Sioux Falls keynote speaker for healthcare, financial services, and association events.
Chris Sund is a keynote speaker, Maxwell Leadership Certified Coach, and sitting executive who leads national healthcare staffing organizations. He speaks on workforce motivation, leadership, retention, and human potential for South Dakota associations, health systems and their multi-state operations, financial services employers, processing operations, campuses, and organizations across the Sioux Empire.
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You are deciding, from an office here, what a Tuesday night feels like in a town you have never been to.
Very few cities this size carry as much consequence for other people’s workplaces as Sioux Falls does, and most of the people carrying it have never thought of their job in those terms.
Sanford Health was founded here in 1894 and is now the largest rural health system in the United States, running hundreds of locations across the upper Midwest from a headquarters in this city. Avera Health is also headquartered here, with more than three hundred locations in around a hundred communities across five states. Between them they employ tens of thousands of people in the Sioux Falls metro alone. Sanford USD Medical Center is the largest hospital in South Dakota and the teaching institution for the USD Sanford School of Medicine. Alongside all of that, favorable banking law made this a national financial services center, with Citibank, Wells Fargo, Premier Bankcard, and a cluster of trust and fintech firms. Smithfield runs a large pork operation, Hy-Vee and the school district employ thousands more.
Hold the health systems in view for a second, because the shape of it is unusual. A director sitting in an office on this side of town writes a staffing model, a policy, a float rule, or a scheduling standard. It then applies in a critical access hospital four hours away where twelve beds are open, the nearest alternative facility is ninety miles down a two lane road, and one person calling in sick means the emergency department is genuinely short.
The failure mode there is almost never a bad person. It is abstraction. Distance turns a shift into a number, and numbers behave, whereas shifts do not. A ratio that looks reasonable in aggregate is a completely different object at two in the morning in a small town. And there is an uncomfortable pattern that anyone who has run a multi-site operation will recognize, which is that confidence about frontline work tends to increase with distance from it, because from far enough away you only ever see the average.
This is not an argument against central decisions. Standardization keeps small hospitals open and keeps care consistent, and somebody has to make those calls. It is an argument about what the job actually requires. Go to the sites, and not only the flagship ones. Ask the people doing the work before the decision rather than explaining it to them afterward. Keep at least one relationship at every level below you that will tell you the truth. And when a policy lands badly somewhere, treat that as information about the policy rather than as a compliance problem in that building.
Sioux Falls happens to be the clearest place in the country to say this out loud, because so much of the rural upper Midwest is run from here. Any leader more than one layer from the work has the same job.
Chris runs national healthcare staffing organizations, staffs facilities exactly like the ones these systems operate, and has keynoted state association conferences in eleven states, including LeadingAge Illinois and health care associations in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado.
Operator, Not Consultant
President and COO of national healthcare staffing organizations, staffing rural and critical access facilities across many states.
Leading at Distance
Material for headquarters and multi-site leaders whose decisions land in buildings they rarely visit.
South Dakota Health Care Association
The Leadership Exchange, an interactive leadership session for South Dakota long-term care leaders.
Groups Chris speaks for.
Sioux Falls is the largest city in South Dakota and the headquarters city for health systems serving the entire upper Midwest.
- Sanford Health and Avera Health, for system leadership meetings, nurse leadership days, all-staff events, and multi-site manager development
- Rural and critical access facilities across the Sanford and Avera networks, for site leadership and staff sessions, in person or virtual
- Senior care, post-acute, and long term care providers across South Dakota, an audience Chris speaks to often
- Citibank, Wells Fargo, Premier Bankcard, and the financial services and trust sector, for leadership meetings and all-hands sessions
- Smithfield and the region’s processing and manufacturing operations, for supervisor and shift-based sessions
- Augustana University, University of Sioux Falls, and Southeast Technical College, along with the Sioux Falls School District
- South Dakota statewide associations meeting in Sioux Falls for annual conferences and member education, the format Chris works in most often
Sioux Falls employers running things from a distance.
Healthcare is where Chris operates, and it is the sector where distance between decision and consequence costs the most.
Multi-State Health Systems
Headquarters teams setting standards for hundreds of sites, most of which they will never walk through.
Rural and Critical Access Facilities
Small teams absorbing decisions made several states away, where one absence changes the whole night.
Financial Services and Trust
Large operations serving customers nationwide from a city those customers never think about.
Processing, Retail, and Education
Shift-based and public facing work that keeps the rest of the local economy running.
Sioux Falls and Sioux Empire venues.
- Downtown hotel ballrooms and the Sioux Falls Convention Center for South Dakota association annual meetings
- Sanford and Avera campuses for nurse leadership, system leadership, and all-staff days
- Corporate campuses and operations centers for leadership meetings and all-hands sessions
- Processing and manufacturing facilities for supervisor sessions, repeated across shifts
- Augustana, University of Sioux Falls, and Southeast Tech facilities for campus programming
- Chamber luncheons, banquets, and Minnehaha and Lincoln County gatherings
- Brookings, Mitchell, Yankton, Vermillion, Watertown, and communities across eastern South Dakota
Sioux Falls events Chris speaks at.
Hospital and Health System Events
Leadership days, nurse recognition events, and all-staff meetings.
Rural and Critical Access Healthcare
Sessions for small facilities and for the leaders who set policy across them.
Association Conferences
South Dakota association annual meetings and general sessions, the format Chris works in most often.
Retention and Frontline Leadership
Supervisor development for site leaders carrying decisions they did not make.
Company and Leadership Meetings
All-hands gatherings, annual meetings, kickoffs, and banquets.
Keynote topics for your Sioux Falls event.
Every session is customized for the audience, the format, and what you are actually trying to change.
See what conference organizers and HR leaders have said after booking Chris.
Booking a keynote speaker in Sioux Falls
Has Chris spoken to South Dakota healthcare audiences?
Does Chris travel to Sioux Falls?
Is this a criticism of centralized decision making?
Can the session reach our rural sites?
Can Chris speak to both executives and frontline staff?
What does a Sioux Falls keynote cost?
Can Chris speak virtually to a South Dakota audience?
Bring Chris to your Sioux Falls event.
Send your date, location, and audience. You will get availability and a quote back within one business day.
info@chrissund.com · 402-212-5771 · South Dakota speaking · All locations
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