Careers are about growth. Throughout our careers, we grow as professionals and develop new skills, all while learning more about ourselves in the process.
For those in the public safety and response fields, that growth comes alongside the growth of the people they help on a daily basis. The impact of the visible difference provides continuous motivation to grow further and find new opportunities.
For Lance Lynch, MBA, CBCP, a career in public safety and response should allow a practitioner to not only raise themselves, but the people around them. And through that lens, he’s continually sought out chances to expand that helping reach and increase the positive influence on people through his work.
Now, as an Account Executive at Veoci, he can continue bringing up those around him. With close to two decades of experience in the emergency response, planning, and mitigation for healthcare, Lance can steer healthcare organizations and coalitions towards strategies and solutions that make them better prepared to provide critical care even in the face of hardship.
Finding Home
Lance graduated from high school in 2003 and, after a quick stint in customer service, realized business just wasn’t for him. He wanted to find ways to give back; after exploring military and other public service options, he quickly found a home in the emergency medical services field (EMS).
After a few years of service to southwest Michigan, Lance and his family had relocated to Raleigh in 2008; at this time, Lance was working full-time in critical care transport and EMS. He finished his undergraduate degree in Emergency Medical Care Administration at Western Carolina University while in North Carolina. He returned to EMS, then becoming an EMS educator at local institutions.
Lance and his family then returned to Michigan, where Lance took on a formalized hospital emergency management role. Through his work at this time, he became a subject matter expert (SME) in both Joint Commission standards and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidelines. He also co-chaired his hospital’s regional healthcare coalition and simultaneously began his MBA in organizational consulting at Spring Arbor University.
To meet his goals of growing the lives of the people around him, Lance needed something with a wider reach after some time as a hospital emergency manager. His sights sent him to the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area, where he took on a new role: Director of Emergency Management for the JPS Health Network. The network is the county’s safety net and provides an ecosystem of care for people who really need it; it was the perfect opportunity for Lance to continue improving the lives around him.
Parkland Health and Hospital System, located in Dallas, presented Lance the chance to expand his reach and build his positive influence on lives. After his time at JPS Health Network, he joined Parkland Health and Hospital System as the Business Continuity Program Manager. In a way, this brought his service full circle. As a freshman paramedic, often called a “para-pup,” he learned the Parkland burn formula, which was developed at the flagship facility of his organization.
While working as the Business Continuity Program Manager at Parkland, Lance found Veoci. After seeing the national and global reach Veoci has, Lance knew it would allow him to, directly and indirectly, touch thousands of lives and help them grow.
Aligning and Leading Others
Throughout his career, Lance has always looked for the opportunities that allow him to help others and give back. That’s how he found himself in emergency medical services, emergency management, and business continuity. And through those experiences, he’s found a few best practices that’ve helped him assist others and fulfill his responsibilities.
Communication is the glue behind everything in emergency response and planning. It holds everything together, keeps all stakeholders signing the same song, and usually produces a favorable outcome.
That being said, Lance believes emergency managers and continuity planners (or any professional in any setting) should prioritize alignment. With very careful exceptions, practitioners should break down their siloes. For emergency and continuity planners, this means making sure all relevant stakeholders are aware of official plans. More importantly, stakeholders should be included in plan development.
This principle extends to stakeholders too. Any important information they hold should be shared. This creates an inclusive environment and an informational ecosystem all participants benefit from. Every participant will learn that certain departments, functions, and operations depend on their information and demonstrate the value their seat brings in during planning and responses phases.
If stakeholders and participants still have trouble finding these connections, emergency and continuity planners should educate those people and socialize them with the larger operation.
Lance also stresses the importance of emotionally intelligent leadership. Each player has strengths, and planners and response leaders should use those strengths to the advantage of the command center. Using people skills will help communicate goals more clearly to participants, aid in the discovery of priorities, and facilitate a better outcome by others’ expertise; the necessary tools and capabilities that response leaders do not directly possess.
Shaping the Field of Emergency Management
Lance wants to bring these ideas into his new role at Veoci. While being an Account Executive isn’t like his previous roles, it still lets him employ these principles.
He can take a consultative approach, see how hospitals, coalitions, or other facilities are operating, and find the holes Veoci can fill. Aligning Veoci with their needs should not only supplement operations, but create an environment of transparency. This environment should allow stakeholders across an organization to have the kind of alignment he believes emergency and continuity planners need in their operations to succeed.
The future of the field is a digital one Lance said, echoing what other practitioners on the Veoci team have said. He wants to be able to deliver what emergency managers and their EOCs will need. Digital tools like Veoci will be on the wish list of any EOC manager that doesn’t have one. If Lance can help get the tool to those EOCs, he can indirectly help them improve their responses and planning operations, pushing a positive influence on the people those EOCs affect.
2020 was an unusual year for almost everybody and every industry, including healthcare. The events of the year, from a once in a century pandemic to civil unrest, exposed gaps in organizations that need to be addressed to ensure future success. Overall, the year emphasized the utility of virtual tools and automation. Technology can shore up those shortcomings, especially in fast-paced and high-pressure situations.
Again, Veoci has a national and global reach, which Lance can tap into to start pushing thought leadership on these topics and shaping the future of the industry. Providing the exact solutions practitioners and their organizations need using technology is the key. Ultimately, it also allows Lance to continue meeting his goal of giving back and raising the lives he touches, directly or indirectly, on a daily basis.
A Helping Hand
We all try to plan out our lives, from our personal goals to our careers. But often it’s difficult to follow our plans exactly, as life events rarely fit the molds we initially cast. Most of life is unpredictable, which is how Lance once found himself kayaking through the streets of Kalamazoo after a 500 year flooding event took over Michigan in 2018.
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One thing we can do to handle the uncertainty of life is give ourselves guiding principles, truths we try to implement throughout our lives. For Lance, that’s helping others, giving back, and finding ways to elevate people and grow their lives, either directly or indirectly. Using that principle, Lance has found himself in EMS, emergency management, and business continuity. Each focus on assisting others in some way, which Lance can continue to do through this chapter with Veoci.
