Richard Pitts was relieved to find a word to describe him. He’s a “philomath”—or lover of learning.
As a child, he was a good student but had no direction. He describes his early years as “a bit chaotic.” His parents divorced when he was young, and he lived with his grandmother. They didn’t have much.
“I lived with my grandmother in high school,” Pitts says. “We had a toilet and sink in the house, and that was it. There was no shower or tub. At the time, I thought it was embarrassing, but as I got older and talked to my patients and other doctors about their lives, I realized maybe I didn’t have it so bad.”
He took his first job picking cranberries at age 10. It was hard work with low pay, so he started doing odd jobs for a family down the street called the Blunts. They had nine young children, so there was much to do. He put out the trash, shoveled the driveway, cared for the kids, and even climbed a 30-foot ladder to paint the eaves.
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DOWNLOAD NOWBut he had no clear picture of his future. With the help of three “north stars”—the Blunts, his Boy Scout leader, and his local doctor, who all had several children—his life plan began to take shape.
“For some reason, people with big families always seem to have room in their hearts for more children, and all three made time for me,” Pitts says. “The Blunts helped me see how education would open doors. My Boy Scout leader gave me a love for the outdoors and showed me that, by keeping active, I’d stay out of trouble. Our local doctor inspired me to pursue a path in medicine.”
After high school, Pitts’s love of learning emerged. He enrolled in a two-year program at Quincy College in Massachusetts and then transferred to Chapman University in California on a full scholarship. He earned a bachelor’s degree in three years and then went to medical school in Iowa.
“I’m proof that it doesn’t matter where you go; it’s what you do with it,” Pitts says. “I chose emergency medicine because I thought it was where I could make the biggest difference. I started to view the world in terms of ROI, not just in school but in my day-to-day life. ‘What is the most important thing I can do right now?’”
His first job was in emergency medicine at County Hospital in Los Angeles. He later joined the emergency department at the health care company Kaiser Permanente. He was working 70 to 80 hours a week and taking an online doctoral program in management at Walden University.
After 12 years at Kaiser, he was recruited as the chief medical officer at a large community hospital with 4,000 employees and 500 physicians. After just six weeks in his new role, the CEO quit, and Pitts was tapped to do both jobs for about a year.
“I went kicking and screaming into health care administration, but sometimes things come your way, and you just have to grab it,” Pitts says. “People sometimes see things you can’t see in yourself. I loved practicing medicine, but emergency medicine is a young man’s job. That year, I got a much broader understanding of what goes on in a hospital and saw that most of the weaknesses were on the business side.”
He had finished his PhD program but felt a need to keep learning, especially about business.
“I had an incredible thirst for education and wanted to remain relevant,” Pitts says. “I needed to know much more about business, so I enrolled in Harvard Business School Online's CORe program. The way the courses were designed, I could do the coursework any time and didn’t have to stop working.”
Pitts found CORe to be the equivalent of three undergraduate courses. He studied early in the morning, late into the evenings, and on weekends to get the work done.
“I didn’t want it to be easy, which is why I chose Harvard,” Pitts says. “I wanted to learn and be able to apply the studies immediately to my work.”
One thing that surprised Pitts was how much the courses helped him with work and life.
“Management Essentials and Strategy Execution, for instance, are as much about rules for life; they go far beyond business,” he says. “I’ve also realized the true brilliance of these professors to take complex topics and make them so simple. These classes permeate my life.”
Pitts and his current employer, CalOptima Health, have put 25 people through HBS Online courses, and he has carte blanche to put through more. He meets with employees taking a course to discuss what they’ve learned and how they applied it to their work and life.
In addition to the faculty, Pitts has found that the HBS case method makes the learning special.
“It’s just like how you learn in medicine,” he says. “Whether you have a patient in front of you or a case study, you learn by coming up with what you would do. You learn through examples. Starting when you’re a young child, life is all about metaphors. You learn that a lightbulb is hot by touching it. Unlike so much in education, with the HBS Online method, you remember the stories, so the lessons stick with you.”
Human connection is another part of the HBS Online experience that stands out. He’s formed friendships worldwide.
“It’s like going to the student union when you’re in college,” Pitts says. “I’m sometimes up until two in the morning communicating with other learners.”
Pitts has completed 13 of HBS Online’s 21 courses and earned all five Certificates of Specialization.
“I’m pushing to a master’s level commitment,” Pitts says. “Someone made fun of me for spending $20,000 on courses, but I believe the best investment is one in myself.”
Pitts believes he wouldn’t have gotten his current position without his HBS Online certificates.
“I needed the budget piece, how to learn to manage 1,000 employees, and how to create and implement policies,” he says. “Between my medical degree and experience, my PhD in management, and my business education from HBS Online, I have a unique skill set that appealed to CalOptima. It’s given me a seat at the table.”
He adds that HBS Online courses can be especially valuable for people advancing to management.
“You see an engineer who’s promoted to management, and they fail because they don’t have a business education,” Pitts says. “Many don’t want or can’t take two years out of their lives. For me, I don’t need another degree. I need knowledge.”
When asked about his favorite course, he says he’d like to put them all in a blender and turn it on. Each has its strengths, and it depends on what you need at a particular place in your career. He thinks the three best courses for transitioning from practicing physician to health care administration are Management Essentials, Strategy Execution, and Design Thinking and Innovation.
“You’ll learn about coaching through Strategy Execution and Design Thinking and Innovation,” Pitts says. “What I learned in Design Thinking and Innovation was critical. You should start with a broad number of diagnoses to get to the single best one.”
Pitts estimates he’s treated over 140,000 patients. He’s proud he could “plug the holes” he was lacking when he transitioned into hospital administration. He’s now working on writing a management book with two other physicians and plans to take more HBS Online courses.
“I want to take all the HBS Online courses,” he says. “The best part is, I can take what I’ve learned today and apply it to my work the next day. That’s addictive for me. I’ve come up with a motto: ‘I like to learn, but I love to apply.’ Take everything you’re learning today and implement it tomorrow.”
If you want to continue your education and learn business concepts you can immediately apply to your career and life, explore HBS Online’s course catalog.
