Culture may eat strategy for breakfast, as per management consultant Peter Drucker, but that may not be the case for now in healthcare, where leaders should be looking for planning aligned with vision issues, according to an Aug. 30 Kaufman Hall blog post.
The immediate focus for hospital and health system leaders may well be on the financial difficulties everyone is familiar with, but finding a "relevant and executable vision should be top of mind right now," argue Kenneth Kaufman, managing director at Kaufman Hall, and Pete McCanna, CEO of Dallas-based Baylor, Scott & White Health.
Any strategic exercise within healthcare systems needs to be properly executed in a post-COVID-19 world given how distracted or tired the C-suite and clinicians are, according to the post. Vision needs to drive growth, differentiate itself and solve problems, and requires active management.
And health systems and hospitals must be prepared to adapt their vision.
"For this to happen, your organization needs to be a listening organization and a learning organization," according to the authors. "Not all hospitals and health systems are."
Learning how to lead a hospital back to financial stability while finding a relevant strategic vision after COVID is "unforgivably hard," the post says, but it's a battle that must be fought.
"Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back," they write. "And fighting back is the hospital job of the moment."