How to Create a Strategic Plan with Organization-Wide Buy-In in Six Months

By Monika O'Clair posted 07-17-2018 09:34 AM

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The Huggins Hospital Strategic Planning Success Story

In 2017, Huggins Hospital in Wolfeboro, N.H., had a fairly new leadership team and an outdated strategic plan. Given the ever-changing health care environment, the plan needed to be updated to reflect the new landscape. The team realized it would be valuable to bring in an outside partner, so they asked Stratasan to guide them through the process.

Huggins had a few goals in mind for the planning process:

Diverse input and organization-wide buy-in
Creation of a new mission, vision, and values
Completion of the entire planning process in six months

Stratasan worked closely with Huggins to address each of the goals for growth planning and activated a five-step planning process:

Executing the Five-Step Process
During the strategic context portion of planning, 108 people—including employees, medical staff, board members and community leaders—were interviewed to gather ideas for the creation of a new mission, vision, values, strategies and goals.

During the building the vision portion of planning, the leadership team used input from the interviews to draft a new hospital mission, vision and values more relevant to the current and envisioned future environment.

Huggins assessed strategic options by reviewing market forces information and completing exercises to coalesce their beliefs.

In the strategy development stage, the leadership team created strategies and goals to fulfill the mission, achieve the vision and pragmatically deal with the market forces. Huggins involved employees along with board and medical staff members in a large group meeting called “The Big Event.” Twenty percent of the organization's employees participated using large meeting tools and processes. The goal was to create a common database of understanding, present the draft plan and receive input into the strategies.

By taking a slice of the organization’s DNA and involving internal stakeholders in the planning, Huggins jump started commitment to the strategy and the implementation plan.

Based on the input, leadership made changes to the plan, which was presented back to the attendees and approved at the second day of the Big Event, exactly one month later. As soon as the CEO, Jeremy Roberge, completed his presentation of items that were added, changed, or deleted based on their input, the attendees broke into spontaneous applause signaling their approval of the plan. They could then move on to action planning.

The final stage of the process involved implementation and commitment. The employees, medical staff and board were involved in action planning across the organization based on the new strategies and goals. All the input was compiled into a comprehensive document, complete with metrics and accountabilities. Implementation and commitment were kick-started because of the diverse, high-involvement process.

The Takeaway

Strategic growth planning is an essential process for any organization looking to grow, change and keep pace with the evolving health care landscape. For plans to be successful, they must have buy-in and commitment from the whole organization and reliable tools for measuring progress.

The ever-changing environment necessitates a readiness to approach the strategic planning process with an open mindset and a willingness to try new things. As you prepare for your next planning season, consider incorporating diverse team participation, coalition building, and open collaboration. The end result might be the creation of a plan that is embraced by your whole organization, with a unified commitment to see it succeed.

To learn more, be sure to attend the educational session at the upcoming SHSMD Connections annual conference entitled “An Agile Strategic Planning Process Inviting Diverse Team Participation, Coalition Building and Open Collaboration.” It will be one of a broad range of programs offered at the conference October 7–10 in Seattle.

Posted July 17, 2018 | By:
Monika O’Clair
Vice President of Strategy and Community Relations
moclair@hugginshospital.org
603.515.2088
Huggins Hospital
240 South Main Street
Wolfeboro, NH 03894

Lee Ann Lambdin
Senior Vice President Healthcare Strategy
leeann@stratasan.com
(866) 628.5051 x 706
Stratasan
450 10th Cir N
Nashville, TN 37203

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How to Create a Strategic Plan with Organization-Wide Buy-In in Six Months

By Monika O'Clair posted 07-17-2018 09:34 AM

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