Healthcare Innovation Leadership: Lessons from Jon Warner, Executive Chairman at Citizen Health Strategies

Why Healthcare Innovation Leadership Matters Now

“Healthcare innovation leadership” isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the linchpin of progress and survival in a U.S. healthcare market facing complexity, cost crises, and technological transformation. As costs threaten to double to $10 trillion by 2035 and as silos persist across fifty states, the sector’s future depends on leaders who can drive practical, adaptive innovation across organizations of all sizes.

That’s why our recent Strategy of Health podcast with Jon Warner, MBA, PhD—Executive Chairman at Citizen Health Strategies and a veteran of three national health systems—is so timely. Warner’s experience is a rare, global lens: he’s led strategy and innovation in the UK, Australia, and for two decades in the U.S. “I’ve been in healthcare an awfully long time now since the mid-90s,” Warner told us, “having tons of fun trying to apply innovation and technology as best I can.” His take is equal parts candor, strategy, and actionable wisdom.

Below, we break down the episode’s core insights—how to lead through complexity, why innovation flourishes (or fails), and what practical steps executive leaders should take right now.

Why Healthcare? The ‘Happy Accident’ That Became a Mission

Why do leaders with choices—often from more lucrative, less stressful industries—choose healthcare?

Jon Warner answers candidly: “Careers are a happy accident… You look back and can find coherence, but believe me, there were lots of happy accidents in the middle.” Warner’s own journey began with a philosophy undergrad and a business-oriented PhD, then detoured through oil, corporate management consulting, and, ultimately, healthcare.

So, why did he stay?
“It’s very worthy work. I realized immediately that this mattered… lives are at stake and we had a lot to fix,” Warner reflected. “I love every aspect of it just because I think we can really lift people’s lives up.”

Key Takeaway:

• Healthcare attracts leaders not for the ease or wealth, but for purpose and impact.

• Many, like Warner, “fell in” through circumstance—but stayed because the mission outlasted the challenges.

How to Build a Career of Influence: Training, Thinking, and Breadth

What separates healthcare executives who thrive as advisors, board members, and innovators from those who plateau?

Warner credits two foundations:

1. World-Class Training:
   Early stints at global firms, including ExxonMobil, “taught you how to do things. I got to manage lots of different things—budget and multiple functions. So, I understood everything from strategy through to tactics through to operations in a very practical way.”

2. Philosophical and Contextual Thinking:
   “Philosophy is all about teaching people contextual thinking and critical thinking,” Warner explained. “I think that’s where all journeys start—solving problems or going from A to B… You first have to get the helicopter higher in the sky, see the terrain… then come up with tactical steps.”

What can aspiring leaders do?

• Seek breadth—not just vertical career progression.
  “If you’ve grown up in a clinical pathway, get outside clinical for a little bit—take something on in marketing, customer service, or product. In a startup, you’d do that—wear those hats on the same day or week.”

• Cultivate “the big picture view” and critical thinking, not just operational expertise.

Quote Highlight:
“People are looking for that big picture view more than diving into operational detail… There are lots of people who can do that.”

Is U.S. Healthcare Really the Worst? A Global Veteran’s Answer

Is U.S. healthcare truly the worst in the developed world, as the media often claims?

Warner is blunt: “It’s a mixed bag. It’s true in part and not true in part. The U.S. has got both the worst and the best in the world.”

Strengths:

• “Teaching hospitals are truly world class.”

• “Amazing technology… drug development and other areas have started here first.”

Weaknesses:

• “The most complex system in the world… and it’s costly.”

• “By 2035, cost could well be $10 trillion from a $4.9 trillion estimated base today. That is just unsustainable.”

Core Problem:

• “We’ve really got to work to de-complexify the whole system.”

• Much of the challenge stems from fragmentation: “A lot of it’s because of the way we play the reimbursement game, politics, and a state-based system.”

Summary:

• The U.S. system combines world-class innovation with cost and access crises.

• Complexity—not lack of ideas—is the biggest enemy.

Why Are We Innovative in Some Areas but Not Others?

How can the U.S. lead the world in healthcare technology and still lag on cost and outcomes?

Warner’s answer is succinct: “Massive fragmentation. We have silos everywhere.”

What Drives the Fragmentation?

• Historical and structural factors: “50 states makes it more complicated than the whole of Europe.”

• Innovation occurs in silos: “Innovation occurs, but it occurs within silos, and the problem with that is things don’t connect… whether you’re talking about the payer space, provider space, or pharma.”

Why does this matter?

• Fragmentation impedes scalable, system-wide progress.

• “It’s not that innovation’s lacking—it’s that we don’t often tackle the complexity and fragmentation.”

Implication:

• To scale innovation, leaders must confront system fragmentation, not just launch pilots.

Can Executive Leaders Really Drive Change—Or Is It All Politics?

Is there any room for non-political leaders—CEOs, boards, strategists—to drive meaningful change, or do we have to wait for government?

Warner is clear: “I’m a great believer in revolution from below.”

What Does That Mean?

• “You can innovate in pockets… prove that something worked and then scale it from there.”

• Waiting for policy or top-down change is a recipe for stagnation: “Politicians can’t touch [major reform] because there’s not a lot of benefit to them in the timeframe they have available.”

What works instead?

• Entrepreneurial Mindsets Within Organizations:
  “Large organizations can be more entrepreneurial… allow more latitude and flexibility for innovation to occur. They want to do that because they don’t want to be caught cold.”

• Empowerment of Startups and Intrapreneurs:
  “Startups with fresh thinking reimagine how things happen in microcosm. Some will fail, but those that succeed give us a clue into how scaling can take place.”

Top-down vs. bottom-up:

• “While we wait for incremental changes from the top, revolution from below is our best path forward.”

Building a Culture of Innovation: What Actually Works

What are the practical steps to encourage “revolution from below” in a large, risk-averse healthcare system?

Warner gets tactical: “It’s all about culture.”

Key Elements for an Innovative Culture:

• Listening:
  “You create listening—you create customer or patient focus.”

• Psychological Safety:
  “You’ve got a very safe environment in which new ideas can survive and thrive—not be shut down.”

• Flattened Hierarchies:
  “You break down hierarchies, you hire individuals who’ve got not only the right skill set but attitude.”

• Rewarding the Right Behaviors:
  “We very often anchor the very behaviors we don’t want because we don’t change the reward systems… We encourage short-term thinking in the way we compensate most CEOs.”

Best Practices:

• Frequent, visible conversations about culture and values.

• Incentivize experimentation, not just compliance or operational excellence.

• Stop rewarding defensive, status-quo thinking.

Quote Highlight:
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” (attributed to Peter Drucker, endorsed by Warner)

Why Don’t More Leaders Embrace Innovative Cultures?

If the evidence is so strong, why do even well-meaning leaders struggle to build genuinely innovative, psychologically safe workplaces?

Warner’s perspective: “Change is scary. All of us as human beings like to have a routine that’s relatively familiar… I think when you get promoted, you think, ‘Great, I’ve now got more power, more ability to choose what I do,’ and it may not be devolving some of that power to others.”

What stops progress?

• Fear of the unknown and personal discomfort.

• Incentive structures that favor the status quo.

• Failure to “disrupt ourselves first”—if leaders don’t model change, no one else will.

Practical Advice:

• “We have to disrupt ourselves, then we can disrupt the team, then the team can disrupt other teams… Before you know it, that gets rewarded.”

• “Make it okay to change yourself—because that’s where this all starts.”

How to Thrive on Change: Advice for Early and Mid-Careerists

Is being “good at change” a natural trait, or can it be learned?

Warner is emphatic: “I think I’ve worked to build it… I’ve lived in eight countries around the world. When you take yourself out of the familiarity of a country and transplant yourself, you have to adapt or die. I’ve had plenty of practice at that.”

Recommendations for emerging leaders:

• “Seek out opportunities that make you uncomfortable—in different geographies, industries, or functions.”

• “People are too set in their ways… If there’s a job overseas or even a short-term posting, go take it.”

• Pursue functional breadth, not just depth. “It makes for a much better leader.”

In sum:
Adaptability is not innate—it’s forged through deliberate exposure to discomfort and new experiences.

AI and the Future of Healthcare: Inevitable Disruption or Overhyped Hype?

Will AI and next-gen technologies finally force change in stubborn healthcare institutions?

Warner’s verdict is nuanced:
“Technology comes along every 20 or 25 years that is incredibly disruptive. AI is going to go a lot further and quicker… but by the same token, there are lots of things that we get scared about that perhaps we shouldn’t be.”

Key Points:

• AI is “just a tool”—like electricity in the late 1800s.

• Lasting change depends on process re-engineering:
  “What process do we have? What do we want to automate? What do we want to keep as human interface?”

• Disruption isn’t automatic:
  “To get there, we have to think about the process, how all of those processes in a very complex part of healthcare work… It’s not the technology in and of itself.”

Actionable summary:

• Get excited about tech, but focus on deep process and organizational change.

• Don’t wait for AI to “fix” healthcare—lead the human side of transformation.

The One Action for Executives: Start with Mindset

What’s the first, most realistic step an executive can take to drive innovation today?

Warner’s closing wisdom:
“I’m a psychologist… In the end, it’s about mindset. Carol Dweck’s work says we want to open our mind to every possibility—work on ourselves before we work on anything else.”

• Challenge fixed mindsets, even (especially) in yourself.

• Cultivate a culture where “striving is part of the game” and where questioning the status quo is rewarded, not penalized.

• “Innovation comes about because of the striving—it’s about not giving up, saying there’s got to be a way over, under, around, or to completely rethink it.”

Takeaway: Innovation Is the Product of Mindset, Culture, and Courage

Healthcare innovation leadership in the U.S. isn’t about waiting for permission or magic technology. It’s about individuals—and organizations—embracing discomfort, broadening experience, dismantling silos, and relentlessly pursuing better ways forward. As Jon Warner, MBA, PhD, Executive Chairman at Citizen Health Strategies, urges: “There’s nothing that isn’t possible—it’s just not possible yet.” If you want your organization to thrive in the next decade, start by changing the way you think, lead, and reward those who dare to challenge what’s comfortable.