Developing strategic plans is all about matching the strengths of the business to available opportunities. To many people, strategic planning is something meant only for big businesses, but it is equally applicable to all businesses.
To do this effectively, C.E.O.’s will need to collect, screen and analyze information about the organizations current business environment. This will help in defining a clearer understanding of the business – its strengths and weaknesses – and develop a clear mission, goals and objectives. Understanding this process often involves more work than expected.
The Business Environment
Strategic planning usually focuses largely on managing interaction with environmental forces, including competitors, government, suppliers, customers, various interest groups and other factors that affect your business and its prospects.
Because of major changes in the health environment, familiarity with strategic planning and an ability to implement it is critical. At one time, healthcare managers assessed their environment on a continuum that ran between very stable and very unstable. Typically, in the past, this environment included competition that was limited to a stable group of competitors, loyal physician groups and patients connected to a relatively slow transfer of information. Many small businesses could thrive in this environment.
Today, experts agree that more health care organizations face an unstable financial environment. Improvements in information processing and telecommunications have made major changes in health care delivery. Along with this, improvements in transportation and the growth of foreign economies (specifically in Europe and Asia) have created a global marketplace, which has redefined how we will do business in the future.
Today’s consumers are exposed to more choices where loyalty has become less important than it once was; a slightly better deal or a temporary shortage of services can easily result in the loss of patients. Competitors also can change rapidly with new ones appearing from out of nowhere (often this means the other side of the globe). With the instability of the global market, it is important to make strategic planning part of our overall operational strategies.
Anticipating the Future
Strategic planning really calls on management to anticipate certain logical future events. Decisions are based on predictions of future changes in our environment as opposed to reactions to various crises as they occur. As a result, strategic planning in our unstable, technology driven health environment is critical to continuing success in future operations.
The Need for a Strategic Plan
Healthcare enterprises are too complex to assume that failure to develop a sound strategic plan will be the cause for problems in and of itself. Nevertheless, this failure often counts among the chief factors contributing to operational difficulties. Being a manager today takes constant vigilance in order to be able to take advantage of new opportunities and the availability of utilizing new information and technologies as they are introduced. The first step in doing this is to have a strategic plan.
