Tim Zoph, Health IT Advisor & Former CIO, Chapter 2

In today’s health IT industry, there’s a lot of talk about the need for knowledge sharing among leaders, particularly CIOs. But for Tim Zoph, who was recently named chair of KLAS’ Interoperability Measurement Advisory Team, it’s more than just talk. When he was asked to share some of the most valuable lessons learned during his 30-year-career (which includes 22 years as CIO at Northwestern Memorial Hospital), he was happy to oblige. In this interview, Zoph offers perspective on the areas of utmost importance to health IT leaders, including talent management, operational excellence, work/life balance, and being a partner in the industry. He also discusses the new expectations of the CIO role — a hybrid of change agent, senior leader, and innovator; why teaching CHIME Boot Camp has been so rewarding for him; and what’s next in his journey.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* A legacy of talent development

* Connecting IT “to the mission of the organization”

* Need for collaboration — “The work is too hard not to share what we’ve learned.”

* Operational excellence

* Teaching work/life balance at CHIME Boot Camp

* Delivering on a promise vs. promising to deliver



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Bold Statements

I understood that ultimately as I grew in the organization, it became more important for me not to manage the technology but to manage leaders, and the legacy I’ve left behind are the people that are there running it today.

I’m a little bit concerned that there’s finger pointing back and forth about who’s doing what and who’s not doing what. We really need to support one another and be respectful of another. The work is too hard not to share that we’ve learned.

At times we forget that making sure that we run the business in a simple, in-control and predictable manner is really important. Oftentimes we can get too hung up on strategy and projects and forget that we’re really required to run the business in an excellent way.

If you want to be a leader of others, you have to demonstrate that those things are important. If you don’t model that behavior, people won’t believe that you value that in them. What people want is authentic leadership.

You start off thinking it’s about the technology, and you really realize it’s about the talent. You think people want you there simply as a technologist, when what they want is really a whole leader.

Zoph:  Looking back, the key to success for all of this was talent development — putting teams in place, growing your future leaders. It has the most lasting and probably the most rewarding impact of anything you’re going to do. And so if I had to talk to you about one subject that was critical to my success, it was that I developed future leaders. I paid attention to people. And in fact, I understood that ultimately as I grew in the organization, it became more important for me not to manage the technology but to manage leaders, and the legacy I’ve left behind are the people that are there running it today. I have been able to train and develop six or seven CIO leaders that are in the industry today. There are many directors that are a part of my organization that started as analysts — that’s my legacy. I built the talent, I put the people in place, and they have grown their careers both in and outside of Northwestern.

The second is being a leader beyond your technology domain. I think it’s really important that you demonstrate that you learn the business beyond technology, and that you engage your team directly in patient care. The most rewarding experiences our team ever had were the times when we had big system changes — those were often the times we work...