Leadership Spotlight John deLorimier Executive Vice President Customer Growth and Experience
“Go do good things.” Those are the words by which John deLorimier lives, and it certainly shows.
John is our Executive Vice President, Customer Growth & Experience. He started at Concentra in 2005 as Vice President of Marketing where he oversaw several key initiatives and product launches, and in 2010, John began managing Concentra’s sales organizations as well. Basically, he’s the go-to guy if you want to talk strategy.
As for that motto of his, you could call John a bit of a Stoic, at least in the traditional sense. When asked which historical figure he most identified with, John replied, “Marcus Aurelius.” An emperor, warrior, and renowned Stoic philosopher, Aurelius’ philosophy can, in part, be summed up with a quote from his Meditations: “If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
Now you see from where John gets his inspiration, right?
It’s appropriate that John identifies with a philosopher as he never stops working to improve his own knowledge and principles. Although John has worked tirelessly on improving Concentra’s quality of customer service, he believes there is still much to learn. According to him, you should never stop learning how to best engage and connect with customers, and great customer service starts with engaging the customer in the way that they want to engage, not how we offer or tell them to engage.
When you work with John, you know that you aren’t just another number in the system or cog in the machine. He strives to understand and empathize with every person he meets in order to improve how our system works for our patients overall. An open and curious mind, John emphasizes, is key to providing customers with the best possible service.
John thrives on this kind of problem-solving, which thankfully, is an essential element of his job (not to mention why he makes such a valuable addition to the Concentra team). He describes his average day as “thinking strategically and implementing tactically.” Although he notes that his work environment is complex (tell us about it!), he also relishes in the opportunity to implement new ideas to solve emerging problems.
Working in a complex and fast-paced industry has its challenges, as John admits. He stresses that this work involves a constant dedication to learning (although we don’t think he’d have it any other way). Failure is not an end. It is just one part of the journey. Continually testing, trying, and failing on multiple ideas every day, week, and month is part of the process. You need to be willing to trying new things every day, little by little until you succeed.
John tells us that he can’t point to just one huge challenge or moment of failure in his career because the entire journey has been a series of steps—some forward, some backward, but all leading to where he is today (which we’d say, isn’t a bad place to be).
On the topic of success, John is also a passionate advocate of the idea that his sense of personal accomplishment stems from helping others to succeed. Ask anyone who has worked with John, and they will tell you that he is one of the first to offer help to colleagues, especially new faces, in developing as professionals and grow into their roles within the team.
In the next five years, John hopes to continue growing Concentra’s onsite locations. When he’s not here working hard to meet that goal, you can usually find John on the golf course (and maybe meditating on the principles of Stoic philosophy).