Interview with Brin McCagg, Co-Founder of OneWire.com, a unique finance employer/candidate matching service

I sat down with Brin the other day, to explore how he developed this job search site, what made it unique and what tips he might have for those searching for a finance position.

What is your background?

I started off in investment banking. Shortly after business school at Wharton, I started an environmental services company that we grew into an industry leader and sold out in 1997. I then formed an internet-based asset management company backed by GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and others. That company was sold in 2002. Next, I worked as a senior executive on the turnaround of two private equity backed companies. Two years ago I co-founded OneWire.com.

How was your background helpful, in creating this business?

20 years of experience in developing an early stage company has been very helpful. I also was taught at a very young age to work hard and stay focused – both essential skills in business.

• Tell me about OneWire.com. How did the idea come about?

My partner ran a headhunting firm and had the initial idea. At first, I thought we were late to the market, but after meeting with a number of top investment banks I concluded we had an enormous opportunity. Two years ago he and I dropped everything and started OneWire.com.

• Briefly, how did you get the business off the ground, financially?

Initially, we covered the costs and were uncompensated. However, we fairly quickly needed to raise what amounted to a considerable amount of funding as a seed round.

• What is your vision?

To be the dominant platform where individuals manage their careers and stay connected with highly relevant opportunities.

• What’s unique about OneWire.com?

While there is competition, there is no application comparable to OneWire. We utilize structured data for candidates to build their profiles, which results in precise matches against searches (All other sites use Boolean or fuzzy search logic). Candidates always control their confidentiality and reveal their profile details only when and to whom they want. Employers can manage all aspects and stages of recruiting, including sourcing, screening, communication, interview scheduling and on-boarding, in one seamless application. Campus recruiting is also an integral focus for us. We guarantee better candidate results and a reduction of recruiting time and expense of at least 75%.

• What has been your growth pattern?

We officially launched the site six months ago and 65 top firms are utilizing our service. We expect accelerating growth in both firms and candidates signing up.

• Where do you see the business in 5 years?

As the dominant platform where individuals manage their careers and stay connected with highly relevant opportunities

• What is your opinion of the ideal CFO candidate?

That depends on many factors including what stage the company is at. The right CFO for IBM is not the right CFO for a startup and vice versa. That said, a good CFO universally must have excellent accounting and math skills, have a conservative disposition and be highly organized.

• As someone in the job search industry, what would be some tips you would give job searchers?

• Build a detailed profile on OneWire.com immediately. If you’re out of work, you should try to get employed as soon as possible, even if the position is not optimal because times are tough, you need to stay engaged, and earning some compensation is better than none.

• Assess what you really want to do and where you have a reasonably good chance of success

• Focus is the key to success in everything and with search. Focus on exactly what you want and develop every channel to making it happen.

• Network to find people that can open doors

• Be able to pitch your qualification cold. Do not leave room for error by being unprepared.

Accountable Care Organizations & Collaboration

Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs, are an exciting component of health care reform. A study by The Commonwealth Fund, entitled The Vermont Accountable Care Organization Pilot: A Community Health System to Control Total Medical Costs and Improve Population Health, defines an ACO as  "a provider organization that takes on responsibility for meeting the health needs of a defined population, including the total cost of care and the quality and effectiveness of services."

As described in the report, the Vermont Health Care Reform Commission (HCRC) spearheaded a pilot ACO program. Their key findings were
a) The ACO cannot exist in a vacuum
b) The working design for an ACO pilot is built on three major principles:
     1) local accountability for a defined population of patients;
     2) payment reform based on shared savings; and
     3) performance measurement, including patient experience data,
         clinical process and outcome measures.
c) ACO pilots need to have threshold capabilities in five areas to get started.
For purposes of brevity here, refer to the Commonwealth Fund Report for further details.

According to an article, Lessons Learned from Vermont on Building Community ACOs,  published May 20th, in HealthLeaders Media, a working design was developed for each ACO pilot that was built on three major principles: Local accountability, payment reform and performance measurement.

In my view, perhaps not surprisingly, payment reform and aligned incentives will be the single crucial element if this model is to work. Getting primary care physicians, hospitals and other continuum of care providers to negotiate who will be the receiver of funds and how those funds will be shared - that's the biggest devil in the details. I believe it can be done, but the spirit of collaboration may need to be born, or re-born, to accomplish this mighty task.

Compliance - Corporate Culture Trumps Programs

Richard Brinsley, an Irish playwright and Whig statesman, wrote “Take care; you know I am compliance itself, when I am not thwarted! No one more easily led, when I have my own way; but don't put me in a frenzy.” These days, compliance is on the lips and minds of every CFO. Morality aside (just for the moment), the civil and criminal penalties companies and their officers are exposed to when fiduciary responsibility is breached is cause for frenzy. So forgive me if I preach to the choir.

By now, we all know it's desperately important to have a comprehensive compliance program. More important is the need to develop a corporate culture of trust. If employees believe "something smells in Denmark", but trust that senior management would deal with it if they were made aware, they are more likely to have the matter dealt with internally.

In a blog published May 13th in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "I Didn’t Want to Be Responsible for Somebody Dying’: Whistleblower" deals with the the impact of pharma-industry whistleblowers on that industry, which paid out more than $6 billion to settle whistleblower-initiated federal cases between Jan. 2001 and March 2009. Of 26 whistle-blowers interviewed for a New England Journal of Medicine story, all but four said that before going to authorities they first took their complaints to higher-ups.

So, the moral is: develop a culture of trust; pay attention to what's happening in your organization; pay attention to the merest whisper of wrong-doing; and deal with it before it evolves into a catastrophe.

CFOs - Moving From Technical Expert to Leader

As we progress in our healthcare finance careers, we develop new skill sets and don't always retain the old. I leave it to you to determine whether that's a good or a bad thing. In the beginning, perhaps we recorded accounting transactions, prepared financial statements and cost reports or created patient bills. We were technicians, and proud of it.

Assuming we worked for reasonably large organizations, as we moved up the ladder, we began to supervise others who accomplished those tasks. When we rose to CFO, we developed new skills - leadership, mentorship, team building, strategic vision, creativity, communication....I could go on.

I ran across a blog, The CFO Edge, by Jack Sweeney, where he posted a piece called Tapping the Right Side of the CFO Brain. His first paragraph reads "One of the ironies of being a top finance leader is that seldom if ever will you be heralded for your vast technical skills. Instead, you are more likely to be praised for having keen management skills or even imagination." I couldn't agree more.

The longer we've been in leadership roles, the more we've honed those new skills. But what of the technical skills we had in the early stages of our career? Under the theory of "use it or lose it", combined with advancements in technology, reimbursement changes and the other dynamics affecting change over time, most of us can no longer personally accomplish those technical tasks. Nor should we.

I have been a CFO for some time and as I search for a new career opportunity for myself, I understand the far greater importance of leadership skills, but I understand the importance of having had technical experience in the past. Unless you're in a small organization where you're the chief cook and bottle washer, you're supervising direct reports who in turn are supervising the technicians.

To be a "hands-on manager" doesn't mean you need to do the detail work. Rather, you're knowledgable enough to review, correct and advise others in their tasks. You can't do that from your office, and you can't do it if you don't understand the subject matter or the objectives of the work. Thankfully, our earlier technical grounding provides the foundation we need.

So, don't fret that you've forgotten the details of the task. Focus on leadership, vision, motivation and support. As the saying goes (and maybe this is a stretch), "make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, while the other is gold".

Staff Reductions? Maybe, But How Best To Proceed?

I came across a blog entitled "Ignore Your People at Your Own Peril" by a Canadian blogger, Geoff Crane. It dealt with the problems caused by a hospital's reduction of nursing staff as a result of a non-collaborative staffing reduction on the part of management. Anyone can cut costs, and salaries & benefits are generally around 60% of a hospital's costs. No one wants to cut staff if they can help it, although the current fiscal state of many hospitals can make it unavoidable. But I agree with the author, adjustments in staffing must be done carefully. This would seem to be a no-brainer, but ill-conceived staffing cuts are not rare.

So, what's the approach to be taken? Foregive me if I'm preaching to the choir, but you've got to look at processes and responsibilities across all functions. Are there processes that can be streamlined or otherwise improved? What are the likely consequences of reducing staff in a particular department? I'm a big believer in metrics and benchmarks, They can give you a 10,000 foot look at areas of opportunity. So, bear with me as I bore through some numbers.

For example, if a hospital has 6 Full-Time Equivalent employees per adjusted patient day (a ratio of staffing compared to patient volume) and the benchmark for a hospital of equivalent size, geography, acuity, etc. is 4.7, chances are you have an opportunity to reduce staff somewhere in the facility. But where? Let's look at a single department next. Say environmental services expends 3 hours per 1,000 square feet versus a benchmark of 2. OK, maybe this an area for further exploration. Now, we get to the important part. What do the housekeepers do, and how do they do it, compared to the benchmark you're measuring against? For example, if your hospital has housekeepers changing bed linens while another hospital uses nurse aides you're not comparing apples to apples.

I don't want to run on forever here, so let me get to the key points. Involve as many functional area leaders as possible in evaluating opportunities for staff reductions. Start with metrics, benchmarks, key performance indicators or whatever, as a starting point. But examine processes carefully to identify where the reductions should occur.

CFOs and the Business of Quality

Under the Health Care Reform Act, hospitals will be measured, and paid in part, on the basis of quality indicators. Those organizations that have not heretofore focused on quality will need to do so. Those that have will seek to move to the next level of quality. This is good news for consumers of health care, but equally good for the providers. It's been shown that as efficiencies and protocols are developed, quality rises, as does profitability. So, everybody wins. Need I mention this principle applies to every other industry as well?

What does this have to do with CFOs, you ask? We are critical members of the management team's collaborative efforts to improve quality and to measure improvement over time. We're familiar with key performance indicators and benchmark comparisons focused on such areas as liquidity, productivity and profitability. If we haven't already done so, we need to create similar, relevant statistics and meaningful reporting focused on quality indicators as well. There are a number of published statistics and benchmarks regarding numerous quality indicators, from reinfection rates to slips and falls.

I suggest CFOs be at the forefront of their organization's initiatives to improve quality, by teaming with the operations leaders to identify the strategic quality improvement objectives, develop key metrics to measure progress toward those objectives and create timely, meaningful reporting of progress.

So, for those currently involved, congratulations! For those who are not, what are we waiting for?

Hospital CFO Priorities Shift in 2010

According to the finance component of HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey 2010, quality was moved down as a priority in favor of physician recruitment and cost reduction. No surprise, as financial results suffer the effects of the recession, and healthcare reform has raised the specter of further pressures. The survey is robust and quite comprehensive. I recommend it to you, for a detailed view of CFO's concerns and thoughts.

In an April 15th article by the same organization, entitled Moody's: Health Reform Will Drive Consolidation, Hinder Credit for Nonprofit Hospitals, Moody's Investors Services is quoted as saying healthcare reform will have a long-term negative credit effect on not-for-profit hospitals, even though it will reduce bad debt expenses and charity care. "The key longer-term challenge for the not-for-profit hospital sector is the reform's reliance on extracting long-term cost efficiencies from hospitals, probably resulting in diminished hospital revenues," said Moody's Vice President Mark Pascaris, author of the report, Long-term Credit Challenges of Healthcare Reform Outweigh Benefits for Not-for-Profit Hospitals.
In the Media Industry Survey, financial leaders ranked their top three priorities for the next three years as:

• Physician recruitment and retention (37.50%)
• Cost reduction (35.53%)
• Patient experience/patient satisfaction (33.55%)

Last year's ranking was:
• Quality/patient safety (68%)
• Physician recruitment and
  retention (38%)
• Reimbursement (31%)

During a down economy, recruitment and retention is just one avenue to get a hospital’s finances in shape, revenue management is another big area. The big question to me is, what will the hospital of the future look like, given the far-reaching changes contemplated in the Healthcare Reform Act, and what should the resultant long-term strategies be to prepare for that future? That will shape the priorities for CFOs, going forward.

Fraud: Can We Prevent It?

I may be starting an assignment shortly, working with a developer who has established a group of ambulatory clinical services. One of the concerns I raised with him in an initial interview was the limited amount of financial staff he employed. While he has great confidence in the honesty of the people he employs, I pointed out internal controls are generally weak when a single individual has responsibility for multiple aspects of cash receipts, disbursements and financial reporting. I found an interesting post on a blog called Forensic Accounting Today, written by Jeff Moore of Atlanta, GA. The post, Preventing Fraud in the Workplace, lists ten anti-fraud suggestions and has links to "the Fraud Triangle", "a fraud policy", "the fraud tree" and "red flags of fraud."

Interesting stuff, and the more you read, the more likely you are to be sensitive to the risks of fraudulent activity. I plan to use Jeff's suggestions as I educate my new client.

Accounting - Art, Science...Or Manipulation?

I've always believed accounting could be viewed as an art or a science. My own belief is that its an art. I don't mean to say the numbers should be inaccurate, just analyzed and reported from more than a straight transactional perspective. To clarify, let's look at a contra-asset account that involves an estimate, like allowances for doubtful accounts. If we prepare a monthly analysis based on consistent formulae, we derive a number for the allowance. If we book that number based on each month's analysis, we may end up with dramatic fluctuations based on circumstances that could change month-to-month. This would cause the financial statements to reflect those fluctuations, giving rise to concerns that may be unfounded. In my view, it's preferable to smooth out these fluctuations by adjusting the allowance to reflect what we know to be the trends. With a thorough knowledge of the company and industry on which we're reporting, we will have a high level of confidence that the year-end result will be accurate, but with less periodic fluctuation. This is what I mean by art, rather than science.

Ah, but what about manipulation or obfuscation? If by our art we make the reader so confused or the numbers so opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand, we're now treading in fraudulent waters. In a March article by Sarah Johnson, in CFO Magazine, entitled "Now You Don't See It", the author illustrates through example how auditors are less likely to find manipulated earnings when management directs their attention away from areas of financial statements that contain errors. It behooves all of us to ensure we don't fall into that trap. I would be interested in your thoughts on this matter.

Not-For Profit Tax Exemptions in Peril?

Ther's a lot of buzz around the Government's scrutiny of not-for-profit enterprises. Not surprising tax exemption is being looked at, given the Federal and State budget deficits. A recent article published on the Healthcare Financial Management Association website, entitled  Tax Exempt Status: Additional Scrutiny on the Horizon?, stated "Regardless of (healthcare) reform’s ultimate fate, providers should anticipate increased federal scrutiny in this area. Given the fiscal difficulties currently being experienced at all levels of government, it’s not hard to see challenges to tax-exempt status on the horizon for many providers."  I feel certain such challenges won't be limited to healthcare organizations. The revised Form 990 has a Schedule H, to be filed by non-profit hospitals. A good summary of the shortcomings of this form in assessing a hospital's charitable works is presented on page 54 of this month's issue of Hospitals and Health Networks magazine. "Fix Schedule H Shortcomings", by Bradford H. Gray and Ashley Palmer, makes the point the expenditures measured on the form are, at best, a crude measure of community benefit. For example, they say, how does one use expenditures to assess programs to reduce teeenage pregnancy? As another example, is the value of sustaining a money-losing program that provides needed services best measured by the amount of services it requires? And, if you're industry is not healthcare, get ready for similar scrutiny. It will be up to the not-for-profit industries to convince the government as well as the public of their charitable or educational mission and the appropriateness of continued tax exemption. I'm interested in anyone's thoughts about dealing with this critical issue.

Cart Before The Horse? Transactions Dictate Financial Modeling

I'm working on a joint venture involving the acquisition of hospitals. The principals involved in identifying the first target hospital described a lease-purchase transaction. Spent a good deal of time creating financial pro formas reflecting what operating results would look like post-transaction. Then, an investor was identified and he's contemplating a totally different scenario. Guess who calls the shots? Now, we're trying to nail down just exactly what the transaction will be, so we can re-do the projections based on reality. Lots of time and resources wasted. The lesson learned? Getting busy with analysis before understanding where the project is ultimately heading is a supreme waste of time.
Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation?

HCA - One Way to Pay Those Big Bonuses

At one point in my career, I worked for a division of Hospital Corporation of America. As I learned about the company's origins and strategies, I discovered they were both creative and bold. They were one of the first national hospital ownership and management companies, founded in 1968 by a doctor in Tennessee. Not so coincidentally, at the time Tennessee's (and their Blue Cross plans) reimbursement to hospitals was amongst the most liberal in the country. Blue Cross paid 90% of a hospital's charges! Guess where the first hospital they acquired was located? As they grew, they targeted other Southern states with similar reimbursement and demographics. HCA is now, of course a giant, national hospital chain.

This is not to take away from the company its strong focus on effective management and operational excellence. But I draw your attention to the front Business page of today's New York Times, and the Dealbook article by Andrew Ross Sorkin entitled "Investors Extract a Payout". We all know the public uproar about investment banks paying shovelfulls of bonuses to its managers. So, here's where HCA's creativity and boldness is exhibited.

HCA announced last week that it was paying its shareholders a $1.75 billion special dividend. Just a bullish sign of the healthcare industry's health? As the Times points out, HCA was taken private in 2006. Its buyers included Merrill Lynch, Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and, yes, some of HCA's own managers, along with a giant loan from a syndicate of banks. So, who's getting the dividend payout? You get my point? And this at a time when HCA has $25.7 billion of debt it still needs to pay off.

I still respect the management of the company. After all, its been tremendously successful. My question to you is (and its not rhetorical) - Is this an example of HCA's boldness and creativity, or a sneaky way to hand out "bonuses" under the radar?

Are You An Introvert?

Don't mean to put us all in one pot, but in my experience many finance people tend to be introverts, like me. If you feel this has a detrimental effect on your ineractions in the workplace, I've got a book to recommend to you - The Introvert Advantage, How to Thrive in an Extrovert World, written by Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D.

It's an interesting paradox. Accountants, financial analysts and such often chose their careers based partially on their personalities. Among other characteristics, they like quiet for concentration, like to work on long, complex problems and have good attention to detail. Introvertive much?

Yet when one rises to a CFO position and is expected to lead, mentor and rally the troops, a totally different skill set is required. Extroverts respond quickly to requests and spring into action without much advance thinking. They like to be part of the majority opinion and feel isolated without management support. They enjoy phone calls and see interruptions as a welcome diversion. With due respect to extroverts, I don't see these characteristics  as particularly valuable for a CFO to have. Do you?

So, what's the takeaway here? Both introverts and extroverts can influence their own styles, while recognizing their natural leanings. Either can become a great CFO.

I work with a personal coach, and she is terrific. It was only in my last CFO position she helped me realize my introverted tendencies were hampering my performance. My coach recommended this book, and I found it extremely helpful.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? How has it helped or hindered you in your career?

Measure, Monitor...and Be Flexible!

Part 3 of 3

We've talked about creating a model that lets us know where our organization is, with respect to the critical functions, so we know where we're starting from. Only then can we prioritize and aggressively seek solutions to our most critical issues. Once the model is in place, we don’t want it to sit on a shelf! Periodic (no less than monthly) status reviews must take place. Where timetables are not being met, serious dialogue must be entered into, to get things back on track. A periodic progress report to Senior Management should also be incorporated in the process.

A side, and not so incidental, benefit of the process will be the development of performance metrics to facilitate measuring progress toward the goals inherent in certain of the tasks. Again quoting from “Hospital Strategies for Effective Performance Management”, “ …performance management rests on a relatively straightforward process of monitoring core metrics to gauge how well the organization is reaching its goals and adjusting strategies accordingly. …Effective management of healthcare organizations, therefore, requires looking at more metrics and comprehending a wider scope of information than most businesses. Only by developing a deeper understanding of performance drivers can leadership address such an incredibly complex environment involving everything from clinical care and patient satisfaction to cash flow and supply chain costs.”
Finally, flexibility is crucial. As the organization's’s situation and the impact of external factors (regulatory, reimbursement, competition, etc.) evolve, priorities and timetables will shift, and must be reflected in the model.

The development of such a model is admittedly a time-consuming task, involving much collaboration. In some circumstances, it may even require external assistance – “CFO Extenders”, if you will. But the benefit of this exercise should be readily apparent. You will identify and address those areas of opportunity to strengthen your organization, focusing on the basics and positioning yourself to meaningfully attack the imperatives for future success.

Good luck, and let me know whether this discussion has proved helpful.

Putting The Concepts Into Practice

This is a continuation of  the previous blog

So...we want to develop a comprehensive set of requirements. Drawing on the expertise of the office of the CFO, along with  other C-suite executives and input from subject experts within or external to the organization, this list should delineate the preferred state (“best practice”, if you will) of every policy, process and analysis that provides the underpinning of the organization’s fiscal health and supports strategic direction.

I can't overemphasize the importance of collaboration, both vertically and horizontally, in this process. A January 6, 2010 Healthcare Financial Management Association report – “Hospital Strategies for Effective Performance Management”, in discussing the structure that best supports improvement efforts, points out “…performance typically is strongest when authority is decentralized and those developing strategy as well as those responsible for implementing strategy work together to formulate plans for growth and solutions to performance issues.”


Delineate the items, and evaluate both their acceptability within your organization and status of their completion. Priorities can than be identified, responsibilities assigned and timetables for completion projected. The finished product will be shared with all appropriate parties. With buy-in from all internal constituencies, you will have a living, dynamic document that can guide the collective effort.

A Proposed Model
If all of this sounds a bit vague or too all-encompassing, perhaps a visualization of the model will serve to clarify. While other models may work equally well, I'll describe a multi-tab spreadsheet that I'm familiar with.

• Each spreadsheet tab relates to a particular function, for example Controllership, Capital Structure, Quality, Strategic Transactions, IT, Risk Management and so forth. While such categories are universal, your organization’s particular situation may dictate additional components. If your organization is financially distressed  for instance, there may be a Turnaround tab.

• List on each tab the one-line sub-function tasks. Let’s look at the IT function. If, as it should be, your objectives are to link IT strategy to organizational strategies and to leverage your IT budget, sample one-liners might include:

o Analyze current state of financial processes and potential to rationalize, scale and automate them
o Verify the fit between improved financial systems and the company’s infrastructure, to ensure that improvements
o Ensure that adequate training is provided and financial systems are integrated with business processes, and so on...

• Having obtained input for these tasks from a wide cross-section of the organization, the draft document can be reviewed, edited, pared down and rearranged as deemed appropriate by the document owner (I suggest that be the CFO). Following this process, each contributor should be given an opportunity to review their section(s) of the draft, and be requested to sign-off.

Facilitate Accountability

• Priorities, responsibilities and timetables must be assigned. The manager with oversight of each function should take the first shot at this. The CFO should then meet with those managers to review, debate and negotiate the final draft. Then, review with the CEO and the rest of the senior management team, for buy-in.
Tune in next time, for a view on how to effectively deploy the model, to strenghten your organization by, in part, linking it to performance drivers.

And, again, what I've described is just one model.  I would be interested in other models you may have seen or be working with in your organization.

What's a CFO to do?

Although the content of this post is related to the healthcare industry, it's really applicable across all industries (All you need to do is substitute, for the italicized healthcare-specific issues throughout this post, those issues of major impact your industry is facing now and in the future).

Bob Dylan was, in fact, prophetic: "The times, they are a’changin’". And, yes, the issue of wrestling with rampant change is popping up in every professional journal and newsletter. What with healthcare reform, integrated electronic health records, depressed investment dollars, pressures on cost containment, pressures on physician income, quality metrics…well, you get the idea.

I maintain the question is less “How do we address the multitude of critical issues concurrently?” than “How do we know where we’re starting from? How can we can identify our most critical issues, prioritize and aggressively seek solutions, in the midst of so much pressure and confusion?”

The future viability of your organization will likely hinge upon the following seven imperatives (among others):

• Focusing on quality initiatives, measures and outcome reporting 
• Strengthening and internalizing a compliance culture
• Identifying opportunities to maximize revenue, streamline costs and manage cash
• Developing and reporting key metrics tied to organizational goals
• Developing and implementing an electronic health record system
• Finding ways to partner with and bond physicians to your organization
• Enhancing product line accounting, to facilitate decision making and identify strategic opportunities

But here’s the rub: You’ve got to walk before you can run. You need to ensure every basic control and process in support of your higher goals is in place.

How Do I Start?

I’m sure you're functioning as an effective strategic partner with the rest of the C-suite team. Taking that as a given, you will find it productive, as a starting point, to lead the effort of developing a comprehensive set of the basic requirements or "best practices", categorized by area of risk or opportunity and by function, that are the underpinning of a strong organization.
My next post will walk through the manner in which you might work within your organization to get such a project off the ground in an effective, collaborative way. A subsequent post will describe one model that can be used to put the concepts into practice.

Meanwhile, let me know what you think of this as an approach to developing an effective starting point, before digging in to conflicting priorities?