Recently in Strategy Category

The July-August issue of Harvard Business Review is far from light holiday reading. Through a wide range of lenses, it aims squarely at business strategy and leadership challenges to be faced in the post-2009 recession world. Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis by Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues at Cambridge Leadership Associates, reflecting the volume as a whole, is all about national and global post recession trends in the broader business environment that will shape industries over the next several years. As physician and health care leaders we owe it to ourselves, our patients, and our organizations to examine how these will impact us...

A few months ago, this blog commented on a short piece about the use of ethnography as a strategic tool (Try Ethnography for Health Care Strategy). The source article had been a short, theoretical, and perhaps even whimsical exploration of the use of anthropologists in developing business strategy. Well, along comes Business Week on June 24 with "How to Kick off an Innovation Project" by Jessie Scanlon which gets practical really fast in describing how Office Max used ethnography to do an image turnaround - complete with a "how to" guide. It struck me then, and now, that there are valuable pearls for health care leaders here...

In addition to my day job advising health care leaders, I have a shadow life recruiting senior physician leaders (in addition to blogging here). So you can imagine the delight when my favorite source of blog content (the Harvard Business Review) published The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad with tips and principles for filling senior level positions - aimed squarely at the global corporate market. Reading the original will be very useful for you. And by applying standard Health Care Leadership Blog wizardry, this well written piece can be transformed into a sensible set of (albeit scaled down) insights for health care leaders to consider when on the prowl for talent...

Splitting hairs? Not really. Read Hanging Tough in the April 20 print issue of The New Yorker (while not really business press it is the press commenting on business). This piece by James Surowiecki examines the nuances of leadership decision making in both risky and uncertain times. While covering some of the same territory as R&D Spending Holds Steady in Slump, April 6 Wall Street Journal - and the subject of this blog's April 8 commentary Health Care Leaders Should Preserve R&D Spending in Down Times - Surowiecki focuses squarely on characterizing the strategic investment dilemma currently faced by senior health care leaders...

An academic medical center client recently asked me to advise on developing a Departmental and programmatic strategic plan. My first reaction was OK, nothing new, let's go. But I soon found myself pausing to have a discussion about what that should look like this year in light of the economy and it turns out that our conversation pretty closely tracked: Strategic planning: Three tips for 2009, published in the April 2009 McKinsey Quarterly. You can register on the McKinsey site for free and view this article as well as a post-publication survey of readers here. While health care leaders (and followers) tend to glaze over when forced to think about strategic planning, the nuances discussed by these authors bear consideration...

The April 13 Wall Street Journal exploded with news about the impact of the economy on jobs which for the first time included bad news about health care. Major articles on health care job losses and adverse nursing employment trends provide concrete reasons for health care leaders to seriously consider contingency strategies for downsizing should these trends expand. Today's Journal contained a discussion of personnel reduction strategies in industry. Weighing Furlough vs. Layoff, by Cari Tuna, addresses one aspect of the problem that is worth a read by health care leaders...

When Internal Collaboration Is Bad for Your Company by Morten T. Hansen, appeared in the April 2009 Harvard Business Review and Getting Togetherness was published online on Economist.com on April 7. Both examine collaboration within organizations. The interesting news from Professor Hansen (U.C. Berkeley and Insead) is that despite the charge for internal collaboration across industries, it is not a "no brainer" in terms of benefit. So by extension, it may not be the best tool for health care leaders in all circumstances...

In Southwest Airlines CEO Flies Uncharted Skies March 25, The Wall Street Journal's Mike Esterl takes a look at how Southwest Airlines - the perennially successful low cost airline - plans to fly above the industry clouds. As you might expect, it's not by using strategies the other airlines use. What's interesting for health care leaders about SWA's approach is not so much what it is, but what it is not...

I've previously commented on Thomas D. Kuczmarski's innovative ideas about innovation (see Is Don Berwick the Secretary of Innovation?). I am going back to the well because An Innovation Action Plan for Obama which appeared in his March 9 Business Week web site column seemed worthy of translation from the business world to the world of health care leadership...

The March 16 issue of Business Week features a profile of Ford's CEO. Alan Mulally: The Outsider at Ford,. At a time when there is plenty to say about the auto industry and its executives, the author, David Kiley, instead focuses this piece on the risks and benefits of bringing an outsider into a position of substantial responsibility. In December of 2006, when Mulally was brought from Boeing to lead Ford, the company was already on the ropes. A risky time for a controversial choice. It's also a familiar dilemma for health care leaders when considering a critical recruitment...