Sue Schade, CIO, University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Chapter 2

When listing the traits of a successful leader, most people might avoid words like “impatient,” but to Sue Schade, being inpatient means refusing to accept the status quote, and instead aiming higher. “I like to see change; I like to see results,” says Schade, who recently spoke with healthsystemCIO.com about the winding road that took her to the University of Michigan, the steep learning curve all new leaders face, her crusade to get more women in technology roles, and what she believes are the keys to change management. Schade also discusses the balance CIOs must strike between being strategic and operational, her decision to tear down the walls and start her own blog, and what makes the CIO role both challenging and fun.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Driving culture change

* “You have to get people to a state of readiness.”

* Traits of a successful CIO — “A good balance of strategic and operational.”

* Avoiding the black box

* IT as ‘part of the extended care team’

* Her blog — “I wanted to share my experience and lessons.”

* Avoiding the blame game



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Bold Statements

In some respects there’s tremendous inertia in bigger organizations, and to an extent, complacency about change. The leader has to have a view of what’s working well, what is not working so well, what are the gaps, and what do you need to do to improve, and start early on working with the team along that path.

There’s not an area of the organization that doesn’t have an IT dependency, and you want people to view you as a business partner that can work with them. You do not want people to say, ‘I have no idea what’s going on in IT; it’s a big black box.’

It’s important that you stay pretty grounded in the needs of the business, yet continually are looking out there for what new technologies and innovations you can be bringing into the organization — not for technology’s sake, but to solve real problems.

That’s the kind of thing I get a lot of positive feedback about — my transparency and being willing to share those kinds of stories, because people learn from them.

Gamble:  I wanted to break down your leadership style more. Maybe not quite like ‘Here’s me in a nutshell,’ but I wanted to get your thoughts on things like change management, which you’ve dealt with a lot in your career, and some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way for how to facilitate change.

Schade:  Sure. I assume you’re talking about not so much change management associated with the project, which is huge when you’re bringing in a new EHR, but you’re talking more about culture change?

Gamble:  Well they’re both pretty big, but I guess I would say more along the lines of culture change.

Schade:  This takes time. One of the blog pieces I wrote in the past year was about patience and the fact that it takes time to make culture change, but you need to try to take it on. I think it’s important to establish your broad vision to share with people what your values and guiding principles are, something that I did pretty much day one with my team and I continue to reinforce. I think you do need to be patient and understand where people are at and kind of take them where they’re at. I’m a fairly impatient person; I like to see change. I like to see results.

One of my lines with my direct reports is, ‘I don’t want to be talking about this still in six months,’ and they know what that means is we need an action plan. We’re not going into analysis paralysis. We’re not just going to stand and talk about this forever. We’re going to figure out what the problem is,