ITML Institute's Eric Bloom on the IT Leadership Leap: Mentors, Mindset, and the AI Moment

In this episode of The Vurge, host and Divurgent COO and President Wendy Hoffman sits down with Eric Bloom, Executive Director of the IT Management and Leadership Institute (ITML Institute) and a former CTO—to unpack what it really takes for technologists to move into management and leadership roles. Bloom explains why many IT professionals are promoted simply for being the “best techie,” then find themselves in a job they were never trained to do—one that requires letting go of hands-on work, delegating effectively, and finding fulfillment through the success of the team.

Bloom lays out key growth areas for new and aspiring IT leaders: interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence; “interprofessional” skills like conflict resolution, negotiation, and difficult conversations; business understanding of the industry and stakeholders; the business of IT (budgeting, vendor management, service catalogs, user experience, and customer service); and executive presence that helps IT earn a seat at the strategy table. A recurring theme is mentorship. Bloom argues it’s the single most important accelerator for leadership growth, because management is learned faster with guidance than through trial-and-error alone.

Looking forward, the conversation highlights how leaders must adapt to multi-generational teams, shifting expectations about purpose and work-life balance, and the realities of leading hybrid workforces. Bloom also emphasizes designing healthcare technology with the full patient population in mind, sharing an example of a well-built prescription app that failed users because it wasn’t accessible to many older patients. Finally, the pair discuss AI as a fast-moving set of distinct capabilities (not “one thing”) and the challenge of choosing tools wisely amid hype, consolidation, and long-term platform risk—reinforcing the need for strong governance, change management, and leadership fundamentals as IT modernizes.

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Transcript

Wendy Hoffman   0:05
All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Verge, Divurgent’s Podcast, where we dive into the latest innovations and insights in healthcare IT. Today, I'm excited to have Eric Bloom, Executive Director at IT Management and Leadership Institute, joining us.
 today. Welcome, Eric.
Eric Bloom   0:30
 Well, thank you for having me. I truly appreciate it. I'm honored to be on with you today. Thank you.
Wendy Hoffman   0:35
 Awesome. So let's just start with kind of our connection. So we have come together and met through the Society of Information Management. We both serve on a kind of a committee advisory capacity with SIM 4.0.
 And today we're going to have an opportunity to really dive into kind of what your institute has an opportunity to offer, not only to healthcare, but across industries and really get a chance to focus on leadership. And I think one of the things that we both have experienced in that connection of SIM is.
 Skill development, both at a technical level, but also in those soft skills and those leadership management skills. So I'm really excited about our conversation today.
Eric Bloom   1:21
 Yes.
 Me also.
Wendy Hoffman   1:25
 Fantastic. Well, why don't you just do a brief introduction of yourself and the institute and let our audience kind of get a feel of kind of what you do and kind of how you're able to help others in IT today.
Eric Bloom   1:40
 OK. Do you mean I have to be able to help others? No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, is that I'm actually a CIO by background. I spent the 1st 30 ish years, let me say, in IT and IT management.
 In 2009, during the financial meltdown, as I like to say, I was given the opportunity to do new things and began or founded what became the IT Management Leadership Institute. What our specialty is or what we strive to do is basically help technologists.
 IT specifically move into management roles. We're the governing body for two certifications in IT management recognized by cio.com and Dean and others called the ITMLP or IT Management Leadership Professional and the ITMLE IT Management and Leadership Executive.
 I've got a couple of other certificate programs and so on. But bottom line is that what the company does is and through the materials we create when I speak or you know or when I teach is I'm continually saying to myself, boy, where was I when I needed me 30 years ago?
 So, you know, that's really what our goal is, is to, you know, help IT leaders be better leaders and help IT be greater value to the organization it's in, in all industries, including of course, you know, healthcare, which brings us to here.
Wendy Hoffman   3:07
 Yes, fantastic. And tell me a little bit, are your classes virtual, remote? People come in face to face. Tell me a little bit about how it's structured so individuals can have a sense of where and what. And then secondly, spend some time. I know I've had a chance to go into a couple of your.
Eric Bloom   3:25
 Mm-hmm.
Wendy Hoffman   3:27
 Webinars slash podcasts and signed up for a recent one that's coming up. So talk a little bit about those as well.
Eric Bloom   3:34
 OK. The way that we deliver classes is we do them in person as well as virtual. How we primarily deliver is virtual. In fact, we have a public schedule. Everything on it is guaranteed to run because knock on wood, we know that we're going to be able to get enough people in it to make it worthwhile to run.
 But, but anyway, we've been doing virtual classes. In fact, the two certifications I mentioned are three days virtual. And people, you know, when we were first asked to do that, it was like, Oh my God, three days virtual. Well, we've been doing those classes on a monthly basis virtual since 2013.
 So when COVID came, certainly there were other business and personal issues related to that. But from a training and delivery perspective, for us it was just another day. What's what people really love about our classes, in addition, I'll say to the the material and all that kind of general stuff, is they're geared toward IT.
Wendy Hoffman   4:10
 Fantastic.
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   4:29
 IT in any professional silo or organization. So in a typical class, we'll have one or two people from healthcare, one or two from municipal IT, 2 from very large corporations, a couple from a nonprofit, both in the US as well as around the world.
 So people really get to see, as I like to say, you know what the other folks are doing in other parts of industry. Also, what we also will tend to have is a couple of people from help desk, someone from Cloud OPS, someone from software development or testing or different parts of IT, which brings another kind of.
 Conversations like do the help desk people really understand what the application developers are doing? And then going the other way, I just picked on those two, I could pick on any. And do the application developers really understand what the help desk people need to know in order to properly service and roll out their software?
Wendy Hoffman   5:16
 Yeah.
 OK.
Eric Bloom   5:26
 So those kind of conversations, cuz it is multiple silo, which you don't get a lot of in it. Interestingly adds to sort of the learning beyond what we're teaching, but just because of the community that we have regarding the webinars you mentioned we have, we've been doing this for years, free webinars once a month to the.
Wendy Hoffman   5:36
 Mhm.
 Yeah.
Eric Bloom   5:45
 IT community, probably half or more of them certainly will never take our classes. But you know what? If it helps, if it helps them in their careers, that in itself makes it worthwhile. IT has been very good to me over the years.
 And as a result of that, I see the free webinars. We have an IT leadership library. We also have, I'll mention our assessment in a moment, but those are free for people. We've also recently done an assessment. This assessment came about interestingly because I'm going to be speaking on it next week in our webinar, some of the.
 Results, but was people would call us and say, Gee, you have this certification, that certification, this certificate, that certificate. And you know, sometimes, you know, I put it a lot of things for me is, you know, if I can't be smart, be lucky, we said, oh, let's just whip up an assessment that can help people decide which one to take.
Wendy Hoffman   6:39
 Right.
Eric Bloom   6:40
 But then we did that and then people said, oh, but you know, it doesn't have any AI insights integrated into the text you get in the back. So we added that and then managers were saying, Gee, you know, you have all this incredible skills and knowledge data on our people. Is there any way we can aggregate it? So we built that. So you know what we've come to.
 Over time, and by the way, the assessment is free. Just go to our our website and on the main menu. Really hard to remember. Our assessment main link is called assessment. But anyway, just go in there, take it. It's free, it ties to your disc score should you know it, and a bunch of other stuff.
Wendy Hoffman   7:34
 That's awesome. And you know through our work at the 4.0 and then just our conversations, it's one of the things that I have found through through that that's very exciting and beneficial is, is that diversity when your classes that have the different industries and the exchange that can take place, but also the solid.
 Presence of healthcare that you're finding in that capacity. And so really excited to have you on the podcast, be able to share more about this, being able to link healthcare to a resource and an element, as I know both of us have a strong passion in that development, that skill enhancement and being able to share.
 Share and give back. So thank you for taking time for the introduction and sharing more. One of the areas we want to talk about is around leadership and how to IT individuals kind of take that to become into management and or into leadership roles.
 And what are some of those components and transitions? And the institute is a resource for them to look at that. So as you look at the difference of that transition of somebody that's very good at what they know within IT, but they wanna take that step and move forward in being a leader.
 Manager engaging differently in the organization. You know, what are some of those important steps or transitions they should keep in mind?
Eric Bloom   9:02
 OK, great. Is let me let me begin by saying is most techies become IT, become managers because they're the best techie. You know is that I like to joke with people that imagine if your manager went into your office one day and said I have some good news for you, we're going to you're going to be promoted.
 Voted. Oh, and by the way, the new job that you're in, you didn't go to school to learn how to do this specifically. None of the things that we really love about you, you know, your ability to perform technical roles, et cetera, are.
 Particularly applicable in this new role, none of the training classes that you've taken have really properly provided you the skill set to do this. Oh, and by the way, the reason the position opened is because last year we promoted someone into this role. You know what? With a skill set a lot like yours, but they failed miserably and we had to fire them.
 Welcome to IT management. So you know, obviously I say that as a joke, tongue in cheek, but that there are many things in moving from a technical role into an IT management role in addition to the regular stuff, you know.
Wendy Hoffman   10:02
 Right.
Eric Bloom   10:12
 Is that, and by the way, many internal organizations have internal new manager training programs provided by human resources. Strongly suggest that you take those. Ours are actually complementary with them. They're not competitive for lots of reasons.
Wendy Hoffman   10:30
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   10:30
 But anyway is is that when you step into a management role, there are many things that are going to change. First of all, if you were promoted from within a department to be the manager of that department, it's going to change the relationship that you have with the people working for you.
 Like they're not going to complain to you about the manager anymore, because now you're the manager. They'll invite you out to lunch less. They'll laugh a little more at your jokes. If you invite them to lunch, they'll cancel plans to go out with you and have lunch. The reason is, is now you have.
 To a large extent, control over the projects that they get over maybe even their future employment at the firm, their raises is they're going to look at you very, very differently. In fact, what you'll see is that if you're the heir apparent, if the manager is, say, going to be retired or everyone knows that the manager's going to be promoted or.
 Know anything along that line. If you're the heir apparent for that role, people will start treating you different immediately. Cuz just imagine that let's take the bad case first. Is there someone? There's someone on my team that I really hate and I'm always really mean to them and obnoxious to them. Oh look, they're.
 Manager. Would I have wished I was nicer to them and maybe over the last year? The other side of it is that if I'm helpful and friendly with the person and then they become the manager, I'm going to look that as a personal advantage because I got along with the person before they were my boss.
 So that there's some of that, but also in a technical role is we're taught to do things. We build software, we fix PCs, we test software, we Gen. up, you know, cloud instances, we do things like that. I'm going to sort of.
 Generally refer to that as with our hands or our hands and our minds, I should say. Then when we're promoted is that, and this is one thing that happened to me, I went through this process is that when you're promoted is you're not personally doing those things. I mean, I'll talk about play or coach in a minute.
Wendy Hoffman   12:27
 Mhm.
 Yeah.
Eric Bloom   12:40
 So what happened is, is you're telling other people to do those things, those things that you love doing, which is why you went into the profession for the first time. So you have to gain a not only a respect for it, but a love and a feeling of accomplishment by letting other people do things.
 Allowing you to get things done through other people's hands.
 And then what's worse? What's the worst for IT people, I think, is delegating people to take over your tasks.
 It's a little bit like, imagine that you built a piece of software or new processes in the help desk or whatever it might be. And now you're saying in your new role, you don't have time to do it because now you're doing budgeting and performance reviews and you're hiring new people and all those things that managers do is that you have to say.
 Someone else, Hey, you know this pristine process that I tuned and made perfect over the last five years? Why don't you go work on it now? You know, it's giving up the things that got you to where you are. So that's really hard because what do you say? Say, well, I can do it better.
Wendy Hoffman   13:49
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   13:53
 Or they'll say, oh, I have to. If I do it myself, it'll take me 20 minutes to teach someone else to do it. I'm going to have to spend a couple of hours teaching them. What I say to people is, and this is a thing you again need to understand in this transition, you're not spending two hours teaching that person.
 You're investing 2 hours to teach that person because you're growing their skill set. That 20 minutes now will be 20 minutes tomorrow, 20 minutes next week and eventually, and so on. So as a result, what you're doing is you have to change that mental, mental mindset.
 Now also, you know my wife actually loves when I use this analogy is becoming a going from individual contributor to manager is a little bit like going from single to being married.
 It's still a little bit about you, but mostly now it's about the team.
 So that's another thing you need to be thinking of. Like let's say for example, you're moving to a new floor on your building. Is that based on your negotiation skills and your, you know, credibility and standing within your manager's department, which includes you?
 Is does your team get the offices that overlook the ocean or the offices that overlook the parking lot and the air conditioning units? Is that those are the kinds of things that change when you're in a management role. So it's understanding this and embracing it.
 In addition to when in from going on too long, let me know. I'm hoping this is good, OK?
Wendy Hoffman   15:28
 No, no, you know, you're good. And I think a couple points that you make there in in that transition of skill is around that focus. And I know as I work with leaders that make and want that change and have that conversation around moving from what you're really good at, where your competency and skill set is.
Eric Bloom   15:37
 Mhm.
Wendy Hoffman   15:48
 The now shifting into like more listening, more navigation, playing a little bit more like air traffic control of projects, people, situations that those skill sets are very different than maybe the technical or the.
 competency that allowed you to kind of succeed or excel and and being able to make that transition. So one thing, and and I anticipate you know you have this, but having resources that can be a mentor, coach, or having a trust with other leaders where you can balance
 Bounce questions off can help navigate through that where you've got some resources and people to help say, hey, I'm experiencing this, but you know, you may not want to admit that to your boss quite yet, you know, and having those tools and resources as you're moving from that area of.
 Strong sense and competency in your area of expertise. And if it's IT, it could be any area, could be data, could be, like you said, PCs, could be applications, could be hosting, could be coding, but moving to now managing, leading and engaging.
 It's some of those dynamics that, you know, you got to listen more, you got to navigate, you got to teach, you got to train, you got to take on frustration, challenges, venting. And that, you know, is an entirely new and different skill set.
Eric Bloom   17:22
 Absolutely. In fact, is that. So I'll begin by saying first of all, everything you said 100% agree is that regarding getting a mentor, one of the best things that you can do for your career. In fact, what I would say if people only remember.
 One thing from what I'm saying in this podcast with you is to find yourself a mentor, because you know is that when if you want to learn to play guitar, you can learn on your own, but you can learn faster if you get a if you're being taught by someone who knows how to play management is the same thing.
 saying, you know, unlike technology, people don't come with user manuals and we're all different. Now, when you move into a management role, there are a number of different ways you need to grow. And a mentor, in fact, could help you with this. Those areas are first, interpersonal communication.
 Now, to be a great technologist, you might be good at interpersonal communication, but it's not part of that core skill set that's required. You know, if you're, you know, unless you're in a specific job that requires you to speak to business users, even beyond technologists.
Wendy Hoffman   18:20
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   18:33
 So the first area is what I like to call interpersonal communication, emotional intelligence. I see emotional intelligence as the tip of the spear on things to understand whether it's negotiation, influence, asking questions, all of those things. When I first learned about emotional intelligence and I was your typical techie that sort of needed to.
 To learn this stuff, to be honest with you, it was like, whoa, and you can learn these skills. It's interesting now that I teach them. I find that rather humorous. But anyway, is but this interpersonal communication, which is, you know, emotional intelligence, active listening, influence, things along that line, asking really.
 Good quality questions. The next is what I like to call interprofessional communication. That's things like conflict resolution, difficult conversations, delegation, negotiation, those things that grow on our ability to talk to others, but are really needed skills, particularly in a.
 Management role. The third area is business understanding. Let's say for example that I was working in a hospital, always worked on patient records. Well, when I'm in an IT management role, probably over the patient records area, but I'm also gonna be dealing with.
 With other areas, say for example, I'm rolling out a piece of software that's hospital wide, maybe something AI based. I need to understand that there are very different business communities within a hospital, for example, hospital nurses. The way I think of it is doctors.
Wendy Hoffman   20:10
 Yeah.
Eric Bloom   20:12
 Nurses and administration staff. I know there are others, but I think of those as the, you know, there's research, but I think of those as the three primary. If I'm rolling out a product to those three, maybe it's an upgraded version of e-mail, whatever it is, I have to understand that their mentality, their goals, their time.
 Constraints, their, you know, their revenue sources are very different from person to person or let me say area to area. So I need to understand the business, my industry, what's going on. The next is what I like to call the business of IT and these are all new things for people who.
Wendy Hoffman   20:38
 Yeah.
 OK.
Eric Bloom   20:50
 Techies. And then I'll explain one other thing at the end of this. But the business of IT is budgeting, customer service, user experience, methodology, vendor management, coming up with service catalogs, all of those things that you really need.
 Understand the business of IT beyond just the technology or just the business and the last of which is particularly for those as you move up organizationally is business acumen and executive presence when everyone in an internal.
Wendy Hoffman   21:23
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   21:25
 Support organization, which at the end of the day, you know, IT sort of is. We're providing technology to different parts of the organization. But whether you're in IT or healthcare, finance or any of the other internal functions that help the mission.
 Is you want to get a seat at the business strategy table. The best way to do that with an IT is to understand the business and talk to the business. You know, talk. Now when I say business, I mean it very loosely. You know, if you're in a municipality, then the business is, you know, the helping the citizenship, obviously.
 Hospital, it's helping the patients, you know in actual business it could be customers or clients. So you know look at it from take the word very loosely, but it's when you get a seat at the business table and you're as part of that strategy.
 That's where you're being seen as or IT is being seen as a true partner of the business.
Wendy Hoffman   22:24
 Yeah.
Eric Bloom   22:24
 So it's all of those things that grow, you know. And one last thing on this is an back to your question on the transition. When you're an individual contributor, you're a subject matter expert in whatever your particular vocation is, help desk, cloud testing, you know, whatever it might be, you know, nightly.
 Operations, whatever it is. So you're a mile deep in that expertise, but you're only an inch wide in all of those other things that go on in IT, you know, budgeting, roll out of new systems, disaster recovery, cybersecurity. Well, when you move into a management role.
 You need to be certainly more than an inch deep in the area that you're managing, but you need to be a mile wide in all of those other things related to related to IT. Because you know what? When you're an individual contributor, you're a member of one team.
Wendy Hoffman   23:20
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   23:20
 Your boss's team. When you're in a management role, you're a member of two teams, the team you're leading and your boss's team, which is you and very possibly people in other IT silos, or as you move U to, say, the head of IT role to people in other.
 Business areas, you know, marketing, sales, lab services, you know, and so on, et cetera.
Wendy Hoffman   23:44
 Yeah, yeah. And I think one thing that's pretty important in all of those five or six areas is it's getting depth and breadth, but it's a, it's not a light switch. You know, you can go get a certification on a particular IT technical item and and have a a basic.
 Understanding and and be able to feel comfortable to go do that, whatever that was that you got the certification in with management leadership, being able to function in that it takes time. It's more like a marathon, not a Sprint, and you have to.
 be able to do a little bit, dip your toe in each one of those areas. It's not like just master communication and then master business and then master, you know, the different elements. You've got to kind of really navigate, you know, wide and down.
 Yeah.
 And that skill development in order to help you be more successful. And I think one of the things, not that any of them are more than important, but getting a sense of the broader picture of the business, how inner departments work together in the strategy and the planning and the execution of those.
 Business operations is really something a leader, IT or otherwise, needs to invest their time in because it really opens doors, it opens your eyes and perspectives and it helps you be able to relate, communicate and engage back with your team when.
 You have that understanding and capability to see that bigger picture.
Eric Bloom   25:28
 Absolutely. You know, and following on that, it also allows you to be proactive and enhance the user satisfaction of those areas that you're helping. Because if you understand what they're doing, then what that also does, it allows you to anticipate their needs.
Wendy Hoffman   25:34
 Right.
 Yeah. And you know, technology has always been an industry that moves fast in perspective and you got to stay up, you got to change, you got to be willing to adapt. But I would say today we're really feeling that change a little bit stronger, a little bit faster than where we're at.
Eric Bloom   25:53
 Mhm.
Wendy Hoffman   26:07
 So when we talk a little bit about, OK, you're making that transition you've moved into and you're establishing, you're a leader in IT. As we look now into the future, what are some key points that you're finding through your classes, through the institute, through your own industry knowledge that leaders?
Eric Bloom   26:22
 Mhm.
Wendy Hoffman   26:26
 Should keep at the forefront as we look to the future. We've got different generations in the workforce. We've got, you know, different compliance items. Certainly we're going to talk a little bit here in a bit around AI, but AI is playing an impact and changing that dynamic from.
Eric Bloom   26:42
 Mhm.
Wendy Hoffman   26:45
 Academic all the way through, you know, to leadership. So talk a little bit about the future leaders and what you see and what are some thoughts to keep in mind?
Eric Bloom   26:47
 Yes, mhm.
 OK, first, what's A I? I'm just kidding. But you know, is that I'm asked this a lot, you know, is that moving forward, you know, is is that how do, how are you, how do people need to be different leaders and leadership things? The first thing I would say is at the end of the day, people are people.
Wendy Hoffman   26:59
 Uh.
Eric Bloom   27:16
 You know, you need to hire them. You need to motivate them. You need to help them enhance their skill sets. You know, all of those. You need to mentor them. All of those things that you needed to do 30 years ago with people. And quite frankly, whether you're a leader or a manager in IT or a manager anywhere else.
 You have to know how to motivate your team and all that kind of stuff. I see that as table stakes for really any management area anyway. Regarding IT is that every generation is a little bit different.
 You know, you look at, you know, I'll start with, you know, my generation, you know, Gen. Z. No, I'm just kidding. You know, is is that, you know, we grew up with different in different environments, different technologies.
 Different world events. So every generation by its nature is a little bit different and you really need to understand what motivates people at different levels. As an example of this as a baby boomer.
 If I were to say to someone, well, why do you want me to do this? What I'm really saying is, is, well, I don't know if I'm going to do this until you give me a really good reason why when younger generations, which we shouldn't be surprised about because they're our kids and to at some level to soon to be our grandkids.
 Is that when they say why do you want me to do this? It's not pushing back on no, I don't want to. It's because they really want to understand their impact to the organization. Quite frankly, I think that they have it better doing it better than we did, but also work life balance, differences in technology.
Wendy Hoffman   28:51
 Mm.
Eric Bloom   29:00
 You know, is working from home. You know, is that everyone says, oh, I'd love to work, you know, work from home if I can. Well, certainly in wet labs in a hospital, you can't in other areas. Some you can't, some you can't. But I was talking to a friend of mine just a few months ago. I said, how do you, how do you like working from home?
Wendy Hoffman   29:03
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   29:18
 And he says to me, he says, I don't feel like I'm working from home. I feel like I'm living at work. So as a new manager, you as a manager today, unlike 25 years ago, you have to be negotiate, you have to be understanding and leading.
Wendy Hoffman   29:24
 Oh.
Eric Bloom   29:34
 A hybrid work team. You know, how do you delegate to people who you never see? And how do you measure their work because you can't walk by and look at their desk?
Wendy Hoffman   29:45
 Yeah.
Eric Bloom   29:45
 So this whole hybrid work, you know, work thing. Also, their understanding of technology is very different than people in older generations. But all of that is sort of, yeah, I mean, they said the same thing before we had calculators. They said, well, you know, your parents didn't have calculators. You know, what do you?
Wendy Hoffman   30:05
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   30:05
 Do in the accounting department, you know, so I think that that is important. Also as technology moves more and more quickly is what we need to understand as IT leaders is that our business community is a lot more comfortable and understanding of technology.
Wendy Hoffman   30:07
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   30:25
 And demands a higher level of quality.
 Than was the case in previous generations. Every piece of software that any IT department rolls out gets compared to Excel and Word, you know, and you know, online interfaces like like Amazon. We're, you know, hundreds.
 10s of millions of dollars has been spent on those designs and interfaces, but we have to provide them as IT people with obviously much, much smaller budgets.
Wendy Hoffman   31:01
 Yeah, yeah. And you know, as I look at the future and even my progression in leadership, adaptation, I think, is an element for future leaders that is just essential. Not that it wasn't before, but it is more relevant and present to your point, the different generations, what motivates.
Eric Bloom   31:09
 Yes.
Wendy Hoffman   31:21
 Them. What brings their questions? What and how do they want to contribute? How and what recognition do they need? It's not a one-size-fits-all anymore in how you organize and engage teams communications.
Eric Bloom   31:30
 Absolutely.
Wendy Hoffman   31:37
 And then the other piece is the multiple forms, you know, may it be e-mail, may it be teams, may it be SharePoint, may it be chats. The ways that people get their information is very different and the phone has become our screen, you know, and having that accessibility. So again.
Eric Bloom   31:53
 Yes.
Wendy Hoffman   31:56
 Able to adapt to multiple platforms and being able to ensure you're reaching the various individuals that are part of your group, your team. And then lastly, being able to bring that up a level in understanding so that it's not.
 Only at that level. But then how does this impact the business? How does this impact the other departments? And in healthcare, the patient and that experience is at the forefront of anything and everything we do. But the steps, the process, the workflows, the clinical, the administration, there's many factors that have to come.
 Come together. So when we're leading and we're engaging, that adaptability and that awareness is so much, in my opinion, prevalent and everyday present than maybe what I recognized earlier in my career when I was leading, you know, different teams and pieces.
Eric Bloom   32:54
 Yes, absolutely. Now let me, if I may expand on that for a moment and say not only like when IT we think of supporting the people within our organization, but also and I will say particularly in healthcare is that a large constituency of healthcare services are older individuals.
Wendy Hoffman   33:04
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   33:13
 Just, you know, by the nature of human beings is that I won't mention the organization that did this, but what they did was they came out with a fantastic piece of software that it was an app on a phone.
 That allowed people to order their prescriptions, have them delivered at home if needed, and so on. It was really a wonderful concept and a wonderful thing. It was designed by younger technologists to be used by older.
 Patients and customers.
 Who didn't have, who didn't have smartphones, who didn't know what an app was. If they had an app and a smartphone, then the text on it was small enough that most of them couldn't read it. So what I would say is, is that anything that's rolled out for.
Wendy Hoffman   33:57
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   34:12
 Self-service, which was a mistake that they made. Again, great idea, great product. The technology worked. But what happened was is that part of their design team did not include the full constituency of people that were going to be using the technology.
Wendy Hoffman   34:26
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   34:30
 So that's something else that has changed overtime. But you know, you mentioned AI, you know, in IT, as funny as it sounds, the more things change, the more it stays the same. There have been various times in.
Wendy Hoffman   34:34
 Yeah.
Eric Bloom   34:46
 The history of IT, all like 70 years of it, you know, whatever, where there have been times of intense innovation.
 Historically, I'll mention them for a moment. It's when mini computers came out and it wasn't just mainframes. It was when personal computers came out, when the Internet came, when when cloud computing came out, and now obviously with AI.
Wendy Hoffman   35:07
 Mhm.
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   35:13
 During those, you know, like that five to seven-year period when those new technology, if you go back 15 years, everything had to do with, you know, moving to cloud based architectures. Now it's, Oh yeah, it's cloud based architecture. OK, you know, I mean it becomes common.
 Place. Some of the technologies go away over time and so on. But The thing is where we are right now with AI. First of all, you have to understand that AI isn't a single technology. And we talk about this in a number of our different classes as well as actually a one day class we have coming out called.
 Preparing IT leadership for AI, but anyway is is that AI isn't one thing. It's multiple different technologies that can be used in multiple different ways. Many, many companies have very, very successfully.
 You know, through stumbling and so on, rolled out generative AI. You know, like ChatGPT. They're using it in a number of different places, but have failed miserably on agentic AI, which deals with process and AI agents.
Wendy Hoffman   36:14
 Mhm.
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   36:25
 You know, I was talking to a senior leader who will also be unnamed, who said to me, hey, Eric, you know, you know a lot about this technology stuff. We want to implement the AI. What do we do?
Wendy Hoffman   36:38
 It.
Eric Bloom   36:39
 And had to explain there isn't the AI, you know, there's machine learning, which has been used by insurance companies for 20 years now to figure out if we get insurance or not. There's agents, there's, you know, text generation, there's code generation now with both codecs.
Wendy Hoffman   36:42
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   36:58
 Codex, Cloud code and others. So which thing do you want to do? So the big thing that's different about AI is that, you know, pick a lane or pick multiple lanes, but don't look at them as all the same thing.
Wendy Hoffman   37:13
 Yeah, and.
Eric Bloom   37:15
 It's just multiple different technologies that happen to be implemented at the same time, very much like it. Also, which tools do you pick? Because we know what's going to happen right now. There's an enormous infusion in venture capital, in new companies, in newly announced products and technologies.
 As there were was in cloud, as there was when Windows came out, if you want to go back far enough, as there was with, you know, the Internet and so on. Think back 15 years. How many of those products are still there?
Wendy Hoffman   37:49
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   37:49
 There's a shrinkage, there's a consolidation to those few products. So if you pick a platform product to develop your A I stuff on and it goes away, you might say, well, all right, you just go to another tool. But on that tool you have built, spent, you know, half $1,000,000 on developing.
 Applications and processes on that technology. Replacing that technology is gonna cost you probably close to the half $1,000,000 that you built on top of it. So this is a very scary time for IT leaders is how do you not pick the next shiny toy unless it's a shiny toy that you truly believe will be there in?
 A few years.
Wendy Hoffman   38:30
 Yeah. And I think, you know, some of what we're finding in our consulting services and capabilities is there, there's a lot of shiny objects for consideration out there and and being developed. And I was just at a couple industry conferences that happened in the spring and so you get a chance to see those products.
 See the demos and the capabilities and as a leader, understanding kind of the governance, understanding the organizational change management and that it's not simply just implementation of a technology tool, but coming back.
 Sum.
 Those leadership core competencies and capabilities that you were talking about in being able to identify where and how that fits into the overall business structure, where and how does that improve and ensuring that it's not single threaded and then with the impact of the EHR.
Eric Bloom   39:21
 Mhm.
Wendy Hoffman   39:30
 And just kind of the interface interoperability, you know of how things work together might have an excellent tool for ambient or revenue cycle. But if you don't go through the steps to your point where you know it might have been single threaded.
Eric Bloom   39:43
 Yeah.
Wendy Hoffman   39:50
 And you don't have the big picture, you miss out. And so I think that's a challenge for IT leaders today of multiple departments coming at them saying I want this tool, I want this capability, I want that, I want this functionality and having to manage and navigate.
 Which ones fit all of those key elements and criteria, and then what is the time and the distraction it's going to take to put into play?
Eric Bloom   40:16
 Yes. Now, may I tie two things that you've said previously with this? And let me say to all of your listeners, Wendy did not ask me to say this, just so you know, but we talked about mentorship and we talked about what you've just said here is that I think that every healthcare organization should.
Wendy Hoffman   40:20
 Yeah.
Eric Bloom   40:36
 Work with, I'll say an organization like yours or yours specifically. I will say the reason is, is you can be their mentor because when you're internal in IT, as I was for 30 years, you know, I never had the time to, I'd go over an occasional conference, but to really look at all the products out there, you know, we'll learn.
Wendy Hoffman   40:43
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   40:55
 You know, like certain things like AMD is buying Intel, like you can't miss that one if you're paying attention to what's going on. But you know, like what products, which companies are, which products are being phased out, which ones are being successful, which one are being embraced by 2/3 of the healthcare.
 Industry, which one are people moving away from is, is that in a firm like yours, Wendy, you get to see that and you get to learn that because it's your job to see that and learn that. Whereas my job when I was internal in IT, my number one job is keep operations up.
Wendy Hoffman   41:27
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   41:33
 You know, I could be interested in all these new systems and technologies and AI and all this cool stuff, but if e-mail goes down, guess where my priority is going to be? Well, then again, e-mail is now Outlook 365, which is cloud-based, but you know what I mean. But anyway is I think that's an enormous.
Wendy Hoffman   41:33
 Mhm.
 Mhm.
 I know, yeah, the technology's moved on.
Eric Bloom   41:53
 Value that your I mean it's the your clients going to you is the same as when I remodeled my kitchen. I hired a designer to do it. Why? Because I never did a kitchen. I didn't want to spend a lot of money for a marble countertop that would make it impossible.
 For me to sell my house, you know, is that it's the same reason you bring in people for that, that you would bring in an organization like yours for a lot of things, just like, you know, people moving into IT management. That's why people come to us is cuz we know how to do it. We can provide that mentorship and that experience and.
Wendy Hoffman   42:14
 Mhm.
Eric Bloom   42:32
 All of those things like how do you what is client service if you've worked in Cloud OPS or what is Cloud OPS if you've been in help desk. In doing that is because what we need to do professionally is an IT management.
 Is not a destination. It's not a Gee, I took the class and yay, I'm good. You know, it's not an event like Gee, or I should say it's not a destination. I'm so good at it. I've learned it. I'm done. Forgive me, I messed up my own analogy.
Wendy Hoffman   43:00
 Mm.
Eric Bloom   43:06
 It's not an event. I took the class. OK, I got the IT management thing down. It's an ongoing, lifelong journey of personal growth, of learning, of watching what your management is doing and saying, hey, do I agree or disagree with that decision not to 2nd?
 Guess them, but to understand the mentality of someone, an organizational level above you of why a decision is made. So when you get there, you have a little experience and understanding on how it's to be made. So, so much of that ties to mentorship and thinking about your next role, whether you know the mentorship could be.
 Be what new product do I pick or whatnot? You know, for you, what new Gee, do I really need to learn about IT budgeting? Well, yeah, even if you're an individual contributor, because if you want to buy a server in June, you better talk to your boss about it because in November, because that's when the capital budget is being defined.
 So, so much of all of this stuff interconnects.
Wendy Hoffman   44:06
 Absolutely. Well, Eric, I think we're close to our time today, but I want to say thank you. Is there any closing items to kind of wrap up that you would like to engage on the institute or the learning or the certificates with our audience today?
Eric Bloom   44:22
 Well, let me say is if you go to our website, I'm easy to find. Again, my name is Eric Bloom. If you Google Eric Bloom, you'll either see a real cool rock musician or me. I'm the other guy, but go there. We have certificate programs. We teach the business of IT and actually a lot of the stuff that.
 We spoke of here. I went through all this, so as a result, I mean we have many instructors, but I've had a hand in all the instruction of the things that I wish I knew. Let me also say most important to this too. Oh, by the way, we have free webinars monthly. Everyone is welcome to. But most important to this, I'm truly honored that you have me in your podcast.
 I know you're an incredible organization and a thought leader yourself. So thank you so much for having me. I truly appreciate it. Thank you.
Wendy Hoffman   45:09
 Oh, really enjoyed the conversation. Very informative, excited about Management Leadership Institute being available to the healthcare capability and audience of our IT leaders. And just want to appreciate your time and insights and I'll close out with until next time, stay innovative.
 Keep pushing the boundaries and what's possible in healthcare IT. We can all work and do it together. Thanks so much.