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From the staff development bookshelf: Leading the way with strategic planning

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, September 30, 2011

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You may remember the days when strategic planning was only the responsibility of those in the boardroom. Senior leadership of the organization would formulate goals and hopefully those goals would be communicated to the employees, but sometimes that goal was never reached. Today, successful organizations are involving staff in strategic planning at all levels. Strategic planning forces organizations to move from a daily focus on operations to a focus on what services and quality the organization wants to provide in the future and what needs to be done to make that happen. It's called outcomes-directed planning.

The organization's overall strategic plan and goals do originate from the senior leadership team and the governance board, but it is helpful for you to understand how these are formulated in order to better understand how your department relates to the attainment of the goals. Each level of the organization should then formulate its own goals and objectives designed to help meet the overall organization's goals. This "cascade effect" will result in alignment of work, focus, and resources in the organization. In other words, everyone will be working toward the same goal attainment in his or her own department's specific way, similar to a troop all moving in the same direction! 

You may currently work in an organization that is not yet at this level of goal development. Don't be afraid to lead the way! Understand what is considered in goal development at the senior level and how to develop goals with your own teams. Spending this time in strategic planning is important before putting the pencil to the paper in formulating the budget. Think of it like this: How do you know what you need if you don't know where you're going or what you want? Believe me, getting everyone understanding the vision and working toward the same goals is priceless.

Source: Book excerpt adapted from The Nurse Leader's Guide to Business Skills: Strategies for Optimizing Financial Performance by Pamela Hunt, BS, MSN, RN, and Deborah Laughon, RN, BSN, MS, DBA, CCRN.

Readers of Staff Development Weekly receive a 10% discount on this book! Just enter source code EB102930A at checkout. Click here to visit www.hcmarketplace.com.

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