Recently as part of our Best Practices Interview Series, we had the privilege of interviewing Susan Gunderson, the CEO of LifeSource, an organ procurement organization (OPO) based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Susan and her team serve an enormous service area encompassing Minnesota and both Dakotas, and over the years, we have seen them grow in many ways to continue to push the boundaries of what it means to be an exceptional organization. We were so excited to have a chance to talk with Susan and hear about her perspective on leadership, and we found what she had to say deeply inspiring!
Here are a few key takeaways from this interview:
Organ procurement organizations are a unique corner in the healthcare space that have a major impact on the lives they touch. Susan explained that one of the most rewarding aspects of her career has been watching the field of donation and transplantation grow from being a role that was unfamiliar to most people into a mission about saving and improving the lives of those in need.
“It’s such a rewarding area of medicine,” she says, “To me, it’s the intersection of high-tech and high-touch medicine in the most profound way. We get the chance to see peoples’ lives being touched, truly being touched, every single day.”
An effective team needs to be aligned around a mission. Susan gives plenty of credit to the wonderful team she’s built, but she recognizes that what is driving them is not just their dedication to their roles, but to the broader mission of saving lives through donation and transplantation.
“I feel like none of this happens without being surrounded by strong people with dedication and passion,” she says, “and we have that in spades – people who are here for the work, for the mission, and are all in.”
Improvement requires sustained commitment and focus. LifeSource has been on a Baldrige journey for many years, and Susan and her team have worked hard to create good, systematic measurements to ensure that their operations and relationships show measurable improvement over time.
“I would say what I am most proud of is our commitment to continuous performance improvement and growth,” she says. “We’ve had year over year gains and continue to do so. I think being focused and intentional about pursuing innovation in a way that makes sense and taking intelligent risk is something I’m proud of.”
Susan also looks for opportunities to match her team’s roles to key areas of opportunity for growth. “One of the things I’m really proud of is that we were one of the very first OPOs who had a dedicated director focused on transplant center relations, understanding the value of transplant centers, transplant surgeons and physicians and helping us drive improvement,” she says.
“We’ve had that program for many years now, and it really does make a difference.”
Relationships are at the heart of a thriving organization. Susan acknowledges that there are many different groups of people who are impacted by LifeSource’s mission, and she and her team strive to build strong relationships with each group of customers, stakeholders and colleagues.
“I think [building] relationships is probably the most important aspect of the work that we do,” she says. “It starts with placing a focus and emphasis on understanding who are your customers, what they expect, and how we are meeting those expectations.”
Susan also cites service to families as being important. “We had the opportunity to build a LifeSource headquarters about six years ago, and probably the most important aspect of that was having a place where donor families can come and continue to be honored, and we do that.”
Susan also explained that the most effective leaders need to be open to building in-roads with their communities, stakeholders and broader industry and that being willing to share and learn from one another is an important practice for a good leader to engage in.
“I think that I would start with relationships. You have to be committed to developing and understanding relationships in the OPO, across the transplant community and the broader community, and that’s the key factor that I believe makes an effective leader and will continue to do so moving forward.”
We would like to than Susan Gunderson for participating in our interview series and for being willing to share her wisdom and insight with us. If you’d like to learn more about her organization, please visit https://www.life-source.org.
Also, don’t miss our other interviews from this series (which we’ll be posting weekly until the end of this year) and feel free to review our other Best Practices videos!