Tired of being “just a lawyer”? If you’re thinking about moving from the legal department into a business role, this episode is for you. Michelle Johnson-Tidjani served for years as General Counsel of Henry Ford Health and before that at top healthcare companies such as The Cleveland Clinic and Tenet Healthcare. With a true passion for learning the business and supporting company objectives, Michelle accumulated legal adjacent functions throughout her career, overseeing legal, compliance, risk, insurance, cyber, and government relations. She took that passion and experience and is leading administrative operations for one of the nation’s largest health systems, CommonSpirit Health. Her bottom line advice–get close to the business, care about people, raise your hand to do more, and above all, bet on yourself.

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C-Suite Series: How to Move from The Legal Department into the Business: Michelle Johnson-Tidjani CAO, CommonSpirit Health

This is Michelle Johnson Tidjani. I serve as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer for Common Spirit Health. We are a faith-based ministry of 175,000 employees across 24 states. A fun fact about me is that in the sixth grade, I started studying French. About fifteen years later, I married a gentleman who spoke French, and now, we speak French together with lots of our friends. French is officially my second language.

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On this episode, I am thrilled to introduce a friend of mine whom we’ve run in the same circles for a while, and now she is at a high-flying level, Michelle Johnson Tidjani, who is the Chief Administrative Officer of Common Spirit Health. I wanted to talk a little bit about Common Spirit, but for those of you who may not know, it is a juggernaut, giant health system with 142 hospitals in 21 states and all kinds of big statistics, but she’s very down to Earth and I’m excited to have a conversation with her about her transition. Michelle, how are you? 

Stacy, I’m fantastic. Thanks for asking. I’m excited both that you’re doing this and that we have an opportunity to talk.

Yes, I’m thrilled you were able to work me in. We know each other through legal circles, through the health law bar essentially. I’ve watched you, we’ve spoken at different conferences together and I know your grounding is from the legal department and from being a general counsel. You don’t just go from being a lawyer into running administrative functions for a giant company. I know you accumulated some other functions throughout your career, and I wonder if we could just talk about a little bit of that progression from purely legal and then how it accretes to other things?

I would just say that throughout the vast majority of my career, particularly early on. You start in private practice and then I went in-house, and in a lot of my early in-house roles, it was strictly legal in-law departments. One of the things that I realized during my time at the Cleveland Clinic, I was primarily hired to support the managed care function.

I found that the best way to support that function was to go and sit with that function so that I understood a bit more about the business. While I was a lawyer supporting it from a legal perspective, sitting and playing and participating in business conversations, I found it critical to helping me better articulate the work I needed to do as a lawyer. Understanding the context around that work was critical.

I had a little bit of exposure then, but still straight legal function. When I left the clinic and went to tenant healthcare, it was a very similar situation. I was still supporting managed care and doing a lot of healthcare reform, building clinically integrated networks and healthcare organizations activities. Even in that space, while I was working in the legal function, I actively negotiated with the team on health plan agreements and navigated disputes, but in partnership with the team. What I began to realize was my job is much easier as a lawyer if I understand the business problem we’re trying to solve.

There’s the legal and analysis that undergirds our approach. Understanding the business in a way that I could speak to it with some fluency with our business partners has always been core to getting to a meaningful resolution. Not just closing the thing, not just signing the deal, but things that stick and allow us to pivot going forward or move forward from a particular space at the end of the project.

That’s universal. First of all, that resonates with me being a general counsel and being in the legal department for such a long time, that’s a uniform theme that getting to know the business, getting to understand the business problems and not just bringing the standard legal tools to bear. It’s a differentiator and it’s like, I would say, table stakes for a successful in-house role. You took that a little further.

When I got to Henry Ford, the role was for a general counsel, but there was an expectation that I also lead some functions that were pretty typical of general counsel and there were some that were not typical. When I took the role, I had responsibility for compliance and the cyber team had been broken out from the IT function and then I had insurance.

I had what I would characterize as a lot of the risk functions, but as I was there over those seven years, my responsibilities expanded. In ways that I thought made sense in terms of both my professional interests and in terms of meeting the needs of the organization as well. I began to take on additional responsibility with respect to government affairs, some of our DEI work, our Innovations Institute, and our international work.

I just want to say that the portfolio is blooming. I do think it is somewhat not out of the ordinary that when you’re in a GC role, the risk functions are appended to that. You’re already seeing it. You’re already like, “Risk management, that keeps me from having litigation,” and then the insurance is just an adjacent after that. When you’re talking about innovation, that gets into a businessy thing. I just want to understand a little bit more about what you would do when they said, “Michelle is doing a great job with our insurance program. Let’s have her lead innovation.”

A lot of times, when there is a transition in organizations, executives come, executives go, leaders will begin to reevaluate, and CEOs will begin to reevaluate where certain functions are placed. I think it’s important for you to advocate for yourself. You do need to articulate, “I want to do more. I think I can do more.”

It's important for you to advocate for yourself. You need to articulate that you want to do more and that you have the capacity to do more. Share on X

I think it is the alignment with both a desire to do more than what was in my current portfolio and the opportunity because of the organization because there were some transitions. These responsibilities became available and there was a thought that this was well aligned with both my interest and my professional interest. I was convinced I could make it work with a broader team and we did. We did make it work.

Let me just say, I think maybe some of the role expansion was both articulating a desire to do it and a capacity to do it. You need to have a leader who’s going to trust you to take those functions on. I often don’t feel like you should build things around people, but I do think that if it meets the needs of the organization and you have a person with the capacity to take it on and champion it, then I love the opportunity to do so. You do have to communicate that. I think one of the things, even your best CEOs aren’t mind readers. You do have to say, “This is something that I want to take on and when the opportunity presents itself, be willing to step in.”

I was interviewing Dana Lira, who’s a senior vice president at Warner Brothers. She said the same thing. To see opportunities and then raise your hand because she described it as no one’s going to put a tiara on your head. I think it can be a little scary, though, for folks, especially again, as you move out of the stuff that you know. The safety net. Compliance and risk, that’s in our wheelhouse. As you get further out in the circle and into the business, for me, I just perceive a little bit of, “Do I know how to do that?” I don’t know about you, but the lawyers, when you get together, “Those business people, I can’t believe.” It’s always easy to poke holes, but it’s hard to execute on your own.

I think there is a little bit of if I’m going to bet on anybody, I got to be willing to bet on me. You see a function. I’ve supported innovations, institutes have supported internationally, so I knew a little bit of something about the business from a legal perspective but also from a business perspective. I think if you have bright talent in places and understand what they’re trying to achieve, my job is championing the work. My job is to learn as much as I can about what I need to do to support that work. I’m going to learn in the process a little bit more about the business than maybe I would have supporting them externally. Your job as a leader of teams is not to go in and do that job.

The job is to inspire, encourage, motivate, and intervene where appropriate when you’ve got good leaders. The key is having good leaders. Now, it’s problematic to take on a function, and it’s a mess. You have to maybe do some things from a leadership perspective. You may not have the right leader in place, but I was fortunate. I think in much of what I had the opportunity to take on, I had established leaders.

I understood some things about the business. I continued to learn more about the business, but my challenge, the real opportunity, was removing political hurdles, supporting them from a budget standpoint, helping them develop professionally, and helping point out things that they may not see because you’re in it every day.

As a leader, you’re standing back from it just a little bit, asking the questions and pushing in areas where you see opportunity for teams. Sure, there’s risk in not having sat in that space for 20 or 30 years as I have the practice of law, but the real opportunity is to shine a different lens on something than what might have already been experienced relative to that function and that’s exciting to me.

I would bet, too, especially if they were functions you were already supporting or your team was supporting from the legal standpoint. What I like about the GC roles, you see across the organization. You can make connections. I would bet as you were, and just to reassure folks that are reading this to have the confidence to step into those roles, the fact that you do see the waterfront of the organization positions you to be successful in leading some of those functions.

General Counsel Role

I love that you make that point. Oftentimes I would tell people, “I was drawn to the practice of law because I love people and I love opportunities or problems.” When you are sitting in the GC space, you’re right, I don’t just support a division, especially as a general counsel. You support the entirety of the enterprise. There’s no part of the enterprise that I don’t have a little line of sight into. For better or for worse, I’ve got some line of sight.

I think you are uniquely positioned because of that because you oftentimes don’t have the same biases that people come from other divisions. It’s just a team that I’m supporting. This team may be doing something strategic, this team may be doing something operational, this team may be doing something clinical, but you do have a line of sight into the people, the personality, and the challenges that they’re facing.

As a leader of that function, when you step out of just being the lawyer to that function, but when you step into spaces where you’re leading, supporting, and advocating for it from a business perspective, I think it’s easier. I love being a lawyer. I love the legal training that I’ve had because I think it gives such clarity into the business. I’ve been in healthcare. I think it’s provided a ton of insight.

I just want to say that I want to emphasize this should give folks confidence about trying new things because I think that we, especially women, can tell ourselves, “I have expertise in this. I have to have gotten a degree. I have to have a certificate in this.” As you’re saying, it’s not the subject matter expertise. It’s the leadership. It’s connecting with the people and, as you said, clearing barriers. I want to talk about the team aspect. I have led legal and then also legal adjacents.

When I first took on a legal adjacent, I had some learning about my communication style. Having been in legal for a long time, we work with a lot of lawyers. We’re very bottom line, we’re very direct, and the training, especially from a law firm, is not to be a curious listener. It’s to wag the finger and get the work done. I wanted to ask if you had to or had any learnings around relating to business people differently as you moved into business roles.

I would tell you that I view being able to be direct as the best act of human kindness one can offer. I say that because I think you need to say what you mean and mean what you said. I do think that there are people who can receive things in different ways. We all have different personalities. You want to be thoughtful about your directness, but I do think you need to be abundantly clear.

I think that’s one thing from a business perspective that oftentimes we’re fearful of. Simply just telling the truth, being honest, saying what it is, and being willing to stand behind it. I would just say to you, Stacy, that is one thing that I carried over. The thing that I think I had to do maybe a little bit differently was appreciate that everybody didn’t have the full context sometimes, particularly if, from a business perspective, there were some risks inherent in it.

I will certainly call in legal if there is a specific legal issue, but I do think being able to talk about the intersection between what we’re trying to drive and other elements of the organization, whether it’s legal, whether it’s compliance, whether it’s security, whether it’s operations, whether it’s finance, because you have sat in a place where you can look across the organization, I think I was better positioned to ensure that there were multidisciplinary approaches to things.

I didn’t have to think about it in the legal space because it’s lawyers talking to other lawyers, it’s compliance people talking to other compliance people, police talking to other. It was a similar conversation, but from a business perspective, I think it’s the opportunity to look at things more holistically.

I think that that builds from the earlier part of our conversation that, if I’m hearing you correctly, you were taking that enterprise view and then making sure that the people on your teams were aware of all the different things going on. I think maybe only the CEO may have that same vantage point as the general counsel in terms of the broad impact. That’s cool. I’m just really in awe of you in this larger role, leading an organization with 175,000 employees. I asked when we talked before about how you develop your leadership skills and how you interact with people. Not all lawyers have a ton of EQ.

I have had some incredible leaders in my life and I think I’ve always been on a learning journey. You pick up things along the way. You have people that you have the opportunity to partner with either you partner with them on work or you see them leading, and you think, “That’s a great quality.” Also, at the same time, you see and meet people and you go, “I will never do that.”

I think I’ve tried to take the best of what I’ve learned along the way and use that. I’m an extrovert by nature. I find great enjoyment and value in connecting with people like that’s easy for me to do. In that connection, I always look for opportunities. I always look for opportunities to learn. As you think about that from a leadership perspective, you think about being on this continuous journey of improvement.

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I do a lot of reading. I like to read what other leaders are saying about leadership. I like to hear and appreciate interviews and conversations about leadership challenges and challenges to leading during complicated situations. A lot of it is reading and watching how others lead and I try to make the best of that.

I think it can look from afar that, though people in leadership just have it all figured out. Even being the general counsel, I want people to know that I work on it a lot. I read a lot, I listen to podcasts, I d talk to people like you. You need to invest in your career to develop this.

There are no shortcuts. I think you’re right, Stacy. There are no shortcuts. I think all too often, people assume good subject matter experts and great leaders. The reality is I don’t think leadership is intuitive. I do think it’s important. It is incumbent upon leaders to read. I think it’s incumbent upon us to learn from one another. I think it’s incumbent upon us to learn from our mistakes because we all make them.

I don’t worry about making a mistake. I worry about making the mistake again. How do you learn from it and how do you move forward? I think it’s also how do you hire to support? How do you partner with others? No leader of anything leads by him or herself. When you’re part of an executive team, what you’re looking for from a development perspective and also from stepping into a new role, as this was a new role for me, are people that I can work with and align with and collaborate with.

That’s just everything for me. I’m a collaborator by nature. I am always looking for ways to partner in that and learn from others. There are going to be some things that as you join teams, you see other people do and you go, “That’s amazing. That’s a nice way to do it. That’s a nice approach.” There are other things you think, “Maybe that’s not the way I would do it,” but there’s learning in all of that. I think just having an openness to that is pretty critical.

Let’s talk a little bit about your current role because what I think is of particular interest to me, and maybe to the audience, is that you’re not leading legal anymore. I want to dig into that, but let’s just go into your span of control, as they say.

It’s interesting. In this role, I partner with the CEO and lead the office of the CEO, and then I have several other administrative functions that I’m responsible for. These other activities have to happen across the organization. Perhaps the most significant one at this moment is our operating model. Our enterprise is one that was a combination between CHI and Dignity.

When those two organizations came together, we needed to realize certain synergies, which would enable us to be better as a new company and that new company to be a common spirit. Our operating model is the chassis for that new enterprise. I spent a good portion of my time having conversations with leaders about what that new structure is going to look like, and how we’ll make decisions in that new structure. What kind of behaviors do we exhibit in that new structure, and what that’s going to mean to run the company going forward?

In addition to that, there are teams that I am supporting with our CEO. Philanthropy and government affairs and compliance and DEI, and then I’ve security and what we call our consulting services, our administrative services, and we have a partnership with more of our School of Medicine. We have our Lloyd Dean Institute. I have responsibility for the national budget.

It’s interesting. You know what I love about this role is the opportunity to be in lots of different spaces, but all in support of what I believe to be an incredible ministry looking to have an impact in healthcare. It’s one that I believe can be incredibly impactful simply because of the stretch of humanity that we have the pleasure of serving. It’s just been a fantastic journey, to lean in ways that I haven’t been able to before and utilize some of the skills I developed lawyering around people and dealing with complexity.

I bet that there’s no shortage of complexity and the post combination and, like I said, the breadth of the organization. One of the thoughts I wanted to explore is that you don’t seem to have this, I wanted to understand that I’ve had folks talk to me about other business roles and other places, and I have been very reluctant to do anything that leaves my legal role. It feels like I know this. This is my space. I’ve got some competency here. When we talked before, I got the impression that you’re not having any FOMO about not being a GC anymore. Let’s talk about leaving that behind.

Leaving As The General Counsel

I would say I will always be a lawyer and I will always be in legal spaces. You can’t spend nearly 30 years in a space and decide one day, “I will never look back at that.” The things that I will always stay connected to from a legal perspective are the things that were interesting to me from a future of health perspective, directionally what’s happening with the industry, directionally what things are people embarking upon or not. What are the challenges facing the industry and what role can I play in navigating that?

A deal’s a deal. Transactions are transactions and compliance is compliance. The regulatory environment is always changing. It is what it is. I’ll never lose those skills because I’ll have opportunities to weigh in concerning our compliance team. I’ll touch on that a little bit. Government relations. I have parts of my role that touch that, but I think about it from a long-term perspective. As I think about what drew me to practicing law, it was just the opportunity to have an impact in spaces. I looked for complexity. I looked for hard issues that I could partner with the business to solve.

In so many ways, it’s not different than that because I am a licensed professional, I do feel a need to continue to maintain my competency in those spaces. I will do that, but I’m not experiencing FOMO. I will tell you, I still will go to our national conferences to the extent that I can fit them in. I am looking to spend a little more time and spaces and places that aren’t as heavily lawyer, just so that I can continue to broaden my worldview.

I can’t wait to check in with you and see how it’s going. I’m interested, too, you’re peers with the general counsel. What’s that like? Do you feel like you’re having to side eye?

No. One of the things that was important to me when I came in was respect and appreciation for the role. Having sat in that seat, I understand what it means to sit in that seat. I had some thoughts about what I might experience if somebody like me came into an organization having done my job. I have absolute respect for lawyers in the role that we play in institutions. My job desire has never been to backdoor our CEO with here’s how I might do it. It’s not even who I am. We had a good conversation around, “If you ever see me doing that, you need to say something.” Not seem to have but if you ever feel like I’m in your space, you need to say something.

That’s a great approach. Back to your comment about being direct. I’m sure that person appreciated that.

I find no pleasure in playing hide the ball and sometimes people do that consciously. I think sometimes people do it unconsciously as well. The work that we’re trying to lead across this enterprise is way too important to navigate personality professional complexities that simply don’t need to exist. He’s a great general counsel. I’m comforted by that.

He probably appreciated that. I want to backtrack just a little to your transition from being a deputy general counsel at Cleveland Clinic and then moving to Henry Ford. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about making that leap or that transition or how to do it. I wonder, since I’ve got somebody who has done that, was that a deliberate move? Did you like always want to be in the big chair?

I did. I think once I came into the house, I began to see things that I thought, “I’d like to do it this way. If I did this, I would maybe do it this way.” I fortunately have had a lot of great general councils to learn from, but I thought from a long-game perspective that I wanted the opportunity to lead in that way. When the opportunity came along to join Henry Ford, I thought, “This was it. This is my chance.”

I had been thinking about it a bit, not I hadn’t been actively in the market, if you will, but certainly open to opportunity. When it came along, I was a little bit nervous in terms of, “Am I ready?” I realized that I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve touched most areas of law and I think I’m ready. There’s always some risk with the transition. Whether it’s from one role to another, one organization to the next, there’s always some risk because maybe it won’t be as good as the last, but I don’t know.

I think throughout your career, you got to take some bets to realize professional goals. You just got to take some bets and part of that bet is on me. It was probably one of the smoothest transitions I’ve ever had because I went from the Cleveland Clinic to a welcoming team at Henry Ford. My colleagues, whom I still stay in touch with at the Cleveland Clinic, were super supportive and the team at Henry Ford was very welcoming. It made it a nice transition, but you’re learning. You’re learning as you step into these roles along the way.

I’m curious about what was surprising or that you weren’t expecting when you became general counsel.

There was no one else to turn to. I think sometimes leadership can be a little bit lonely, especially as a general counsel, because there are issues of confidentiality, there’s a sensitivity of some of the things that you deal with, there’s a complexity of some of those issues, and you just don’t have the opportunity to have the conversations that maybe somebody in another department could have because you’re trying to protect the interests of the organization or the confidentialities that confidential information may have been shared with you.

It can be a little bit of a lonely road. I did not expect that and then there was also there are issues that you can’t just run down and talk to your team about. There are other lawyers, obviously, but some of those things aren’t appropriate for those conversations either. I think that the best thing that I learned in that space was how important it was to be in a relationship with other similarly situated professionals. That created a sense of comfort and helped me to develop greater confidence around some of my decision-making because at that point I felt like you weren’t alone when you did.

Thank you for saying that because, first of all, I would say another thing that’s come out in these conversations with GCs is the fact that it is a lonely role.  I feel like it’s different from other C-suite executives because, as you’re saying, the things you’re dealing with, the information you have have such an impact.

You have to be cautious and careful with what you do about it and how you manage the information. Also, you don’t have a peer who knows what. Thank you for reminding the reader that having a, I call it a coffee clutch of people that do what you do. You don’t have to give them all the specifics, but you can have a sounding board or even just a little therapy circle.

I think I felt that as a general counsel. I think it’s true, but one of the things that I’ve learned is that the experience of loneliness is not unique to general counsel. It’s just that we have the confidentiality piece with it, but CFOs could be pretty lonely, too, partly because you are ultimately responsible for the financials of the organization.

While other people play a role in that, you’re signing off on those reports in a way that nobody else in the organization is. When it comes to bound ratings, when it comes to credit ratings, when it comes to filing our financials quarterly, I would imagine that that’s pretty lonely, too, or for a COO, the weight of the operation sits on your shoulder.

There are lots of presidents across the enterprise, but ultimately, in some of those COO roles, those presidents report to you. The weight for driving revenue and operational excellence sits on your shoulders. In some ways, I would imagine that could be a little bit lonely. What I always felt was that the GC role was for sure the loneliest. What I see at this moment is that anytime you’re in a leadership role in an organization, there is no one beyond the CEO to whom you report.

There can be an element of loneliness partly because of the weightiness of your role and responsibility, but also because of some of these roles, especially your CFO, there’s nobody else who’s the CFO. You often bring that skillset, that talent, that expertise to the role, beyond that role. There’s a weightiness with that. There’s also that with other roles, the head of HR. That’s tricky. What do you do when you have a problem?

It is tricky. I don’t want to be like, “We walked uphill both ways in the snow to school.” I don’t want to be playing the smallest violin, but another thing I think is different is your ethical obligations. It’s confidential, but is this something I need to go to the board with. I’ve had some tough situations where I don’t know where to go with this. I don’t know if I have somebody to talk to about.

You know you have to go someplace. Yes, that is fundamental. Hopefully, we’re going to have too many opportunities like that. That is the most alienating experience. That is the loneliest moment when you realize you have to do a thing and no one else has an obligation to do this thing other than you. By the way, you can’t talk to anybody else about it.

That is for sure. I do think the ethical responsibility is always advocating in the best interest of the organization. Your other executives have that as a responsibility, but not in the same way. I always say you have a responsibility. I have a license. I have to do this. Yes, I would agree with you 100%. Lawyers are uniquely positioned in that way.

All right, we had it the hardest. Thank you. I say we have to have really broad shoulders and a tough stomach for the role. I want to talk about the silver lining is that it is a role to have a lot of impact. For people who are thinking about whether they want to do it or not, I think it’s a good bet to make your own.

I would not change it for the world. I love my role. I love what I was able to do in that role and I learned so much. If you’re thinking about it, just do it. Just do it. I think all too often, we spend time talking ourselves out of things that we simply should be doing.

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I like that. Big cheerleader. Got our pom poms high. This is a little bit off of the theme of the conversation, but I recall that you posted once about pro bono work that your inner team did at Henry Ford. I started doing some pro bono work myself. I think it’s something that in-house lawyers and GCs don’t feel like we’re super busy, especially if we’re in a nonprofit. I’m already doing stuff to help the world, but it’s been so rewarding for me and I do think there’s an opportunity for in-house departments to explore pro bono. I wondered if you could just talk about that experience. I’m going to encourage others to explore this with their teams.

Doing Pro Bono Work

I appreciate the question, Stacy. I think it’s a responsibility. I think being able to gift of practicing law with that gift, if you will, there is just a tremendous responsibility to serve and to share that with others. For me, the idea of doing work pro bono was something that we had conversations about with the team. There was a need from our local legal aid to have more volunteers.

I talked to the lawyers on my team about it. People were excited about it. People were enthusiastic about doing it. It was just a question of like, “How can we do it? Can we logistically pull this off and what are we taking a day off? How will this work?” Our Legal Aid partners were tremendous in helping us walk through the mechanics of how we would hold a clinic. It’s one of those experiences I would never, ever, ever take back because we did it several times because it was so valuable to me.

Were they discreet, one-day things that legal aid set up the infrastructure and you guys went?

Yes, so what they did was that we provided the building, they provided the program. We did expungements. What they did was they provided some training on the morning of the event. We secured a date. Our challenge was to get together as many lawyers from the team as we could. The second time, we had a law firm partner with us because it was a local law firm that was interested in doing it, so we did it together. We provided the space and we had lunch, but more importantly, Legal Aid came in and offered the training to everyone about what we would be experiencing and what we needed to know because this isn’t stuff that we do in our day jobs.

We did that for about an hour in the morning and then we set off. It was virtual. We had conversations throughout the course of the day with clients. At the end of the session, some were going to require some follow-up. We had follow-up appointments through Legal Aid with some of the clients. Some people attended hearings because that was a necessary part of the follow-up.

 For us, it felt like the right thing to do because we had the opportunity to do it and a responsibility to serve in that way. People were so incredibly appreciative of just the opportunity to receive the service. It felt to me like a win-win. We got back way more than we gave. I would have to say, I should speak for myself. I think this was one day, maybe a day and a half, a little prep, and the event itself.

What I got back from that was a tremendous sense of insight into the lives and experiences of so many people in the broader healthcare community that we were serving. Also, just an opportunity to feel like I helped in some way. It just planted the seed. It made me want to do more. We’ve done it several times since. I continue to serve in my capacity. Now, I will always be a supporter and a fan of Legal Aid. Anytime I can volunteer for that, I will do it.

Was it a team builder for your in-house team as well? Do you feel like you got something out of it as a team?

For sure, because we were working together. Rarely do we all work together on the same project. You have different practice areas. Often, people are working in the area of specialty, but this was one of those things that pulled together the whole team where we could all sit around, including me, going, Oh, no. We got to get some help. Somebody come help us. We learned a lot, laughed a lot, shared a lot, and had some sad moments, but I think we grew as a team. I thought that was a really important experience.

I want to just highlight a couple of things you said. First of all, you had a partnership with Legal Aid. You had the support of your organization with some infrastructure and then, I feel like the rest of the organization isn’t going to know that this is something that is needed in the community. The general counsel and the lawyers in the department are the only ones who are going to know that there are these kinds of needs in the community. You are uniquely positioned to make that act.

I’ll just say that I saw Bryan Stevenson speak at the American Hospital Association a couple of years ago and read his book. It was a no-brainer. As you said, we have such a gift with our legal training, license, and access, just working with Legal Aid on this consumer issue. There are things that I do on my phone. I send emails and get debts forgiven, for example. It doesn’t have to go to court or get somebody out of prison. It doesn’t have to be hard. Anyway, I just want to applaud you for your leadership there and encourage others. It doesn’t have to be hard.

Can I also just speak to it from a healthcare perspective? I’ve spent my career in healthcare, I think as we think about what population health is, and when we think about what it means to meet the needs of the community we serve, about 30% of that is what happens in the hospital. That other 70% is the basics. When we discharge a person, do they have a place to live, or have they been evicted?

Do they have other issues that prevent them from being employed? Is there a criminal history out there that prevents them from being employed? Is there a criminal history out there that prevents them from being housed and the like? The gift that we can bring, at least so far as healthcare is concerned, drives our population’s health imperative.

It gives us as lawyers an opportunity to play a role in the broader solution, if you will, to some of the challenges of our patients. I think of it from that perspective as well. This is what pop health is. We have inpatient care, but the ability to provide legal services, which are oftentimes necessary to ensure that people come back and follow up on a care experience. It’s an important part of that.

It is. Thank you. I just want to encourage others to see what you can do because it’s easier than you would think and as Michelle said, you get so much more out of it than you think you’re going to. Onto just the light end of the tunnel here. I love music and I’ve relied on it throughout my life to get me through hard times or get me excited for things. I ask all guests, what is your pump-up song?

That’s a good one. Lately, and I don’t know who wrote this but I’m going to look at it while we’re talking because I got it from one of my former colleagues who I ran into. It is a song that we hear. I hear it on YouTube from time to time. It’s my Friday song, but it’s also my Monday song that gets me started. On YouTube, it’s a guy, Mufasa. I know he didn’t write this song, but it’s a song that starts with, “It’s Friday then, it’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday,” or something like that. It is a wonderful house music song that celebrates Friday, but I also use it to celebrate Monday.

Monday’s the new Friday?

No. Friday marks the end of a week and the opportunity to do some different things, hopefully on the weekend, but Monday starts the opportunity to make a difference. It’s Sunday night and then you recommit to what you’re going to kick off differently on Monday. I’m going to work out harder, I’m going to focus more on this, I’m going to read more emails. The things that you set up for yourself for Monday and that song just get me going every time I hear it. It’s a house music song that I love to hear.

Great recommendation. I’m going to check that out. My kids are on YouTube 24/7, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find it. All right, Michelle, thanks so much. I really enjoyed having you on the show.

Thank you, Stacy. I appreciate you doing this for the legal community and for others who are reading this. Hopefully, someone read something that could be helpful to them as they move along their journey.

I’m sure they did.

Important Links

• Michelle Johnson Tidjani – LinkedIn 
• What It Takes to Be a Good Lawyer In the Legal Department: Dana Lira Warner Brothers Discovery 

About Michelle Johnson-Tidjani

Ms. Tidjani has nearly two decades of experience driving both engagement and accountability, especially during times of change, in the healthcare industry. As the organization’s Chief Administrative Officer, she provides strategic oversight of the national budget, ensuring resource optimization across the organization, and is responsible for implementing the health care ministry’s new operating model. Prior to joining CommonSpirit, Tidjani served as the Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Henry Ford Health System; the Deputy Chief Legal Officer at The Cleveland Clinic; and as Senior Counsel for Tenet Healthcare.

She spent her early career in private practice. Tidjani received her bachelor’s degree in Government from Cornell University (with honors) and her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. She will receive her master’s degree in Business Administration from Brown University and IE School of Business in May 2024.