In your previous assignments, you examined how today's health care organizations prepare themselves for the present and the future through strategic management. Specifically, you analyzed how a health care organization's external and internal environments affect its operations. You also performed a TOWS analysis to help a health care organization identify strategic objectives to drive and improve all aspects of the company.

The next step is to consider the directional pathways health care organizations take to achieve their strategic objectives. Creating a strategic vision for a health care organization involves developing or revising the organization's mission, vision, and value statements. Here is a summary of these three directional strategies:

• A mission statement captures the organization's distinctive purpose or reason for being.
• A vision statement creates a mental picture of what leaders want the organization to achieve when accomplishing its purpose or mission.
• Value statements clarify how the organization will conduct its activities to achieve its mission and vision. They frequently reflect common morality and emphasize respect, integrity, trust, caring, and the pursuit of excellence.

In a first-in-class health care organization, these three directional strategies align with the company's overarching goals. Once strategic leaders are confident the mission, vision, and values are well formulated, understood, and communicated, they then focus on the activities that will make the most progress toward accomplishing the organization's mission and move it toward realizing its vision. These activities are called strategic goals.

This assignment provides an opportunity for you to create a directional strategies report. In this report, you will analyze the alignment of your health care organization's current directional strategies (mission, vision, and value statements) with its strategic goals. You will make recommendations for improvement if you identify gaps between where your health care organization currently is and where it wants to go.

By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assignment criteria:

• Competency 1: Analyze organizational structure, design, culture, and climate in relation to environmental forces.
  • Analyze the effectiveness of a health care organization's directional strategies.
  • Identify gaps between effective directional strategies and an organization's existing directional strategies.
• Competency 3: Recommend an organizational structure and design to optimize a strategic plan.
  • Analyze the alignment between an organization's directional strategies and its strategic goals.
  • Propose changes to an organization's directional strategies that improve alignment between its organizational structure and its strategic goals.
• Competency 4: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and consistent with expectations for professionals in health care administration.
  • Write a clear, concise, well-organized, and professional directional strategies report that includes conclusions that are supported by relevant evidence.
  • Follow APA formatting and style guidelines for citations and references.

Scenario

Your boss is pleased with the thorough and impressive work you have done to date. However, she notes that the TOWS matrix findings do not align with the organization's directional strategies. The organization's structure needs to more closely align with its strategic goals, so that the organization can be more efficient, competitive, and profitable. She asks for your help once again.

Her next task for you is to examine the organization's current mission, vision, and value statements and compare them to the TOWS matrix. She requests that you recommend revisions to the organization's mission, vision, and value statements so that they more closely align with the organization's strategic priorities.

Knowing your boss, you understand that she wants your directional strategies report to be insightful, substantive, and brief—all at the same time. You also know that your boss is a visual person. It will serve you well to include appropriate images and diagrams, such as your TOWS matrix, in your report to highlight key information.

Instructions

Write a directional strategies report that examines the alignment of a health care organization's current directional strategies with its strategic goals.

Report Requirements

The requirements, outlined below, correspond to the grading criteria in the Directional Strategies Report Scoring Guide, so be sure to address each point. Read the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.

• Analyze the effectiveness of the organization's directional strategies.
  • Use the Mission, Vision, and Values Analysis Questions document, linked in the resources, to determine how effectively the existing directional strategies currently fulfill the requirements of effective directional strategies.
• Identify gaps between effective directional strategies and the organization's existing directional strategies.
• Analyze the alignment between the organization's directional strategies and its strategic goals.
  • Examine the strategic fit.
    • How well does the directional strategy fit the environment?
    • How appropriate is the organization's direction, given the environmental analysis you completed in Unit 3?
    • Which strategic goals make the most sense at this time? Growth? Maintaining the status quo? Or does contraction make the most sense right now?
• Propose changes to the organization's directional strategies that improve alignment between the organization's structure and its strategic goals.
  • Recommend changes you think the organization needs to make to establish a foundation necessary for the organization's current structure and strategies.
  • Be sure to support your recommendations with references to current, scholarly, and authoritative sources.
• Write a clear, concise, well-organized, and professional directional strategies report that includes conclusions that are supported by relevant evidence.
• Follow APA formatting and style guidelines for citations and references.

Document Format and Length

Prepare your report using a familiar and appropriate document format used by health care organizations, such as business report or white paper.

Your report should be 4–6 pages in length (double-spaced).

Supporting Evidence

Health care is an evidence-based field. Consequently, readers of your report will want to know the sources of your information, so be sure to include applicable, APA-formatted source citations and references.

Submission Requirements

Proofread your document, before you submit it, to minimize errors that could distract readers and make it more difficult for them to focus on the substance of your report.

Portfolio Prompt: You may choose to save your directional strategies report to your ePortfolio.

Resources

• Directional Strategies Report Scoring Guide.
• Mission, Vision, and Values Analysis Questions [DOCX].
• ePortfolio.