Recently as part of our Best Practices Interview Series, we had the privilege of interviewing Kent Holloway, the longtime CEO of Lifeline of Ohio, an organ procurement organization (OPO) based in Columbus, OH. We’ve worked with Kent and his wonderful team for many years, and it was a real privilege to have a chance to hear his perspective on many different topics ranging from the future of the OPO world to what some of his favorite books and streaming shows have been as of late!
Here are a few key takeaways from this interview:
Leaders can benefit from bringing unique skills to the table. Kent Holloway is different from many CEOs in the industry because his background is in business, accounting and finance rather than in a clinical or medical field. His business skills have allowed him to think differently about how to build a sustainable and efficient team, and part of his daily thought process is in how he can continue to optimize his organization to save more lives.
“There’s a direct, one-to-one relationship between, ‘what did I do right?’ and ‘what did I do wrong today?’ in influencing peoples’ lives everyday,” he says.
Leaders recognize and remember those who have provided them with opportunities and shared best practices with them. Kent cites many individuals who helped him along in his career, from Diana Clark giving him his initial opportunity and trusting him to help build a fledgling OPO in Indiana to individuals like Linda Jones, Paul Schwab and Lloyd Jordan for teaching him, sharing their perspectives and showing him how things could be done.
Leaders are eager to share credit with their teams and stakeholders for the success of the organization. Kent explains that his team at Lifeline of Ohio has swelled from 35 individuals when he started 20 years ago to over 120 individuals now, and in that time, Lifeline of Ohio has been able to not only greatly grow in terms of donation and lives saved through transplantation, but also its impact on the community.
“What I’m most impressed by, and I’m still in awe of this, is that over the last four or five years, we’ve increased organ donation by greater than 50% in ways I never would have imagined,” he says. “I’m really proud of how my team is more creative than we were in years past, not intimidated by how to ask the question to move forward, and how they understand how what we do is so important to the families of all those donors we come in contact with.”
“The second thing I’m really proud about is that we were able to talk to our board about installing a donor memorial that I think is just absolutely stunning. My office overlooks the memorial, and today, before 9:00, I had a young family come in just to find their loved one’s name. They had a young one in a stroller. That happens every day.”
Leaders work hard to build relationships with key partners. Kent explains that Lifeline of Ohio has been focused on streamlining communication with its donation, transplant and tissue processing partners in hospitals and in looking for opportunities to share costs and improve how processes are coordinated. Lifeline of Ohio is also thinking very carefully about how to interact with transplant programs as new allocation rules shift the understanding of what it means to be “local.”
“I think by being creative and being willing to think outside of the box and being very specific about how we interact and understanding how this benefits us both, I think we’re able to improve relationships.”
Leaders think about how to build internal engagement and alignment. Kent says that with the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s been thinking quite a bit about how to ensure his team doesn’t lose the strong culture and connections they’ve built over the last several years as they are distant and working remotely.
“The biggest challenge for me immediately over the next 12-18 months is to figure out how to bring people back together more frequently for those meaningful connections and more meaningful engagement,” he says. “I was reading a news article reflecting on how things went several years ago when several large companies like Microsoft and maybe Google sent all their employees home and said, ‘Hey, you know what, maybe we don’t have to be in the office.’ And they changed their mind about two years later. There were really very specific reasons why.”
Leaders need to be mindful that running an organization means developing good business thinking. Kent applies his own background in business to ensuring that Lifeline of Ohio is running smoothly, and he’s quick to caution that being knowledgeable about the world of donation and transplantation isn’t enough to ensure that an OPO has effective executive leadership.
“I think if you want to step into a position that might be available at other OPOs, you have to understand is that what you’re doing is running a business. We’re all small businesses,” he says. “Your orientation or your training over time may have been in a clinical department with a large institution. This is different. You have to understand employment law, you have to understand laws that govern not for profit organizations, you have to understand cash flows.”
“So either understand that or surround yourself with people who do, and you’ll be successful.”
We would like to thank Kent Holloway for participating in our interview series and for being willing to share his wisdom and insight with us. If you’d like to learn more about his organization, please visit http://www.lifelineofohio.org.
Also, don’t miss our other interviews from this series (which we’ll be posting bi-weekly for the next several months) and feel free to review our other Best Practices videos!
Excellent – We are proud of Kent’s contributions to increase opportunities for a better life for so many.