Develop the vision
A good vision includes three key components that will help energize an organization
and set it on the path to achieving goals: a
vision statement, a strategic plan and a mission statement.
Anderson’s first vision statement was created with an informal process. He led a
group of trustees, senior physicians, senior
nurses and business leaders in a lot of brainstorming and discussion about the characteristics of the hospital, its strengths and
weaknesses, opportunities, and the best achievements of the past.
After two years of work, the end result
was a vision statement that focused on the
hospital committing its resources to be a
leader in improving child health.
“It was a rich process that caused all of us
to reflect on what the institution was and
what it could become and in the context of
wanting to be aggressive and bold about it
and expecting high potential to be
achieved,” Anderson says.
The key to getting the most out of these
types of discussion is keeping an open mind
and being an active listener. It allows you to
hear what everyone is saying while being
open to new ideas and possibilities.
Anderson says you just need to keep
reminding yourself to keep your mouth
closed more than it’s open and listen to
people.
“I find myself in meetings from time to
time saying I could say something but that
doesn’t mean I should say it, and it’s probably better in many cases just to listen carefully and try to understand things in a new,
more helpful way,” he says. “If you’re doing
more talking, the probability is you’re not
going to be as revolutionary as you might
otherwise be by listening to the views that
are from a culture or an epicenter that you
don’t live in every day.”
The second piece of a vision is a strategic
plan. Anderson says it’s important to have a
plan in place to map out your goals for
achieving the vision and also gives you the
framework to make good decisions.
He’s been through the process three times
now — once in 1998, once in 2001 and again
in 2004. Each time the plan got a little better
and set the bar a little higher.
The most recent process involved a larger
and more diverse group of people working
together to create a 30-page document that
includes five focus areas and more than 100
specific action items.
When you are putting together a plan, it’s
best to get others involved to help achieve
buy-in and to make sure you don’t miss
anything. You can’t involve everyone, but
you can pick representatives who will be
able to be the voice of each group within
your organization.
Anderson involved about 300 of the hospital’s then 9,500 employees in the process.
“We tried, in a systematic way, to include
thought leaders and people whose position
in the organization or in the community
reflected broad views or the views of a broad
subset of people who would have a stake in
this,” he says. “You can’t go to everybody, but
you can have a thoughtful representation or
a process that leads to a thoughtful representation of a broad range of constituencies
into the process. While it’s not everyone, it’s
certainly a good group that gives rise to rich
discussion.”
The work was divided up among different
groups with each having a specific area of
responsibility. Each group broke up into
smaller groups and then an integrating
group, made up of 15 people from all representations within the hospital, brought all
the groups back together to listen to the
ideas and develop the plan.
As a result of the integration, the group
decided a new mission statement — which
is the third component of a vision — was
needed to reflect the changes.
“It was at the meeting of that integrating
group that we were all enormously excited
about the ideas that came out of the process
that we looked at our old mission statement
(developed in 1989) and said, ‘That’s not
good and certainly not helpful or energizing,” Anderson says. “In one session, we
came up with a new mission statement,
which is enormously helpful and is energizing and does provide direction and has been
proven to be a useful document.”
The new statement is more action oriented and reinforces the five themes in the
strategic plan — innovation, organization,
outcomes, experience and value.
When all three elements of a vision are in
place — vision statement, mission statement and strategic plan — they will help you
achieve your goals.
“The vision statement is the biggest,
broadest umbrella; that’s the kind of thing
we aspire to be and want to do,” Anderson
says. “The mission statement is fully consistent with that and, in the direction of
providing leadership, says a little about
how we’re going to do it and describes the
deliverables, mainly improved outcomes of
patient satisfaction and value. And then the
strategic plan itself says more specifically exactly what we’re going to do clustered under these five categories.”
