The New Beginning Part 2

This is the second post in my blog series on Matt Hutcheson and my new book, The New Beginning.

In Chapter 2, Tom gets invited to play a round of golf with his friend and former mentor Bob Nelson and two other men Tom’s never met.  The foursome decides who will be teammates and the round of golf begins.  Tom gets paired with Pete Hallwell, the CFO of a Hospital complex located in Pittsburgh.  As the round continues, Tom and Pete have many conversations about each other’s work.  Tom explains the tools he uses to make dramatic improvement in profits, and he does so in very simple terms that Pete can understand. To make a long story short, not only do Tom and Pete win the match and collect money from the other team, but Pete, because of his interest in Tom’s work, invites Tom to come to his complex.   Specifically, Pete, who was the Chief Financial Officer at Health Center Complex, was very interested in hearing more about Throughput Accounting.

In Chapter 3, Tom travels to Pete’s headquarters at Maximo Health Center Complex and presents the details of Throughput Accounting to Pete and two of his employees, who both work in Accounting.  The meeting goes very well as they discuss other subjects related to the Theory of Constraints.  In fact, the meeting went so well that Pete surprises Tom with an exclusive consulting offer with Maximo Health Center Complex which consists of six very different hospital types.

In Chapter 4, entitled The New Direction, Tom returns home from his meeting with Pete Hallwell and discusses the consulting opportunity he had received, plus the possibility of becoming an independent consultant with his wife, who is fully supportive.  Tom then contacts Bob Nelson to get his input into his decision on whether or not to accept Pete’s consulting offer.  Bob Nelson reassures him and lets Tom know that if he himself has consulting offers that he can’t take on himself, he will refer them to him.  Tom decides to accept the consulting offer, but when he “attempts” to resign from his Board seat, he gets a huge surprise.

In Chapter 5, Tom signs his consulting agreement with Maximo Health Center Complex and one of the first things he does is discussing the need to develop a list of performance metrics that they would track as they proceeded through their improvement journey.  In this chapter, Tom provides an example from a previous improvement effort where he had worked with a hospital in Chicago to improve their Emergency Department time for STEMI-type heart attack patients.  In his explanation, Tom presents an improvement tool known the Interference Diagram which proves very helpful to the improvement team.  Tom also meets with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Jonathan Briggs, about a new list of portfolio companies for Tom to work with as part of his new consulting agreement.  One company, Simpson Water Heaters, stood out from the others because, in addition to their other poor performance metrics, their profit margins were in negative territory.

In my next post, I will continue with a summary of Matt and my new book, The New Beginning.

Bob Sproull