Mike Young got his start in healthcare technology more than 20 years ago, when he learned how to run wire, terminate cables, and install nurse call devices. By the time he joined CEC in 2018, he had also gained valuable experience in sales and project management.
His insight and experiences serve CEC well as we continue to build our healthcare suite, expand our team, and look for new ways to integrate healthcare technology with AV, IT, fire and security, and two-way communications.
When he’s not working on strategies to help the sales team or boost customer experiences, he’s always looking for ways to improve his own leadership skills and share his knowledge with coworkers to help them grow, too.
“Having the ability to empower my team and watch them grow into amazing leaders makes me so proud,” he says. “Watching them collaborate with different teams at CEC to achieve a common goal has been awesome.”
Meet CEC’s General Manager of Healthcare Communications Mike Young!
Q: What makes you most excited about working at CEC?
A: Our forward-thinking leadership. As general managers, we’re being encouraged to think “outside the box” and create new, innovative, and efficient ways to take customer experiences to the next level. We’re not just focused on products. By creating a new level of middle management in leadership, we’re creating and empowering different levels of staff. It’s exciting to watch everyone grow into it. In addition, we’re emphasizing our technology roadmaps, which help us focus on providing the best solutions for our customers. What does tomorrow, next week, or next year look like … and what do we have to do to get there?
Q: Is there a CEC initiative you’ve been involved with that you’re especially proud of?
A: Last fall, we were challenged to restructure our field ops group and technical staff. We created requirements for what this restructured field ops team would do, which resulted in the healthcare group creating a whole new project process—from sales to project closeout. It’s being built to take us to the next level of project organization so we can be more efficient. By shifting part of our technical staff into one group, they can be better utilized across the different technology projects we offer. It also allows them to gain more experience and build their career paths.
The healthcare suite has also created a new SystemsCare agreement to offer our customers. This—along with the new project process we created—is expected to be rolled out across the company.
Q: How does a typical day play out for you at CEC? What are you responsible for in your new role?
A: I ensure that our team is in place and has what it needs, working on all kinds of initiatives—from service triage to scheduling to integration of our technologies. For example: How we can bring the healthcare suite and IT suite together to share resources?
I also make sure my team has what they need to get our test systems in place as we create our own healthcare networks across our locations in Iowa and Wisconsin. We’ll connect them to create an enterprise healthcare system that we can use to test different technologies, as well as provide a live environment for customers to experience.
The other thing I focus on is creating sales documentation. What can we help the sales team with? How can we provide data so they can do proper assessments? One of the most important initiatives when I started at CEC was to build a clinical application team. Who could possibly provide a better experience for our healthcare customers than trained and experienced clinical staff? This will take us to the next level of providing amazing customer service and experiences.
Q: What’s a fun/interesting fact about you that most people don’t know?
A: My wife and I are supper club junkies. As a family, we also love to cook and experience different foods (I’m more of the sous-chef than anything). Every Sunday starting at noon, we make it a point to have a family game day or spend the day in the pool together. It doesn’t always work, but we set aside several hours to dedicate to our family.
I was also the head coach of a college baseball team when I was 22. It was a passion of mine to be involved with baseball; that was a great couple of years I spent with some really fun and amazing young men. They taught me as much as I taught them.
Q: If you could do one other job at CEC for a day, what would it be?
A: Training customers. That’s one of the things I miss most. Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to do the type of training I’m looking for here since I’m not an RN. In my previous life, I was able to work with clinical staff and leaders, facilities, maintenance, and biomed staff to train them on the systems we had just installed. Being able to create a workflow and turn it into a real, moving piece with our customers—and then train them on it—was a lot of fun.
