Gopi Natarajan
Co-Founder & CEO at Omega Healthcare
Gopi Natarajan is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Omega Healthcare Management Services. He has more than 30 years of experience in the US Healthcare Industry. Prior to Omega, he was heading a healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) company in the US. He has also worked with companies like Aetna, EDS and Healtheon/WebMD.
One thing that keeps you motivated
I must admit its the passion for what I do that keeps me motivated and going. Seeing the endless opportunities and a continuous drive to improve how we do things and get more efficient are motivating factors too.
One thing that is the biggest driving factor of your success
The discipline to work hard every day, not procrastinate and be relentless about what I want to achieve. People say one needs to wind down and get away from work, which is fine, but I believe when it comes to work, theres always that something about work that is resident in the back of your mind that should keep you always connected to work.
One thing that inspires you every day
I look at all the entrepreneurs and people that have built big companies and constantly wonder how they got to that scale. That totally inspires me to feel like if they can do it, so can I, and drives me to constantly push myself. When I started Omega Healthcare 18 years back, I had no idea how big we would become but looking back now at the success we have had inspires me to keep building on that success.
One thing that you (as a business leader) must tell everyone
There is no substitute for hard work – it will always pay off. And then there are things like never ever give up on your ideas, keep on experimenting, and dont be afraid of making mistakes or being wrong. The best success comes out of failures and learning from them.
One thing that you (as a business leader) must not tell anyone
I think its important to stay away from an authoritative leadership style and make people feel like doing something because I said so. Its very important to solicit feedback and make it a collaborative decision making process so everyone is on the same page and knows the direction.
One thing that future leaders must know
The concept change is the only constant is going to happen much faster going forward than in the past. It will be driven by multiple factors like technology, process efficiencies, AI, and other natural factors beyond our control. The pandemic that we are in the middle of now is a classic example. Very few leaders knew that it could happen, forced to make decisions on the fly and be reactionary, but even those that sort of anticipated it earlier on couldnt do much about it in terms of being ready and having a plan of attack.