In the quest to boost innovation, CIOs have many options at their disposal. An often-overlooked approach is visiting enterprises that are highly regarded for their vision and imagination.
“When I was CIO at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, I led one of the most complex IT operations in the country — a $6 billion portfolio supporting 1,300 facilities, millions of veterans and the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system,” said James P. Gfrerer, former CIO at the VA, and currently CEO of Federal Business LLC, a veterans affairs advisory services firm. “We were running everything from hospital systems to financial platforms to national cemetery technology — and everything had to work 24/7, with zero room for downtime.”
That’s why conducting site visits was so important, Gfrerer said. “You can only learn so much from a PowerPoint deck or a vendor briefing,” he explained, adding that he believes viewing other business operations up close provides real insight. “It shows you what ‘good’ looks like in the real world, and how you might translate those practices back into your own environment.”
Jordan Ruch, CIO at AtlantiCare, an Atlantic City, N.J.-based hospital and medical services firm, agreed. “Site visits allow CIOs to see innovation in practice and understand how technology integrates into real-world operations,” he said. “You can’t always capture that from a slide deck.” Ruch said that observing up close how other organizations approach transformation provides fresh perspectives and often inspires practical ideas that can be adapted within one’s own organization.
Hitting the road
Advance preparation is essential to get the most out of a visit, Ruch said. “Define clear learning goals and review the host organization’s recent initiatives so you can ask targeted questions,” he advised. “Bringing a cross-functional team that includes IT and operational leaders ensures you capture diverse insights that can translate into meaningful action.”
Preparation starts with a brutal honesty assessment about your own organization’s pain points, said Kevin Surace, CEO at Appvance, an AI testing tools provider in Santa Clara, Calif. Identify where resistance or hidden sabotage may already exist and build questions that target those dynamics. “Bring your tiger team leaders and empower them to listen not just for process insights but for how other companies manage morale, incentives and accountability during rapid adoption,” he said.
Gfrerer breaks the process into four basic steps.
1. Go in with data. At the VA, Gfrerer and his team surveyed thousands of employees every month on IT performance. Reviewing that feedback before each visit helped them understand what users were experiencing, he said.
2. Know what you want to learn. Gfrerer advised that IT leaders pick two or three priorities, such as cloud speed, AI governance, cybersecurity or customer experience, and keep conversations centered on those.
3. Bring along the right people. Gferer would take deputies, security leads, finance folks and district leaders with him on visits. He explained he wanted his team to see successes and pain points firsthand, to work toward a philosophy of fixing root causes of issues, rather than pointing fingers at one another.
4. Hold a town hall. Town halls give everyone a chance to speak honestly, Gferer said. He added that sometimes he would bring in Tier 2 and Tier 3 support teams via video to hear issues directly. His organizations would also recognize high performers during town halls.
Discussion topics
The most productive conversations typically revolve around workforce and talent — who you hire, how you train them, and how you retain them, Gfrerer said. Other essential topics include service management, customer experience and ways of measuring ROI.
“Cybersecurity — identity, zero trust, insider threat and operational resilience — these topics tell you a lot about how an organization runs, and where its strengths and blind spots might be,” Gfrerer said.
The conversation should go beyond platforms and pipelines, Surace said. “CIOs should probe into cultural dynamics, accountability structures and how leadership identifies and addresses employee resistance before it becomes sabotage.” He added that key issues, such as cross-functional governance, AI literacy and communication cadence are vital discussion topics since they determine whether innovation accelerates or collapses under internal friction.
The bottom line
The best site visits spark ongoing relationships, Ruch said. “Innovation in healthcare moves too quickly for any one organization to go at it alone,” he said. “Sharing lessons learned and maintaining an open dialogue across systems creates opportunities for collective progress.”
Visits should be reciprocal, Gfrerer advised. “When you open your doors and let others see the good and the bad, you build long-term partnerships — not one-off exchanges,” he said.
