The Tyranny of Precedence

What do you do intentionally regularly to keep improving your ability to adapt to change?

Well, this is a great question too. So I probably should start by saying change is in the DNA of The American Red Cross. Our founder, who is Clara Barton, has a quote and it hangs in my office in DC. And it says, “I defy the tyranny of precedence.” I always look for something new to improve the past. And she founded the Red Cross in 1881 and it's become my mantra. And when I first got here, there was so much we had to change. I mean, it was unbelievable. We had no IT, we had every chapter doing their own thing. We had nothing.

Wait, you had no IT in 2008, when you first joined the Red Cross?

People were doing stuff manually all over the place because we had 720 chapters. We needed a general ledger system. We needed a financial system. We needed a fundraising system. We had nothing. We had email systems that were 720 different email systems. So I couldn't even send a note to our employees. So we battered people with change after change after change. And you know, they were starting to get exhausted. And so we said, okay, we're going to pause, let you take a breath. And this is after the first year we're going to let you take a breath. And they all said, no, bring it just let's get this over with. And it's become kind of a mantra. I have a chief innovation officer who, oh my gosh, we have these award-winning apps. It's amazing. We have a chat bot that will tell you whether or not you're eligible to donate blood. We have artificial intelligence figuring out how to optimize our blood drives. We have taught Alexa first aid and CPR.

I didn't realize you had all these gizmos. The Red Cross is kind of cool. I mean, it's always been necessary in this country, but now you're kind of cool.

Well, one of my favorites is our blood app because we give badges to people when they've given certain numbers and the coolest badge is the vampire badge. We have these virtual blood drive contests. It's, it's really fun. And you can also make a blood appointment with Alexa, which is a very complicated set of steps that you would normally have to go through and just say, Hey Alexa, can you tell me when I can donate blood? And she knows your blood history, it's become quite fun. Watching a 140 year old institution win awards for innovation.