Strategic management is an essential ingredient for success at every practice, regardless of size – and the practice manager should be leading it. Gary Hughes explains why it’s important and how to go about developing it
If you’re unfamiliar with the area of strategic management, you might think it’s something for the corporate world and nothing to do with general practice. But in fact, strategic management is crucial to the long-term success and sustainability of any organisation, including general practice and PCNs. networks.
Put simply, strategic management is the process of setting long-term goals and objectives, and formulating strategies or plans to achieve them. Without a clear strategy, a practice can easily be distracted, disrupted and lose sight of its goals and purpose.
An effective strategy helps align resources, such as workforce, finances, and technology to the practice’s objectives. It enables proactive decision-making, maintains financial stability, and can ultimately ensure the practice delivers high-quality patient care.
This guide will walk you through the key steps of developing an effective strategic plan tailored for your practice.
What does strategic management look like?
Strategic management is an ongoing process that requires continuous assessment to ensure the practice achieves its desired goals.
It begins with setting clear goals, and a broad assessment of the practice’s current position. From here, you create a roadmap for where you want your practice to go and how you’re going to get there. You do that by establishing the measures of success, allocating resources, assigning responsibilities, and agreeing timelines.
Strategic management does not need to be complicated, difficult or time consuming. The four simple steps described below are all that you need to get started in creating and implementing a successful strategy.
A simple strategic management process
Step 1 – Where are we heading?
The first step is to set your vision. That is how you see your practice at a future point, not how the practice is now. It should be a vision that excites everyone so it’s important to take in the views of staff and patient groups, not just the leadership team at the practice. It should be clear and powerful, so everyone is committed to it, and it should be the guide for decision making, plans and activities.
To help create your vision, answer the question: what kind of practice do we want to become in five, or even 10 years’ time?
If you can, summarise it in a brief statement – the best are simple, memorable, aspiring and inspirational. An example might be: to improve the health and wellbeing for every patient of the community we serve.
Step 2 – Where are we now?
This next step is to evaluate your practice’s current state – both internally and externally. A simple but effective tool to use for this is a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).
Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors.
You can identify strengths by answering questions like: what do we do well and what advantages do we have? For example, an advantage might be having high skill levels. Weaknesses are areas for improvement and what you should avoid if it’s not something you do well. For example, a weakness might be unsuitable premises.
Opportunities and threats are external factors.
Think about the opportunities that you see around you, such as trends or changes that might benefit you. New technology would be an example of an opportunity. Threats are the challenges you face or perhaps something that your competition is doing better than you. An example might be the loss of funding, or expiry of a contract without renewal.
Complete your SWOT analysis and then decide on strategic priorities and objectives that maximise strengths, improve weaknesses, grasp opportunities or mitigate against threats.
Step 3 – How will we measure progress?
The third step is to establish the key performance indicators (KPIs) or objectives and key results (OKRs) that you will use to determine progress and success in achieving your objectives.
You must decide on the areas you will measure and quantifiable metrics you will use to gauge progress, inform decision making, assess the effectiveness of your plans and to motivate the team. Examples could include patient satisfaction scores, staff wellbeing, list size or income and profit.
Step 4 – How will we get there?
The final part of the strategic management process is creating the implementation plan. This is your roadmap of the major workstreams, actions and timelines required to achieve your goals.
Break big goals down into phases, assigning owners, resources and budgets to each component. It can help to create the plan graphically, showing the key points to measure and the timelines of where each priority will be achieved as well as the measurement of success.
Finally, to get everyone engaged, committed and to ensure accountability, share your plan widely along with the vision you created at the start of the process.
What to do next
A strategic management process shouldn’t be difficult or complex but it is made easier with the right experience and skill set.
Going it alone can be overwhelming, and it can be challenging to manage the different personalities and agendas involved. An experienced facilitator can help with this by providing an objective perspective, guiding you through each step, and ensuring all stakeholders are aligned.
Gary Hughes is the founder of Leadership in Practice and Portfolio Careers in Primary Care providing leadership and management development to primary care. He has been a practice business manager and federation director, has an MBA and a Post Graduate Certificate in Medical Education, and is the host of the Leadership in Practice podcast.
