Hey and welcome to Fashionable CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content material officer of Mansueto Ventures. Every week this article explores inclusive approaches to management drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Quick Firm. If you happen to acquired this article from a good friend, you possibly can sign up to get it yourself each Monday morning.
When John D’Angelo turned president and CEO of Northwell Well being in October, he inherited a nonprofit well being system in transition. Northwell, based mostly in New Hyde Park, New York, had simply accomplished its acquisition of Nuvance Well being, making a mixed entity with 28 hospitals, greater than 100,000 workers, and $23.1 billion in working income in 2025. Many executives introduced their retirement, requiring D’Angelo to replenish his management group. In the meantime, the well being system additionally launched into an ongoing digital transformation that features a new digital well being report platform and artificial intelligence (AI) integrations.
FINDING ANSWERS IN UNCERTAINTY
D’Angelo, a doctor who specialised in emergency drugs and led Northwell’s COVID response group, likened his first months as CEO to a shift within the emergency room (ER). “We had these three main issues occurring, and plenty of issues may go proper or incorrect,” he says. “With all that’s been taking place within the final eight months, I joke, ‘That’s why they picked an ER doc as CEO.’”
D’Angelo’s expertise in juggling a number of enterprise priorities in a time of nice technological upheaval shouldn’t be unusual amongst CEOs, however his expertise within the ER is. For that cause, Fashionable CEO requested him to share his recommendation and insights on coping with stress and uncertainty in management as we speak. Certainly, D’Angelo, who initially thought he would focus on orthopedics, says he was drawn to emergency drugs exactly as a result of of the uncertainty. Sufferers, he says, didn’t are available with a prognosis: “Somebody would possibly are available weak and dizzy or with some belly discomfort,” he recollects. “You have been the primary individual or the primary a part of a group figuring it out from scratch and having to navigate that uncertainty.”
Listed here are 4 management suggestions gleaned from our dialog:
Get snug making choices with incomplete information. In an ER, D’Angelo says, you hardly ever have the luxurious of ready for full data. You be taught to prioritize investigating the highest-impact unknowns—what can’t be missed—over all the things else and to behave in your greatest judgment when the info doesn’t exist but.
Watch the very important indicators, not the noise. Each group has indicators that predict success or failure, D’Angelo says, and leaders want to remain mounted on these quite than getting pulled into distractions beneath that threshold. Simply as necessary: Don’t anchor to a call out of delight. “You’re seeking to see when you received the response you anticipated,” he says. If not, “it’s a must to be prepared to take a step again and redirect or pivot if issues aren’t going the way in which they’re purported to go.”
Triage your time such as you would triage sufferers. Not each downside deserves equal consideration. D’Angelo says the self-discipline of an ER shift, if you’re deciding in actual time who wants you most, interprets on to working a big group with competing, simultaneous calls for.
Construct dedication, not simply compliance. D’Angelo is a agency believer in connecting workers to the establishment’s function, acknowledging that in healthcare, employers possible don’t discuss sufficient about mission. Staff “hear about productivity, and we’re consistently asking them to work tougher and do extra with much less,” he says. “We’ve got to carry it again to connecting folks to function. That’s what’s going to hold the resilience and cut back burnout and create the drive to create the way forward for care we need to ship.”
PULLING FROM YOUR PAST
Are you a frontrunner who as soon as held an intense frontline position early in your profession? How did that form the way in which you lead as we speak or deal with stress? Ship your anecdotes to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com and we’ll publish a number of the greatest tales in a future e-newsletter.
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