Strategic Planning: If It Feels Like And Obligation Today, Then Turn It Into An Opportunity Tomorrow

When you think about strategic planning, do you see it as a positive for your agency? Does your strategic plan bring about necessary change and improvements to your organization? If you can’t say yes, then it is time to change it. We are in agencies throughout the United States and see many different ways agencies approach a strategic plan. So, let’s consider the approach and things that will sabotage your plans coming to fruition.

5 Hindrances to Effective Strategic Planning:

In our experience, many ways to focus your plan can be successful. The failure of the plan focuses on these five elements:

1. How do you break down your focus?/ How you spend the time you have?

Do you normally break down each department to determine changes? Obviously, you need to put out the biggest fires in your organization first, but we find there often isn’t a structure to how agencies conduct the planning process. Have you given your agency enough time to effectively create the plan or is it done very quickly just to get it finished?

2. Who is involved?

Is just the administration? Are a couple people deciding the entire plan without input from others key within the organization? Is the entire process done collectively with department heads, admin and operational leadership involved? Our experience is that those agencies with closed planning processes are not as effective as those who include people who are in the field or in the office doing the day-to-day operations. If you have issues with your accounts receivable, why wouldn’t you include those employees in order to understand what isn’t working? In that exact scenario, we have seen that certain payers change stipulations about billing in a contract and those with signing authority didn’t see it. Therefore, suddenly your department goes from having 6 months to collect on a claim down to 90 days. If you bill insurance monthly and anything is wrong with the claim (wrong insured ID number, name wrong in claim, etc.), you don’t find out until your 90 days clock is almost gone. In this scenario, including the right people allows administration to make changes to the current contract or the billing process to be successful in preventing lost claims.

3. Do you complete an objective SWOT analysis?

This may seem obvious, but it really is lacking more than what you think. We often forgot our own biases and relationships we have to our organization and the people in it. We have to be able to see our agencies with fresh eyes. If you need to, consider an operational assessment from an outside source to help you move forward with an effective strategic plan today that will help you provide yourself a basis for development of future plans.

4. How often do you address the plan?

The worst thing that can happen to a strategic plan is for it to collect dust in a drawer. A good strategic plan is an ongoing process with goals addressed and achieved and  changes made when it is deemed necessary.

5. Who are your change agents?

Another land mine to effectively carrying out your strategic plan is putting the wrong employee in charge of executing the change. This happens so often in our agencies. The most logical job title is not always the most effective in carrying out the change. Look to your employees that want a new challenge or those that can be real change agents for other staff. Maybe the supervisor isn’t the one to change a clinical practice in your organization. Maybe a staff nurse that is influential and respected within the organization is in charge of that. Incentivize staff and see what change can look like in your agency.

These are our top 5 at Kenyon Homecare Consulting. You potentially can see others within your current strategic planning structure. Give your agency the time it takes to create and develop your process. If you need an operational assessment or some help through your strategic plan, give us a call at 206-721-5091 or contact us online today!