Scott Fitzgerald said, “An unread book is just a block of paper.” I would argue that an unimplemented strategic plan is equally useless.

I’m a big believer in strategic plans—for many reasons. The planning process is an opportunity to coalesce an executive team around a common set of goals and path forward, as well as prepare…

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before the defeat.” Sun Tzu, Art of War

Sun Tzu’s Art of War is certainly one of the most famous studies of strategy ever written, and the concept of having a tactical plan for achieving victory—or in health and human services, an organization’s…

The well-known saying “What gets measured gets done” is often attributed to management theorist Peter Drucker. What he actually said was, “What gets measured gets managed.” The basic notion is that if you’re measuring something, then the probability of you acting on the information you now have is a lot higher. The simple act of…

Successful implementation of an organization’s strategic plan depends on many factors—having a data-driven strategy, monitoring performance against metrics, having a well-defined process and action plan, an appropriate level of executive attention, communication, and collaboration. But one key issue is the inability of an organization’s human capital to change to make the plan successful. If the…

Strategy drives structure…or so says Peter Drucker. For chief financial officers (CFO), the reality is a little more complicated. There are many factors that influence a market-driven, scenario-based strategy, and in health and human services, those market factors are often changing quickly. This means that CFOs need to view organizational structure as fluid and continually…