CIO Reinvented: Donna Roach On The Key Attributes Of Today’s Leader (Part 2)

When Donna Roach began her term as a member of the CHIME Board of Trustees in January, she had a mission: to continue the dialog that started last year about how to continue to develop CIOs as leaders. It was a discussion that kicked off at the 2015 Fall Forum when Roach, CIO at Via Christi Ascension Information Services, and Tim Zoph presented the results of a survey designed to identify the leadership attributes that will be most critical for CIOs moving forward. In this interview, Roach talks about why the project appealed to her, the importance of alignment among senior leaders, and the results that surprised her most. She also discusses the increasing role of emotional intelligence in CIOs, the “scary” discussion that needs to be held, and what she hopes will happen next.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Challenging the status quo “in a respectful way.”

* Stretching the executive team’s vision

* “We need to build up our emotional intelligence.”

* The question to ask CEOs

* “I learned a lot by conducting those interviews.”

* Value of self-reflection

* Looking ahead — “I want it to be a continual dialogue.”



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Bold Statements

The CIO sometimes is the one that thinks outside of the box, and they need to continue to do that in a respectful way — challenge the status quo, but really bring that perspective. Because that dialogue that takes place is what’s really beneficial.

In any situation when you challenge something, you have to have really strong people skills and be able to have that emotional intelligence. In the past, I don’t know if CIOs have always done that effectively.

It’s that willingness to be able to do some introspection of, ‘Okay, maybe I do shy away from reaching across the table and working with the clinical side. What can I do to encourage that and how can I keep that dialogue going?’ That, to me, was just as valuable as the data that we collected.

Let’s educate other CIOs on how to do this. Maybe you want to do this once year, maybe you want to do it with different executive team members to get their feedback and get their perspectives. It can take on a life of its own in terms of how you want to utilize it.

It’s a great opportunity to sit down with somebody who may be new to the executive team and say, ‘how do you see my role impacting you and what could I be doing to better serve you in your role?’ I don’t think we spend enough time doing that. I think we get so focused on the day-to-day and what we have to do that we forget about our service.

Gamble:  Obviously, there are a lot of organizations that have had CMIOs in place for a while, but there are still organizations that are just getting to that point and getting CMIOs and CNIOs in place, and I think that really speaks to the need to really have IT and clinical together to bridge that gap.

Roach:  Right. We also heard the executives say that the CIO sometimes is the one that thinks outside of the box, and they need to continue to do that in a respectful way — challenge the status quo, but really bring that perspective. Because that dialogue that takes place is what’s really beneficial for that executive team in getting other people to see that perspective.

I think a really good point Tim brought up is that when we look at other industries, we’ve seen that the ones that are going to be the most successful or that have led change the best are where we bridged that gap, and the CIO has really been infiltrated throughout the executive ranks. And so it’s beneficial to the organization to keep having that dialogue and really stretching the vision of the executive team a little bit more.

Gamble:  When you talk about challenging the status quo, it’s interesting because I feel like that might be something where CIOs are being given that permission now a...