Erik Angus

Encourage the Heart

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou

In my first consulting job following graduation I had the opportunity to work with a committed and values-based team focused on changing the lives of thousands of fraternity men across the country. A cornerstone concept to our onboarding program and a belief I still hold today, is the idea that relationships equal results; all success and happiness in life is rooted in the relationships that you have around you. From your family to your friends and even your coworkers, relationships are the bedrock. Think about the best sports teams today, they may have a few great players, but the team is great because they work together, trust each other, and have meaningful relationships that drive results every day.

Road Warrior Life in a Pandemic

My current professional role as a learning consultant with Cerner Corporation has me in a 100% travel role where I have the opportunity to interact with thousands of different people across the world — and pull in some great Hilton Honors, Delta Airlines, and AVIS travel points. However, my travel schedule suddenly stopped in March along with most of the world as we all began to grapple with what it means to travel and work in a pandemic.

On June 1, my organization made the decision that the work that my team accomplished was so important to the success of our clients and hospital staff that it was time to hit the road again as a Road Warrior. Since June, I have embraced traveling during a pandemic for 17 of the last 21 weeks. During this time I have had the chance to work with a variety of healthcare systems from the great food in Knoxville, TN, to the rolling hills of Morgantown and Huntington, WV, all the way to the foothills of upstate New York in Valhalla, NY.

A Pandemic Driven Book Club

In early March, life turned upside down for myself and countless people around the world as the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep the country at an unprecedented rate and the majority of the world turned to a new lifestyle of working from home. While navigating this transition, I found myself with more time than I ever imagined due to eliminating my office commute and other traditional social activities in the evenings that weren’t possible in this new climate.

As I began embracing this new lifestyle, I constantly talked about these new changes with some of my closest friends. We spent a lot of time talking about how to spend all of this extra time. While we discussed recommitting to fitness, trying new recipes, and even developing new skills and hobbies, our final resolution was to begin a book club. As a group of men, we were going to tackle a list of books that we had always wanted to read. At the end of March, we committed to reading a book specifically as a group at least every three weeks and having a “team call” at least once a week to talk about the approximately 100 pages that we have read. Our only rules were that the book couldn’t have been already read by someone in the group and it should be timely.

My virtual keynote speech

Not everyday do I get the opportunity to articulate my thoughts and beliefs to a group of rising and current leaders. I had just this opportunity on the evening of October 3rd, when I was asked to deliver a keynote speech for the SigEp Balanced Man Scholarship Banquet for the SigEp chapter at Wright State University.

This wasn’t a normal banquet, as the whole program was delivered virtually a la COVID-19. From the mingling amongst guests, to the recognition of scholarship winners, and the delivery of speeches. In my role, I was given a prompt of “share advice around personal and professional development”, and you have 10 minutes. There are a lot of ways that I could have taken this, but I immediately knew that I had to share one of my favorite concepts, Big Hairy Audacious Goals by Jim Collins (BHAGs). I will recap what the speech consisted of later on, but first I have to share my three biggest takeaways about effectively delivering a keynote speech via Zoom.

Life Lessons From My Wedding

“People are weird. When we find someone with weirdness that is compatible with ours, we team up and call it love.” – Dr. Suess

On September 5th, 2020, I married my best friend. While our wedding day was nothing like what we had imagined when I proposed in the fall of 2019, we could not have asked for a more spectacular day. As I reflect on being a married man for the last month, I continue to think about three foundational concepts in my personal and professional life that manifested themselves throughout the entire wedding.

Population Health & Information Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the need to overhaul how the world connects people with their healthcare now more than ever before. This summer I had the opportunity to take a course on Population Health. My final project challenged me to create my own online module about population health and information technology.

Take a crash course in population health, information technology, why this matters today, and what the future holds.

Information Technology & Business Strategy

Across a span of seven weeks I completed an MBA class on information technology and business strategy that involved the reading of nearly 1,000 pages of business theory and case studies, analyzing these ideas with a six-person team, and creating of over 100 pages of reflection. My final case study involved reflecting on the three business articles that were the most compelling to me and then applying them across the mattress industry.

Top Three Articles

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Global Health + Technology Adoption

Global health is the practice of sharing ideas across borders in the pursuit of collaborating to improve health and health equity across the world. This field can oftentimes be confused with international health and public health, which is why it is important to analyze technologies and innovations with the five global health indicators to understand if a technology or innovation truly makes an impact in global health.

Continue reading “Global Health + Technology Adoption”

Health Systems & mHealth

In the spring of 2020, I began my graduate school education by taking a course titled Global Health Technology & Innovation. In this course I have had the opportunity to learn about the basics of how global health operates, the ethical, political, and financial implications in healthcare, and the life changing technologies and innovations implemented. A few of these life changing innovations are Oral Rehydration Therapy to treat dehydration, omniprocessors to improve water and sanitation conditions, or even solar technology to make cooking and lighting more affordable and accessible. Below I will describe how health systems operate, how they can be strengthened in underdeveloped communities, and the impact that Mobile Health (mHealth) technology can make in strengthening health systems. Continue reading “Health Systems & mHealth”

Looking Forward to Year 26

With my 25th year in the rearview mirror, I look toward year 26 with hope and excitement, another year set for challenge and opportunity. As I outline my goals for the year, I’ll be referencing back to my goal framework where I explore creating values, setting Big Hairy Audacious Goals, utilizing goal evolution, and building a team. Continue reading “Looking Forward to Year 26”