Heakthcare strategies Decision-making Tools - Essay Example

Part of successfully implementing a strategic plan is involving everyone in the organization in the plan. You work as an admission coordinator for anassisted living facility that just enacted its 5-year strategic plan. However, no one has communicated any of the components of the plan to any departments, including yours. Instead, management has chosen to include only senior-level management.This implementation strategy is appropriate only in the early stages of implementing the strategic plan.

The assumption here is that implementing the strategic plan be viewed as a change effort. In which case, the early phase requires creating a small but powerful team to guide the initiative. This is the ideal situation regardless of organization type (Kotter, 2007). Having senior-level management form the core of the group will create the needed sense of urgency. Kotter (2007), however, argued that even in these early days of implementing the strategic plan the guiding team needs to include members who are not part of the senior-level of management.

These other members are particularly important for two reasons: to communicate the vision and message of change to their peers and to communicate the challenges and concerns faced by their peers with regards to implementing the strategic plan to senior management.The above approach will not be effective especially at the later stages of implementation when the need to communicate the new vision and strategy becomes mandatory. Ultimately, the strategic plan cannot be implemented without the participation of most of the employees in the organization.

According to Kotter (2007) transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices. It is obvious that implementing any new vision will have some effect on employees’ normal activities. This means that employees need to be convinced to believe that useful change is possible with implementation of that strategic plan. Without credible communication, the hearts and minds of the staff will not be captured. This will be counterintuitive to the organization’s plan because when employees are neither fully convinced of senior management’s plan nor are the involved in it, they resist the changeMoreover communication is achieved through both action and deeds.

Keeping employees in the dark lowers the trust and confidence they have towards senior management. To ensure the successful implementation of this assisted living facility’s strategic plan, the first step would be to identify who are this assisted living facility’s stakeholders and there varying influence or importance. Categorization of these stakeholders would enable the company to adopt different communication strategies for each stakeholder. Rawlins (2006) developed a model that prioritizes stakeholders through a four-step process: (1) identifying all potential stakeholders according to their relationship to the organization; (2) prioritizing stakeholders by attributes; (3) prioritizing stakeholders by relationship to the situation; (4) prioritizing the publics according to the communication strategy.

Having effective communication strategies will help managers be in a better position to diagnose the form of resistance they are likely to encounter. Resistance to change generally arises due to one of the following: parochial self-interest; misunderstanding and lack of trust; different assessments; or low tolerance for change (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008). Diagnosing the form of resistance allows managers to select the most appropriate strategy to deal with this resistance from one of the following: education and communication; participation and involvement; facilitation and support; negotiation and agreement; manipulation and co-optation; and explicit and implicit coercion.

ReferencesKotter, J. P. (2007). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard Business Review, (January), 92 – 107.Kotter, J. P., & Schlesinger, L. A. (2008). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, (July).Rawlins, B. L. (2006). Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations. Institute for Public Relations. Retrieved from http://florida4h.net/news/public_relations/files/2006_Stakeholders.pdf