Chapter 15: Removed as Head of the Division of Surgery
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Description
In this Chapter, Dr. Pollock speculates on why he was removed from his position as Head of the Division of Surgery on October 2012. The ostensible reason, he explains was that the administration was concerned about budgeting issues within the Division. However he believes that upper levels of the institution wanted to replace him with an individual whose leadership philosophy more closely matched the new administration. Dr. Pollock explains that he adheres to a model of servant leadership that has also influenced the matrix-model governance structures he has favored over “command and control” leadership. He cites growth statistics within the Division as evidence of the success of decentralized leadership.
Leadership at MD Anderson is coalescing around the “driving vision” of an individual, Dr. Ronald DePinho, who is organizing resources on behalf of the Moon Shots initiative. Dr. Pollock explains his belief that this program will succeed if the faculty spontaneously embrace the refocusing of resources. He characterizes the spirit of the MD Anderson faculty and reports some faculty reactions to the Moon Shots program.
Identifier
PollokRE_03_20121119-C15
Publication Date
11-19-2012
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Raphael Pollock, MD, Oral History Interview, November 19, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional PathProfessional PathInstitutional PoliticsMD Anderson HistoryMD Anderson PastOn LeadershipOn the Nature of InstitutionsLeadershipMD Anderson CultureCritical Perspectives on MD Anderson Obstacles, ChallengesContributions
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
All right. This is Tacey Ann Rosolowski. Today is November 19, 2012. The time is 9:12. Today I’m in Surgical Oncology for my third session with Dr. Raphael Pollock. Good morning, Dr. Pollock.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Good morning.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Thanks again for taking the time for this additional session.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
My pleasure.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Last time we finished speaking about your time as head of the Division of Surgery. I wanted to ask you if you could tell me how you came to leave that position.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Well, in candor, I was asked to leave the position. My original thought had been to hopefully remain in that role for additional year and a half, at which time I would have wanted to step down to help the institution to engage in a search and a transition and what I anticipated would probably have been my last year at Anderson prior to retiring. But I was asked to step down ostensibly because of concerns about the budgeting process within the Division of Surgery. As someone who has lived in the large institution that is MD Anderson for thirty years, I recognized the need for new senior leaders to be able to assemble a team of leaders that they feel most comfortable with. So I think that time will demonstrate that that was probably the nidus of their decision to ask me to step down from this position, and so I did.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Could you describe some of the philosophical or personality differences that you feel were at the root cause of the rift between you and the administration?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
I can attempt to do that, but would encourage you to speak to administrative officials about that question. It’d be interesting to see what came back were you to do so. I think during my time at Anderson I have always been someone who has tried to practice servant leadership, meaning that the agenda of the people who report to me is my agenda, as their leader, and I put my own activities not so much on the backburner, but they aren’t the top priority. The top priority is understanding what others are trying to accomplish. So that requires a lot of face-to-face contact time, very strong listening skills, a willingness to give of yourself repeatedly and freely to others so that you can truly understand what they’re trying to accomplish, and then collate all of these individual agendas. And surgeons tend to not be blushing violets, so they’re very up front about what they want to happen and what they want to accomplish. But to collate these into a larger, strategic plan, and so that has been how I have tried to position myself as a leader and also the types of structures—governance organization and leadership structures—that we’ve tried to put in place instead of a centralized command and control model, for example, which works very well in some entities, even here at Anderson. We tried and I think we were very successful in creating a matrix model in which the major decisions were made by the Division of Surgery executive committee, which consisted of myself, the seven department chairs, and three or four other additional senior surgeons who had designated titled responsibilities within the division on behalf of the departments as a whole. And that model worked, I think, very, very well over the fourteen-year period of time that I was the division head. The faculty roster increased from approximately fifty-four full-time-equivalent faculty to 150, and certainly the NIH funding profile increased remarkable such that this past year the Division of Surgery at MD Anderson, if you analogize it to a traditional medical school department of surgery—which is the proper analogy—this is the third best funded surgery department in the United States and the only one in the top fifty that is not in a medical school. So we’re very proud of that accomplishment, and when I say ‘we,’ it’s not the royal second person. It’s what we as a group have been able to do—creating an environment that fostered the opportunities for younger people to pursue both excellence in clinical care as well as competitive peer reviewed, NIH funded, laboratory based research programs such that approximately twenty-five percent of the faculty are also clinician investigators—MD practicing surgery faculty, I’m referring to—which is perhaps the largest such cadre in the United States. I don’t know that for sure, but it certainly is a formidable force for progress. And the ability to foster an environment that would make that possible required us to work as a group, and I think, as a group, we were effective, and that’s the outcome that resulted.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Do you feel you can comment on the kind of leadership model that you feel is taking shape right now at MD Anderson?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Yeah, I think that the leadership model is, in some ways, very different, which is not necessarily to imply bad or deficient, but this is more of a model that is based on the driving vision of an individual—in this case, Dr. [Ronald] DePinho, who has articulated, I think very effectively, a vision of the Moon Shot program and organizing resources and activities on behalf of that program. The real question that remains to be seen is to what extent resources and activities can be made subservient to that program versus in pursuit of the goals of the program per se. Those are two different qualities that remain yet to be demonstrated.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How would you describe that difference?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
It revolves around the willingness of faculty to be recruited to the vision, whether it is mandated that participation take place versus something that is spontaneously embraced. I think time will tell that if the faculty spontaneously embrace this conception of focused resources in the manner being suggested that the program will have a much better chance of succeeding. The faculty at Anderson are too strong and too opportunity-rich to be willing, as a group, to be commandeered or led too far down the pathway if they themselves don’t endorse it. And I think that we’re in that transition zone right now where people are trying to learn more about the Moon Shot programs will actually go forward. How will they be funded? Will they be supported totally by philanthropy? Will we need to transfer clinical dollars into the programs in support? Will the faculty be able to generate the clinical dollars, what with Obamacare coming down the pike and other third-party payer erosions in our clinical revenue bottom line? These are all question marks that have yet to be resolved, and I think, frankly, in the absence of open discussion about those issues is causing quite a bit of concern and even demoralization within the faculty cadre.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything else that you’d like to add right now about your observations about where the faculty are in their reactions and mood vis-à-vis Moon Shots and how they’re evolving right now?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
I think that the faculty whose diseases have been selected for the Moon Shot, by and large, are looking forward to seeing a much greater aliquot of resources being moved in their direction. Of course, with that comes increased expectations including, perhaps, an increased level of conforming to more centralized research plans, which they may or may not have full impact upon or input into. It remains to be seen. Others whose diseases have not been selected as Moon Shot targets, at least in this first go around, I have heard a spectrum of responses, ranging from dismay that their disease will not get any attention to total elation that they are not going to be scrutinized at the same level and therefore will not have the same onus of responsibilities regarding tangible productivity placed on their shoulders. And thereto, it remains to be seen how all of that, to use the analogy, lands.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Freedom comes in strange forms sometimes.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Yes. That is true.
Recommended Citation
Pollock, Raphael E. MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 15: Removed as Head of the Division of Surgery" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1327.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1327
Conditions Governing Access
Open
