GuideWell CEO Pat Geraghty: Success Should Never Come Down To One Play

During Pat Geraghty’s senior year in high school, his football team was playing in the league championship game. With seconds left on the clock, they were down 14-13 to a team that had won nine consecutive league titles. Geraghty led a 90-yard drive down to the five-yard line, well within field goal range, and they lined up to kick the game winner.

Geraghty, the team’s quarterback and holder, received the snap, teed up the ball, and the kicker kicked the ball high over the left upright—a challenging kick to call. The referee standing directly beneath the goal post signaled “good,” but the head referee signaled “no good.” After a brief huddle in the middle of the field, the head referee stuck by his call—even though he was not in the best position to judge it, and Geraghty’s team lost the game.

You don’t forget a moment like that, but you also learn from it if you’re a leader like Geraghty, who went on to play college football at Colgate University. And what was the lesson from that day? (Hint: the answer has nothing to do with finding a head referee with better eyesight.)

“First, it helped me re-double my commitment to making sure you’re not in the last second trying to get that field goal,” he explained in a recent interview. “You need to have done other things to have been successful earlier in that game. That’s something I’ve taken with me: Preparing and staying positive, thinking about what your alternatives are, and not going into something with a single point of failure.”

And second: “Change starts with me.” Not the ref.

It’s a long way from the football field to the leadership of a major player at the forefront of healthcare transformation, one serving more than 38.5 million people across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. But that’s where Geraghty’s strategic thinking has taken him—along with a place in the Harvard Business School curriculum, in which future leaders study his model of strategic reinvention.

Under his direction, the company has achieved notable accolades for being an exceptional place to work, praised for its commitment to diversity, and employee satisfaction. But the secret sauce at GuideWell remains its leader’s commitment to never letting a single point of success or defeat determine the outcome. If this sounds like a leadership trait you’d like to put in your toolkit—and it should—take note of these lessons from Geraghty:

Processing calm amidst a crisis or challenge in a large organization involves a similar mindset to winning in football. In a football game, beating a difficult opponent can mean getting that earlier first down so that you don’t find yourself needing a last-second field goal to win. In business, it can mean staying in the moment and assessing the alternatives when plan “A” falls short.

“How do you use all your assets and resources to make sure that everybody who can contribute to the result has a voice in helping craft the answer?” Geraghty asked. “I think it’s really being thoughtful and comprehensive about navigating through a tough situation. That makes all the difference.”