Staying Grounded, but Visionary: Garth Jordan on Being AAHA’s New CEO

Interview by Ben Williams

IN AUGUST 2020, GARTH JORDAN, MBA, CSM, CSPO, was hired as AAHA’s new CEO. Jordan, a lifelong Coloradoan, has no formal veterinary training, but comes to the position from the association leadership side. Trends spoke with Jordan about his life and career path before AAHA, and about some of the plans he has for taking AAHA into the future.

Trends: How did you come into the association world?

Garth Jordan: In the late nineties, after the company I had been working for got sold, I gave my friend and former colleague a call to ask him what it was like working for a nonprofit, because I had been working in the for-profit world. It just so happened that his association was looking to start its first business development and marketing team, so it was a natural fit right away. That was the Medical Group Management Association.

So my first few years in associations were in human healthcare medical group practice management, not 100% dissimilar to what we’re talking about at AAHA with veterinarian-owned practices and animal health.

Little did I know that 20 years prior to my role at AAHA, I was cutting my teeth at a similar organization. In those first few years of association life, developing and marketing a business development program for an association was an awful lot of fun. I learned that associations can be a really interesting blend of nonprofit, mission, and meaning, but also entrepreneurial action. So you get kind of a nice blend of both worlds.

Trends:Coming from the association leadership background, what special skills do you bring to the table for a veterinary association?

GJ: I think certainly people could say not being a veterinarian is a disadvantage, but I’d probably flip it and say it’s an advantage for myself and for AAHA.

Running an association is a very specific type of profession, just like running a medical practice. Someone who understands the association industry, not just within veterinary associations but understands the whole industry—what the business model looks like, what successes look like, and how our business model needs to evolve—has a very different perspective.

I have worked for four different associations, so that diversity of experience across associations has led to a very unique perspective on what associations can accomplish, where we have opportunity to evolve and change to improve our business models, with the intent to improve the lives of our members. It’s this mindset and skill set that I bring to the table, that has been crafted and honed over about 20 years.

Trends: Had you heard of AAHA before coming to this job?

GJ: The short answer is no. But I can tell you that by sheer luck I’ve been taking my animals to accredited practices. And my current dog is a patient at an accredited practice. Once I learned about AAHA through the CEO interview process, the first thing I did was to check if the place I took my pet was an accredited practice. (It was.) And I guess a switch flipped in my head that said, “Why wouldn’t you?” It just makes good sense. You wouldn’t want to take your grandma to a nonaccredited hospital.

So the easy answer is no, but I’m certainly happy to know about it as a pet owner and obviously ecstatic to know about it as the CEO.

Trends: You’ve mentioned design thinking to the AAHA team. What is design thinking and how will it help shape your vision of AAHA’s future?

GJ: Design thinking is a process and a way of collecting information and distilling it to help a person or a company or anything in between create unique insights about what your target audience needs, wants, or desires. While the overall process is simple and somewhat prescriptive, there are a million different ways to implement it. It’s a very fluid process. The key, though, is empathy.

Understanding someone’s world from their perspective is the key to empathy. And when you do that, when you understand the world of your member, your client, your consumer, you take a very different approach than looking at a typical focus group that a marketer might do.

As an example, we’re going to use design thinking to evolve Connexity for 2021. We’re going to try to understand not just the satisfaction level of the members who went to the last one or two Connexities, but we’re going to talk with members who have never attended Connexity before, and with nonmembers, and really understand what they need from us in order to feel like they can dedicate time and effort to taking part in an outstanding education program. Our education program could look very different in the future due to trying to take that more empathetic point of view.

Trends: What is your number-one goal for AAHA as an organization?

GJ: We’re at 15% market penetration, and if you believe in AAHA’s mission, then I would suggest that we should be at 100% market penetration. We believe that the standards and guidelines and the work that we do helps elevate care across the board, and it’s kind of a rising tide that lifts all boats.

The way we grow is going to be very important, but that we grow is also going to be very important. Good growth can be designed. We were already designing what some of those opportunities look like, because our growth means it’s better for our industry, for our practices.

Trends:What changes do you see for AAHA members in the next year?

GJ: Well, I would say I’m in the middle of my “listening tour.” I’m listening to our staff, I’m going on a few ride-alongs for virtual accreditations, I’m very much in that story-collecting mode. So I can’t say specifically what members can see in the next 6–12 months, but what I can say is that I can already see an awful lot of opportunity for AAHA’s growth.

I would say that one thing people can expect is not an attitude of growth for the sake of growth but seeing AAHA look for new ways to grow our influence so that our industry and our practice of medicine is better across the board.

In human health, there are legal, regulatory, and other drivers behind accreditation, but veterinary medicine doesn’t have the same drivers. It’s more of a self-improvement mindset; I want to improve my business and the outcomes for pet owners and their pets.

It’s almost like AAHA accreditation is self-regulation rather than having state and local or federal governments come in and tell us as an industry how to operate. We’re taking care of ourselves. And when industries take care of themselves like that, I tend to think that they operate really, really well.

Trends:Where would you like the association to be in 5 years? 10 years?

GJ: I’m an idealistic leader, and so ideally I’d love to see every practice in the US and Canada, and even beyond, accredited. That way consumers, and pet parents and pets, whether they know it or not, will be getting a standard of care and a quality of care that they can count on regardless of where they go.

There are some practical improvements for our members that we will hopefully see. Things like being a more digitally contemporary and finessed organization. That would not just be for the sake of digital “shiny objects” but in order to help our members’ lives be simpler and easier.

That’s better for everybody, whether it’s a digital transformation, or AAHA’s support of the industry’s use of data, and using data to create knowledge and insights into how to be better practices and a better industry. We’re really not at the epicenter of data right now. And I think in 5–10 years it would be a very interesting opportunity for us to be either at, or much closer to, that epicenter.

There’s opportunity for growth, there’s opportunity for digital transformation and better efficiency, there’s opportunity for utilizing data, and even for influencing other countries and how they deliver care.

I’m not exactly sure where we will expand yet, but the strategic plan that we’ll be developing in the next six to eight months will definitely bring that focus to the table.

Trends:So there could be an expansion internationally?

GJ: When you think about it, we have, in a couple of capsules, a really significant intellectual property. That intellectual property is our standards and guidelines as content, but then also as the process of helping people become accredited. That’s a huge amount of intellectual property.

If I oversimplify it and say there are ways to license and/or franchise that intellectual property to other countries that have a sincere interest to improve the lives and health of pet owners and their pets, then we really should take advantage of our intellectual property and go past whatever physical or mental borders we have and do our best to help. I think we can do that without jeopardizing what we do within the US and Canada.

Trends:What do you want AAHA members to know about you?

GJ: As a leader, I go back to the word empathy. I really, truly try to lead with empathy. I’m certainly imperfect; I’m a self-admitted imperfectionist. I will never, ever believe that anything will be perfect, but I don’t strive to be perfect, I strive to learn.

So I do my best to do that every day, and my hope is that our staff, our ecosystem, our members, will embrace that attitude with me, to learn and improve every day. We will make some mistakes here and there, but for AAHA to continuously improve, that’s kind of par for the course; we’re going to have to take some risks.

Personally, I’ve been a pet owner my whole life and, as you pointed out earlier, without knowing what AAHA was. But now, having a very different perspective, as a pet owner, about what AAHA is and what it does, I have a very quick and intense appreciation for, and attachment to, AAHA. And it’s not because I’m the CEO; it’s because I’m a pet owner. And so while I’m not sitting here advocating for a big consumer marketing campaign—that’s not what I’m about—I do believe that we have a place in the world to improve the practice of veterinary care, and I hope the other 85% of practices out there will come along for the ride.

Trends: Now, the important question: What pets do you have?

GJ: We have one dog right now because he’s like having 10. His name is Jem, named after the brother in To Kill a Mockingbird who broke his arm protecting his sister. He’s a mix of a vizsla and a pit bull. He has three legs; he’s missing his front left leg, and his front right leg is fairly deformed, so he wears a prosthetic device.

He was abused and was a six-month-old puppy when we adopted him. He was a $75 adoption who quickly cost us $4,000–$5,000 in surgeries and devices to help him. He is now nine years old, and (I hope) relatively happy and healthy, and almost always by my side. I have more pictures of him on my phone than I do of my kids, which is really sad, but it’s true.

Trends: What are your interests and hobbies outside of work?

GJ: I like to garden because it gives me time to think. If anyone ever visits my house, there’s always something new that’s being planted or replaced. I do it all on my own because I like the labor. It keeps me grounded, literally and figuratively. And it aligns with a promise I made to my family and to our earth, to plant 100 trees in my lifetime. I’m at 81. I think the quote is that the person who plants a tree knowing that he or she will never enjoy the shade has started to understand the meaning of life. I take that to heart.

I absolutely love dirt, plants, insects, mulch, getting grimy under the fingernails, getting bitten by spiders when I’m cleaning out debris. I just love it. I don’t know what it is, but it just makes you feel part of something, and I like that.

 

Ben Williams is editor of Trends magazine.

 

Photo credits: Photos courtesy of Garth Jordan