Blogs

Why the Office of Strategy Management is the Department You Didn’t Know You Needed

By The SHSMD Team posted 07-11-2017 04:20 PM

  

why-the-office-of-strategy-management-is-the-department-you-didnt-know-you-needed.png
Managing the development and execution of strategy across your organization can be tough, but with an Office of Strategy Management (OSM), you can better set your company up for success in achieving your business goals.

It’s no secret that strategic performance suffers when there’s a disconnect between strategy planning and deployment. Successful companies have realized that effective strategy execution requires cascading corporate strategy in a way that aligns executives, business units and employees to common goals.

But how do you accomplish that?
With an Office of Strategy Management. This department, helpful in healthcare organizations both large and small, brings all strategy-related activities together under one integrated, corporate unit. You can call the team whatever you want, but no matter the name, its functions – and benefits – are game-changing.

Here are 4 groundbreaking ways it can help your company:

  1. Your Central Strategy Hub
    Effective strategy development starts with having all the right players at the table. Everyone from HR to finance should be involved in setting strategy from the very beginning. When they’re not, you get strategy development processes that get bogged down in a never-ending cycle of input, changes and redirects.

    The OSM prevents that from ever happening. One of its most crucial functions is to bring all the relevant stakeholders together for strategy planning. It eliminates silos out of the development process and fosters collaboration from the get-go.

  2. Bridging the gap between development and execution
    Strategy is often set at the C-suite and leadership level, but it’s your company’s frontline staff who are normally responsible for executing it. That can create a jarring disconnect in the development-to-execution strategy pipeline.

    Think of your OSM as the glue that binds everyone together. It seamlessly moves strategy down to the staff, translating high-level strategy into day-to-day goals, and helping frontline workers understand how their contributions are moving the strategy forward.

  3. Providing organizational agility
    The ability to pivot your strategy execution is often necessary due to changing market forces and other industry factors outside your control. But when rapid change is needed, most companies just aren’t able to adapt quickly enough.

    That’s not something you have to worry about when you have an OSM. Because of its centralized function, it can mobilize all your company’s stakeholders to adapt and do so much more quickly than the usual glacial pace of change.

  4. Spreading your strategy knowledge far and wide
    A huge benefit to housing strategy management activities under one department is the capacity for coalescing collective strategic knowledge in one place. Your OSM can be this strategic knowledge hub.

    The team can do strategic environmental scanning, educate leaders on the latest industry trends, share best practices across the organization and provide expert recommendations on strategic moves. Who wouldn’t want that?


Conclusion
An OSM can be your ticket to success when it comes to organizational strategic planning and deployment. Don’t underestimate the value it can bring – or the impact it can have across all reaches of your organization.

You can learn more about the ins and outs of an OSM – from how to get executive buy-in for the department to how to staff it – at the SHSMD Connections 2017 Conference. Look for the preconference workshop, “From Idea to Execution: Accelerate Strategy Execution Through the Office of Strategy Management” Sunday, September 24.

Posted July 11, 2017 | By

Jhaymee Heinlein, MS, MBA
SHSMD Member
Director of Strategy Management and Growth
Carolinas HealthCare System

Liz Popwell, FACHE, PMP
SHSMD Member
Vice President, Strategy Executive
Carolinas HealthCare System


register.png
0 comments
403 views

Permalink