CEO Tom Mihaljevic, MD, on Taking the Job No One Wants

By Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD

Thank you to Atul Gawande, MD, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for inviting me to their Voices in Leadership forum.

Atul and I spoke on the topic “Taking the Job No One Wants: Lessons in Leadership.” This has been an important aspect of my career, starting with the years I worked as a nursing assistant to support myself in medical school in Croatia. After four more years of training in Zurich, I took an internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, with Atul as my chief resident.

“You have to understand,” Atul told the audience, “this is a guy who was fully trained — relative to me — as a cardiac surgeon and lands on my service as my intern.” He then turned to me and said, “You came in here and had to start all over again. You had to start at the bottom and work your way all the way back up. It was very clear you knew more about surgery than I did. You knew more about how to run a team than I did. And I never once felt like you resented it.”

Because I didn’t.

As I explained during our discussion, the uniqueness of the opportunity that was handed to me at Brigham was unthinkable to me. I felt so blessed just to have a chance to be here and to learn from the people around me. I just had an immense amount of gratitude to be trained here. There was nothing for me to complain about. Not where I came from.

We also talked about why I went into the field of robotic surgery when it was viewed as difficult and risky; why I left my thriving surgical practice to take on the challenge of opening a brand new hospital in Abu Dhabi; and how I could follow an icon like Toby Cosgrove, MD, as Cleveland Clinic CEO and President.

And what I told Atul is that while Cleveland Clinic is in phenomenal shape, everyone in the organization understands that my job is not to keep it the way it is. We know we have to continue to evolve to make this organization stronger and to take better care of patients. We won’t be successful if we stay the way we are.

Learn to become a physician leader with Cleveland Clinic Global Executive Education programs, including The Cleveland Clinic Way: Intensives, Samson Global Leadership Academy and the Executive Visitors’ Program.

Dr. Mihaljevic is Cleveland Clinic CEO and President.