David Cordani ’88 | Integrity and Leading through Crisis

Understand that leadership is a privilege you are given by those you have the opportunity to lead. It is not a given right because of hierarchical position or title. If you mistake that, I think you will be an ineffective or unsustainable leader.

I'm doing great. It's good to be with you today. And it's great to be back in Aggieland.

Sure. I was born and raised in Connecticut. A smaller manufacturing town. Back to its history. A lot of copper and brass manufacturing, and was born and raised, or raised in my grandparents' house, with my parents and my two brothers. So a little bit of a different environment. In a smaller Italian community and a lot of good learnings from that.

Especially with the blue collar upbringing, instilled in us from an early age was intense hard work. Always intense hard work. A service orientation. I didn't understand it at the time, but our family tried to give back in different ways. And lastly through my grandparents, they were really relentless relative to instilling, I didn't understand it at the time, but what I know now is the golden rule. Just treat people like you want to be treated. So I had a great upbringing. And I look back on it fondly. There's a lot of lessons learned in it.

Yeah, my father made a decision, for and with the family in 1981 to pick up and move here, which is a huge deal. Because we grew up on a street. I had great, great uncles and great aunts all on the street. It was my great grandmother's farm initially, and my dad decided to leave the police force and come down to Houston and go into business with his cousin for at least a three year commitment. They actually ran dry cleaners toward the tail end of the then oil boom. So it was a big deal for us. First time on an airplane. Whole new world and new environment. Giant high school, etc. So, my dad was pursuing a little bit of a different, broader life for his family at the time.

Yeah, it was shocking. Because in the environment I grew up in, we went I went to a Catholic school because the neighborhood was in same group of kids, every class. I was a freshman in the Catholic high school because that's the environment we were in, parochial high school. And then it was a culture shock in every way, shape or form, size, scale, diversity, environment, everything was different. But after the first couple months, I loved it. I just I loved it. I love the, in our neighborhood, people were there from all over the world because of the oil environment. The breadth of what was available down in greater Houston in terms of whether it was sports or other activities. First couple months though were a shock to the system.

I don't think there was a moment. I think if I reflect back on your important question, it's it was actually finding a couple of people you could connect with. So try to envision your first day high school. Knowing no one. In a giant high school, I went to Klein High School, thousands of people I knew no one. And so starting over, and once you made connections with a couple people and you found that, at its core, there's humanity. And once you make a connection, then it started building momentum. So I guess indirectly, it was that it was finding some commonality, some connectivity, some engagement that opened the door.

Well, first my folks were not that excited about it because we moved from Houston back to Connecticut. When I graduated high school, in fact, came home from my graduation, the house was empty because everything had been moved already. We were in transition, literally. And I applied to only two schools. Texas A&M and University of Connecticut. I qualified for in-state tuition for both because I was graduating from high school and going to, a fortunate I got into both. And so my parents were certain I was going to University of Connecticut. And when I said, I want to go to A&M, they were not happy, just because it's far from home. We're very family oriented. So back to why, the sense of service, the as I look back at the time and I appreciate it more as every year goes on, the value based culture. Something as simple as, you know, the grass outside the MSC, the symbolism of that. And the self-governance around that and the respect, that exists to me that was just so powerful at the time. And the more I learned about A&M, the more I was attracted to A&M. So when it was the choice of be 2000 miles from my family, or be at University of Connecticut, got a gig A&M, that service, the culture, the environment, the diversity, etc. had its draw and I'm so glad I made that decision.

I think there's two big foundational pieces there. One is, interesting. The, my brothers and I, three boys, my older brothers, three years older, my younger brother's, eight years younger. But my older brother and I, we actually didn't want to go to college, because we grew up in an environment that none of the folks we grew up with went to college, either went to work in the factories, went to be fireman, went to be police officers. And our our parents were insistent that we were going to college. They wanted us to have essentially a first generation college experience. So it was our folks forced number one, my mom and dad pushing us to pursue higher education, which was interesting as opposed to the kids pulling on it the other way. As relates to business, somewhere deep down in my roots, I've always had a drive for business. For example, I ran the oddly, the biggest paper route, when they existed in Waterbury, Connecticut, where I grew up. And I sublet to other kids delivering papers because there's too many papers for me to deliver on my own. But took a spread on the delivery of papers. I had my own car detailing... Getting the overrides. Yeah, very much so. I had my own car detailing business where I detailed cars at people's homes. Had my own house painting business. So I always had an entrepreneurialism, oriented. So to me, business was a natural attraction. In terms of an opportunity to pursue higher education and learn business more systemically versus organically from a small micro business owner. And then the more I leaned into the business opportunity here in the business school, I went from a single major to a double major. Enjoyed it very much. And then that propelled me after college to pursue, obviously, a series of business opportunities. But it was that entrepreneurial spirit, me, that correlated to pursuing business in higher education.

So I've been very fortunate in my work career in so many different ways. I've only worked for two employers. So to me, deep down inside there's a loyalty effect. And I was fortunate to work for Coopers & Lybrand when I got out of college. And then get into a leadership development program at Cigna. I think one of the most important, fiber components from Texas A&M that I like to live, breathe and sleep in my professional career is ensuring that you stay true to your center of integrity. In business, your word is everything. And in business especially, there's forces that push and pull at times. To be able to, push against the line. So if you're doing a business deal, if you're doing negotiations or otherwise to try to get more than, your fair share of the loaf of bread. And if you look somebody in the eyes and shake hands and you have an agreement on principle, it's an agreement on principle. And maybe I'll give you an example. We're looking to buy a company, that was HQ'd in Europe, headquartered in Europe. And it's a pretty competitive process to go after this one company, it was a unique, niche company. And, in the latter negotiations, I decided to fly overnight and meet the family representative of the business because it was a family-founded business. And I remember this is probably 15 years ago. His first name was Mark. Never forget it. We were in Brussels, and, I looked him in the eyes and told him. I said, if you give us the opportunity to own this business, I will ensure that the family's integrity is carried through. The name is respected, and all your colleagues are respected, and the brand promise that you gave to all your clients is there. We had breakfast. I left, we ended up winning the or earning the transaction at a price less than my primary competitor. So I went back and talked to Mark, I said, why did you let us win the deal? Even though my price was less than the other player. He leaned forward, looked me in the eyes. He goes, I believed you had integrity and you were going to fulfill your promise. That's powerful to me in business. And sometimes it's lost. So I think there's a fiber here relative to instilling those values that culminate in integrity. And integrity gets tested. Not when the tail winds are blowing. Everybody's a genius. When the tail winds are blowing, it's when the head wind blows. It's when the head wind blows it. It becomes a clarifying event.

Sure. So as I mentioned I had the good fortune of working for Coopers & Lybrand. And my client portfolio was largely financial services and health care. And I always loved financial services. I was always fascinated by complex finance. The healthcare caught me even more intensely because at the end of the day I believed that, healthcare at its core was trying to help people live better lives. One, I'll come back to that. Two, the healthcare ecosystem globally at that time, was pretty fractured and fragmented. And therefore there would be evolution. But to change creates opportunity. And lastly, change and opportunity creates learning. So it was as simple as that. It was the values of If I'm going to be in business, I want to do something that really matters. And see if I can help people. I want to be in an environment that is going to be fluid, dynamic and in some cases volatile, because it creates opportunity. So when I had the opportunity to go to Cigna in the leadership development program and I was recruited from outside Cigna, had a healthcare business it had a history back then of high integrity. Integrity mattered like, this was before Enron, before WorldCom. It had an integrity governance configuration. And ironically, it had a track record of taking bets on individuals early in career. And I am a net beneficiary of a lot of bets early in career because I had leap of scope opportunities well beyond what I on paper, deserve. But that healthcare component was always center to what I was pursuing.

Yeah, I think the, opportunity then if we go back in time, the global healthcare system benefits now like a lot of industries by significant innovation, we have life altering medications. You have life sustaining medications that exist today. We have, surgical procedures that are very minimally invasive to be able to help people down to putting a stent in a, in a vein that is lifesaving or otherwise. So the innovation that is taking place in terms of availability of supply, massively differentiated today. On the other side, if you break down, the healthcare equation, lifestyles and behaviors, have continued to erode over time. So when you look at the overall healthcare equation, if someone wants to live a vibrant, high vitality life, you need your health. You need your physical health, need your mental well-being, to be able to pursue anything. In today's day and age around the globe, we have actually a more sedentary lifestyle, less physically active. And our food consumption is less clean. Statistically, greater than 50% of all calories consumed in America are highly processed foods. So that's a change of innovation on the supply side. But you have a bit of erosion on the demand side. And so now it comes down to the promise of how do we harness technology in a different way to be much more personalized and precise with healthcare interventions, with health service interventions, etc. And that's a lot of what propels the Cigna group. We have the blessing of serving over 180 million. 180 million customer relationships around the world. And we're trying to help people maintain their health, lower the health risks, optimize their quality of life if they have a chronic disease, or get the best possible care coordination if they're dealing with an acute situation. And that's what we do. So it's harnessing those forces, of change. We have a headwind and a tailwind. Headwind is lifestyle aging population more chronic disease. Tailwind is how do you grab some of the innovations but be able to afford them and match them back to the right person? That's what we do every day at the Cigna group.

We believe fundamentally in choice. At its core. So you don't do to anyone you help individuals, so you meet people where they are and help people. So the biggest opportunity to me is first and foremost awareness. There is a lack of awareness in many ways relative to the multiplier implication of certain actions or lack of actions. Second then is much more targeted support. It doesn't mean stop. It may mean evolve slightly. It may mean evolve your diet slightly. Maybe evolve your physical activity slightly. It may be more medication compliant and we could take certain medications for example, in chronic disease. You could augment someone's lifestyle with a medication and help them lower their cholesterol for example. Therefore avoid a heart disease risk after moderating the, cholesterol levels. If the physical activity or diet modifies itself somewhat, you could titrate them off the medication. That's a highly personal event. That's a very personalized event. So awareness and support and care coordination. That's that's the future. And what makes it both exciting and complicated. It's one person at a time. All health care is personal and all health care is deeply local. Yeah, it's not a national solution. It's not a statewide solution. Those are architectures. It's bringing it in a highly personalized way and harnessing technology and other modalities to make it make those moments that matter really impactful for an individual. But in support of somebody's health journey, not telling them what to do in support of someone's health journey.

So for AI first, there are transformational opportunities. I think most people believe in our global society is really in the early innings still of harnessing some of the value. The spend is there. Without a doubt. If I oversimplify AI for business First, indisputably AI allows us to do what we do today in business, better, faster or more efficiently. And what that means is you could return more value to the customer, lower prices, better service experience. So that's bucket one. More than 50% of everything we're doing in our company. That's AI is in that category. Bucket two, which gets really exciting is more precision or more speed. For example, you could identify somebody in a pre-diabetic state, and in many cases help them from becoming diabetic. We could identify someone with a high cancer risk and in many ways help them avert the risk. You could identify and expect the mom that has a high probability of having a premature birth, identify it way earlier on, and help that individual and their care team increase the probability the mom goes full term. Why is all that relevant? The baby's healthier. The family's healthier. So speed and precision AI fuels that. And then the last category, there are net new developments where we could stand up solutions in two or three weeks. That would have taken me 10 months, because of the technological architecture underpinning. So better, faster, cheaper, just more value, speed and precision. Right. Everybody wants a more precise solution that is immediate. And then net new, net new categories of value.

Yeah. So first is from a leadership standpoint I think you need to be quite deliberate relative to your leadership philosophy. And most importantly, when I talk to folks about a leadership approach or philosophy, I think the most important aspect for any individual, it's got to be authentic, especially today, fabricating a leadership style because you think it's what's necessary for a moment is not sincere, it's not authentic and will not have a leverage effect. For me, there are some key building blocks of approach to leadership, and I'll highlight a few. One is communication. Most people think when you start with communication it's speaking presentation that level. Actually always flip it on its head. The most important part of communication for me is being awesome at active listening. And I think it's as every day takes on. It's more of a lost art, whether it's one on one with an individual, whether it's with a group or otherwise, really working hard to actively listen and understand what the root is behind a point of view. Second is creating an environment of inclusion. So diversity of perspective, experience and thought process creates an explosive positive effect. And I was just with a team last night congratulating them. And thanking them over a working dinner that are building a net new offering that doesn't exist in the marketplace right now. These individuals are handpicked. They are all from different backgrounds. They come together with commonality. So creating an inclusive environment. Next is seeking and embracing change. Sometimes senior leaders stop learning. Sometimes senior leaders think they have all the answers. Yeah, that's an impossibility in my philosophy in this environment. So relentlessness relative to seeking and embracing change. Last two components are consistency and courage. Your words and your actions need to line up. If you say something as a leader, but your actions and behavior we talked before about, especially when the headwinds blow, you'll lose. You'll lose the privilege of leading And having the courage in the more complex situations to make decisions. For example, when we were in the worst of Covid. We didn't know what was going to happen globally. We were the first company to come forward, and our industry did not want to. We made a public declaration that we will pay for all costs for Covid care, regardless of your coverage, if you're a customer of ours. We had no idea what it was going to cost. No idea. When we made that call, it was a Saturday morning. I remember I was pacing in my backyard. It wasn't a business case attached to that. That was guided by our mission and our value statement. That's having a dimension of courage. And the last piece we talked a little bit about is integrity. You got to maintain your integrity as you carry forward. So for me personally, that's a bit of a leadership framework that I keep grounding back on. To help govern and guide the Cigna Group, especially over a long period of time.