Leadership – Strategy Alignment

Service: Risk Management
Subject: Leadership
Type: Risk Profiles

This risk relates to lack of organizational alignment and engagement around vision, mission, values and strategy. This risk may result from lack of integrated planning of strategic priorities, misalignment with departmental goals, inadequate resource prioritization, lack of optimizing opportunities for health system needs (including with partners and competing priorities), and capacity limitations impacting strategic execution. Strategy misalignment can impact operations and potentially affect an organization’s ability for bettering the healthcare system. This document contains information entered by HIROC Subscriber healthcare organizations (acute and non-acute) in the Risk Register application to help you in your assessment of this risk.

Key Controls / Mitigation Strategies

  • Planning processes:
    • Board committee and work plan dedicated to the organization’s mission, vision and values
    • Strategic plan is appropriately refreshed on a regular basis and is updated based on progress and capacities
    • Annual planning process to ensure alignment of projects to support success in strategy execution with clear strategic goals and objectives. Determine top strategy priorities and adjust business plan accordingly
    • Business planning approach considers the staff and leadership capacity risk in shared planning, and stewardship
    • Governance framework
    • Set out clear accountability for each strategic priority at beginning of planning process and determine realistic scope and completion date for projects; identify the required resources to support each project
    • Department-based work plans with alignment to corporate strategic directions
    • Project management gating process to assess project impact on organization, project budget and risk assessment
    • Use of project charters to provide structure and clear reporting against each remaining objective
    • Development of transition plans to support long-term sustainment of progress and remaining work
    • Focus organization on strategic priorities and limiting of external projects as appropriate
    • Knowledge transfer and skills of project management through the organization
    • Policies and procedures in place to ensure alignment across the organization
  • Engagement and Innovation
    • Engage a consultative methodology to develop or revise strategic plan throughout the organization to create ownership and commitment
    • Consultation with patient/family advisory council and/or patient feedback mechanisms
    • Develop annual business plan in collaboration with regional partners to create synergies for better outcomes and potential for shared resources to improve capacity
    • Monitoring partners and successful provincial/national initiatives regarding potential strategic ideas for consideration
  • Communication
    • Communications strategy to share organizational strategic plan and ongoing developments with staff such as: staff huddles with executives, project management office cafés, staff forums, newsletters
    • Public communication strategy, strategic plan availability on social media
    • Communication plan considers increasing capacity for change management, unique organizational culture and transformation action plan 
    • “Brand” the priorities

Monitoring / Indicators

  • Board provided with quarterly update on progress
  • Annual business plan and strategic plan refresh
  • Scorecards of strategic objectives, performance metrics at corporate and department levels
  • Ongoing engagement with system partners to ensure alignment with needs and responsive programming
  • Monitor the legislation federally and provincially 
  • Workload measurement and monitoring for management and frontline staff in a visible tracking tool
  • Ongoing patient/management/frontline feedback  
Date last reviewed:
This is a resource for quality assurance and risk management purposes only, and is not intended to provide or replace legal or medical advice or reflect standards of care and/or standards of practice of a regulatory body. The information contained in this resource was deemed accurate at the time of publication, however, practices may change without notice.