sure everything's connected, OK.

Is that better?

Yeah, that's a little bit better, OK.

Sorry, Thank you.

Um, so, after we drop them to paper, we really look and identify how the process works. What are the pain points that are needing to be addressed?

And we work with the business area and the experts in the area to start identifying those value drivers that are going to ultimately help us demonstrate the value. And I always tell my team that nothing happens by accident. It's always cause and effect. And with this step, we're starting to document the cause and understand what we're aiming to achieve.

This is a kind of summarized example of one of our worksheets that we use in this phase.

We complete this with the business team and we're here, we're looking to describe the opportunity in enough detail that it's clear what we're what we're gonna do. Capture how it's gonna drive value and change, you know. Is it gonna be, if it's in servicing?

Are we looking at reducing cost, reducing the time that it takes to complete a call, et cetera. All of those thing, that's, that's what we're looking for.

Then, we made sure that we gotta know, kinda who are the players that we're working with? What are the areas that are impacted?

Who owns key sets of data that we're gonna need and miss sheep and becomes the starting of our charter, really, as we, as we roll through and these templates that I'm going to show you, all kind of work and build together, as we go through the process of implementing an initiative.

So now, once we've finished the identification step, we move into estimating, which is one of our most important steps. So, here we're looking to identify the metrics and the baseline that are relevant. And then estimating the impact of the change. The impact of the initiative.

So, to do that, we need to know where we started, and where we believe we're going to end up.

And we ultimately document that in a value formula.

So that there's alignment around how much value is going to be and how we derived it, and the methodology that we used in order to develop that.

Here's the worksheet. one of the worksheets that we use in this process, this is our Initiative Value template.

Um, and through, identify and Ask the Identify an Estimate phases. We're working with the business all the time, understanding their work, documenting the opportunity under uncovering the value drivers. And now, we're going to translate this into a formula.

So we start by identifying the metrics that are at stake, whether they're cost metrics or performance metrics. Not particularly important, and it's important, but what is important is that we can get a baseline measure for that.

So pre improvement measure, then, we work with our colleagues in the business to understand the change and, and begin to assess the impact of that change on those metrics. And what target state are we aiming for.

We usually look at data, and then we work to develop a formula that will go down in this value calculation of how much value we think it is, and how did we calculate it.

For instance, let's say we're working on reducing call time.

So, if we can reduce a call by NaN, then that means we can have X number of more calls addressed, or addressed some with X number of fewer people, and all we have to have all these metrics and measurements in order to translate that operational change into its financial outcomes.

Um, and so, so, that, and all of that map, and gets captured on this template here, so that, so that we know how we got to the answer that we did.

The next phase is Own, which is one of our this, as I mentioned, this, is one of our most important steps. And it's one in some of the organizations I've been in.

This was a step that prevented a lot of value from getting done because ownership wasn't established and aligned the right way, But Blue Cross does it really well. So, this is all about getting accountability for those outcomes.

Once we have those estimates, we want to make sure we know which business area or areas are going to be running the delivery and which executives are going to be championing, championing the progress through.

And so a lot of this process and ownership is around syndicating.

My, my boss, our VP, Cindy, Diane. She says, syndicates, syndicates, syndicates.

And we get a formal alignment with the key stakeholders so that we can get a commitment around, number one, delivering the change that is anticipated, but also delivering the outcome that results from that change. And I'll slide ahead me about the course, another template that we use for this.

This is essentially a charter document now.

We're deep enough into this process that the charter document is fairly complete, and this is very summarized, of course, um, but we use this then to capture all of the data around the initiative, the analysis, and the timelines so that we can share it with the business sponsor. And ultimately, this creates what we call a covenant.

We, we could call it a promise, we can call it a comparison, but the way that we manage it, we have chosen to use the term covenant because.

Well, let's just be honest, I've broken thousands of promises in my day but I have not unbroken very many covenants so. We showed that word specifically to set the right expectations.

And you'll see over here, this is all part of that syndicating process. So the stakeholders are seeing all the underlying work developed along the way and ultimately, on the right-hand side of this, you see sign offline. And, especially, initially, we were, we were no intent on getting sign off on these. now, especially in this remote world, we don't get wet signatures anymore. But we get e-mail acknowledgments and alignment that are part of our records so that we know, hey, everybody, agreed, This is how it's gonna work.

This is what it's going to deliver. And there's a commitment across the whole team to work together to achieve those outcomes.

Ah, Once that's and let's just say it's time to implement it, right? We've done all that work to get it ready and planned and it would be a shame to fumble the ball now.

Nonetheless, it happens and the work that we do through the Deliver phase, is all about preventing the erosion of value.

We've done all this work upfront that has set us up to run the race, but this is running the race. and this is, this is about making sure that we win the race, and if we can't quite win the race, that we run a personal best time in the race.

So, all of that helps to set us up so that we can be successful, and we do that by keeping regular pulse checks with the team that's implementing and leveraging the insights that we've gained in the planning process to anticipate and mitigate risks.

And then, as changes happen, and they do, we will continually update and revise the Charter and the value estimation as we learn more and get deeper into the implementation.

Here's just a snapshot of part of a template that we use to track items as they go through the delivery process.

We always keep an eye on the benchmarks of timing and cost and ownership in this process. And we made sure we're keeping track of, is it on schedule you'll see over at the left, is an unscheduled from a timing standpoint? Is it on budget for what we thought the investment was going to be?

And are we still on track to deliver the value that was identified in the beginning?

And we align the business to kinda confirm those things. On a periodic basis, sometimes it might be biweekly, sometimes it's monthly, is whatever's necessary.

And what we do is, is we use this as a manner and a means.

two, be transparent about the tradeoff decisions that, that cannot be avoided in the process. Projects encounter difficulties.

They are over budget sometimes over time, and I saw a lot of instances in my past where we made tradeoffs and it seemed like we always talked the value outcomes.

They always took the hit.

We would always try to get back on schedule or on budget by thrusting out some of the functionality that was anticipated and that ultimately then reduces the value that you get that you get. So we, we use this and work with the business owners to make sure that we have a lot of transparency around those decisions.

And then as changes are made, we will maintain a changelog and update all of our artifact documents so that they represent the latest status of each initiative.

So, once we're done with the implementation phase, it starts to ramp up, and evidence phase of our value management process is the that, that ramp up.

We start with one question, which is really, you know, does the effort that wasn't just completed, genuinely reflect the improvement that we anticipated.

So, we'll go through, and we go back all the way that those initial estimates and documents to remind ourselves, here's what was gonna happen in the process. Here's what we expected to happen from an outcome standpoint. And we go and start to gather evidence to demonstrate that those things have happened or demonstrate what has actually happened.

And ultimately, we validated this with some of our finance folks that have a objective viewpoint in the process.

We do this through something that we call our Value Evidence Package.

And this, this, I will say, is probably one of the most unique parts of how we do value management.

I just don't think a lot of companies go through this exercise, and use this, and that. But it's part of what makes it really effective for us.

So we essentially assembled documentation and evidence, comparing all the pre implementation, and post implementation performance.

And we try to tie it all back to source documents that we know are reliable accounting, ledgers, HR records, published performance reports, et cetera. And we assemble these things into an evidence package.

And then combine that with the voice of the business that live the change, and we assemble this into really a story of, of the initiative and the change that hasn't been made. And ultimately, you know, we tell that story.

And then, this evidence package is reviewed by our VP of Finance, our controller. And he signs off on it. So he validates that all those things make sense. If it's an administrative cost reduction, we put right in front of him. Here's the costs that were occurring before. Here are the costs that are occurring afterwards. It's very easy for him to see like, yeah, costs came down. And so we work with our business team, and our finance team to assemble all that, and get it all validated, and verified.

Then, the final step that we go through is called Recognize, and this is another area where, in my companies, I used to work for, didn't spend a lot of time on this. So, you think about it. The folks that put a lot of time and effort into this, they get it done.

But there's not always a lot of recognition and thank yous that go to the team. But we make a point of really recognizing them.

We made sure that we're systematically reporting our achievements across the leadership team.

We formally recognize those stakeholders and champions, and then we partner with finance to ensure that the impacts that we're seeing are sustained.

You know, we don't wanna have that value be transitory and then go away.

So we do this, again, through another form that we use. And this is a, like a congratulatory note that we send for every initiative.

Then is completed, then delivers value.

So as Josie said in the beginning, we've got, we've done over a thousand initiatives so far. So there are somewhere in the system more than a thousand of these forms. And it's, it's very helpful to us because it shows if it's part of a big program how that initiative contributed to the delivery of an entire program. And it is, it is sent to the executive in the area, and all of the contributing folks are copied on it.

And it's been great because the executives, they're very good about, uh, telling their staff, Hey, I see you got this done. And that's great and it's improved our business or reduced our costs.

And the other thing is, we really never miss an opportunity to highlight our initiatives in a feature article. In our weekly news publication, we, we are always looking for opportunities to promote the work that is done, the continuous improvement work that is done. And really, the efforts that are being expended by the people who put their heart and souls into the transformations.

All right, here's my last slide. And, this is sort of an extra slide that I added right at the end. We talk about this all the time. We have This, is what we call our secret Sauce.

Our formula for success that has made us made are being transformation grants consistently successful. And it starts with leadership at the top.

Our most successful programs come from our CEO and have his attention have his support and not just tacit support.

They had his active support, which means then that he gives executive ownership aligned around those outcomes and those objectives, those executive owners, then, are able to dedicate employees to it and we get employees that are really committed to making change. And through it all, we are able to go out of our way to be very transparent with the entire enterprise. The executive team knows what progress we're making, the employees know, the progress we're making, and we celebrate it all the way through.

And then, lastly, disciplined execution of which our value management process and our practices is a key element of that and disciplined execution.

All the way through, because it's such a focus on our outcomes, and we want to make sure that we're delivering everything that is promised in these transformation programs.

So, at this point, I appreciate the opportunity.

I think it's time for our Q and A's Josey, if you'd like to, if anybody has any, I'm looking in the chat to see if there are any.

Uh, oh, don't worry. We have lots of questions for you, Matt. So I'm going to ask you to stop sharing your presentation, so that they can see us on the big screen now.

And what a fantastic presentation, Matt, and I want to put this in context for our audience globally, Matt and his team. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, if I'm not mistaken, because I have led the award ceremony for the Business Transformation World Summit for several years.

And Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has one awards for business transformation, operational excellence. Based on results that Matt has just share with us. I mean it's a This is: these are award winning best practices that you're getting a glimpse on here.

Let me also point out that we know by working with over 100 cross industry organizations and transformation some of the best in the world, that it's easy to say, I'm doing a transformation. It's easy.

Just say, I'm accelerating innovation and improvement, but nearly half of the organizations that say that, 18 months to three years later, nothing happened and it's dead, it starts with a bang and this fizzles out.

Now, Matt is talking to us about something that's happening for, for nearly a decade here. Less than 1% of the organizations that is start a transformation process or an innovation acceleration process survive a decade on that path. And not only we have Blue Cross Blue Shield doing this here, but there are still thriving, which is fantastic. So, math, you're part of the 1% Club, whether you like that or not. That's nice to know. Now, let's go to the question, Several questions and themes, I have M orange here, some of them tactical a few more strategic. The first one is, Let's get very specific on some things here. How long do you track the value creation from this? improvements and innovations?

Well, after it's completed, we will track it and confirm that it is sustained until we kinda believe there's no risks, that it's that it will unwind. Once we know that it's sort of in a perpetual state, we don't continue to track it and we only when we measure our value. This is the other thing, Josie.

We only measure annual impact, so if the thing we do have changed, it improves costs for five straight years. We only take the incremental annual value.

So that one billion dollars is, is it's not accumulating over a bunch of years, since I got $250 million in value in year one.

Again, another 50 million of incremental value in year two, which would really, really be 100, are 100 in that year. So, that that, but that's how we track it and how we track it until until we feel like we don't have to anymore.

Farewell. Another another somewhat tactical question that has come up has to do with the discussion around redirected labor. You treat redirect the labor as an and tangible or intangible benefit.

Aye.

Well, it depends. And I assume when you talk about redirected labor, we refer to that as redeployment.

So, I make an improvement, it frees up capacity.

Yeah, I'm not laying off people, because I have some other equal or more urgent need, to which I want to assign those people.

So we, we will, we count that as value, but we do it in a tricky way.

The team is responsible for creating that capacity.

It only counts as a cost reduction. if they have separately gone to executive leadership, and asked separately for the increased resources that are needed for whatever new function needs to be attended to. So we make them go back, and almost kinda re ask for those people to redeploy them.

If it's going to be counted as administrative value, if they don't do that, then it's not going to be administrative value. We might copy when we might be able to count it as some cost avoidance.

Well, we won't let them have counted as administrative cost reduction OK. Yeah. There are pros and cons of that. That can be debated. But it's good to know what your or your line is. There's a huge debate on this. Some organizations think you should call as tangible.

Because, you know, that capacity over time will be realigned, unless you have a really horrible management system that lets people just kind of to go, no, not do anything, which is not usually the case of most organizations, but, yes. There's this very good, very good insight. Another, another question here related to kind of the practice itself, we, we know through, from practice, across multiple organizations that people really have a hard time estimating value creation. I mean, we would typically have, like, a joke that we say, you know, we do the big three questions with them, What's not happening are working, why do you say that, and then we say, so, watch, what is the value creation potential off this ID on an annual basis. If I put a little team to work on this is order of magnitude, you know, $10000, 100,000 millions of dollars, what is the order of magnitude assessment. And people have a really hard time with that.

So, walk question, because, for several reasons, often, they don't have access to the cost data. Some, often, they haven't really thought through the operational side of things and what, what are the pros and cons of that, those actions. And the And the and then, organizations may be protective about certain types of cost data that we have. How do you deal with the coaching, with the employees and managers and leaders in your organization on the on, on assessing initial value, estimating the value of their improvements or innovations?

So, over time, we've really developed a great relationship and partnership with our business partners.

We want them to be able to express what they're doing in the most positive high benefit terms as possible.

Now, there are always going to be, there are always initiatives that are hard to measure, you know, initiatives, You know, in our business. Retention of customers is a big thing.

Um, and they'll do things that, Well, it's gonna increase customer retention.

Well, it's really hard to isolate things that are happening in an area that has 50 other changes happening, simultaneously known or unknown to isolate, you know, there's hard to have the science, but we ask them, Do what you can to measure that baseline. A lot of it comes from understanding the baseline Josie, and if they can figure out how to measure that baseline, well now they know how to measure it in the in the forward state. So we just, we just work with them.

We want them to be able to articulate them outcomes in the, in the most favorable manner, So we really work and will translate operational performance changes and trace them all the way through. Like, I'm changing this process, this is going to eliminate all this work. When I eliminate this work, that means less people, So will trace all those changes all the way down to do its final kind of outcome. And usually it gets more and more economic as you trace it through.

But it's hard, it's hard, we've, you know, there are things, there are things that we still do, where we're like, well, I think it adds value, but I don't know how to show it, mean.

And then you just have to use kinda your intuition, and that's executive leadership, you know. Really making a lot of those decisions.

That, I want to follow up on that in a little bit, because there are questions around that, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna park that for a moment and the, and go a little bit deeper on the transparency of cost. Because, it seems that that's very important, that you have transparency on the cost structure of the company. when you're asking every employee to assess, you know, improvement, improvement baselines hears about, first of all, if that assumption is true. It because, for example, I want to do an improvement a certain part of the company, but, I don't know what the average salaries for the people who work on that table on the side of the company, on that part of the competent. I try, I need to assess labor costs. So, how do you deal with situations like that?

There is no way you have to to share, perhaps, sensitive information with employees. How is that handled?

Yeah, so Blue Cross has a really slick way of handling that.

They have and it's a tool that was invented for budgeting and planning purposes, and they call it the FTE calculator.

And what they do is they periodically go through and they take average salaries across every grade level, average Fringe loads, et cetera, and they load them into this tool.

So, when you say, I'm going to reduce, know, three positions, it's a grade for a grade six, Integrate A, we have across the company, averages of salary and load fringe loaded salaries for those people.

And what we say is, it's not important that you get the specific one of the person that ends up being eliminated, because it could have been anybody, if it's meant to be accurate, not necessarily precise.

And in the most part, it's been fine.

They have a really unique tool that has allowed people in that FTE calculator. It gets used for a lot of stuff. That's not, within our area, into its whole budgeting tool. We, actually, probably, pig tailed off. It's a really, a budget tool, and we piggy detailed it as a way to manifest the value, in our initiatives.

That is, that sounds like a fantastic tool, by the way, and the level of transparency that cannot be taken for granted, because a lot of organizations struggle with this issue match. So I'm really glad that they share that with us. A lot of organizations often have a hard time sharing that data, for two reasons. one is that sometimes they just become a very controlling about, and they don't want people to really know what it is, they consider to be almost proprietary. The other reasons that sometimes they just don't know, and they don't want to admit that they don't know, because the accounting system is so complex that they cannot really tell you what the cost of certain areas are, so that that sounds that structure sounds really beneficial. I wanna, I wanna maximize our time here. So I want to ask a follow up on that intangible benefit question. Listen, I think that we are going to do a change. here. There is going to increase customer satisfaction. This thing, this strategic, Matt, it's gonna make us the market leader.

And then that asked me, can you put a dollar value to that? I'm like, that's really hard, I can't do that. So how do you deal with the, a little bit more color and detail on how you deal with the number of intangible benefit, things that pop up?

How do you prioritize the list?

Well, we would start with Josey, bye, bye, asking them, well, how would I know we're going to become the market leader? What will that look like? And they'll answer, well, you know, they might and all of a sudden it'll give them a different perspective. Well, you know, we're gonna be ahead of Health Alliance Plan, or whatever some competitor plan, or we're gonna be, you're gonna see it in JD, Power Surveys. We should make some Big Improvement JB, our survey.

So once you start to ask that series of questions, about, Well, what does that mean, and how would I know, how can I prove it? They actually know the answer. It just doesn't occur to them that that's an acceptable response, because it's not monetized.

Monetization is overrated on a lot of business processes. Don't need it monetized.

I just need to be able to show that it matters and that I got better and let someone else figure out the intrinsic value to them of a three point increase in customer satisfaction. I can't quantify that, when I always say that the auto company. We had all of these. We have this model around attributing incremental sales versus no replacement sales and it was all based on a bunch of historical data which ended up being salty because the market is dynamic. It's not built today, is not what it was before. And so you almost have to rely on the expertise and the intuition of those people. But you can help them say they were looking for that vivid description.

That doesn't mean it has to be a dollar sign as the first character. I need a vivid description of what is going to be different, and how it's going to look.

That's terrific, math. Our time is up, but next time, I'm going to invite you back. I'm going to have a 45 minute live Q&A with you. And for two reasons: one is that this is such an important topic, because as much as organizations say, oh, you don't have to show me the value of something, next recession hits, your improvement program will disappear, if you do not have a track record of value creation. So sounds like common sense. But common sense is the least common of the ... and Laura, larger organizations, and what you're doing is pioneering. So number one, that the second reason is that what you're doing is world-class, is a great program that this value creation component is just one of the many great aspects of a great, enduring program that accelerates excellence and innovation for value creation. So congratulations to you and the team for doing that.

Lots of questions from the, from the audience will keep I'm connecting with you on LinkedIn, I'm sure a lot, you're gonna get lots of other people who are going to be connecting with you on LinkedIn, falling up and asking you questions about, and following your journey. So congratulations again, and thank you for taking the time to share this expertise with us.

Thank you, Josie, I appreciate it very much.

Thank you, Ladies and gentlemen, that was met, tabled though, from Blue Cross Blue Shield on on the Path for value creation such an important topic.

There is no, every transformation, every acceleration of excellence and innovation must be translated into value creation.

And whether it's a social or financial value creation, you must be able to articulate what your transformation is, is, is doing in terms of value creation. And that what Matt has shared with us, are important details of that journey. And, of course, we have just skim the surface on, on, on, on some of these important questions. And thank you for the many questions you pose. I tried to address as many of those as I could, and we'll bring that back in the future, to go deeper into this topic. Now, let's take a break and let's finish with a tremendous leader of excellence and innovation. Joining us. We're gonna have that the leader for Operational Excellence at Global Manufacturing is strictly strategy and deployment at Johnson and Johnson with us.

So Marcus Paganini is going to be joining us to discuss the journey and the transformation at Johnson and Johnson and how, what is the path towards smart operations where they're combining operational excellence and industry four. I missed all the disruption in the world Johnson and Johnson is playing a pivotal role in the in our fight against the pandemic and and it's gonna be great to see the insights from someone who has been on the frontlines and leading with the organization. So, taking a break now, see you back at the top of the hour.