Escalate Growth through Strategic Planning (Part 2)

At this time, the individual service line teams with the support of the cross-functional support team will be responsible for finalizing the organizational and service line-specific CSFs to achieve the strategic goals and the timing of the CSF initiatives. Based on the long-term vision and the initiatives of the critical issues, questions may arise, such as:

• What exactly are critical achievements to gain the benefits of the initiative?
• What service lines, departments or functions are responsible for achieving each CSF?
• How is the achievement of each CSF tracked and reported?

All of this operational planning is conducted in the trackable benefits stage.

Penn Medicine, for example, has an integrated master spreadsheet which outlines every service line initiative, each CSF, the team responsible for achieving each CSF, which person on the team is responsible for what action, how success is tracked, who is responsible for oversight and reporting and when each task is due. This detailed information is rolled up into a system-wide dashboard for executive leadership. Throughout the process, Penn Medicine also conducts periodic checks of CSFs and other strategic and tactical planning against the overall vision and goals.

Spotlight on an Excellent Strategic Planning Process
AtlantiCare uses a similar strategic planning process, but on a three-year continuous rolling process. They kick off the first quarter of each year by reviewing the prior year's strategic planning initiatives, CSF results and where they stand in terms of forward thinking. They overlap their continual three-year strategic planning with the one-year executional process. AtlantiCare uses information gathered from the most current internal and external environmental assessments to tweak their current one-year strategic planning executions as well as planning two and three years out.

At AtlantiCare, Vice President of Marketing Communications and Customer Service, Rene Bunting, is part of the senior leadership strategy team that designs and implements the strategic planning process and its execution. Her team is critical in gathering, aggregating and analyzing "Voice of the Customer" data, which is part of the environmental assessment step in their strategic planning process. Throughout the course of the year, Bunting and team conduct formal and informal VOC methods such as consumer research, which is tracked over time, community advisory groups, traditional customer satisfaction surveys, focus groups, and stakeholder interviews. This data is shared throughout the planning process with key leadership and with business unit and service line leaders and staff who are closest to the customers. The VOC data focuses the strategies around customer and stakeholder needs and expectations.

AtlantiCare's strategic planning and execution is deeply grounded in clear communications strategies, building brand ambassadors and "ownership" of the strategic plan within every employee on every level of the health system. Their process is dynamic, information-based and entirely rooted in their long-term vision with little competitive distractions. Their strategic decisiveness has fostered the passionate commitment of physicians and employees, as well as generating significant patient loyalty. AtlantiCare has approximately 60 percent market share in most service areas and is continuing to grow.

Bunting and her team also develop communications strategies to ensure that the plan is fully deployed to all stakeholders. The integrated health system located in southeastern New Jersey was recently recognized as a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program recipient and deployment of the strategic plan was a critical success factor in AtlantiCare achieving its goal of being "Baldrige-worthy."

AtlantiCare had received two prior Baldrige site visits in which they learned from their feedback reports. One of our opportunities for improvement was deployment of our strategy to their staff. AtlantiCare addressed this OFI by researching best practices around communicating strategic plans and developed what we refer to as "strategy maps." Each employee carries a strategic planning "roadmap" in his or her badge holder that outlines the organization's goals and exactly how the respective department's and the individual's work helps in achieving organizational success. There is a deep employee pride in AtlantiCare's vision and the strategies they need to employ to achieve it. Individual and business unit goals are aligned to the overarching strategic goals or the goals that support Best Quality, Customer Service, People and Workplace, Growth, and Financial Performance.