Kumar Chatani, executive vice president and chief information officer of Mount Sinai Health System, has been distilling his management philosophy for some time. He tells his leadership to attend to the five dimensions of leadership, neatly framed as the five Rs:

• Results: Deliver value
• Resilience: Recover from hardship, learn from it, and successfully move forward
• Relationships: Understand the pulse of your team and form trust with colleagues
• Reward: Recognize and reward good behavior to create a supportive culture inspiring pride
• Renewal: Training and education renew soft and technical skills, keeping you relevant

Chatani further asks IT staff to embrace what he calls six practices. Creating a culture that lives within this structure is what promotes success in one of the most demanding IT environments in the country, he says:

• Offer exceptional customer service
• Be patient-centric
• Demonstrate teamwork
• Show respect
• Be transparent
• Act with integrity

Chatani insists Mount Sinai's team practice these values, and every year people are rewarded for executing on the practices. He and his IT leadership team measures staff attitude annually and adjusts goals based on their employee engagement and customer satisfaction survey results. This is a practice he picked up while he was a regional CIO at Kaiser Permanente. He allocates approximately $600,000 per year to staff and leadership training and tries to create an environment where folks are allowed to take risks because they are allowed to fail, within reason.

The system is complex, supporting world-class research institutes that are renowned for the breakthroughs taking place on the frontier of medical cognitive computing and using analytics to help care for an increasing population where the hospital system has financial risk. Chatani's team is a clear part of the leadership, enhancing the prestige and growth of the largest hospital system in New York State.