44
LEADERSHIP
It’s safe to say that operational leadership is filled with metrics and guidelines to success. But what happens if you decide to follow your own path? Tom Ream, CIO of Sutter Health, tells Nick Pryke his story.
B
reaking into the world of C-level leadership is never an easy task. For some, years of hard work and diligence translate into that elusive corner office, unprecedented opportunities and the chance to implement change. For others, it remains a pipe dream, quietly crumbling into obscurity as time takes its toll. These are our usual suspects, our staple business stereotypes. We’ve seen them come and go with the tides of change, but every so often that tide brings with it someone unique – an anomaly of luck and timing with the talent to succeed and a passion to do so. For these fortunate few, the usual clichés of ‘falling into it’ and being in ‘the right place at the right time’ don’t even come close to telling their story. An epitome of this rare breed of leader, Tom Ream is proof that natural talent, the right timing and a sense of adventure can get you everywhere – quite literally. As current VP and Regional CIO of Sutter Health, a not-for-profit healthcare provider operating in over 100 communities, Ream’s professional life was born out of the inquisitive while still at university. “Somebody urged me to run for some kind of office and I eventually became the student body president,” explains a laid-back Ream. “I’d been pre-med all the way through my junior year and had just arrived at that point where I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to keep doing that. When I got elected to the student body presidency, which is something I had never done before, it gave me a whole new set of insights about myself and what was personally possible. That was a great time for me.” With no one in the Ream household having anything resembling prior business experience, there were foreign concepts aplenty to the budding Ream. So he did what any self-respecting student would do – he experimented. “Organizing people, getting them to work together as a team, helping each person feel like an integral part of what was happening; those were things that I experimented with and saw some great responses as a result. It got me thinking: ‘Th is is kind of interesting. I don’t know what it is, but I like it.’ I remember having that distinct thought, and then I went on to go to business school later. I had no way of connecting it to anything I’d ever participated in previous to that.” Delving into his background, Ream openly admits that he didn’t come up through the traditional ranks of being a programmer or operator. While he was interested in the sciences, he never harbored an attraction towards the technology of the day, choosing instead to nurture an interest around information. However, soon aft er his inauguration as student body president, he realized where his true interests lay. “By the time I got an awakening towards leading things, I found that I enjoyed working with people and fi nding out what they could do and how you could form a team and work together. To me, that was very encouraging.” His senior year was witness to the culmination of this realization, with a plan to get people from the margins of social inclusion engaged
TOM REAM.indd 44
10/11/2010 15:50