What Healthcare IT Leadership and Early 90’s MTV Have in Common – How White Zombie Benefitted from a Leadership Change and We Can Too

Early 1990’s MTV played a lot of music videos.  However, if you liked heavy metal, you had one night a week, Saturday night, to watch videos from bands like Slayer, Anthrax, Pantera, Motörhead, GWAR, or Megadeth. The legendary show that featured videos from these bands was Headbangers’ Ball, hosted by Riki Rachtman.  This was at least two hours of the best metal videos you could find.  The rest of the week MTV only showed Guns N’ Roses, Bob Rock-era Metallica, Faith No More, and hair metal such as Poison along with their stable of pop videos.  Headbanger’s Ball was the reason I learned how to set my VCR to do timed recordings on Oxford Valley Cablevision Channel 37.

That was, until MTV decided to take a short cartoon featuring two destructive metalheads with annoying laughs, a lack of social and functional skills, functional brain cells, and no self-realization about themselves.  They turned their antics into a nightly TV series.  Beavis and Butt-Head became an instant megahit.

Their show was divided into two parts.  The first were short episodes that featured them getting into situations that caused laughs from their misfortunes and lack of reasonable thought.  Interspersed with those were them sitting on their dirty, ratty couch and watching music videos.

This was the best part.  They made fun of the videos they saw, which were mostly hair metal, and included videos from Headbanger’s Ball.  For the first time outside of Saturday Night, people could see real heavy metal videos in primetime, not just Enter Sandman or You Could Be Mine for the 900th time.  They would comment on how the videos they watched “sucked”, and if one was particularly bad, they would say “This Sucks, Change It”.  Videos from Vanilla Ice and Milli Vanilli were so bad that they looked at each other and changed the channel without saying a word, which was the ultimate insult.  In this way, this was a way MTV could use to make fun of itself, and its viewers, without taking itself seriously.

For all the videos from Grim Reaper, Accept, Judas Priest, and other hair metal bands they savaged, they had a small amount they loved.  They loved GWAR’s videos.  They also loved Bananarama videos, because they thought their members should have married GWAR and ruled all of Antarctica.   Primus was also a favorite because they had great videos and had a toilet in one.  They also recognized the greatness of Motörhead.

This brings us to White Zombie.  Headbanger’s Ball had a feature where the audience could vote on new videos.  One week, they featured the now-classic video for Thunderkiss ’65.  Riki Rachtman saw it, gave a look as if someone had made him watch every Vanilla Ice video in a row, and then proceeded to wave off the video as strange.  Normally, this would be the kiss of death for a band.  If Riki Rachtman did not like you, you were done.

A few weeks later, their fortunes changed.  Beavis and Butt-Head watched their video for “Black Sunshine” in the episode “Home Improvement”.  They loved it.  They considered it one of the coolest videos ever.  It didn’t hurt that this episode also featured them setting Mr. Anderson’s house on fire.  Later videos for “Thunderkiss ‘65” and “Welcome to Planet M***********” were met with equal excitement.

Suddenly, White Zombie went from being waved off Headbangers’ Ball like “Ice, Ice Baby” or a really bad hair metal video to being one of the most popular bands around.  More importantly, Riki Rachtman was no longer the gatekeeper to heavy metal success that he once was.

What leadership lessons can we learn from this?

First, and most importantly, we are constantly developing new leaders at a fast pace.  They can come from anywhere, and do not need to follow a proscribed path that the previous leadership set.  Beavis and Butt-Head came about because of cartoons that were equal parts funny and awful, not a feature on Headbanger’s Ball or the pages of Kerrang! Magazine.  They quickly established themselves as top performers.  Within several months, they were able to usurp Headbangers’ Ball as the top source for heavy metal videos to the benefit of White Zombie.

With the speed technology moves, especially in healthcare IT, we are seeing a new generation who implemented Electronic Medical Records systems, consultants, and security team members replace long-term senior leaders who have been around for years. These new leaders will make decisions that will cause long-term managers to react like Riki Rachtman did the first time he saw Thunderkiss ’65.

In my experience, this has caused many of the older leadership team members to react negatively.  Technology is changing around us and constantly evolving.  We cannot be in a world where HL7 is forever, HIPAA doesn’t apply internally in our opinions, and pretend that virtualization, mobility, and Kubernetes do not exist.  We need to accept that just because newer leaders did not take the same path that the previous ones did does not mean their decisions are less valid.

These negative reactions are driving people away from healthcare IT and giving the impression that it does not want to change.  We are denying ourselves the opportunities for beneficial transformation by not accepting the leaders that come from outside the systems already in place.  And yes, we are showing that we are as in touch with the modern world as Mr. Anderson.

As an outsider who endured years of dirty looks and insults from team members due to being a younger leader that came from outside the traditional career path, I have experienced this firsthand.  If it was not for the very forward-thinking CMIO and physician group I first worked with that helped guide me down this path and avoid these human obstacles, I probably would have left healthcare IT and gone back to defense contracting.

Secondly, we must look at ourselves, and not take ourselves too seriously.  One of the most understated parts of Beavis and Butt-Head was that it allowed MTV to make fun of itself and the overproduced videos that defined the early 90’s on that show.   One of the funniest anecdotes came from a member of the band Grim Reaper, whose videos were a frequent target of their insults, including “This Sucks”.  Their lead singer, Steve Grimmett, agreed with the spoofs and found them funny.  Other bands also agreed.

Being able to take that critical eye to ourselves and say “Yes, we sucked” is important.  We are never going to get anywhere if we do not learn from our mistakes.  We are not going to be able to keep things the way they were.  We must constantly change.  Part of that is being able to look at ourselves, say that we were not perfect, and then work to improve on it for our sake and our customers’.  We all can learn from Grim Reaper.  This is a core tenet of developing a Learning Organization that adapts to significant change.

The final and most important lesson that we can learn is to be where our customers are, when they are there.  Headbanger’s Ball was on Saturday nights, competing against Saturday Night Live during an era where they had Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, and Chris Farley.  Beavis and Butt-Head originally competed against game shows and reruns at 7:30. The kids who watched videos were more likely to be watching.  After a few controversies blamed on the show, they were moved to 11:00 PM, where they competed against the local news and reruns of Three’s Company.  Even then, they were more accessible than Headbanger’s Ball, and competed against much less attractive alternatives.

We cannot always expect our customers to be there on our schedules.  We need to adapt and be there on theirs.  This is an era of always-on healthcare IT.  We need to be there at the right time and present a more appealing alternative.  It is easier to compete against the local news than a funny Adam Sandler.

The 90’s were an era of change.  While most focus on the changeover from hard rock and metal to grunge spearheaded by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, there was also a change within heavy metal itself.  The main source of pre-Internet information on cool metal bands switched over from Headbanger’s Ball to Beavis and Butt-Head almost overnight.  This was because they adapted to a different crowd, were not afraid of self-criticism, and were more available against less appealing alternatives.

We can see the same analogue in Healthcare IT.  We need to be more accepting of incoming younger leaders who have taken a different path and adapt to their needs.  We also need to be able to look back and say “This Sucks.  Change It” to what we’ve done so we can improve in the future.  Finally, we need to be more accessible to our customers during times of significant change like now.  Compete against the local news five nights a week, not the late Chris Farley once a week.  You have a better chance of success.

About the author

Mitch Parker, CISO

Mitchell Parker, MBA, CISSP, is the CISO, at IU Health. Mitch has eleven years’ experience in this role, having established effective organization-wide programs at multiple organizations. He is responsible for providing policy and governance oversight and research, third-party vendor guidance, proactive vulnerability research and threat modeling services, payment card and financial systems security, and security research to IU Health and IU School of Medicine. In this role, Mitch collaborates across the organization and with multiple third parties to improve the people, processes, and technologies used to facilitate security and privacy for the benefit of IU Health’s patients and team members.

   

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