The CMIO Quick Start Guide is a series of posts on the role of Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO). The number of health care organizations adding a CMIO to their staff is growing exponentially. However, even though the benefits of a CMIO are plentiful they won’t make all your problems disappear. This series will discuss what a CMIO is, whether your organization needs one, how to hire the best one, and how to create the best environment for your mutual success. Stay tuned for a new post every Tuesday.
“Talent alone won’t make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: Are you ready?” -Johnny Carson
If you’re following our post series, you’ve already selected a talented and capable CMIO. Now its your job to make sure they are ready to succeed in their position. Like our friend Johnny Carson, we all know that planning and preparation are vital to success. We’re all also guilty of putting it off completely or at least to the last minute. But we know better. Mistakes of inaction are mistakes, nonetheless.
While your CMIO is capable and talented, planning and preparing for their first day can better help them achieve success. We can do this through a simple exercise that helps the CMIO understand the strategic direction of the organization and helps them integrate with their new team.
Planning for a Successful Onboarding
Oboarding is how new employees engage and integrate with the organizational culture to become productive employees. Good onboarding processes result in happy employees who are less likely to quit and more likely to recommend their organization (you can see more benefits here).
In a typical onboarding process, the new employee will meet with their managers to discuss their role, the direction of the organization, and how they fit into their team and how their team fits into the organization. The manager will also be on the lookout for when the new employee could use some feedback or a push in the right direction. However, when your boss is the CEO and doesn’t have enough time to do their own job, let alone babysit new employees, a different direction may be required.
Once the HR administrivia of onboarding is out of the way (office space, business cards, legal documentation, ID cards, parking passes, etc), we recommend that the new CMIO develop their own 3-Month Action Plan.
What’s a Three Month Action Plan?
This 3-month action plan will require that they get to know their team, colleagues, and the goals, issues, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and other aspects of the organization for themselves. It will require a personal approach to learning about the organization and some deeper thinking of ways they can really help improve the organization. After all, new hires typically have a fresher perspective and can see things that may have blended in with more seasoned employees.
Why a 3-Month Action Plan?
The process of developing a 3-month action plan will help your CMIO to:
- Understand the strategic direction of the organization
- Understand the culture, strengths, and weaknesses of the organization
- Develop an internal map of the key players and stakeholders
- Determine the best first actions for the position
- Figure out the best ways to engage with their team
- Better integrate with the team by learning about the individuals that make up their team, their likes, dislikes, what they would change, etc.
Developing their own 3-month action plan will help the CMIO better succeed by building loyalty and trust with new team members and colleagues, turn stakeholders into allies, and figure out the company culture faster.
How to Develop a 3-Month Action Plan
Developing a plan when you know little about the organization may sound very intimidating, but as a capable and talented CMIO you know that understanding people and fixing their problems will help you gain them as allies for the long haul. Therefore, interaction and understanding of the strategic direction are two key inputs to the action plan.
It may take more than a couple of meetings to get a good feel for the real personalities of everyone and some may withhold some information because they are unsure of intentions or loyalties. However, those withholding information will most likely release additional information in time as they get to know the new CMIO. Those unwilling to share information by then are probably hiding something and further insight into their roles, responsibilities, projects, and other activities may be needed….but we digress.
The Steps
First, you’ll have to talk to people in your new organization and get to know them. Check the following off the list:
- CEO
- CIO
- Team Members
- Other C-Level Executives
- Administrative Assistants
- Clients
- Customers
- Department Chairs
- Disgruntled and Happy Providers
- And any other interesting characters you run into!
Secondly organize your meeting notes, collected documents, and other information you have come across from meeting all of these people.
Next, pick out the resounding issues, strengths, opportunities, and threats that pertain to the organization and its culture.
Then figure out how this information pertains to the strategic direction of the organization. Do the strengths of the organization align with the strategic direction? Will the opportunities and projects that are getting the most attention help accomplish the mission? Are there basic processes that need to be fixed before any long-term goals can be set? Are there any obvious short-comings you could improve relatively quickly?
If you can see a lot of “tactics” or “actions” that can be accomplished, take some time to really think about the strategic goals and the umbrella that they fall under. Then, let’s get working!
Check out this template for a sample 3-month action plan.
Feel free to download, modify, steal, and distribute this template as needed. We hope that it will help you and your new CMIO to become a more effective, better aligned organization.
Cheers!