Why Healthcare Leaders Should Read Outside Their Field

Often, when we think of advancing in our healthcare careers, improving our business, or becoming more innovative in our field, many professionals feel the need to dive into the latest industry news, business & leadership books related to their industry, and even industry-specific articles, videos, and web articles. And that makes sense. I mean, how can you become an innovative leader in healthcare, for example, if you’re not up to date with the current healthcare trends or advancements? It may be counterintuitive, but healthcare leaders should read outside of the field.

Here’s my take: being well-informed in your healthcare is just the baseline. Everyone should be doing that. What often sets leaders and innovators apart stems from their ability to take insights and ideas from outside their field and apply it to their industry.

That’s exactly why I made the decision to switch up my reading habits for the next couple of months.

For two reasons:

1. I wanted to read for leisure—not everything has to be about work. There’s value in stepping back and simply enjoying the process of reading for the sake of it.

2. More importantly, I wanted to see what insights I could pull from books that had nothing to do with healthcare, business strategy, or leadership.

You’d be surprised at how often ideas from seemingly unrelated fields can unlock new ways of thinking about your own work. A story about survival in the Alaskan wilderness might teach you more about resilience and process management than the latest leadership manual. A deep dive into the history of jazz might shift your perspective on improvisation and problem-solving in ways that no business podcast could.

The more I read outside the typical business playbooks, the more I’m convinced: if you want to stand out in your field, you sometimes have to look beyond it.

In this article, I explore why reading outside of your industry is not just a luxury—it’s a strategic advantage. And I’ll share the surprising ways this shift has impacted my own work in my healthcare practice and consulting work.

Sometimes, the best business strategies aren’t found in business books. They’re hidden in plain sight, waiting to be uncovered in the most unexpected places.

 

One Man’s Wilderness

“Too many men work on parts of things. Seeing a job through to completeness satisfies a man.”

This quote from “One Man’s Wilderness” is a great example of how an idea from a “non-healthcare” book gave me an insight into running and managing teams in healthcare provider organizations.

What can we learn from this quote and how can it apply to managing a healthcare business?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I know that nearly every one of my team members works on a small part of the “process” of delivering healthcare…

• Clinicians provide the treatment and complete documentation

• Care coordination schedules patients and manages the schedule

• Patient access coordinates benefits, eligibility, and authorizations

But it’s easy for each of those team members to fall into the silo of their “role” on the team. It makes sense—when you spend most of your time focused on one slice of the process, it’s natural to zero in on just that piece.

The problem is, when you only focus on your piece, you lose sight of the whole. And in healthcare, the whole matters. When we just work on “parts of things,” we miss the bigger picture—the patient journey, the continuity of care, the smooth handoff from one department to the next.

It’s why you can have exceptional clinicians, a streamlined front desk, and a diligent billing department, yet still have patients fall through the cracks or leave feeling disconnected.

The cure?

It’s a mindset shift. We need to get out of our silos and start looking at the entire process—front to back, start to finish. It’s not enough to be good at your part. You need to understand how your part fits into the whole—and how it affects the patient experience. Because, at the end of the day, completeness matters.

In healthcare, it’s not just about getting things done; it’s about getting them done right, from start to finish. If you’re leading a team, ask them: “Do you know where your piece fits into the bigger picture?”

If they answer “No”, maybe it’s time to help them see the full picture.

 

The Alchemist

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.”

My favorite fiction book is The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. It’s a story of a boy who embarks on a great journey to discover his true purpose and uncover a great treasure he has a dream about. I probably reread it once a year.

In fact, one of my favorite life lesson quotes comes from The Alchemist, where the narrator tells the story of a boy who travels to the wisest man in the world to discover the meaning of happiness. The wise man tells him he is busy, but the boy is instructed to look around the marvelous palace while making sure not to spill some oil that is placed in a spoon for him. The boy comes back and the wise man asks the boy what he thinks about the gardens, the palace, and the views. The boy replies that he didn’t observe any of that. He was trying not to spill the oil. So, the wise man tells the boy to go back and take all the beauty in. He does just that and returns to the wise man. He tells the wisest of wise men how much he enjoyed the gardens, tapestries, and woodwork in the palace. The wise man then asks the boy what happened to the oil in the spoon. The boy looks down and realizes that he had spilled it all along the way. The wise man responds with this: “The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, but never forget about the drops of oil on the spoon.”

When I first read this, I immediately fell in love with this quote. Especially as healthcare providers, it is easy to get wrapped up in “doing” healthcare. We complete assessments, write our notes, and implement treatment protocols—all while making sure we’re meeting the set productivity and utilization metrics—without really thinking about why we’re doing any of it.

For us healthcare professionals and clinicians, our patients are the drops of oil in the spoon. So, the way I see it, the key to feeling fulfilled in your work as a healthcare provider is to learn as much as you can, implement new treatment methods, and advance your career, but never forget about the patients you serve every day.

New technology, innovative treatment techniques, operational efficiency, and even things like population health are all good, but they are secondary to the primary purpose of healthcare: helping individual people improve their health and well-being, overcome injuries or dysfunctions, and chart their own path toward healing and long-term recovery. Even when it comes to population health as a whole, the most effective way to make any headway in that regard lies in the ability to affect individual patient lives.

As healthcare professionals, it becomes easy in our day-to-day work to get bogged down in the process of delivering healthcare services or managing healthcare programs. We lose sight of the individual, human relationships that are not only a byproduct but a necessary requirement of healthcare service delivery.

 

Storyworthy

“Regardless of whether your change is infinitesimal or profound, positive or negative, your story must reflect change. You must begin and end your story in entirely different states of being. Change is key.”

One of my favorite “side gigs” is being the resident storyteller for my six kids. It doesn’t pay much—unless you count giggles and wide-eyed amazement as currency—but it’s by far one of the most rewarding jobs I have. It all started when my first son was about three and wanted to hear stories. At first, I read the usual suspects: Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, the classics. But one evening, I decided to make something up.

That night, I spun a tale about a fictional cow named Billy-Bob who got himself into all sorts of mischief. My son loved it. I kept going, adding new adventures, new characters, and little morals tucked neatly into the storylines. Before long, it wasn’t just Billy-Bob. I was making up stories about Billy-Jack the homesteader who didn’t store up for winter and ended up learning a hard lesson. Then came Sally—the adventurous girl who always found herself in sticky situations and managed to get out by sheer grit and a little bit of luck.

It’s become part of our nightly routine. In fact, my girls just asked me to come up with a “Sally Story” about getting a silly haircut the other night. Sometimes, I pull from real life, like the time I went duck hunting with friends and one of them dropped his shotgun into the swamp. Other times, I just make it up as I go. It dosn’t really matter. What matters is that I have their attention—and that the story means something.

So, that’s a long way of getting to this point: I picked up Storyworthy at the tail end of 2024 because I wanted to up my storytelling game for the kids. But, I ended up pulling some quotes out of that book that changed the way I handled patient communication & even some of healthcare consulting projects.

And this quote, about change being key stuck with me. In healthcare, this idea of communicating change is not just relevant; it’s fundamental.

Think about the patient journey: it is, at its core, a story of transformation. Whether it’s recovering from an injury, managing a chronic condition, or achieving a higher level of physical or mental health, the goal is always change—moving from one state to a better one.

One of my favorite “side gigs” is being the resident storyteller for my six kids. It doesn’t pay much—unless you count giggles and wide-eyed amazement as currency—but it’s by far the most rewarding job I have. It all started when my first son was about three and wanted to hear stories. At first, I read the usual suspects: Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, the classics. But one evening, I decided to make something up.

That night, I spun a tale about a fictional cow named Billy-Bob who got himself into all sorts of mischief. My son loved it. I kept going, adding new adventures, new characters, and little morals tucked neatly into the storylines. Before long, it wasn’t just Billy-Bob. I was making up stories about Billy-Jack the homesteader who didn’t store up for winter and ended up learning a hard lesson. Then came Sally—the adventurous girl who always found herself in sticky situations and managed to get out by sheer grit and a little bit of luck.

It became part of our routine. Sometimes, I’d pull from real life, like the time I went duck hunting with friends and one of them dropped his shotgun into the swamp. Other times, I’d just make it up as I went. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that I had their attention—and that the story meant something.

And the same holds true not just for patients, but for practices and providers. A clinic that stays stagnant—relying on the same systems, the same processes, the same approaches year after year—eventually gets left behind. Healthcare is an ever-evolving field, marked by technological advances, shifting patient expectations, and new models of care delivery. For a practice to thrive, it too must reflect change.

This is why the most successful healthcare organizations are the ones that don’t just respond to change; they drive it. They recognize that transformation isn’t just inevitable—it’s necessary. Whether it’s integrating digital health, embracing value-based care models, or rethinking patient engagement, those that adapt and evolve write a story of resilience and growth.

 

Closing Thoughts: The Unexpected Advantage of Looking (and Reading) Beyond Healthcare

It’s easy to get stuck in the echo chamber of your own industry. We tend to double down on the same sources, the same business books, the same industry updates. And yes, that’s important—you need to know your field. But what I’ve found, and what this journey of reading outside my industry has reinforced, is that real insight often comes from the most unexpected places.

Whether it’s learning about resilience and process management from One Man’s Wilderness, understanding the delicate balance of patient care through The Alchemist, or grasping the fundamental importance of transformation from Storyworthy, these books—completely unrelated to healthcare—taught me more about managing a clinic, leading a team, and improving patient outcomes than I would have ever expected.

If there’s one takeaway I hope you get from this, it’s this: If you want to truly innovate in your field, sometimes you need to look beyond it. Read broadly. Seek stories from outside your bubble. Draw parallels from unexpected places. It’s amazing what you can learn about your own work by stepping outside of it.

Because sometimes, the best strategies, the most profound insights, and the keys to real change are waiting for you—not in the next healthcare white paper or business bestseller—but in the pages of a book or article entirely outside of healthcare.