Neshat Interview PDF

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Neshat Interview...

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1. Describe your academic background? I wasn't mathematics major in New York, I did a 180 and went into biochemistry. so I got my Bachelors of Science degree in biology/biochemistry. I went to University of Southern California for dr. dental surgery like you and then I went to graduate school for an MBA program at UCLA which involved a lot of Finance classes I wanted to get my answers or business aspect. 2. Can you describe your professional experience? I ended up going to dental school knowing that I did not want to be a dentist. It's not like I struggled through Dental School but I did not like the clinical aspect of it. Within 4 weeks of my graduation and getting licensed, I opened up my first clinic using my ex-wife's credit card. The practice did very well and within a year I had other dentists working and we did very well economically. I then expanded my practices in a few years between 1994 to 2000, I ended up managing 12 practices throughout Southern California. At one point I came across an opportunity when I read an article about an HMO placed in receivership due to financial solvency issues in California. I showed up there and got them to not shut it down. The governor's office then allowed me to run the HMO on behalf of the state and clean it up and in return, I would get the license, if I did everything to their satisfaction. It took about a year and I took the HMO license and sold all my practices and funded what is now known as Liberty Dental Plan. I have been doing this since 2001. 3. Do you believe Leadership is an act, process or a skill?

That is an excellent question, I might not be an expert in that field but I will give you my honest opinion. I think it is a little bit of all three, but more of an act than anything. It is an act because you have to act on yourself first, it is like being in a relationship. A relationship is constant work, Being a leader you are in a relationship with all the people you work with and who look up to you. It is in some ways like a bipolar relationship, you have to constantly set yourself in a state of mind which you may not necessarily want to be in but you force yourself to. Trying to get everyone engaged and buying into your vision. It is lot more of an act. It is always a process as you are leading an organization and are steering a ship , so you better know where you are going. 4. What is your definition of a leadership? I am still working on myself on a daily basis, To me the definition is trying to get other individuals in the organization engaged in what you are trying to accomplish. Engaging and empowering them to be their best would be my definition of leadership. 5. Three top qualities of a leader. 1) Have a vision of where you want to take your organization

2) Have the skill set, basically trying to inspire motivate your people be the best they can be 3) Constantly try to improve the organization and who you are, try to let other people identify their own shortcomings, their strengths and weaknesses and constantly work on that. 6. How would you describe your leadership style? I love people, and I somehow find it (?) in every individual that I work with and I try to connect with them on a personal level. To me, it’s my compassionate interest in other people that has helped me be where I’m at. 7. How important is the culture of your organization? Is your organized culture where you want it to be? I think culture is the most important field that moves this ship forward. It is extremely important the culture of our organization right now is not where it is supposed to be because we have been expanding and adding so many new people. I’m not sure if we’re actually serving the (Kool-Aid?) that it should be and every individual who has joined us in the past 30 days to 120 days to even a year has really had an opportunity to taste the Kool-Aid (?) and get the culture. That would be a problem I’m obviously trying to solve at the moment. It is not where I want it to be because not everyone who has joined the organization in the recent months has really been brought up to see and engage to the level that I’d like them to be. 8. As a Senior Administrator, how does your senior management team communicate with each other? I would say with absolute candor, with no boundaries and by friends. I would reemphasize that I think one of the most important characteristics of a senior management team functioning well is to include a candor when they talk to each other or they address issues. That would be helpful to eliminate a lot of democracy etc. 9. Decision making is an important part of leadership. What steps do you take before you make a decision? Every meeting that I go and every decision that I’m faced with, I clearly have to know what the objective is, what’s the goal out of that. Then it’s the fact finding phase where you have to collect all the data that is relevant and make sure you that have all the information available to you so you can make the right decision. Once you make a decision, you have to be able to again collect your idea to ensure that you did indeed make the right decision. These are the phases I go through before making a decision. 10. Have you ever had a personal value that conflicted with what you needed to do as a leader? If yes, please describe. I can’t think of one right now. If there is a conflict with your personal values, if you were in such a situation what would you do?

I wouldn’t violate my own personal values because I think that’s a part of the leadership style. You’re modeling yourself and you want people to respect the personal values you have. Sticking to my values is how I would like to model my own organization and my future leaders. 11. What according to you is a leader’s role in getting high trust certification for their organization? As much as I like to say that I am, I’m not a technical person so I’m not sure if I’m qualified to answer this question but at a high level we wanted to get the high trust certification because in the past few years the security and the cyber security has been v imp and we wanted to make sure that anyone who trusts the information with us or the clients information is secure about it. 12. If you were to suddenly leave your organization, what would people in your organization say was your legacy? The way I’m engaged in business where I am extremely hands on and I go at a 60,000 ft. level and then I jump into the very minute details of every little process and everything that happens in the organization adjusting my style going back and forth. The fact that every time we were faced with a situation I challenged my team to look at every potential, every possibility of doing things differently and I think a lot of times we ended up doing things that we never thought would work. I think only because of the way we challenged each other and looked at every potential solution, we found more possibilities and more opportunities....