Recently, Monica Oss — CEO of OPEN MINDS, a market intelligence and management consulting firm focused on health and human services — wrote an article that struck a chord with me: Leadership Defined By Mindset. In it, she cites research from MIT Sloan Management Review on Four Traits of Forward-Looking CEOs and asks: what kind of leader thrives in today’s complex, shifting health and human services environment?
The answer is not credentials, experience, or even industry background. It’s mindset.
According to the Sloan research, successful leaders share four traits: they hold an enterprise mindset, navigate complexity, facilitate excellence, and build their bench. In health and human services — where workforce challenges, funding pressures, and regulatory shifts are constants — these traits aren’t optional. They’re essential.
Enterprise Mindset
The strongest leaders see their entire organization — clinical, financial, and operational — in the context of the market. Even siloed decisions are weighed by the question: How does this strengthen the whole?
That way of thinking echoes one of the principles in The Productivity Manifesto: clarity over communication. Productivity doesn’t come from more emails or more meetings. It comes from everyone understanding how their work connects to the mission and moves the enterprise forward.
Navigating Complexity Without Oversimplifying
Health and human services has shifted from complicated to complex. Complicated systems can be mapped. Complex systems involve interactions that can’t be fully predicted.
Leaders who thrive in complexity don’t try to strip it down. Instead, they provide strategic clarity — giving their teams stability and focus even when the environment changes.
It’s no coincidence that “Strategic Clarity” also sits at the top of our Hierarchy of Productivity. Without clarity, complexity becomes chaos. With it, people can make sense of uncertainty and stay aligned.
Facilitating Excellence Through Culture
Another trait of successful leaders is their ability to demand excellence while cultivating a culture that allows experimentation and even failure. As Oss notes, thriving organizations create safe environments where teams can “fail safely” and grow stronger from it.
That’s why we placed culture at the base of the Hierarchy of Productivity. Productivity doesn’t flourish when people are micromanaged. It flourishes in environments where people are trusted, innovation is encouraged, and excellence is sustained by culture rather than enforced by fear.
Building the Bench
Finally, successful leaders don’t just manage today’s complexity. They prepare their organizations for tomorrow’s. They raise expectations for their executives and give them the space to grow into those demands.
That’s governance over guesswork — the idea that sustainable productivity depends on systems and expectations that outlast any one leader.
Closing Thoughts
Oss concludes that thriving in today’s environment requires adaptive, change-ready executives. I’d add that productivity and leadership are two sides of the same coin.
A strong healthcare leadership mindset doesn’t just help leaders survive uncertainty. It equips them to create organizations where people work with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Reading her piece, I couldn’t help but smile — Mrs. Oss must have been reading our Productivity Manifesto. If not, then we’re simply sympatico. Either way, the alignment is striking: strategic clarity, culture, and governance aren’t just buzzwords. They’re the foundation of productive, resilient organizations.
