Ep. 69: Sandra Clarke - Finance & Innovation -- The Perfect Partnership

Sandra Clarke, Senior Vice President & Chief Financial
Officer at Blue Shield of California, is a proponent of finance
innovation. At Blue Shield of California, she oversees the
company's financial strategy, actuarial functions, and financial
operations in addition to lading Enterprise Process
Transformation. Most recently, under Sandra’s leadership, Blue
Shield of California has made $200M in financing and support
available to struggling physicians and hospitals affected by the
COVID-19 crisis. The entire concept was an example of innovative
thinking to ensure California can have a robust provider network
after this crisis, and there is also an innovative technology
element to the program as well. In this episode of Count Me In,
Sandra talks about the value of crossing finance and innovation
and balancing both to effectively lead your firm. Download and
listen now!


Sandra Clarke and Blue Shield of California in the
news:
Blue Shield of California Updates Details on Financial Support
Options to Healthcare Providers in Response to COVID-19 CrisisIn
the News: Blue Shield of California Offering Financial Support to
Providers, Sandra Clarke Tells The Wall Street Journal

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch:
(00:05)
Hi everyone. Thanks for coming back for another episode of Count
Me In. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is episode 69 of
IMA's podcast. Today's conversation is between my cohost Adam and
Sandra Clarke, the CFO of Blue Shield of California. Sandra
talked to Adam about the value of crossing finance and innovation
for the organization and finding the proper balance as a leader
of the firm. Keep listening for more insight into how to bring
innovation to your company. 


Adam: (00:39)
So to start off, what would you say are your guiding principles
when it comes to finance and innovation? 


Sandra: (00:46)
I'd say my guiding principles are that it has to be a partnership
that you have to, as a finance person, find the balance between
the business strategy and the financial discipline and how you
can help innovation weave into those things in a balanced way. So
that, that's a very key thing for me. We have to be drivers in
unleashing that, that slice of genius that exists in everybody.
We always have to do it in support of business objectives and
execution still matters. You, you have to be able to execute on
this idea of dreaming up lots of cool ideas on a whiteboard is a
lot of fun, but you have to be able to turn them into something
that's useful for the company. And, finally, I would say an
underwriting guiding principle at all times as you cannot assume
that what you are continuing to do or you're currently doing is
riskless. If you are staying in your same way of doing things and
not paying attention to what's going on around you, that can be
just as dangerous as going and trying something innovative. So
the better answer is to be bold and to strike that balance. 


Speaker 1: (02:07)
I think that's some great advice to be bold. So then what counts
as innovation in your organization and how do you define it, and
what does innovation mean for your employees? 


Speaker 2: (02:19)
Innovation is a real buzz word at the moment. If you were to do
an internet search, I actually did this at one point. Google has
over 2 billion results for the word innovation. So I'd say that
it means a lot of different things to different people, and you
have to be careful that you define it in a way for your
organization that's meaningful because a lot of employees hear
that word innovation and think “uh oh” this means job cuts
coming. And it may mean that jobs change, it doesn't necessarily
mean that the jobs go away. I define innovation as something that
is novel and useful. So it could be a new way to work. It could
be a new way to save money, or it could be a reinvention of
something that you're currently doing, but it has to be useful as
well as new. And new can be defined as, completely never seen
before, or it could just be a significant and enhancement to
something that you're currently doing. But the key is that in
addition to being a breakthrough, it has to be a useful
breakthrough. Innovation just for the sake of coming up with a
cool new toy isn't beneficial to your organization, and a lot of
times that's the balance that you have to strike that I was
referring to before. 


Adam: (03:42)
So we live in very uncertain times, and so what should leaders be
thinking about when it comes to innovating in the face of things
like recession or just not even sure what the economy is going to
look like on the other side of this pandemic that we're in? 


Sandra: (03:56)
Well, you still have to do innovation. In fact, I would say right
now, especially in the current environment, innovation is even
more important, because we're all finding that we need to rethink
how we do our jobs, how we go to market in an environment where
you can't do as many things in person. And so it's important for
companies not to completely pull back on innovation in this type
of an environment, but you might have to refine your priorities
and pare them down. So you might've had 10 projects out there for
innovative ideas, new initiatives, and maybe you scale that back
to three or five and you do more frequent check ins, give them a
little bit less time to evolve before you make a decision on what
to move forward, modify, or stop the investment. So that I think
your, your level of rigor around what you consider acceptable
parameters might change a little bit. And again, and again and
again, I will say it still has to fit with the business strategy
and your company's objectives, and that's even more crucial now
because you're going to be refining what those objectives are
potentially, as I said, to address the new ways of going to
market or the new ways of working, and you need to make sure that
you don't continue with the project just because it's somebody,
darling and you make sure that it's still going to sit. And so
that's where that re-prioritization comes in to make sure that
you are using your innovation energy, and I mean that from a
people resource perspective as much as a money perspective that
you're using it wisely. 


Adam: (05:46)
Definitely. Are there some examples that you can give about, ways
that you've been able to innovate? 


Sandra: (05:53)
Well, within my finance team we rethought how we do our close
process and shaved about a third of the time out and we're going
to try and get another 25% out by the end of the year. And so I
think that's one example of, I'll call it in place innovation
where you're taking a process that by and large has to exist and
finding ways to do it differently so that you can make it better.
And that's allowing people a lot more time for analysis and a lot
less time on transactional work that's not meaningful to them or
to the business. That's one way. And then we, within Blue Shield
have a big process transforma...