August 27, 2008

Yo DaVita!

I think when I last left you I was on the plane to Michigan on Sunday.

I got to the hotel about 11:30 p.m., called home, called Cheryl (my asst), and was in bed about 1 a.m. Up at 6:45 to go over the outline for my speech. The darn hotel has no hot breakfast, and their workout room only had a treadmill and an elliptical machine! With my torn knee ligament I can’t use a treadmill and I don’t get a good workout on an elliptical.

Anyway on to the speech. More than 90 percent of the first year MBA class showed up, over 400 young men and women. I had the pleasure of talking about our efforts to be a community first and a company second, about investing in our personal as well as professional growth, and about leadership. It went well, you guys have created quite an impressive body of material! Who would have ever thought some of the top business schools in America would be inviting a dialysis company to talk about stuff they are doing? But this Fall we are invited to speak not only at the University of Michigan, but also UCLA, Harvard, Northwestern Kellogg and the University of Wisconsin – Madison. What you guys have done is special, no brag just fact!

I had two bananas in the course of the morning, then a high-fat lunch where the only main course was chicken and broccoli in cream sauce. I then did several hours of meetings, my normal productive plane flight, and was back at home about 9 p.m. California time.

On Tuesday I had scheduled a doctor appointment for 7 a.m. That was the only way for me to get my rotator cuff worked on and still have time for a 20 minute lifecycle session with some stretching before I ate my normal breakfast and flew down to the Casa DaVita in Los Angeles. I worked on emails and a PDR (professional development review) on the plane and then hit the Casa for a day of meetings. We do the meetings straight through lunch, and the food that was brought in was one of my favorites, and I ate way too much! Darn.

One of the highlights of the day was my first meeting with our new Chief People Officer, Laura Mildenberger. She is going to help us with a bunch of things to become a better place to work and I am incredibly excited by her thoughts and plans! I have not done well in finding the right leadership for this spot, and I am feeling like I have finally delivered to you what you deserve in this regard.

At 7:30 p.m. I left the Casa to have a group dinner with 10 VPs. Each had been told to come to the dinner with their most important thoughts about the strategy presentation they had been exposed to earlier in the day. We had an excellent talk until 9:40 p.m., when I had to leave so I could call home before 10 p.m. to make sure I caught Denise before she went to bed. I had crab cakes for an appetizer and salmon for the main course, with plain mixed berries for dessert. So that was neither decadent nor impressive. Once I got back to the company apartment (that visitors to the Casa use), I had a couple bowls of cereal, which was not so good. Then I did some email and went to bed at 11:30 p.m.

Up at 6:30 to type this. I will now leave the computer to hit the lifecycle for an intense 17 minute session, followed by a little shoulder rehab and stretching. At 7:45 Cheryl will pick me up so we can cover issues during the 20 minute drive to the Casa.

Make it a good day!

KT