On Monday, March 9, at the HIMSS26 Executive Summit, held this year at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, the opening keynote speakers, David Banks, president and CEO of AdventHealth, and former Google executive Jenny Wood, author of WILD COURAGE: Go After What You Want and Get It, provided advice for healthcare leaders.

While Wood addressed how fear can hinder achievement, Banks emphasized the importance of organizations repositioning themselves in this changing climate to avoid being left behind.

“When you adopt a mindset of wild courage,” Wood explained, while sharing several examples of taking courage in her personal and professional life, “your runway for success and leadership is endless.”

Using the metaphor of cyclists riding in a formation that benefits the group, Banks told the audience that those who can get into the right configuration realize that surviving the headwind is not about being joyful.  “The goal is to get through it so that you can get on with your work, to get to the finish line. Getting positioned, or more accurately, repositioned, is really the goal.”  There's nothing worse than being the guy, Banks remarked, who gets left behind, who gets ejected off the map, because they are not in a winning position.

“We clearly are facing some significant foreseen headwinds in the future,” Banks said. However, he added, “We're going to survive these, and we're going to thrive.”