Fortify Health Organizations with Better Decisions, Better Choices, Better Strategy; pt 2

A Tool for Progress

The strategic planning process is a modern-day manifestation of Sun Tsu’s 2500 year-old classic text, The Art of War. It looks at the role of business from the standpoint of the benevolent conqueror, advancing position through the clarity of great decision-making on the battlefield. Its adaptation to the business world is highlighted in many authors’ works, most notably Gary Gagliardi’s The Golden Key of Strategy. The four-step strategic planning process – referred to as The Progress Cycle – includes:

1. Listen – opportunities to advance      are often disguised by environmental barriers, self-deception,      organizational limitations and competitive forces
2. Aim – positional advances are      tricky, counter-intuitive, and require a different set of skills than what      we are taught in business school; selecting the right advance helps      eliminate risk
3. Move – Capturing an advancing      position implies relinquishing our previous one, so strategies must be      articulated for each kind of move
4. Claim – Strategic moves will not      be successful unless people recognize them, so we must claim the rewards      of any new position by focusing attention to develop it, resolve its      challenges, and map our next move by repeating the Progress Cycle 

This four-step process is now being deployed by a host of hospital systems that have realized the often sedentary nature of their decision-making. Big-picture analyses are being based upon comprehensive and ongoing information gathering. Environmental assessments are opening minds about the complexities of issues. Organizational nimbleness is resulting from enabling all-management challenge definition. Hospitals are self-cannibalizing with their own sophisticated outpatient spaces. New visions are erupting from the newly engaged decision teams. The future of healthcare is bright for these corporations, largely because they were able to reinvent the way they think and act.

These healthcare systems are now using strategic planning as a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape policy and realize a better future for stakeholders and their constituents. Strategic planning clarifies issues and explores strategic alternatives for solving them, as well as the consequences for those actions. And the process is propelling organizations farther, while spawning vast amounts of creativity, communication and accountability, and response to change.

This article appeared in the Winter 2007 edition of AZ Medical Office, and is reprinted (including updated title and content) with permission from Square Foot Magazine. See our web site to learn more about strategic research and the success of hospitals, health systems, and physician group practices. Just click the link to the left or go to www.michaelharrisgroup.com.

-----Michael