Many successful health care leaders recognize that maintaining they’re operational flexibility is the key to the future longevity of their organizations’.
The pattern of new consumer habits, new competitors entering the Field, shorter business cycles and value creation is increasingly challenging traditional business models. What’s changed, however, is the accelerated rate at which these forces materially impact the fate of organizations and industries.
For healthy organizations with solid capital structures, regular product portfolio reviews may identify a product or service no longer positioned for long-term growth or margin expectations. Such projections could be early signs of changing customer expectations – and an opportunity for competitors or new entrants to seize market share. Understanding the need to act, even when disruption seems far in the future, requires keen foresight, bold leadership and a supportive board and employee group.
When performing their annual strategic planning management teams are often unwilling to change. This lack of ability to adjust to changing conditions relates to an inherent inflexibility in management thinking. Too many leaders avoid the fact that health care delivery systems are quietly changing and they have to change as well.
What frequently happens, when it comes to phasing out unprofitable programs managers continue hanging on to legacy systems. Despite the evidence of more competitive, newer services and markets CEO’s cannot face giving up their fixed pre-determined positions – right or wrong. Top management inflexibility is often demonstrated by an unwillingness to consider new programs and services in favor of sticking with decisions to not lay-off a qualified, loyal workforce.
The most successful leaders are the ones who utilize flexible thinking and qualified teams of workers to arrive at innovative solutions to complex problems. By learning how to adjust operations to reduced revenues, higher production costs, greater competition, and overall resource scarcities – those flexible organizations will survive and even thrive.
As is the case with many smaller traditional health care organizations, they must take into account changing local consumer attitudes and a new competitive environment they find themselves in. With the exception of a few small health systems many providers are finding their financial condition challenging. For some their financial outlook is troubled at best. The biggest reason appears to be that operational flexibility and adaptability are tied to their organizational.
