What is the CIOs role in fostering Digital Leadership?

So, we have a board that needs to be able to understand what the future may look like and a language divide with the team who can help them. To address this, we decided to create a CIO to CEO phrase book.

We mapped descriptors of organisational digital readiness from the official NHS Digital Maturity Assessment, an unofficial model used by Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and the learning on Digital Leadership from a not-for-profit organisation called DotEveryone to a framework called Well Led, used by healthcare regulators in England to assess Leadership. This analysis identified eight key elements of organisational maturity that appear to be present both in NHS approved digital maturity models and in organisations most able to adapt to the accelerating rate of change across all industries.

We posit that these organisational traits are where boards should concentrate first.

Element 1: Boards need to understand the changes being brought about by use of data, information, knowledge and technology (digital) in health and care and what the opportunities and risks of these changes are. Importantly, they also need to know what the changing expectations of staff, stakeholders, patients and the public are.

Element 2: The organisation needs to have a culture of open discussion, experimentation and sharing led by visible leaders.

Element 3: Everyone in the organisation should understand users’ needs, as well as organisational performance in meeting those needs, and be empowered to act to improve them.

Element 4: The organisation has a suitably skilled and empowered workforce.

Element 5: The organisation should be supportive of cross-functional, non-hierarchical structures as well as traditional hierarchies. It needs to consider where power to affect change should be, inside and outside the organisation.

Element 6: The processes that the organisation uses to underpin its functions must be fast, integrated, light and meet users’ needs (both staff and service users). Boards should understand the impact of having poor processes on staff productivity and user satisfaction.

Element 7: Risks associated with use or adoption of digital (e.g. cyber security, GDPR and information sharing) must be understood, weighed appropriately against benefits and mitigations assured.

Element 8: The organisation should be supported by technology that is scalable, interoperable, flexible, fixable, resilient and fit-for-purpose and importantly the Board should understand how to assure themselves of this.

None of these are easy to crack. We are experimenting with board development sessions to engage boards in developing themselves and their organisations in the areas they think are most important. So far discursive and creative sessions led by independent facilitators, supported by the CIO, seem to be most successful.

What is certain is that if CIOs don’t learn to speak Digital in the native language of boards, their organisations simply won’t be able to adapt. And if organisations don’t adapt, they will fail.