Chapter 05: Communicating about Finances in an Academic Setting

Chapter 05: Communicating about Finances in an Academic Setting

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Description

In this segment Dr. Leach explains that he had to make some adjustments to work in an academic setting after years in the corporate world. He faced challenges communicating difficult financial and accounting information to MD Anderson faculty and did presentations on “weathering the storm.” He talks about coming to respect the academic side of medicine and the need of faculty to understand the measures he was instituting.

Identifier

LeachL_01_20121115_ C05

Publication Date

11-5-2012

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - The Administrator; The Administrator; Professional Practice; The Professional at Work; Overview; Understanding the Institution; On the Nature of Institutions

Transcript

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

And that is the difference between the business world and an academic setting. Tell me about your learning curve.

Leon Leach, MBA, PhD :

My what?

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Your learning curve with the academic setting. Did you find that your way of doing things differed? How did that work for you?

Leon Leach, MBA, PhD :

Well, I’m still on it. I’m still on the learning curve. Communication has become so much more important to me, being able to communicate difficult financial concepts. I usually don’t anymore slip into GAAP accounting, something that people may not be familiar with. But I’ve done a series of presentations about weathering the storm, so that’s a way of using an analogy that people in Houston can relate to as to what we have to do. It’s really about what they used to call the KISS method, keep it simple stupid. What was the phrase? It’s the economy. It’s trying to get to the heart of the matter, and with the academic world, you’ve got to respect the academic part of it. There is a thirst to understand why we’re doing something that we’re doing, and there are several balancing points. One of the critical balancing points in the early years was, how much do we spend? How much do we invest in research, and how much do we invest in clinical studies? One begets the other, and in the short term, the clinical side funds the research. In the long term, the research is critically important, because that’s what keeps you on the leading edge. If you neglect either, there are problems. I think that was one of the things that John and I did pretty well together was balancing the need to grow the two entities, and I actually did some studies—it’s been a while ago—that showed that they did pretty much grow in tandem. There were times when one got a little ahead of the other and vice versa. You could feel some vibration in the machinery when that happened, but it is a bit of a balancing act.

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Chapter 05: Communicating about Finances in an Academic Setting

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