ABSTRACT
When Wray was at Citizens, he and his team were managing a number of integrations, with the mandate to make significant cuts to the budget. “This was way beyond the typical 5 percent, and I didn’t know how to do it,” he says. “So this guy I know said, ‘There’s this Lean Six Sigma thing,’ and that got me started on continuous improvement.” When Wray joined BCBSRI as CIO, he saw that there was no real continuous improvement discipline in the company-no structured approach to improving cost, customer service, and risk management based on Six Sigma principles. “I said, ‘We need this, and I’m going to sponsor it.’ ”
As his company’s continuous improvement champion, Wray was able to use his CIO skills to provide enterprise leadership at a dierent level. “If, like most CIOs, you are good at project management and good at driving structured change, you will be good at being your company’s continuous improvement champion,” says Wray. And because these skills are the same as those you use in IT project delivery, you don’t have to get permission to practice. “Continuous improvement is a natural extension of your CIO role. It makes you a better leader, and it will give you more than technology problems to solve,” Wray says.
