Q&A With CHIME Board Of Trustees Chair Chuck Christian

If Chuck Christian had one message for CIOs, it’s this: get out of your office. The 2015 CHIME Board of Trustees Chair, who is also VP and of Technology and Engagement at the Indiana Health Information Exchange, believes the best way for leaders to truly understand what the organization needs is by getting out and talking to end users. In fact, he preaches a method called Management By Wandering Around (MBWA) when teaching CHIME Boot Camp. And as health systems continue to expand, it’s become more critical than ever for CIOs to be out in the field. Christian discusses his philosophies in this interview, along with CHIME’s new vision statement, why the “O” in CIO should stand for optimism, and why today’s leaders must be willing to “walk into the storm.”

Key Points



* New CHIME vision statement — “Healthcare is changing, and so our role had to change.”

* Emulating Wayne Gretzky

* Getting docs the right data at the right time

* CIO 3.0: “Running the servers is not a core competency.”

* Management By Wandering Around

* “You have to be willing to walk into the storm.”



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Bold Statements

We found that it’s been very helpful to the folks in Washington, D.C., to listen to the people who are actually having to implement the regulations. We found that they’re very much willing to listen. So we wanted to craft a vision statement and mission statement that is far more fitting to what the organization really is.

We’re not just talking about what the next network is going to look like or if we need wireless and that kind of stuff. We’re in the boardroom talking about business. How do we leverage the technology to have a positive impact upon the organization?

If you find somebody that has a great best practice, take it and use it. There’s no reason for us to keep paving the same roads in different counties that others have done and done well. Let’s learn from what they’ve done.

Running the servers, as far as I’m concerned, is not a core competency that the CIO has to have. He needs to have the management skills and the wherewithal and the knowledge to understand the business implications of that.

Building those relationships is an extremely powerful thing, because once you can build that rapport with those folks and you’re a known entity to them, you’re just not this person that they see at the boardrooms or happen to run across in the physicians’ lounge. If they know who you are and they’ve had some time to have a conversation with you, they will bring issues to you.

Gamble:  One of the things I wanted to talk about was the new vision statement for CHIME. First of all, what was the motivation for changing it?

Christian:  The vision statement we had had been around for a while. The organization is changing because health care is changing. And so our role, in order to provide the services we need to the membership, had to change. We felt like we needed to have a little bit different vision statement that spoke more about what we’re currently doing with education — not only for the CIOs but just the industry in general, because we have such a bigger part in advocacy now than we ever had before.

I came on board back in 2002. Our role in advocacy was very, very small at that point in time. Over the last several years, we’ve ramped it up a little bit. We found that it’s been very helpful to the folks in Washington, D.C., to listen to the people who are actually having to implement the regulations that are pouring out of the hill. We found that they’re very much willing to listen. So we wanted to craft a vision statement and mission statement that is far more fitting to what the organization really is.

If you look back a couple of years ago,