DEVELOPING A PERSONAL STRATEGIC PLAN

wEEK ONE: uNDERSTANDING AND ANALYZING THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

The main theory of strategic management is that external forces have considerable power over your life. You do not live your life in a vacuum. These external forces can provide opportunities or threats to your own personal mission. To reach your full potential and to limit the destructive effects of a threat, you must identify these opportunities and threats and be prepared to meet them and actually use them to your advantage. I have never been one to plan my future and I tend to believe in fate. Although I have been very fortunate, it has been detrimental at times. For example during Desert Storm, I was preparing to leave the military and was within 20 days of separating. Although I had heard that the U.S. Navy might be involuntarily extending corpsmen, I did not make any alternative plans in case my separation was delayed. I was extended and unfortunately my original plans fell through when my future employer could not hold the job for me and my future roommate had to select another roommate. I had not developed an alternative plan although I had known that the potential war could have delayed my separation date. Since I did not have a revised strategic plan, I ended up staying on active duty.

Table 1 Stakeholder

Stakeholders are individuals or organizations that have a reciprocal relationship with you. They have a significant impact on the success or failure of your strategic plan. I feel there are three parts to my live, personal, military career and civilian career. Civilian career refers to my future. I have included future stakeholders because strategic planning means preparing for the future not just the present. In Table 1, I identified the stakeholders in the three sections of my life. As Ginter, Swayne, and Duncan (2002) stated stakeholder collaboration encourages joint problem solving to increase valuable knowledge.  The Baylor program and my fellow students are a prime example of this belief. When we have worked as a team on projects, it has increased our problem solving capabilities because each person brings a new perspective and personal experience to the issue.

Week two: service area competitor analysis and internal environmental analysis

There are seven steps to a service area competitor. The first step is to define the service categories to be analyzed. In my work life that would be the health care administration, which involves fiscal, managed care, health information, administration, logistics, disaster preparedness, readiness and information management. My service area is currently defined as the DoD healthcare system. The third step is to identify my service area. I usually gain this information from the in-processing briefs and by reviewing Managed Care Forecasting and Analysis Systems (MCFAS) information concerning the local demographics. The next step is a service area structured analysis. I have never completed a Porters before when evaluating the external environment at my commands but I will do so in the future to give me a good overview of the local health care industry. In addition I will identify all the civilian medical organizations, military medical facilities and USPH facilities in the area and evaluate their strengths and weakness. By identifying their strength and weaknesses, I can determine how our strategic plans is integrated with these facilities. Our goal should be to create collaborative working relationships with these organizations in order to reach our ultimate goal of providing our patients quality, affordable, accessible care. I think this will be one of the most beneficial tools for me while working in the DoD medical system because I have never taken such an organized approach before of evaluating my new commands and their local environment.

Although strategic management is externally focused, it does not negate the necessity to conduct an internal analysis. A person or organization needs to know their strengths and weaknesses, to determine if they have the capability or need to develop the attributes that will allow them to minimize the negative impact of threats and maximize their ability to take advantages of opportunities. By evaluating your strength and weaknesses in relation to threats and weaknesses, you can identify what adds value. You would then focus on those attributes in your strategic plan. For many people, it can be difficult to objectively evaluate themselves so an individual may want to take advantages of evaluations by others or tests. For example, I would review my former FITREPS to identify my strengths and weaknesses. Also in Organizational Behavior, we had to take tests, which evaluated our personalities.

week three: Directional Strategies

The mission attempts to capture a persons distinctive purpose or reason for being. I had previously written a personal mission statement when I had taken Coveys Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. After looking at different organizations mission statements in class and listening to my fellow students critiques, I realized that mine was too long and I had included values in my statement. I have since rewritten my mission statement to correct these deficiencies. It defines what I consider is my purpose in life and can be applied to both my personal and business life. I consider it enduring because I wrote it a number of years ago and I believe it still applies today.

Mission Statement: To value all lifes experiences, seek new opportunities, and learn and grow from my adventures. I will develop a fault-free, self-perpetuating learning environment for others and myself so that we can achieve worthwhile purposes.

The vision statement is a hope for the future. It is based on the needs of the stakeholders and I believe a basic need of all human interaction is to enrich the lives of others. So I feel my vision statement can apply to both my personal and career life.

Vision Statement: I will have lived a full life composed of diverse experiences and friends who have enriched my life as I have enriched theirs. In some small way, I will have made the world a better place and inspired others to follow suit.

Values are the fundamental principles that people believe. Below are the principles that I want to guide my life.

·        People- I will treat all people I encounter with honesty, integrity, tolerance, compassion, and consideration. I will celebrate everyones success and support a fun and nurturing environment.

·        Teamwork-Create a desire to work with others to gain valuable knowledge, work for the good of the team, and together share our success and failures.

·        Education-continually explore new adventures, maintain curiosity about the unknown, strive to learn and pass on knowledge to others.

·        Societal Commitment- dedicate myself to helping my community.

·        Courage-To neither avoid risk nor responsibility.

Week four: Developing and evaluating strategic alternatives

Table 2: Linking Strategic Alternatives with Situational Analysis

In order to formulate strategies, a person must follow the strategic thinking map.

Directional Strategies®Adaptive Strategies®Market Entry Strategies®Competitive Strategies®Implementation Strategies

I followed this map for designing a strategy for joining the civilian workforce. Unfortunately I was unable to develop an implementation strategy because I feel I need a more in-depth analysis of the external environment. In addition, the environment is experiencing so much white water change that I can probably wait until I am a little closer to my retirement when I will have a more accurate picture of the civilian health care industry.

Per Ginter, Swayne, and Duncan (2002), alternative strategies should be evaluated against your directive strategies, your mission, vision, and values. If the strategy does not meet your basic criteria, it should be eliminated because it basically doesnt support your main purpose or goal. When making decision before, I had never evaluated them before in such an organized and structured manner and retrospectively I can now say I wasted valuable time on projects or activities that I would have avoided if I had evaluated them properly. Although every experience provides a lesson, my time could have been better spent on activities that would have carried me closer to my vision if I had used this process.

Figure 1: The Value Chain

Week Five & Six: implementing strategy: service delivery and point of service strategies

Market research Target market Promote services Branding of services Pricing (civilian career)

Function Division Matrix

Financial, Information, Technology, Physical, Human

Shared assumptions, Shared values, Behavioral Norms

Follow-up for administrative tasks Follow-on to ensure customer satisfaction

Administration Operations Quality service Accurate Information Customer Satisfaction

This section of developing the strategic plan focuses on the components of the organization that add value, the value chain. Each strategic plan makes unique demands on the organization that requires explicit action. Each of these unique organization requirements for the strategy must be matched with the current organizational resources, competencies and capabilities to determine whether current activities need to be maintained or changed. This section of the strategic plan ties back into the internal evaluation that was conducted. You are identifying the strengths that must be supported and the weaknesses that must be improved in order to support the strategy. In other words, the organizational value chain assists in identifying where and how value can be created. It is a systems approach to mapping the internal organizational focus.

The value chain is divided into two sections. Those sections are the service delivery, which is the main purpose of the organization and the support activities, which allow the organization to function. Service and support activities must work in unison to provide a synchronized and steady process for meeting the mission. So the strategic plans for each section must also be coordinated.

The service delivery section of the value chain is composed of three sections: pre-service, point-of-service, after-service. All sections are essential to the strategic plan. Pre-service, brings the people into the organization and can facilitate the point-of-service by educating the consumer and obtaining information that allows the point-of-service to modify its process in order to meet the consumers demands. Pre-service tends to be marketing in nature. Point-of-service is the whole purpose of the organization. It is imperative that the strategic plan ensures value is added to or maintained at this section. In the healthcare industry, this section is clinical in nature. After-service follows up with the patient to evaluate whether the services were effective and they were satisfied. It also includes follow-on administrative activities such as billing, follow-up testing results or appointment follow-up reminders. This section provides the last impression; a consumer has of the organization. So although the care may have been good, if their last experience was issues with their bill, the consumer will have a lasting impression of bad service.

The ultimate goal of the support activities is to enable the service delivery section to accomplish the mission. So support strategies for support activities cannot be evaluated or developed in isolation. Coordination is essential for the support strategies. The value adding support strategies compose the implementation strategies that achieve the directional, adaptive, market entry and competitive strategies and assist the achievement of service delivery strategies.

Value adding support strategies basically determine the setting or context in which you provide your services. The organizational culture is the assumptions and values of the organizations, which influence behavior. Although it is easier to change the values and assumptions of one person compared to an organizations, it is still a difficult task, which takes time to accomplish. Most people gain their original cultures and values from their family and their experiences during their childhood. Once we are exposed to different culture and values, we begin to change. I feel this is one of the advantages of the military. Each service has clearly defined its culture and values to its members and once you are stationed overseas, you are exposed to beliefs that are very different than those of America. I believe once you have witnessed many cultures and values, it makes you more tolerant and aware of different perspectives. It also helps you to more clearly define what is important to you.

  By constantly reinforcing our mission, vision and values, we establish our organizational culture. The military services require each member to be able to recite these items. Self-improvement philosophies like Stephen Covey require you to review your personal mission statement on a regular basis.  Reinforcement can help you change culture from what it is to what you want it to be. It keeps you focused and on the right track to accomplish your goals.

Week seven: Unit action planning /Strategic control

In an organization, a unit action plan breaks down planning to a section level. For an individual, it would mean planning for different aspects of your life. For example the units could be spiritual, physical, fiscal, educational, behavioral, and recreational. Each unit should have defined objectives, which reinforce the strategic goals. The intent is that all aspects of your life should be contributing to your mission and moves you toward your vision. The objectives should be measurable and have time frame for completion. Typically, people establish one year, five year, ten year and retirement goals. An example of a goal is that you lose 20 pounds and maintain your new weight for one year or you want to complete your masters within the next five years.

After the objectives are determined, you have to devise a plan as to how you will reach these goals. Do you need additional funds or resources to implement the plan? The unit action plan is basically a detailed map for living your life to ensure you complete your mission. By establishing the goals, you create momentum in your life and you keep yourself from becoming a coach potato or one of those people who have regrets when they are older about all the things they never did. By devising the plan, you can overcome the obstacle that can interfere in you achieving your goals. Although to many people this seems tedious and time consuming, in the long run it keeps you from wasting your time on unimportant tasks and helps you to achieve your goals more efficiently.

According to Ginter, Swayne, and Duncan (2002), strategic control system monitors, evaluates, and adjusts the strategy implementation, the strategy itself and situational analysis processes. The strategic control ties back into the unit action plan. By monitoring the success of achieving unit objectives, you can determine if you are meeting your mission. It also provides feedback to determine if you need to change your strategy. For example, your goal is to attend U.S. Army-Baylor Healthcare Administration Graduate Program. Unfortunately, your grades are low even though you are following your unit action plan for studying. This failure can identify the need to change your action plan for studying. If you continue to perform unsuccessfully, you may need to change your strategy and obtain masters from another program. In this manner, strategic control is flexible. It ensures that you are attempting to meet your objectives but it also allows for revision if those objectives are unrealistic. If several objectives are unattainable, you must review your situational analysis to see if there are new external factors or if some of those external factors are no longer pertinent to your situation. These changes may require you to overall the strategy