Balancing Operations with Strategic Thinking

One of the biggest challenges I see hospital CIOs facing is trying to balance the operational requirements of their organization with the high level strategic thinking that’s really needed to make an organization effective. I think we all underestimate the operational challenges that most hospital CIOs face. Most health IT organizations are relatively young and were put together at a break neck pace. This provides an exceptional challenge for hospital CIOs.

If all the hospital CIO was tasked with doing was meaningful use of a certified EHR, that could consume all of their time and it would still be a challenge to do it effectively. However, meaningful use is far from the only thing that hospital CIOs are dealing with in their organization.

Meaningful use gets all the press and so we often forget about all of the IT tasks that were originally associated with the office of the CIO. Things like managing the network, the computers, and all the other IT infrastructure has come a long way, but still requires a high quality leader to keep it up to date and working efficiently. A lot of us look at these things as commodities that every organization just has and does. This really discounts the effort and time that’s required to do this effectively.

When considering all these tasks that require the CIO’s attention, it’s no wonder that many don’t have (or don’t make) the time required to think about their organization in a strategic way. I’d suggest two ways that hospital CIOs can spend more time thinking strategically.

First, learn to delegate and trust the other leaders in your organization. This is much easier said than done. In some cases this means changing the leaders in your organization. However, more often it requires a shift in mentality as a leader. Trusting other people is hard, but absolutely necessary for you to make the most as a leader.

Second, schedule time into your calendar for strategic thinking. I assure you that you’ll feel a little odd doing this. It almost feels like you’re cheating your organization to schedule in time to work on the strategy of your organization. However, there’s definitely truth in scheduling. We do what we schedule. Just don’t cheat yourself during that time. It will be really easy for you to fudge that time and work on other things. Turn off the email. Turn off the cell phone if needed and spend the time focused on where you should take your organization.

Finding time and making an effort to not be overwhelmed by operations and think strategically is the very best thing you can do. Don’t cheat yourself or your organization by focusing on the wrong things.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

Categories