Habitual Excellence, Presented by Value Capture
Oct 2, 2026 · 45 min · 16 segments
In this episode of the *Habitual Excellence Podcast*, Ken Segel talks with **Dr. Tracey Hoke of UVA Health** about her journey from pediatric cardiologist to healthcare executive and her role in…
Tracy HokeGuest
Ken SiegelHost
I think, you know, one of the reasons that I've been successful at Darden, this is this is my 11th year having the true experience.
Um, you know, I think, I think one of the reasons that I've been successful is that I think they thought I was being, uh, brought over to, to, to give them some healthcare street cred and credit and credibility and build some cases and, and, and, and teach the language.
Uh, but what I think they realized, and, and I sit in the operations group at Darden.
So I am a part of the sort of the the blue collar team at the, at the ivory tower.
I think what they realized is, is exactly what you're alluding to, which is my belief that good leaders are good leaders and good business management applies in all business sectors.
There are absolutely some particulars to healthcare, not the least of which is that it's about people taking care of people.
But, but if you back it up to the very basic principles of, I believe that non-healthcare leaders at Darden can learn from our healthcare class things like how to solve problems that matter, how to establish expectations and habits and provide feedback, how to align around priorities, how to assess a business decision from both the financial impact and the value alignment, meaning values alignment with your core, and how to listen to a complicated stakeholder group.
I think this is one of the things that I see when I teach that they're used to seeing pretty straightforward stakeholders in business development classes, but ours are incredibly complicated.
because of the supply chain and other relationships, vendor relationships, et cetera, in healthcare, the explosion of technology and potential partners and tools, the fact that we are, again, talking about people taking care of people in the very end.
And so I think it's been a rewarding evolution for me to have gone from being the healthcare person to being an operations leader at a excellent school that uses healthcare as a platform for good business management teaching.
And as you just gave your high-level hypothesis, everybody could hear, oh, wait a minute.
It's also what can people from outside healthcare learn from healthcare about complex stakeholder management? And wait a minute, I didn't hear tough talk about how it is a business.
I actually heard using the principles that actually you modeled through the building of the operating system to actually succeed in your mission.
you know, and the long-term well-being of the organization financially, which does largely come from focusing on the mission, but all because of healthcare is sort of caca.
So when you get into conversations with people who may comment this from one of those, you more simple angles, you know, or, or sort of fear based angles about, you know, if we're a physician in healthcare and we're thinking about, you know, the corporatization behavior, which is not always good, you know, how do you, how do you approach it? You know, how do you, how do you sort of help get them deeper into the blue collar approach, as you said, is actually very life-giving for missions.
Yeah, I say to people, imagine, what if you had a system, a way, a method, an infrastructure that allowed you to look at what happened in your business yesterday and to, again, bringing us back to the beginning of this conversation, identify what went well and hardwire it so that it always goes well.
Identify what went wrong and hardwire that process so that that negative outcome never happens again, whether it's a glitch in the production line or it's a wrong site surgery or or it's failure to access your market, whatever it is, what if you had a system to do that, to look back and then to redesign going forward? And it allowed a little flexibility to test because bringing in somebody else's best practice, anybody who works in my job anywhere in the country knows is not an easy thing to do.
You want the bones of somebody's best practice, but then it has to become yours as our management system or operating system has had to become every leader's program.
I think, you know, one of the reasons that I've been successful at Darden, this is this is my 11th year having the true experience.
Um, you know, I think, I think one of the reasons that I've been successful is that I think they thought I was being, uh, brought over to, to, to give them some healthcare street cred and credit and credibility and build some cases and, and, and, and teach the language.
Uh, but what I think they realized, and, and I sit in the operations group at Darden.
So I am a part of the sort of the the blue collar team at the, at the ivory tower.
I think what they realized is, is exactly what you're alluding to, which is my belief that good leaders are good leaders and good business management applies in all business sectors.
There are absolutely some particulars to healthcare, not the least of which is that it's about people taking care of people.
But, but if you back it up to the very basic principles of, I believe that non-healthcare leaders at Darden can learn from our healthcare class things like how to solve problems that matter, how to establish expectations and habits and provide feedback, how to align around priorities, how to assess a business decision from both the financial impact and the value alignment, meaning values alignment with your core, and how to listen to a complicated stakeholder group.
I think this is one of the things that I see when I teach that they're used to seeing pretty straightforward stakeholders in business development classes, but ours are incredibly complicated.
because of the supply chain and other relationships, vendor relationships, et cetera, in healthcare, the explosion of technology and potential partners and tools, the fact that we are, again, talking about people taking care of people in the very end.
And so I think it's been a rewarding evolution for me to have gone from being the healthcare person to being an operations leader at a excellent school that uses healthcare as a platform for good business management teaching.
And as you just gave your high-level hypothesis, everybody could hear, oh, wait a minute.
It's also what can people from outside healthcare learn from healthcare about complex stakeholder management? And wait a minute, I didn't hear tough talk about how it is a business.
I actually heard using the principles that actually you modeled through the building of the operating system to actually succeed in your mission.
you know, and the long-term well-being of the organization financially, which does largely come from focusing on the mission, but all because of healthcare is sort of caca.
So when you get into conversations with people who may comment this from one of those, you more simple angles, you know, or, or sort of fear based angles about, you know, if we're a physician in healthcare and we're thinking about, you know, the corporatization behavior, which is not always good, you know, how do you, how do you approach it? You know, how do you, how do you sort of help get them deeper into the blue collar approach, as you said, is actually very life-giving for missions.
Yeah, I say to people, imagine, what if you had a system, a way, a method, an infrastructure that allowed you to look at what happened in your business yesterday and to, again, bringing us back to the beginning of this conversation, identify what went well and hardwire it so that it always goes well.
Identify what went wrong and hardwire that process so that that negative outcome never happens again, whether it's a glitch in the production line or it's a wrong site surgery or or it's failure to access your market, whatever it is, what if you had a system to do that, to look back and then to redesign going forward? And it allowed a little flexibility to test because bringing in somebody else's best practice, anybody who works in my job anywhere in the country knows is not an easy thing to do.
You want the bones of somebody's best practice, but then it has to become yours as our management system or operating system has had to become every leader's program.
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