« How to Measure the Hard to Measure: Part 3 - Strategies for Too Many Measures | Main | ActiveStrategy Goes Mobile (And Gets Blogged by Wall Street Journal) »

April 15, 2008

Is Strategy Execution Anyone's Full Time Job in a Hospital?

Virtually all hospitals and health systems have full-time staff responsible for developing strategy. These VPs and Directors of Strategic Planning work in concert with their CEOs, Executive Teams, and Board Members to create what is often a 100+ page document we're all used to seeing.  Unfortunately, what we're not used to seeing is a single person who has the full-time job of executing that strategy. 

After years of working with our nation's largest and smallest hospitals, my advice for all of these organizations is to appoint a "Strategy Execution Officer" (an SEO). This person's job would be to address two themes that I see across all hospitals: a lack of understanding of the effort it takes to execute strategy and a lack of accountability for doing it.

In a nutshell, here are the major responsibilities for the SEO:

  • Translating the strategic plan narrative into a Balanced Scorecard that can executed
  • Cascading the top-level Balanced Scorecard down and across the entire organization
  • Gaining the buy-in and engagement of leadership at all levels to "USE" their cascaded and aligned balanced scorecards
  • Coaching leadership at all levels how to conduct consistent, data-driven business reviews on their Balanced Scorecards
  • Prioritizing and aligning projects (both large and small) to measures on the Balanced Scorecards

At our most successful clients, I see engaged top leadership that have appointed someone at the senior level to own strategy execution. They have the clout, skill set, and background to be successful in that position.  I usually see a 2 year effort to work through the cultural change and leadership coaching it takes before strategy execution is "institutionalized" or "hardwired."

Here are the consequences I see when organizations don't dedicate the leadership and time it takes to conduct this work:

  • Lots of talk, but no changes in outcomes
  • No predictability of outcomes (i.e., when they are good, nobody knows why; when they are not good, nobody knows why)
  • Isolated pockets of teams gather their own data, but there is no effort to synthesize it, ensure consistency, or to act upon the various data sets
  • Poor project prioritization, resulting most often in overworked nursing and quality reporting staffs
  • Ad hoc requests for data and inconsistent reviews of performance

Do you have a person dedicated to Strategy Execution? Tell me about it.

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2486460/28092574

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Is Strategy Execution Anyone's Full Time Job in a Hospital?:

Comments

As of this spring, functional duties were expanded/formalized within Sunrise Health (a regional system of hospitals & ASCs within HCA) to create the CSO role -- Chief Strategy Officer. The role basically functions as you've outlined, and is supported by a full-time analyst/project manager (MBA-trained) to help build and manage the tracking systems and ongoing activities. Our primary benefit to the enterprise is in aligning daily operations with our desired outcomes.

Mercy Health Partners established its Office of Strategy Management (OSM) slightly more than a year and a half ago. It is led by a Sr. V.P, OSM, who reports to the system CEO. We have 1 FT staff, and have recently appointed a director. Strategy Planning and Communications also report upto him.

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the author has approved them.

If you have a TypeKey or TypePad account, please Sign In

Subscribe

  • FeedBlitz
    Enter your Email Address to Receive Articles:


    Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz
AddThis Social Bookmark Button