By Elizabeth Cloutman
At first glance, drawing parallels between managing an emergency room and managing a business might seem an unlikely premise for a book.
But even a skeptical reader should be convinced just a few pages into “Management Lessons from the E.R.: Prescriptions for Success in Your Business” that physician/ entrepreneur Paul Auerbach offers practical advice on navigating the inevitable situations that every business faces.
“The best doctors and managers come to realize that there truly are constants in an inevitable sea of change,” Auerbach writes in his new book. “What you always need to know and be able to implement isn’t trendy. The basics never change … Merely paying attention and keeping an open mind can identify most of what’s important … True crises never become routine, but much of the threat and urgency can be mitigated by being as well prepared as possible.”
Auerbach, a Los Altos resident since 1991, has extensive experience as an administrator in both business and medicine. Currently he is a clinical professor of surgery in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Stanford, who still spends one day a month in the Stanford Medical Center emergency room. Since 1999, he has also been a partner at Delphi Ventures, a Menlo Park venture capital firm which provides equity financing and business expertise to new biomedical and health-care firms.
In addition to a 1977 medical degree from Duke University, Auerbach earned a master’s degree in management from the Sloan Program at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 1989. He has served as the chief of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt and Stanford university hospitals. He has also been the chief operating officer at Sterling Healthcare Group, a Florida-based emergency department management company, and MedAmerica, a physician management firm in Oakland.
Auerbach said the initial inspiration for the book came while he was chief of emergency medicine at Stanford in the early 1990s. One day, he encountered a frustrated and shaken colleague in the dean’s office. His friend had been through an angry encounter over a financial situation and was ready to confront his superior. Auerbach was quickly able to assist his friend in developing an alternative solution to settle the issue. His solution proved successful. Auerbach was struck by the thought that being an emergency room doctor would be helpful in a business situation.
He developed his ideas further when Gene Webb, a Stanford business school professor, invited him to lecture graduate students on crisis management. “You probably handle more crises in a week than most corporate execs see in a lifetime,” Webb remarked to Auerbach. Webb also suggested that he write a book.
During his years as a corporate executive, Auerbach became even more firmly convinced that “certain truisms are universal when framed in the appropriate context … Brilliant businessmen are insightful, collaborative, decisive and honest. These also happen to be the qualities of great doctors.”
“Management Lessons from the E.R.” is arranged not by chapters, but explanations and examples of some of the numerous “truisms” Auerbach has learned from emergency medicine and applied to corporate life. These truths include: “Take time to explain everything;” “Never become complacent because advantage is temporary;” and “Individuals quit one at a time before the team goes on strike.”
“There will be something everybody can relate to,” Auerbach said of his book. “I think they’re good analogies and I think people can resonate with those. It’s a very practical approach to things that really happen.”
The most important key to a business’ success is communication, Auerbach noted. “If you had to pick a general place where all sorts of relationships break down, it’s communication … Failure to communicate leads to misunderstandings, poor implementation, failure to complete tasks and hurt feelings. Superb communications lead to teamwork, common goals and execution.”
To order “Management Lessons from the E.R.” online, logon to www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com.
