Today in health, it's Friday and on Fridays. I like to riff on some topics on this one. I'm going to talk about on being a healthcare CIO. I've been asked to write some things down. I toyed with the idea of a book. I've put an outline together and stuff, and I want to start sharing some of this with you.

I'm not going to wait till I read a book. And love to get your feedback. Love to get your thoughts. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this weak health set of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare. One connection. At a time. Today's show is brought to you by artist site one platform, infinite possibilities for improving healthcare, our to sites, platform unlocks endless ways. To relieve tension, reduce friction and make clinicians jobs easier from telemedicine to virtual nursing and beyond explore artists' sites platform. At this week, health.com/artist site.

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, share this podcast with a friend or colleague, use it as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you in the industry. This would be a good one to do that on because I'm going to give you eight characteristics that I think are important. For being a healthcare CIO and it's a great foundation for a discussion. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, let's get to it.

I've been asked over the years. Hey, can you write some of this stuff down? And you'd be surprised how much I have written down. At some point, if I ever die, come here, get on my computer and just unearth all the stuff that I've written down because. I have a lot of show notes and a lot of things that I've done over the years.

And again, if you were one of my CIO listeners or any of the listeners, if you have some thoughts on this love to hear them. So these are the eight things I think are required. And this goes beyond clearly you need to be excellent at what you do and you need to have integrity and you need to be a communicator.

All those things are just the obvious. Like you wouldn't even be considered for the conversation. If you're not able to do certain things like string a sentence together and stand up in front of people and communicate. Right effectively. Encourage your team and staff and all those things. These happened to be the categories that I think are most important. So number one is leadership. Big vague term.

Let me boil it down a little bit. I think you need to be able to inspire people. You need to be able to stand in front of people and inspire them. I've talked about this before. This aspect of, channeling your inner, Newt Rockne, helping people to see their part in delivering care, helping them to see their their value in delivering care, helping. People to see the vision for what something can become with the use of technology in healthcare.

So you need to be able to inspire people. You need to be a trusted advisor. I find that the best CIO is don't have to ask for a seat at the table. They are they are asked to be at the table. And it's because they do things that make them a trusted advisor. They've deep understanding. Of the industry of their organization and their strategies and of technology and the technology trends and how all those things come together.

They develop strong relationships within the executive team. They listen effectively. They they have empathy and they understand how things are going. So they become a trusted advisor. Through through a lot of different things, but those are some of the key aspects. And then the third is being an effective operator. They have to be able to get things done within an organization.

These are highly political organizations. You have to understand politics. You have to be able to build coalitions. You have to be able to understand how to launch a project, how to get them funded, all those things. So leadership, I put all those things under the leadership category, but there's very specific things underneath leadership that you need to be able to do. Inspire people, trusted advisor, effective operator. And then go into the next seven are it might be obvious to, you may not be. Most people will say you have to be able to build an effective team.

I think that's true. I think you have to be able to build an effective culture and few leaders know how to build an effective culture. And when you come across them, you know them like you have conversations with them and you're like, I want to come work for you. When they're done talking. And so not only can they build effective teams, they know how to acquire talent and then cultivate that talent, but they also can build a culture for that talent to to thrive in. And that culture, a lot of times, if it's really good within, it can start to seep out because cultures don't stay contained.

They. They tend to don't know, seep out is the word I use. And I'm not really. The source this afternoon. Leadership team and culture number two, number three is architecture. I'm a firm believer in architecture by design. Intentional design of the systems that you have in your house with them. There is there is remnants of all sorts of poor architecture and poor leadership around healthcare.

We didn't say no, we didn't lead. We didn't help people to see the need for good architecture. It has led to breaches. It has led to attack surfaces that are unsustainable. It has led to black holes of costs. It has led to Allie's that you have to back out of because you've implemented technology that just doesn't have a future.

That's why I put architecture in there as one of those things that. I believe is important for a healthcare leader to understand. At any level, you have to understand architecture. You don't have to be an architect, but you have to understand architecture and be able to cultivate. A an organization that appreciates architecture.

This is one of the weirdest things. When I first went into St. Joe's. Data center had gone down eight times at six weeks. And this is one of the first conversations I had to have architecture is required and it's, you have to simplify the architecture in order to secure the architecture in. In order to secure the environment in order to make it a robust and reliable environment.

If you want a robust, reliable environment, you have to understand a few things about architecture. And I'm sitting here talking to hospital, administrators and physicians about architecture. I you'd never want to do this by the way. But in these, in this case, it was required. And once I got done it and they said what do you need? And I'm like, I need to control the governance.

I need to control what applications come on to this environment. We need to cut down on the number of new applications we need to use the stuff we have and, essentially just core components of architecture. So leadership. Team and culture architecture. For thing is a risk and security and compliance.

You have to understand security in today's day and age, a healthcare leader. A healthcare leader, somebody who is who is running a billion dollar healthcare technology platform. Nice to understand security. And yes, you're going to hire a cysto and you're going to have people who understand it at a deeper level than you. But if you are going to lead it, you need to understand it probably deeper than some of the other topics that you like.

You may not need to understand. How surgeries are performed, but you will you are the person they are looking to for security. Other people can help you with how surgeries are performed and you can understand that workflow and whatnot, but security is your job. And so security risk. Being able to understand risk. Quantify risk and communicate risk is important and then compliance. We're a highly regulated industry. Staying compliant is just par for the course. So there's your top four and actually they're not in order. Leadership team and culture architecture, security, risk compliance. Number five, it operations. You have to be really good at it, operations and you can't spend, if you're the CIO, you can't spend a ton of time here. Like you have to get this working.

This is the basic blocking and tackling of it. And you're you're going to bring people in who can run it. You have to understand when you it's one of those things that when you see it not working, you have to see it and recognize it and be able to say, Hey, time out. We were not looking at this correctly.

The change procedures are correct. The. The documentation approaches and correct. You have to be able to, you have to see it and know it when you see it and be able to make recommendations, you have to immerse yourself in good it operations so that when you see. Poor it operations. You recognize it.

It's like somebody once said to me that they teach people to identify counterfeit bills, not by showing them counterfeit bills, but by showing them the real thing. And so they get so used to seeing the real thing that the, when they see a counterfeit, they just know it immediately. I don't know if that's true, but it's that kind of thing,

good it operations. When you see it, the components of it. And you're able to bring those models to bear at your health system. So leadership team and culture, architecture, risks, security compliance, it operations. The next one is projects. So projects is interesting to me. I wasn't gonna put it on here, but I was having a conversation with the CIO and I was sharing this list and they said you got to put projects on there. And when they describe for me why it made perfect sense that. Good luck. There's so many projects going on within it itself, and you're participating in so many projects across the entire health system. You have to know how to launch a project.

You have to know how to. Close a project. Run a project. You have to know how to resuscitate a project. That's gone. Arrive or gone poorly. You have to know what are the core elements of a good project. You have to know what good project management looks like. And I thought about, I'm like, yeah, a significant portion of the job. Lives and resides in that project. Area. And so that, that becomes another component.

So projects, it, operations, risk security, compliance, architecture, team, and culture leadership. Let me give you the last two, because the last two is where you live. It is where you live. It's so much of the time. And so little time is spent on really understanding them. And the next one is organizational change management. How do you bring change into an organization so that it is adopted and it adds value to the organization and delivers on the ROI that is expected. Because it brings so much change into the organization.

This is a critical skill understanding area of focus. For any it leader, organizational change management, understanding that at a deep level. Of how to make it how to make it go well, be effective. And when it's not going well, how w how to. Again, how to recover when it's not going well. And the final one. Last, but not definitely, not least. Finance and budget it.

Leaders need to understand finance and budget. Most of us don't have home budgets. In the hundreds of millions of dollars. However somebody is going to give you responsibility. My responsibility was for $250 million. One year I'm sitting there going, I will never spend this much money again in my entire life. And it's amazing to me that somebody gave me that responsibility without a significant amount of training. But I had the training, so that's why they trusted me with it.

And that's why. It again, I understand the value of this. So many organizations I go into don't know, some key metrics within their it finance operation, how much certain things cost, how much certain resources costs. How much. I don't know. How many applications you have.

There's so many basics. That where all your contracts. Do you have an inventory of contracts? Do you know when all your, do you have a calendar of contracts when they come due and all those things? Can you make a cogent argument for budget? Can you make a cogent argument around your run budget versus your project budget. And I'll tell you, we, this is where you live.

If you cannot get the, your budget is the fuel to run the it operation. If you cannot get enough money to run your it operation, it will atrophy. You will end up with, you're already going to end up with tech debt, but you won't be able to retire that tech debt and over time that becomes a significant problem. Remember when I said the data center went down eight times in six weeks. It's because the budgeting. Was so poorly done prior to me getting there to St.

Joe's. Because it was outsourced and some other things I'm not blaming the leadership for me, I'm saying. Whatever was structured. Was so poorly done that the data center had gotten so old and decrepit. And when they went to when they went to renew it and fix it. They actually broke it worse. And that's where architecture comes in. So there's your eight things. Leadership and under leadership I've inspire people, trusted advisor, effective operator. Then it's team and culture, not just team hiring the best team, but also being able to build that culture that they can thrive in. Architecture, security, risk and compliance. It operations. And effective it operations really understanding and knowing what that looks like. Projects, just a big bucket called projects that you're going to have to be able to manage and be able to bring to completion or shut down.

But knowing when to effectively shut down a project that is not delivering on what it needs to deliver on. There are some really important decisions are made for all your projects. One of the things I did at St. Joe's we did a project inventory and I shut down 20 projects. Like the first meeting, shut down 20 projects. They didn't have an executive sponsor. They had no clear. Defined goals and objectives.

And, I shut down 20 of those and I think only two people complained in the organization. They just taken on a life of their own anyway projects. Organizational change management. Being able to bring change into your organization effectively. And having that change. B a. Deliver on the promise that was made and then finance and budget.

So these are the things. If I were going to write a book and that would be too long of a book. That's what I would do. I think I'm going to turn it into training material. I'm going to create some videos around this stuff. I don't know, maybe put it on a portal and make it. Available to you in the industry and your staff. And so you can have some conversations around these topics.

Let me know your thoughts on that as well. Let me know if that's worth doing. All right. That's all for today. It's Friday. That's all for this week. Don't forget, share this podcast with a friend or colleague, you said as the foundation for mentoring. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health.

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