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We are Arena Labs

Our work is rooted in a simple but radically different approach to healthcare quality and patient safety: focus on the team. We bring the tools, frameworks and resources of high-performance cultures in sport, the creative arts, and elite military units to the frontlines of modern healthcare. We use innovative technology to take high-risk performance to the next level, while staying rooted in the the human system and its potential for creative mastery in modern medicine.

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Our core team on catalyzing peak performance and mastery on medicine's frontlines

Recent Publication

“The future of medicine will require a fundamentally different style of leadership, rooted in a willingness to decentralize authority, empower a broader network, and build processes that augment a leader’s capacity for decision making and for understanding the needs of the organization and its staff and patients.”

-Arena Labs Founder + CEO Brian Ferguson in concert with Kevin W. Lobdell, MD, Siddharth Hariharan, MA, BA, Will Smith, MBA, BA, Geoffrey A. Rose, MD, & Chris Fussell, MS, BA

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Recently Published

Performance Profile: Patty Brandmaier

The Arena Labs Performance Profile series brings insights from high performers across worlds to frontline teams in healthcare. Patty Brandmaier spent 32 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, serving both domestically and abroad. Her CIA trajectory led her from an entry-level analyst to, at the time of her retirement, serving as a member of the […]

Optimizing a Network of Frontline Medical Leaders to Fight COVID-19: The Fusion Cell Approach

The Arena Labs Fusion Cell for COVID-19 Crisis Response in Frontline Medical Teams.

Our Ethos and Operating Principles

THE ARENA ETHOS. Arena Labs is a culture built on humility. Not the false humility that is the absence of boasting, but a ruthless commitment to learning and betterment. We hold this mindset, that of the expert learner, as the bedrock of all extraordinary endeavor. We are not academics or careerists. Nor are we a […]

A Tale of Two Operating Rooms

Two Ors, two totally different worlds. A story of how one surgeon's choices around how, when, and to whom to express a legitimate dissatisfaction radically compromised patient safety and the wellbeing of staff.

System Design: Leadership Architecture and Great OR Performance

How does the environment outside of the operating theaters influence performance?

Optimizing for Focus and Mastery with an Untapped Practice

A young surgeon, dedicated to mastery in the craft of pediatric spinal surgery, faced barriers to peak performance, including distractions and additional cognitive load.

Arena XR: The Future of Medical Learning

A first-generation immersive learning tool geared toward Resident Education to begin training for performance-oriented skills and leadership in their early careers as surgeons.

Burnout: Data + Tools For Healthier Frontline Leaders

Staying calm under pressure is not only an art and a science – it is the hallmark of expert performance. How can data assist with managing fear, stress, and anxiety?

Building A Surgical Performance Program

How our propriety Discovery process and First Principles of High Performance™ uncovered one system's deeper challenges and supported the staff-leadership innovations that determined the way forward.

Enhancing Performance with an Overlooked Resource: Physical Space

Elite athletes have locker rooms. Performing artists have green rooms. Fighter pilots have ready rooms. What if surgical teams received the same resource - space - invaluable for extraordinary performance under pressure: sacred space?

Pioneering High Performance in Modern Healthcare