Week 1

By Lili Hozakowska:

This week’s case study focused on the Moyen Sante Medical Center. We were presented with four final candidates for a CIO position; our job was to make a recommendation to the CEO as to how we should move forward. Our group, Jefferson, was actually the only group to reach a consensus on the candidate we chose for the position: Sarah Janes. Before we began discussing any of the candidates, we reviewed the details about Moyen Sante and discussed what type of CIO they were likely in need of. We then reviewed the candidates and found that, in our opinion and despite missing information, Sarah was the most fitting.

It was interesting to listen to the remainder of the class defend their candidate selections because we had already taken many of their arguments into consideration, but didn’t feel that any of them were sufficient enough to justify selecting a candidate other than Sarah. Some argued that the position should have been filled by a person with greater business experience, but we thought a doctor would be more appropriate due to the division of departments. Having a doctor interact with departments, we felt, would more likely yield results because doctors will typically listen to other doctors before they listen to administration.

There were also some incidences where, what we considered to be weaknesses of certain candidates, other groups viewed as strengths. For example, one team argued that Barry was the best choice because of his business and consulting experience. They also admitted that, due to his age, there was a good possibility that he might leave the organization after just 3 to 5 years, but not before he was able to enact significant change. We saw early abandonment of the position as a weakness, but then it was pointed out that the average tenure of a CIO is only approximately 5 years anyway.

Overall, we decided on Sarah because she was a physician, she had HIS implementation experience, demonstrated that she was a good leader and manager of people, and she did possess some knowledge of necessary standards. A few of our reservations were due to missing information, such as why she would want to leave Hawaii, she was unsure of the direction of her career, and we had no salary information.

What I enjoyed most about this case study was that it made us think critically about the needs of a medical center and how those needs could be met. It was also beneficial to have us evaluate the candidates, because it gave us the opportunity to identify missing information that we felt was crucial in making a decision. I really enjoyed this “lightening lab,” so I’d say my only complaint was how the information was provided. Only one person in our group saw that the information about the Medical Center was posted the day before. Many of us did not get another Canvas notification when you added to the announcement you already posted. Please create separate announcements and post those documents in the Modules section of Canvas as well, since that’s usually the first place students go.