Beeson Podcast, Episode #517 Mark Neaman Oct. 6, 2020 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, I am Doug Sweeney here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla, and today we continue with our series on the podcast called Christian Faith At Work. We’re interviewing members of the Beeson community who are seeking to advance the reign of God in business and the professions. Kristen will introduce today’s guest in just a moment. For now, let me say that ever since he and I worked together in the leadership of my former school, Trinity in Chicago, we’ve become good friends. I have deep admiration for the ways in which today’s guest combines exceptionally strong gifts in business and leadership with profound love for the Lord and his work. I cannot wait to share him with all of you today. But first, let me tell you about what’s happening here at Beeson this week. Today, October 6th, begins our fall missions emphasis called Go Global. We’re excited to welcome to campus this year’s keynote missions speaker, Dr. Jackson Wu. As a missionary in Asia, Wu has become one of the world’s leading experts on the subject of honor, shame, and the gospel. And has authored three books and multiple articles on the subject. He will speak on how the cultural lens of honor and shame can aid in biblical interpretation and discipleship. You can find out more about Go Global on our Beeson website, www.BeesonDivinity.com/events. Now, Kristen, who do we have on the program today? >>Kristen Padilla: Welcome, everyone, to the Beeson Podcast. We have Mr. Mark Neaman. He is the founder of Neaman Advisors and is the past President and Chief Executive Officer of North Shore University Health System in Chicago. He and his wife, Susan, are members of Christ Church Lake Forest, Illinois, and we are so pleased to have you on the Beeson Podcast today. >>Mark Neaman: Great to be with you as well, Kristen and Doug. >>Kristen Padilla: We always like to begin just getting to know our guests a little bit better. So, if you could introduce yourself. Where are you from? Anything about your story? How you came to faith in Jesus Christ? >>Mark Neaman: I grew up in Buffalo, New York and then my family moved to Columbus, Ohio. So, I went to high school and undergraduate and graduate school in Columbus. I grew up in what I would call a sort of quintessential home from parents who came out of the Great Depression and World War II. It was a religious home and we went to a Presbyterian church pretty faithfully each week. But it really wasn’t personal to me. One of the things that changed that is while I was a freshman at college I started dating this hot blonde chick. And I dated her a couple of times, and then she surprised me by saying she couldn’t go out with me anymore because I wasn’t a Christian. I’m not sure exactly what my response was. I think I said something like, “Well, I’m not Jewish,” because I kind of thought those were the only two choices. But she said, “You know? I just don’t think it’s personal with you. So, would you come to this Bible Church with me?” And of course I said yes. It was a very small Bible Church, Riverside Bible Church in Columbus. Maybe had a hundred people that attended. The pastor was a nuclear physicist by training and an engineer. But what he really did was teach the Bible. So, through a teaching of the Book of Romans I came to a personal faith and a personal understanding in Jesus Christ. And this Pastor, Dr. Crawford, really became not only a mentor but a role model for me. If you’re curious whatever happened to the hot blonde chick, I married her. And am still married to her. But obviously a leading- >>Doug Sweeney: That’s wonderful. >>Mark Neaman: Then to a personal faith in Christ through the preaching of Dr. Crawford. >>Doug Sweeney: We continue to thank Susan for her ministry in her life. Mark, we want to get around to asking you questions about the difference that your faith makes and the way you’ve practiced business over the years, the way you do consulting, the way you live your daily life. But I think it would help our listeners if we set that up a bit by just telling them what your career has looked like. Telling them what your work at North Shore University Health System looked like. You and I know already you were the head of that organization for many years. But down here in Birmingham, not many people know about what healthcare is like in Chicago. Could you set things up a little bit by talking about your work at North Shore University Health System? And then more recently tell us about the consulting agency you started. >>Mark Neaman: Absolutely. Part of the story is how I got into healthcare in the first place. When I was in undergraduate school it was a traumatic time in the US. There were a lot of protests going on over the Vietnam War, over Black Power and the movements that were going on, as well as the feminist movement that was all going on. So, there was a lot of turmoil and I was a business major in undergraduate school. Not exactly a cool profession, given the times. When I was in one of my classes one of the professors said, “If I had to do it all over again I’d go into Healthcare Administration.” That was my calling. It just rang out to me as if somehow the Lord was saying to me, “This is a great profession because it includes business as well as a social ministry, in terms of healing and dealing with people.” So, that’s how I got interested in the profession. I went to work in a hospital in Columbus as an orderly and really loved the environment, really loved the people, really loved physicians and what was going on in the care ministry. But it’s always had this notion of both being a business as well as in part ministry. How did I get to North Shore? Again, kind of a similar story. I didn’t want to go to North Shore. I didn’t want to go to Evanston, Illinois. My wife and I were just married in the first year, but I had to do a fellowship as part of my graduate training and the professor who was leading the program said, “You’re going to Evanston. You’re going to North Shore University Health System.” Over my objections. So, again, I think you can see the leading of the Lord in my life that even despite myself he brings things to pass. As far as healthcare delivery, there’s a couple of things that really were important in health care. One was developing an integrated model and by that I mean really making sure that the hospitals and the physicians and all the different categories of physicians are working together as one. You might think of it as sort of the Mayo Clinic model, which is basically a large physician multi specialty group practice with some hospitals tacked onto it. So, over the years North Shore grew from a single hospital into what it is today, five hospitals – a 1,000 physician multi specialty group practice. A research institute, a teaching institute, part of the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. But in all of these endeavors and activities it was really a focus on making sure the care was exceptional and really thinking about innovation and technology that made the healthcare delivery system better and easier to navigate for patients. So, pretty early in that development North Shore became the first health system in the United States to implement the electronic medical record system that we know today. And this was bringing a technology not only to improve quality, but to create things that are now present, such as online appointments and scheduling and getting your lab results and getting your prescriptions renewed and doing telemedicine, all the things that are pretty prevalent across the country today and that began in North Shore back in 2003. So, it was just a part of that continuum of thought process and [inaudible 00:08:14] that were important to me in health care. And those really continue on today, Dr. Sweeney. There really, at Neaman Advisors, a continuation of being engaged on boards and advisors and private equity based companies and consulting roles – all with this notion of integration in healthcare and bringing technology into that equation to help consumers and help patients achieve their healthcare status more readily. >>Kristen Padilla: Thank you. That’s so helpful. As Dr. Sweeney has already mentioned, we have you on the show to talk about Christian faith at work and we’d love to hear you share now how being a Christian has made a difference for you in the work place. How it’s given you perhaps a different perspective on how you view your work and how you use your work as a means for advancing the Kingdom of God? >>Mark Neaman: There are two things that I would start that conversation with. Number one was my mentor and role model, Dr. Crawford, that I mentioned back at the Bible church in Columbus. What Art really put to my mind was this notion of being a Christian businessman. And that is one role. It’s not two separate roles. It’s not like your Christian life is over here on one side and your business life is over there. No, it was really to be a oneness as you think about your life before the Lord and to conduct business with all of the excitement and enthusiasm and gifts that the Lord might give you as much as your Christian life. So, this notion, my north star, my guiding north star was all about this notion of being a Christian businessman and making sure that would be one. Second thought is how does that really work? For me, in practice, it was all about starting with the mind. Starting with how it shapes your thinking. How does Christianity shape your thinking? Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. So, the whole notion of scholarship and the Bible and studying it so that you would create a perspective in making your business decisions that were consistent with your calling and consistent with the pattern that scripture might reveal to us. As I think about that practice, it’s not like in any way shape or form I ever stood on the corner or preached to the organization of ten thousand people that somehow you had to be a Christian or you were out. It was much more the adoption of sort of the G W Bush premise that if you’re President, you’re President over everyone and you need to be able to respond to everyone in that leadership. But I think it also became evident by some of the pushback that I would get that people knew I was a Christian. They knew I went to church. And for some people that was a good thing and for other people it was a scary thing that I might try to impose some idealistic Christian ideology that would be apprehensible to the people of science or to the people of a different maybe political persuasion, or other things that they might in fact have thought about. The real thing that was then motivating to me with these background points was how could I make a difference? And I thought I could make a difference just by being a leader in the business community, but also use the gifts and talents and calling that the Lord provided to me in teaching. So, I’ve been engaged with a group of 20-25 business leaders in doing a Bible study, and have done that in fact for years. So, a little bit of hopefully using my giftedness for teaching and administration to the glory of God, above and beyond what I’m engaged with in the healthcare world. >>Doug Sweeney: Has being a Christian cost you, Mark, at all over the course of your career? Has being somebody with a strong set of Christian ethics and with some limits to the things you’re willing to do in the business world been difficult for you at any key junctures over the course of your life? >>Mark Neaman: I would start with the upside of that, Dr. Sweeney. It’s been an enormous blessing. I can’t imagine not being a Christian. But yes it has cost me. It’s cost me in terms of, in some instances, friendships in the business world. It’s cost me in some ways with mockery or belittling. There was a phrase that some people, mostly who are upset with me in some way, they would refer to me as Minister Mark. That was not a term of endearment. That was a bit of ridicule. In various kind of scientific discoveries, you know, you just couldn’t bring things up in the discussion of how we really think about genomics and so on – and bring the Lord into that equation very easily or very readily. So, I think there were some political pushback. I think there was some mockery that was engaged in that. But in part there are also times when there were other Christians in the organization who were kind of rowdy to my cause. It was just enormous. I can’t quite put it into words how encouraging that was that a lot of Christians come alongside even in the toughest of times. >>Doug Sweeney: How do you deal with that in an organization as massive as the one that yours became? Do you just grin and bear it? Do you try to show them how to respond lovingly? Or are you mixing it up with people in a way that requires you to dig deep into the well that you’ve got from the Lord? How do you navigate those waters? >>Mark Neaman: One of the things that came to me is I thought about leadership and, gosh, there’s tons and tons of books written on leadership. But scriptural leadership, biblical leadership always seem to me to have an element of humility that was engaged in being an effective leader. So, unless the situation was a crisis where ... again, you just need to step in and take leadership, that always adding an element of listening and an element of humility, especially humility in the sense where you could give others the credit, where you could celebrate whatever was achieved as either a team win or somebody else should get the credit. And a sense of humility that I didn’t know it all. Believe me, I still don’t know it all. But add that as a Christian dynamic into the conversation and into the being how you conducted your business I think always proved helpful. I think it was something that you could reflect ... I noticed, even in very professional and leading physicians, physicians sometimes get a bad rap about how arrogant they are. Believe me, you don’t want a surgeon who lacks confidence. But that said, the very, very best physician also had a sense of humility about them. They knew that they needed to count on others and they knew they didn’t necessarily know it all. So, could you grow? Could you learn? And could you pass that along to others? So, some of the attributes of trying to handle those challenges in the business world. >>Kristen Padilla: Mark, you’ve been very active in supporting the work of the local church and ministers of the gospel as a business person. Just to name a few, you’ve served on the Lewis Palau International Evangelism Board, the Trinity International University Board, and now you serve on our Advisory Board at Beeson Divinity School. You were also a founding member of your church, Christ Church in Lake Forest. Why has it been important for you to be active and serve in these ways on boards of Christian organizations in the local church? And we would love to hear about why you have decided to join us here at Beeson in supporting our work at Beeson Divinity School? >>Mark Neaman: If you go back to my fundamental premise that my leading and calling is to be that of a Christian businessman, I have not somehow put a wall between those two concepts. I think you get some feel for why I’m interested in also engaging in ministry based organizations. Whether that be the local church, international evangelists, evangelism with Luis or being involved in Trinity, or Samford University / Beeson Divinity School. Because I think there’s something that’s fundamentally there that can benefit both ways. I am the product or beneficiary of taking classes at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. So, I’ve benefitted by that. I think organizations, though, like ministries and churches can benefit by some acknowledgement of business principles. So, if you think about it a divinity school, a university, has all the elements of an organization. It has people, it has finances, it has this notion of a ministry, others would call it a strategy or whatever you’re talking about and how to get there, but the business principles, in some ways, apply to all these organizations. And particularly healthcare, where healthcare is almost always a not for profit institution. It is mission driven. And it has this thing called faculty physicians. If you think about what’s going on at Beeson, it has a not for profit status, it has a mission, a high calling, and it has very important faculty. Well, how do you really get to success equations in that? Well, what do you want to try to measure? What are you trying to do to be successful? And I think some of those business concepts, which can be ignored at the university or divinity school level, has some value. It has some value in making the organization even more successful as you think about your strategies, where are you trying to get there, and some of the tools or tactics that could be employed from other industries and other businesses to help the divinity school and the university prosper. So, when you think about all the kinds of things that are needed ... how do you recruit and retain faculty? How do you think about your competitive status? And, yes, there’s competition even for divinity schools. How does that work and how does that be successful? What’s your pricing point? What’s your pricing strategy? How does that work? How does your marketing strategy work? Kristen, that’s part of your genius is you’re going to answer all those questions. But how do all those business concepts work in a different kind of context? I think there’s a role to pass along some suggestions or recommendations of thought processes, and that’s why I’m excited to be a part of the Beeson family. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Dr. Sweeney both as a business colleague as well as he was my history professor. He asked way too detailed questions on multiple choice. They were all trick questions. >>Doug Sweeney: (laughs) >>Mark Neaman: I did my best to weather through all of that. But really make a contribution as an advisor to Dr. Sweeney and to the Beeson family, if I can. Where some of these business principles might be helpful. I also just want to end with that it’s a bit dangerous. I’ve seen too many people who think they’re experts go over the top and super impose their own beliefs that are just misplaced or not appropriate for the time and place for the whole organization. So, take that with a little bit of warning, that you have to be careful with what some of us business people might be suggesting. >>Doug Sweeney: Mark, you’ve been doing some great coaching for us already. The next question I have in my notes has to do with ... and the people I have in mind are younger business people, younger professionals who might be listening to this program, or might be in the congregations of pastors who are listening to this program – who are still struggling to figure out, “How can I really make a difference for Christ in the secular world, in the business world, in the professions?” If you were going to speak, just directly, to those sorts of people here, what kind of encouragement would you want to give them as they begin careers where they’re trying to honor God? >>Mark Neaman: I would start with the notion that you will make a difference. You will make a difference. Because whatever place or time you’re involved with, it’s a place that the Lord has encouraged you and put you in. The question is not, “Will you make a difference?” It’s, “What kind of a difference that you’ll make?” And the calling begins, for me anyway, as an individual. Are you faithful in your own walk? Are you a person of word and prayer? Do you look at the world through the lens of scripture or do you look at scripture through the world? Just thinking about being right with the Lord will create those opportunities, sometimes when you least expect it. Be a faithful witness of Christ and to make a difference. And it’s not if you’re the CEO of a healthcare organization or you’re a physician, or you’re a plumber, or whatever calling that might be. Whatever the technicalities of what you do, you’re always going to interface with people, and that’s our real calling to make a difference and be a witness for Jesus Christ in whatever circumstance. And then use the skills and training that you have and apply them to all kinds of different organizations or situations, voluntarily or for compensation, for pay, because again those skills that you develop can make a difference and will make a difference in other people’s lives. >>Kristen Padilla: Mark, that’s such an encouraging word and it has been, personally, just beneficial to me hearing you talk about your walk with the Lord and how that has made an impact in the way you do business, conduct business, work ... we always like to end these podcast conversations, though, with just heard what God is doing in your life. What is God teaching you through his Word these days? Is there something that God is really sharing with you that would further encourage our listeners as we end today’s show? >>Mark Neaman: Well, a couple of things, Kristen, and thanks for asking. One is it’s just been a horrible time between the pandemic and things associated in our country with Black Lives Matter, and just the whole environment, the economy, vicious presidential election cycle – all the things that are going on are very difficult. I think one of the things that has been most challenging for me, personally, has been being separated from individuals. I enjoy going to meetings and being engaged with individuals. That’s been taken away because of the Coronavirus and the pandemic and I look forward to hopefully restoration of that someday in the near future. So, part of what’s been teaching is to remind us of what we have. And how it can be taken away. It’s a reminder of the need for fellowship and how that can be taken away, even by a tiny virus that we can’t even see. I think the other thing is that I’m learning and re-learning is in part related to family, having three grandchildren now that have come through some tough circumstances, and seeing what they’re going through with this isolation and the challenges of having parents working at home and kids at home. It’s just a reminder to keep our eyes open and see how we can be of any assistance to people in our family or people in our congregations or people in our work settings. Just to keep our eyes open. It’s really tough out there, as you well know. It’s very challenging. So, that’s a couple of things that are working on, and finally I’d just say I continue to just be blessed by having a Bible study with 20 wayward guys. And just business guys that come from all different backgrounds and understandings and maturities or are kind of new in the Lord, even some that don’t know Christ as their own Savior. Gosh, what an opportunity just to share in the Good News and to share God’s Word with other people. That fellowship is really special. Really [inaudible 00:24:33] and I thank the Lord for that opportunity. >>Doug Sweeney: Wise words from Mark Neaman, the founder of Neaman Advisors and for many years the President and CEO of North Shore University Health System. Mark is a member of the advisory board of Beeson Divinity School. A good friend. We are so grateful to you, Mark, for carving out time for us today. Thanks for being with us. To our listeners, we’re grateful to you for joining us, please continue to pray for us so that we will navigate these Covid19 days with wisdom. We miss having you around. But we’re grateful for the technology that enables us to stay in touch with you. Please know we are praying for you. Feel free to drop us a line at any time with input or prayer requests. And until we see you next time. Goodbye for now. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.