In this episode of The Leader Show Lou Carter talks with Dr. Susan Dorfman, president and CEO of CMI Media Group, named one of America’s Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2023. The episode delves into the company’s empathetic, innovative approach to healthcare marketing and its dedication to fostering talent, continuous learning, and mentorship. Susan highlights managing a widespread team with trust, technology, and communication, alongside a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, emphasizing a supportive and inclusive work culture.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to have you join us on a new episode of The Leader Show with Lou Carter. We are joined by Dr. Susan Dorfman, the president and CEO of CMI Media Group, which is ranked 25th on 2023 America’s Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces.
CMI Media Group, a WPP company, is a full-service global media agency focused solely on health, wellness, and pharmaceutical marketing. The company’s core offerings include audience strategy, planning, development, and insights; data and analytics; buying and investment; and direct response and customer experience.
As the leading media resource for the world’s top healthcare companies, CMI Media Group brings together leading technology, data, and talent to deliver seamless capabilities for clients. With that said, let’s delve into the insights that Susan shares in this episode.
Firstly, Lou and Susan discuss the core functions and values of CMI Media Group, highlighting its role as the world’s leading healthcare media agency.
The latter highlights CMI Media Group’s commitment to providing information and knowledge as the first step to health, aiming to deliver hope through its services. She articulates the culture of service within the company, which is guided by empathy, agility, and a human touch.
Susan shares her personal philosophy of respect, honor, and doing the right thing, influenced by her upbringing and focused on prioritizing people in all aspects of the business. She strongly believes that this approach is integral to the company’s interactions with both employees and clients. It underpins the belief in treating the company as a family and striving for the greater good, especially in the context of health care.
Moving on, Susan highlights CMI Media Group’s approach to talent cultivation and the importance of fostering a community and family-like atmosphere within healthcare organizations.
She emphasizes the significance of respect and co-creation in creating a Most Loved Workplace and how these values are central to its model. Susan then delves into the specifics of the company’s university learning services team, highlighting the importance of hiring individuals with a desire to learn and engage.
She shares her personal journey at CMI Media Group, starting with no background in media but possessing a strong desire to learn, which was supported by the company’s culture of coaching and development. According to Susan, this emphasis on investing in employees’ learning and development is key to the CMI Media Group’s success. It enables the company to attract and develop talent who are committed to doing good and excelling in their roles.
Next, Susan discusses the importance of mentorship and personal growth within CMI Media Group, highlighting the value of adapting learning and coaching methods to individual needs and experiences. She shares how her own learning experience, facilitated by a colleague named Kate, served as a model for expanding mentoring and development opportunities across the company.
Susan mentions “relatability” as a key element in effective learning and mentorship. She notes that understanding and connecting with experiences can make new challenges less intimidating and more approachable, even if they’re not directly similar.
The speakers then discuss the dynamics of mentorship, including the importance of being open to different perspectives and the value of feedback that challenges one’s initial viewpoints.
Susan stresses that learning and growth are continuous processes that occur at all career levels and in various directions—top-down, side-to-side, and bottom-up. She advocates for a culture where everyone is open to learning from each other, reflecting a holistic approach to development and mentorship within the organization.
Lou picks a question from Scott Baxt, who inquires about Susan’s leadership approach to managing a rapidly expanding company with a geographically dispersed workforce. Susan responds by highlighting the importance of trust, accessibility, open communication, and technology.
CMI Media Group operates across multiple locations, both in the US and globally, with a flexible approach that combines remote work with on-premise opportunities for collaboration. Trust and access are emphasized as critical factors for fostering a positive work environment, supported by a strong emphasis on communication and the use of technology to facilitate accessibility.
Susan mentions the role of the learning services group as a vital support system for employees, ensuring that they feel comfortable asking questions and accessing the resources they need. She also shares her commitment to speaking with every employee, aiming to fully understand their experiences and needs, although she acknowledges the challenge of reaching everyone.
The conversation also touches on the importance of listening, adjusting based on feedback, and fostering a culture where titles do not dictate the level of openness in communication. It encourages feedback and ensures that necessary changes are made to improve the workplace. Accountability is highlighted as a mutual responsibility, emphasizing the value of diverse perspectives in finding better solutions.
Lastly, the speakers affirm the significance of these practices in making CMI Media Group a “Most Loved Workplace,” underlining the effort and commitment required to maintain such a culture.
Susan also discusses the importance of prioritizing people in regard to the DE&I initiatives at CMI Media Group. She explains that these priorities naturally emerged from her fundamental belief in putting people first. She argues that genuinely caring about individuals’ well-being, inclusiveness, and feelings makes everything else fall into place, distinguishing between authentic care and superficial checkbox approaches.
Susan credits the company’s status as a Most Loved Workplace to its foundation of caring and inclusivity, set by its active chairman and carried forward by her leadership.
On that note, Lou highlights how CMI Media Group’s emphasis on a people-first philosophy aligns with the sentiments and emotions valued by Most Loved Workplace, particularly in relation to LGBTQ+ and diversity. Susan’s role as the executive sponsor for Plus+, the LGBTQ ERG, and Shalom, the Jewish ERG, exemplifies her commitment to this philosophy.
Towards the end, Susan delves deeper into the impact of embracing diversity and making cultural additions at CMI Media Group.
She explains that moving beyond traditional hiring criteria, such as the requirement for a four-year degree, has allowed them to tap into a broader and more diverse talent pool. It includes integrating tools such as the AI across the workforce rather than limiting them to a select few, demonstrating the company’s commitment to adaptability and growth.
Lou reflects on the personal significance of cultural experiences and how they enrich workplace diversity and understanding. Susan emphasizes her support for all communities and highlights the importance of a people-centered approach that transcends DE&I initiatives, focusing instead on genuinely supporting and uplifting individuals.
Furthermore, Susan shares her background as a refugee and the opportunity given to her family, underscoring her commitment to paying it forward by helping others thrive and recognizing their unique contributions. She asserts that CMI Media Group doesn’t just advocate for these values in theory but actively practices them, creating a workplace environment based on love, respect, and prioritizing people above all.
Thank you for your time!
Lou Carter : Dr. Susan Dorfman is president and CEO of CMI Media Group, A WPP Agency, the leading strategic media planning agency serving the life sciences industry. CMI Media Group is ranked number 25 on 2023 America's Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces. She's responsible for the growth and future direction of the agency with a strategic focus on integrated HCP consumer data backed integrations on a global scale.
Mentorship and DE&I is a priority for Susan. As part of this, she is the executive sponsor of Plus+, the LGBTQ ERG and for Shalom, the Jewish ERG for CMI Media Group and Compas. She's a Doctor of Health Administration, co-author on the definitive guide to EHR, and an industry speaker with strong connections to the healthcare and life sciences industry.
It's my pleasure to speak today with Dr. Susan Dorfman about the awesome culture she's created at CMI Media Group. Dr. Susan Dorfman, what a pleasure to have you on today and learn more about your work at CMI Media Group and how you've created this awesome Most Loved Workplace, so many amazing initiatives and personal one-on-ones that you've created in this emotionally connected culture. Dr. Susan Doran, welcome to The Leader Show.
Susan Dorfman : Oh, thank you. So happy to be here.
LC : Well, it's great to see you. And I want to start just, let's talk about CMI Media Group. Tell us about CMI Media Group, where you serve, what you do so the audience can really get to know you.
SD : Yeah, thank you. So CMI Media Group is the world's leading healthcare media agency. So the way that we look at it is information, knowledge around health is really the first step to health. And what we enable, what we provide is the ability for people to learn more about various aspects of health, various treatments that are available to them. So the way that we look at it is we deliver the first step in health and we deliver hope.
LC : That's outstanding. Delivering hope and delivering information and health. That's wonderful. And I want to get into really not just who you serve but who you are and how that kind of culture of service to the healthcare industry is pervasive inside of your company. I love what you said, we lead with empathy and agility, hearts and minds. We want our impact to be guided by data and strategy, but also the human touch.
Tell me more about that human touch that you talk about. I know you meet with everyone during the year, at least once a year, and you encourage people, the authentic selves, it shows up in the DNI initiatives as well as so many other places.
So why don't we dive into it? Tell me what your philosophy is and how that is pervasive within different programs in your culture.
SD : Sure. So I mean my philosophy is I think probably the most simple thing and that is respect, honor and do the right thing. So growing up, my mother, I think, always taught me don't focus on being right, focus on doing. And that has always been my philosophy as a human, as a leader, just as a person. And that's a philosophy along with we are family and all for good that we bring to CMI Media Group Compas to every employee interaction, to every client interaction.
We're in the people business. And when you're in the people business, you have to put people first. And when you serve people you have to put them first. And in health, that's the core of everything that we do.
LC : No doubt. And I've been working with healthcare clinics for a long time now and it really is that community, it's a family, it's a community. And because it encompasses the community outside and also the community within, if we don't feel that community sense, then we can't give it externally and we must mirror that of the world that we want to create. And it seems that you're really doing that from we learned here being a Most Loved Workplace, putting respect first, which is at the center of our model respect feeling and giving respect is at the center and also the co-creation aspects.
Let's go into how you do that. Your university learning services team sounds phenomenal. Tell me how this came about, how you see it as integral to your strategy. Tell me more about it.
SD : So when we look for individuals, when we look to bring people into our agency, I think the first thing that we look at is for people's desire to want to do so we can build capability. What you can't necessarily always build that comes from other people is their desire to want to learn, to want to engage, to want to do.
So for us, being able to bring out the best in people is not a light switch that you turn on and off. It's the first step. So that is a cultivation of effort that is investment in our people, that is investment in their learning and their knowledge streams and proactive and reactive responsiveness to where they want to go. So it's a continuous effort. When I first started at CMI Media Group, I was not a media person. I came from big tech from data.
I came with a desire and was given a chance to lead a division of CMI media group. And my first experience with the person who is now leading our training and development was this incredible approach to coaching and teaching. So, she, Kate is the person that I'm referencing, had given me the gift of knowledge of explaining to me, of coaching me, of developing me on the media world. And that was something so incredibly unique to CMI Media group where people were brought in for their capability and then educated, taught and developed for the business that we're in. It was remarkable. I hadn't seen that before.
So expanding that, bringing that to all of the people that come to us has been a core of our success because it allows us to bring in people with a desire to do good, do great work, be in the business that we're in, and then based on their areas of need for development, that's where we invest in them.
LC : It's so great that you took your experience and enabled it for your company. I'm sure people say, how do I get more Dr. Susan Dorfman in my life during? And this question comes up of CEOs, they say, I want more mentorship, I want to understand more Dr. Dorfman, from you. And I see that a lot in companies and what you said was, let's package this coaching, mentoring up that you succeeded with equate what did well with and give it to others, paying it forward.
So this university model sounds amazing with it. And you mentioned Kate, right? And how that happened, the relationship itself, what was it about that relationship that seemed to really guide you and inspire you and help you succeed? What were some of the magic sauce elements of that?
SD : The magic sauce. So first of all, there are many different types of individuals and how they like to learn. I like to learn and to be taught other people like to learn but don't necessarily like to be taught. I think, for me, it was understanding individual approaches to where people's gaps are and making you feel like you're an ad to the process. And that was monumental. I think that was a really life-changing game-changing experience. When you are part of that, to be able to say, I want to do more of that, I want to be able to bring in people that have the skills and the experience that may not be from the industry that we're in.
They may not be in healthcare, they may not be in exactly the kind of media activity that we're doing, but be able to have what we in place to allow them to learn, to allow them to practice, to quickly get up to skill and allow them to relate. Because in life we do so many things or have so many things that we experience that we can relate to. And being able to put it in a way that allows us to relate, to understand instead of making it so complex. But that relatability, I think that is the key.
LC : The relatability factor. And to see in others what you see in yourself and vice versa. That intimacy into me. I see you, right?
SD : Yeah. And experience to be able to relate to an experience, even though you have not personally done something, but you may have experienced it in a different way. So that experience being able, you may not have done it, but you may have experienced it gives you the perspective of, oh wait a second. Yes, I understand it. And once you understand it’s not scary anymore. It's not different anymore. Now you're leaning in.
LC : I find that in mentors too, at first there's sort of a natural reaction to say, no, just agree with me. And then they give that other perspective of be calm, be the older self saying this is what's possible here that you may not have seen. It's always beautiful to see those possibilities about the advice and feed forward. People can give me, it sounds like you've gotten the same thing where people are really giving that perspective that you may not have seen and being open to it.
SD : Yeah. And no matter how far advanced your career goes, no matter how many years of experience you personally have, how many years you're leading, you don't stop learning and you don't stop growing. And I think that it is important to recognize that you can learn from anyone and you should. And that's a big factor as well, because mentorship is not just about top down, it is also side to side, bottom up. It's every single way.
LC : Absolutely. So we learn from staff, we learn from managers, directors throughout different divisions and departments getting this whole data perspective. When we lose track of that, we don't know what's coming around corners after a while. Right. So it's good to know. I'd rather know than not know. What's very cool is that you've decided to put into place mentorship and DE&I, right, as a priority for you. How did you come about making mentorship and DE&I priority?
SD : People are a priority for me. And when you put people first, I think everything else falls into place. When you are human and when you care, you make people a priority. You make inclusiveness a priority. You genuinely care about the welfare, the mind, the feelings, all of that, all of individuals, I think everything else falls into play. If you do it as a or a check mark, that shows up and it shows up for people.
And I am very honored to be leading an agency that is considered to be the most loved. And this isn't just about me, this isn't just about Susan. This is, we have an active chairman who started our agency with that kind of spirit, with that kind of belief. I am lucky and blessed to be able to take that from him and carry it forward and bring my own personality to the mix. And I'm very blessed and lucky to have a leadership team who are genuinely good people. And when you have good people and you put people first, I think that's what happens.
LC : Absolutely. The fact that you chose to put people first and everything else falls into place is the perfect way of thinking about everything. And I think about this too, and for Most Loved Workplace, we have a sentiment and emotion for LGBTQ+ as well as for diversity. So we're asking people, well, how do you feel about it being heard being included for these specific certifications and population, if you will, subsets because people do identify differently.
And that's part of what I was impressed at is that you are the executive sponsor Plus+ the LGBTQ ERG and Shalom, the Jewish ERG, wow, this is awesome that you're doing this and how amazing that you do this for your put people first and everything will fall into place philosophy. So I was really curious. It sounds like that's what brought it about and we always look for that, right? The sentiment and emotion and what's behind it. How do people feel about it? That's what love is all about at Most Loved Workplace.
SD : Yeah. Yeah. I'm incredibly honored by our teams and our ERGs who come to me and ask me to be an executive sponsor. I'd probably be an executive sponsor for every single one of them and I would make time for all of them. I have to say that I want to make sure, and that is my responsibility, to make sure that people can come to work being themselves. Sometimes it's their best self, sometimes it's their worst self. But I want them to know that they can be themselves, that we are family. We are there for one another. There should be no concern, no fear.
They are with people who love them. And we'll love them for who they are and understand them not from necessarily the belief of what somebody's living with, but from their perspective. And I would say that that is so important to me to allow people to come into work and be themselves and know that they are loved, that they are heard, that they are appreciated, that they are respected. And I think I'm just going to say heard one more time. That is really important.
LC : It's huge. And that's the center of what we all do here is hearing and doing something about it. And that's really what are we doing? How are we building skill like you do in your university? How are we addressing these comments, as you said, mentorship across, up and down and different departments. It's important.
And that's really a good question here and Scott Baxt brought it up, which is great. He said, could you share your leadership perspective on managing a fast growing company with a distributed workforce, particularly one with many employees in the early stages of their careers, sharing alignment and collaboration.
SD : So distributed workforce. So we have an agency that is multi-location across the US and also globally. We are an agency that still allows to preserve people working from home, but also enabling people to come together at business moments that are necessary to do work together for our clients. So we have an on-premise opportunity and environments where we definitely encourage people to come together, allow them to be there when they want to be.
But we do have that very trust enabled organization. And I think for most people that distributed workforce for early stage career opportunities, trust is a really important factor. Trust and access. So trust is, that's a hard thing for a lot of people to do. But that is, it's a give and take and of 360 across multiple teams to be able to do that, communication is important. Access is important.
In this case, technology is important. So when you pretend like I'm going to turn around and ask someone a question, what ways can we enable that? What ways can we enable accessibility? That's also where our learning services group comes in. Really, really, I would say handy, but becomes really an important lifeline to everything that we do.
Similar to tech support. You may need someone's support, especially if you're coming in and you're learning and you're early career and you're stepping in, no question is a dumb question, no question is a bad question. How do we enable you that whenever you need to ask, you're asking that you have central places to go to.
And I will say it's also learning and pivoting because you don't always get it right, but what you can do is listen and adjust, which is also the reason why I make it a priority to talk to every single person in our agency regardless of title on a mission to actually get to a hundred percent. I have not been able to do that, but I do try and my heart is there. My heart is always in the right place to be able to talk to them, to see how they're doing, to understand what we could do better to answer any questions for them and ensure that my number ones, their number ones, their number ones that we enable that environment.
And if we don't get it right, if we hear about it, we can change it. If we don't hear about it, we'll never know. And it's like wearing a bullseye on your back. So we encourage open communication. We also don't lead by title, but lead by people. So put my title aside. Hey, I really want to know. And I think for the most part, people are really open with what they share. I hope that answers the question.
LC : I believe it does, especially in a distributed environment because you have so many points of data and like you said, that arrow on your back, you don't want that happening. You want to hear and then do something about the data and understand where it's coming from.
And it's the right thing to do, as you said, to know and to go one-on-one and understand where their sentiment is, where their emotion is, and then really identify what needs to happen to improve. And that's what makes you a Most Loved Workplace, is doing those very things and holding true to it.
SD : And getting back to people. So making sure that there are follow ups, that they hold me accountable as much as I hold others accountable. So it's the accountability factor, the trust and accountability of all angles, its perspectives. It's being able to share perhaps another perspective to get people to look at things in a different way and then for us to be able to come to a better solution.
So, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. You have to be committed. It's not an easy thing, but boy, it is worth it.
LC : Absolutely worth it. And part of the job, isn't it? Right, the title or not title. That's part of the job of human relationships, of deepening our understanding of people and keeping a robust culture that serves customers the way that they deserve, which you said about follow-ups and accountability, that's exactly what it's about. And finding those opportunities to check in and then also follow up on that.
And again, consistent follow up research shows that consistent follow up periodic is much more effective, highly effective in terms of perception of change. And if you only do it once, it actually has less of a perceived chain. So how interesting, isn't it? So it sounds like that must be what you're doing is consistent change periodic getting in front of people more than once.
SD : Yeah. And that's the other thing is being okay with change or a lot of people, change is hard and change is not easy. It requires us to look at things differently, do things differently, different than what we've done in the past. I know Kerry asked a really great question, how has our focus on building a diverse workforce helped our business outcomes? I am the product of a diverse workforce.
So, I don't know that 15 years ago, any other agency, media agency would have said, Hey Susan, we're going to bring you in as the CEO, I came from a very different diverse background. Our then CEO, current chairman, Stan Woodland, and I engaged in a vision for the future and recognizing the future and not being afraid to charter new paths that have never been done before is incredible to building the kind of diversity that you need, diversity of mind, diversity of so many different things to be able to build ahead.
So as we look to the future, as we start to see shifts in dynamics and environments, it is on us as leaders to be able to say, we will not benefit only from cultural fits. We will benefit specifically from the ability to add those cultural ads. And when you do it with the right spirit, when you do it, when it's not a checkbox, but you really do it, gosh, does it have the most amazing business outcomes? You are constantly adding. You are not looking for the same.
You're looking for different perspectives, for different beliefs, for different cultural opportunities to bring forward. And those things can only make you better and stronger. People are not numbers. That's the other thing that I want to say. It's not about a number, it's not about data. It is about people. It is about better. It is about future. It is about making sure that we're building that organization, that agency, that spirit, those solutions, the anticipation ahead of time and investing in all of those things.
LC : Let's talk about that. I like your perspective on constantly adding, right? And it's not just a number, it's about a perspective. And I could sense this kind of knowledge that kind of rose up when you said it, and I'd love to look at that a little more deeply, is that you said, it's wonderful, it's beautiful when it happens, right? So what is the It? Tell me more about what that, by the way, she said thank you. So, tell me about that. What happens specifically when you make those cultural ads?
SD : Yeah, so I mean there's so many, there's so, there's so many ads in the equation from the Its of, I'll give you one example. Historically you will see in the past many companies saying you need to have a four year degree in this or the other thing to be able to qualify for a job. Our chief people officer or myself and our leadership, we had a discussion around where are we going, what do we need? What are the types of skills we want to cultivate? And where should those skills, where can those skills come from? And you start to look at some of the factors and you're like, we can change those factors. We can get a much more robust pipeline of incredible talent if we remove specific unnecessary criteria for those things.
It could be things, you know, like AI, artificial intelligence, and two years ago, three years ago, recognizing how that type of skillset would need to be embedded in every single employee that we have as opposed to the few who were doing it. So thinking about from a cultural ad perspective or a, I'll say community ad perspective, what do we need to have in place to enable that? How do we need to shift our people? What do we need to bring to them to give them that opportunity to grow, develop, and learn? So many different things, so many different things. There's not one answer. And if you have only one answer, then you're looking at the challenge in the wrong way.
LC : And I think what we're saying is that people have different experiences with cultural ads and deep experiences that they can bring to the table a perspective that really is inclusive of that particular community and that deepens our awareness of those communities that we serve.
SD : Yes, very much so.
LC : It's hard to get to that too. I'm from a Jewish background. I grew up in a Jewish family. There's a deep experience that I had from that, and that experience helps me relate and understand and connect on a deeper level that I've learned really from my experience. And that's why when I was reading about the Jewish ERG, I thought what a great thing to have to help that community connect on a deep level about our experiences with others as well and sharing it in an open and inclusive manner.
SD : Yeah, I mean, I have to say that I am there for the Jewish community. I'm there for the Muslim community, I am there for the Christian community, Catholic community. I am there for our people. And I think when you are a people centered person, when you really don't look at DE&I as an initiative, but when you look at people first and you put people first and you enable and you create and you pull out your hand and you pull people in and you help them rise, I think that's the meaning of life.
I myself came to the US as a refugee with my parents. Someone gave my parents a chance and an opportunity and I feel it is on me to raise my hand up, pull my hand out, or put my hand down and help bring people up, help people thrive, uncover the individualness of each person who wants it, right? You have to want it as well and be there. And if I can enable that in an organization, if I can demonstrate that and my team can demonstrate that, and we mean that we will be in a remarkable place. And I feel we have. And I feel that we don't just talk the talk our people walk the walk.
LC : Absolutely. And putting people first, no matter who they are, whether Jewish or Muslim, Christian, it's everyone. It's people.
SD : It's people, it's people. And when you genuinely love your family and when you are in that kind of place, that's the environment you're going to create.
LC : The love resonates. If you have it, you give it, it's all over. It allows everybody, it goes everywhere. And you've enabled that. Dr. Susan Dorfman here today on The Leader Show, it's been wonderful having you with us. What great philosophies and implementation of philosophies with love at the center and respect at the center, putting people first, that's the right thing to do. As you had mentioned before, a wonderful workplace. So great to have you on with us today.
SD : Thank you so much. Honored to be here.
