Strategic Planning Essay

As per Henry Mintzberg, former president of the Strategic Management Society, “strategy cannot be planned because planning is about analysis and strategy is about synthesis. Strategic planning involves a structure or framework, a set of procedures both formal and informal, and of course content. Beyond these basic elements, the underlying assumptions about strategic planning are that the future can be anticipated, forecasted, managed or even controlled, and that the best way to do so is to have a formal and integrated plan about it in place. The process of planning itself may turn out to be more important than the results, and that process requires both analysis and synthesis. Planning simply introduces a formal “discipline” for conducting long-term thinking about an institution, and for recognizing opportunities in and for minimizing risks from the external and internal environments.

Among the hundreds available, perhaps the most well-know model of strategic planning has the SWOT (for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) appraisal of internal and external environments as its centerpiece. But whatever the model, following decades of research across hundreds of organizations, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of strategic planning is mixed at best. Of we try to answer the question why do we need a plan for achieving the targets or establishing the credibility and many questions which has the only answer and that is a strategic plan suitable to the structure of any organization.

The IT culture, the academic culture and the health care culture differ in almost every important respect: the IT Culture has an institutional focus, the academic culture has a disciplinary focus; but the health care culture requires ins...

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...e planning process that focuses resources and provides for resiliency in an environment of health industry changes (strategic plan, campus renewal plan, community relations plan).

Actually When I went through the organizational set up of the Jefferson Healthcare, I found it pyramid cal which is more or less like this figure-

Patient

↓

Quality and Patient Safety

↓

People ∕ Service Excellence

↓

Mission ∕ Growth ∕ Finance

↓

Lean Process Improvement

↓

Electronic Health Record

↓

Operational Excellence

↓

Mission/ Vision/ Purpose

↓

Community

Last but not the least I would love to use the statement of Mr Daniel H. Burnham- “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood . . . . Make big plans; aim high in hope and work . . . .” I will for sure follow the line as I believe by making big plans and aiming high we can achieve what we actually desire to achieve.