A health informatician, management consultant, past public servant, and now at Emerson Health, Alicia Cook’s focus is on making the health system better one bit at a time.
“I founded Emerson Health in 2016 because I wanted to be very "hands-on" and have a full span of influence on shaping and delivering complex health system improvement projects. In the past, I'd been a client of consulting firms, and from those experiences had formed a very clear idea of what outcomes health managers wanted, and also how external consultants can best work with health organisations on projects. I absolutely love the intellectual stimulation and personal satisfaction of creating well-considered, pragmatic solutions to the big challenges in health care,” according to Alicia.
She shares more of herself, her passion and her experiences in her entrepreneurial journey.
Q: Can you give a brief background about you, your family and your business?
Emerson Health is the business I founded in 2016 - it is a boutique management consultancy that solves the complex challenges facing the health and human services sector. In terms of family, I am a sole parent, and profession-wise, I am a health informatician and my experience spans from primary care to the hospital and health service level through to the Commonwealth, both as a client and vendor.
Q: What inspired you to be an entrepreneur?
I think I always knew that I was a bit of a black sheep in the broader world of work and human endeavour. I moved around a lot of roles in my early career. Once I'd settled in, I was very quickly looking for the next challenge! Now that I'm older and wiser, I recognise that navigating the emotional and intellectual challenges of business makes me more fulfilled in a whole human sense.
Ultimately, the trigger to be a 'proper' entrepreneur — where I went all in after a few half-hearted efforts — was after the experience of pregnancy and birth in really challenging circumstances. After surviving that, using every tool I had in my kit bag, I realised I would struggle to be able to parent in any decent way if I had to commute and work an 8-hour day in an office (pre-COVID, of course!). Plus, I had the kernel of an idea that I could build the type of organisation I really wanted to work for as a consultant, and be able to make a social impact in a way that was good for everyone...and, now here we are!
Q: What do you enjoy most about being an entrepreneur?
Right now, I am really loving my latest career evolution where I move from being a subject matter expert consultant into a management and leadership function. Now my role is to build more sustainability into the business in a broader sense and empower the team to grow into new roles. It's stretching me in ways I didn't know I could stretch!
Q: What are the biggest challenges you have faced as an entrepreneur?
Unquestionably, since I started Emerson Health, last year was the most challenging year by far I have faced. I had a lot of family stuff going on and couldn't give the same amount of time or attention to the business and I still feel incredibly guilty and saddened by it. The team did an incredible job of stepping up and keeping things rolling. So, sometimes our most prickly moments are actually the things that really bring on the change that is needed to move things forward.
Q: Why did you decide to join EO?
I'd known about EO for some time and a coach I worked with overseas had been encouraging me to look into it. At the time, I didn't meet the criteria for membership and I didn't know about the Accelerator program, but it was very much on my radar. As I would drive between Launceston and Hobart for work meetings, I would listen to a podcast called Built to Sell and sift out these little grains of insight on what I could do to make Emerson Health a better business. So, many of the people who were interviewed 2there were EO members and shared lots of really valuable gems and I suppose that was a very effective subliminal message! I had no intention of selling Emerson Health but quickly came to realise that the same things that make a business valuable for sale are the things that make your business better if you intend to keep it.
Ultimately, I'd had a challenging year as you heard earlier, and in the same way, I knew I was an entrepreneur at heart, I also knew that EO would almost certainly have the answers I needed to move forward. I knew I needed to meet people like me who would understand what I was going through and find the mentors I desperately needed! Of course, that all happened probably within 4 weeks of joining and already the business is evolving in the way that I was hoping for.
Q: Can you share a golden nugget that you learned from your experience or from another entrepreneur or mentor in the past?
Oh gosh, there are so many nuggets to be shared. I'll go with one from a conversation with my colleague from this morning. We know we have a lot of work ahead of us, and we also feel a bit overwhelmed if we look at the full scope of what needs to happen... so we're just going to do the one next thing we need to do — keep putting one foot in front of the other. Or, as I say to my clients — eat that elephant, one bite at a time!