The younger McGohan started at the Moraine firm in 1988 as an assistant. He worked his way into sales, where he rose to the No. 1 position in the firm’s sales force.
But all was not well. McGohan’s valued assistant approached him at one point 14 years ago and “called him on the carpet,” as he put it.
“She just kind of said, ‘Hey, it’s not working for me,’” McGohan remembered. “‘You’ve got values painted on the wall, and you’re not meeting those expectations. I’m going to look for another career.’”
That moment forced a reassessment for the founder’s son.
McGohan took a hard look at himself and found mentors who held him accountable. He calls it “the destructive hero” syndrome. He was doing well for his business — he was successful — but he was also leaving “body bags” behind him.
“I needed a big piece of humble pie,” he said.
McGohan’s assistant remains with him, and he continues to carry lessons from that time. Without that event, he believes, he would not be CEO today, a job he has had for four years.
We sat down with McGohan and talked about benefits — workforce benefits and the benefits of self-reflection. What follows is an edited, condensed transcript.
Q: McGohan Brabender is often called an “employee benefits” company. What does that mean? What do you do?
McGohan: "We help organizations decide what benefits package they want to offer. There are probably three different points in that: The insurance company, the financial impact and the coverage level for their employees. So we would help build those relationships, with the insurance company, to the employer. And then manage those relationships.
“And that’s who we were probably before health care reform. And we kind of thought, ‘Hey, we have to retool who we are going to be in the future.’ Otherwise, we might end up being a transaction or a commodity. So our big vision is we can make a big difference in risk mitigation — or looking at disease in the workforce.”
Q: That’s the wave of the future, isn’t it? Employers want to know about their employees’ health.
McGohan: "So our big passion is really a triple target. How do we lower health care costs, how do we create healthier employees and how do we provide sustainable results?
“It’s hard. It’s not easy. What we try to do is provoke people to think differently, and then reveal new opportunities to people. And encourage action. And then lastly, kind of providing a path for people. Because really, at the end of the day, if the inside of the person doesn’t want to change, that’s a hard thing to do.
“In our business, we can’t mandate change when we’re available. We have to wait for people and give them tools and resources. When they want to change, we’re available for solutions.”
Q: I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but will at least some elements of health care reform remain with us, no matter what happens in 2016?
McGohan: "I think without a doubt, doing nothing was equally as bad. That's probably where we are. I don't think so. There might be elements of it (reform) that might fall off the truck. Or might be added back on the truck.
“Health care is 20 percent of our economy. The thing I like to share with people is, we can start improving the system when we stop blaming people for this problem. At the end of the day, we blame our government. Because they’re an easy target. But we’re in this position because we’ve created this disease state. They did not. We did. Or we can blame the insurance industry or the pharmaceutical industry, a variety of other entities. But they didn’t create it either. We created it.
“When the public kind of wakes up and says, ‘Hey, we created this disease state, we can change it,’t that’s when we’ll really start to make a difference.”
Know someone who can handle Three Questions? We’re looking for behind-the-scenes-but-still fascinating Miami Valley residents with something to say. Send your suggestions to tom.gnau@coxinc.com.
About the Author
