Last night, I had the great pleasure of enjoying a meal with several brilliant doctors from The Ohio State University Medical Center and two others from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Drs Leroy Hood and Fred Lee are in town from Seattle this week to formalize the creation of the P4 Medicine Institute, a partnership between OSUMC and ISB, that will completely revolutionize medicine and transform healthcare delivery. P4 Medicine stands for predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory and utilizes genome-based information and molecular diagnosis to understand each person’s individual requirements for maintaining health, preventing disease and tailoring therapy to their genetic uniqueness. When I say brilliant, I mean these are some reeeeeaaally bright people.
Dr. Hood is the world-renown scientist who developed the DNA and protein sequencers and synthesizers that are the cornerstones of modern molecular biology and that made possible the Human Genome Project. He has founded several biotech companies, including Amgen, and is the founder and president of the Institute for Systems Biology. Suffice to say, I was a fish out of water in these discussions.
But for all his brilliance, Dr. Hood did talk about something that I understood completely. One of the others at the table asked a question that many of us were wondering – “Why did you choose Ohio State as your partner on this enormous project?”
Dr. Hood didn’t miss a beat. “First,” he said, “there’s amazing leadership here, namely Dr. Steve Gabbe and Dr. Clay Marsh, who are truly excited about this work. Second, Ohio State wants to get even better than they already are.” He explained, “I visited with 4 of the top 10 academic medical centers in the country, and each one of them suffers from the ‘arrogance of excellence.’ And I’ve found that excellent organizations who simply assume they will always be excellent are exactly the ones who will not.”
Finally, I thought, a concept I can wrap my relatively tiny mind around!
It is for this very reason, this “arrogance of excellence”, that the second of the BUILT TO LEAD 12 Essentials of Personal Excellence is Build your Humility. It immediately, and intentionally, follows the essential Build your CORE.
Once you’ve built a strong CORE; once you’ve gotten crystal clear about WHO you are, WHAT you believe, and HOW you wish to live and work, and once you’ve defined your true Passion, Purpose, and Process, you will discover in yourself a clarity, a conviction, and a confidence like never before. But a common trap at this point in the builder’s journey is PRIDE. Self-esteem is one thing, and a very good thing. But pride, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, is “an unreasonable conceit of superiority,” an “overweening opinion of one’s own qualities.” Pride falsely tells us we have arrived and eventually leads to mediocrity, stagnation, and many times, derailment.
What I believe Dr. Hood was saying was that, while Ohio State is already excellent, they don’t pretend there isn’t still more to learn and room to grow. And what I believe about Dr. Hood is that, for all he’s already accomplished, he’s not done learning either.
How about you?
Do you enjoy a special clarity, conviction and confidence that challenges you to keep learning?
Or do you suffer from the “arrogance of excellence?”
How do you know?
Are you attracting brilliant partners or repelling great opportunities?
Tell me more…
BUILT TO LEAD 
Nice blog post Doug.
I appreciate your humility, but you already know the secret to happiness. We all struggle (even Lee Hood) to understand even a little part of what determines our individual lives and life meaning. Having faith that all will work as it should/there is a greater plan; doing what you love with people you love; staying grounded and balanced; and spending your time doing something important for others is the essence of life’s meaning and fun and that makes all the difference.
We are excited about P4 MI and believe this new approach to medicine will help us keep people well and transform what we do today (reactive, disease-based care) to something much better (wellness), and are excited to have very smart friends like you that will help us stay grounded and pointed in the right direction.
Wow! Brownie, you hang with some reeeeeeallly cool people! I know from my involvement with others who are committed to this paradigm shift from “cure only” to P4 + Cure that both humility AND courage (third in the 12) will be required. It’s exciting to be involved and helping. Keep up the great blogging!
Sully