Strategic Influence
This section describes the assessment carried out by 2 teams of health care leaders and measures the potential future strategic influence of the organizations reviewed through the SWOT analysis of two separate Canadian health organizations. Teams evaluated the anticipated strategic influence for each organization and made suggestions regarding how to develop the anticipated strategic influence for their organizational future. Using chapter 4 of Richard Hughes, Katherine Colarelli Beatty & David Dinwoodie (2014) Becoming a Strategic Leader (pp. 145-195) the teams prepared an assessment of each organization’s present strategic influence and outlined developmental steps for seeing the future strategic influence they can develop by staying the course toward future development and change. Teams prepare reports and suggestions based on the findings in their review of organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Using Chapters 6-9 of Galbraith’s Designing Organizations: Strategy, Structure and Process at the Business Unit Levels (pp. 131-216), teams identify/determine the organizational designs best suited for developing each organization’s desired strategic influence. Designs listed by Galbraith, describing specific design fit or lack is an important part of understanding the effectiveness future strategic planning will have on the health organizations reviewed. Realizing anticipated strategic influence describes organizational vision in terms of suggested or negated organizational operating designs creates an effective framework for protecting the future path of these organizations and makes their success more likely than without identifying the structure they plan to follow.
Teams also create a workable hybrid and add suggestions for organizational practice, using available documentation about the organization, gathered from their SWOT investigation. In the cases outlined by these health care teams, one team chose to use the Star Model as suggested by Galbraith (2014) to address organizational design points through strategy, structure, process, reward, and people as the most effective for developing strategic influence practices. The other chose a mixed model, leaning more towards a divisional model but also containing elements of a conglomerate organization.
Taking these steps toward strategic discovery helped each leader, each team of health care professionals, through each exercise discover what it means to become a more effective strategic leader and develop practices common to the competent and confident practice of strategic leadership.
