|  Scott Regan

Hopefully, your 2010 strategic plan is completed, approved, distributed, and communicated.

However, I suspect there are many of you who are still putting the finishing touches on your organization’s strategic plan, either because you are awaiting final year-end numbers to validate your 2010 objectives, your board didn’t meet in December to approve the plan, or the executive team got sidetracked by the budget process.

Regardless of whether you have finished the planning process, resolve to build accountability into this year’s plan. Assuming you use the standard business school strategic planning model of goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics, and that your organization has quantifiable and measureable 2010 objectives, as well as strategies and tactics designed to achieve those objectives, here then is a six-point plan for driving strategic plan accountability:

1. Make sure each 2010 objective is assigned to a single senior leader in the organization. Objectives are the lifeblood of the strategic plan; they should be “owned” by your senior-most executives — not middle managers. And they should be assigned to single individuals, not a team of executives. At the end of the day, you want to know who is ultimately responsible for an objective. Individual ownership breeds accountability; team ownership does not. And if you think that because yours is an integrated delivery system with 12 hospitals, 65 physician practices, 18 outpatient centers, etc., you are forced to have shared objectives, then understand that this is just the culture of your organization talking.
2. Make sure every strategy and tactic has a very specific completion date. Second quarter is not specific. Neither is June 2010. However, June 18, 2010, is. And unless your organization’s leadership team routinely works weekends and holidays (which I doubt they do), make sure completion dates don’t fall on any of these days. In addition, the completion date for any strategy should be the latest completion date of the tactics that make up that strategy. A strategy is nothing more than the sum of the tactics that comprise it. When the tactics are completed, the strategy is completed. Period.
3. Make sure every strategy and tactic is assigned to someone in management. Like objectives, they should be assigned to single individuals, not teams of people. Even if a team is required to execute a strategy or tactic, one person will be designated the team leader. This is the person who should have strategic plan responsibility. Don’t ever assign strategies and tactics to non-management staff or to physicians who are not employed by your organization (that includes physicians who receive a medical director stipend). This is a recipe for failure.
4. Monitor due dates. Develop a system for notifying people when they have a strategic plan strategy or tactic coming due. Let them know how to report the status of their activity, and whom to report it to. And when they are late, let the executives in your organization know. Implementing strategies and tactics on time should not be optional; it should be required.
5. Create an easy-to-understand dashboard system to monitor your organization’s objectives. Any such system should include early-warning flags that alert the organization when an objective is in jeopardy. This will help your strategic planning team assess whether the strategies and tactics were ill-conceived, or just poorly executed. Devise a scoring system that shows the success of the plan. My favorite methodology is to use a 100-point system in which meeting the objectives is 75% of the score and completing the strategies and tactics on time is 25% of the score. Scoring makes communications easy, as people inherently know that a strategic plan score of 88.5 is much better than a score of 72.6. And while you’re at it, establish a score you are aiming for — for instance, 90.0 (if you ever achieve a perfect score of 100.0, I would argue that your plan was soft).
6. If possible, incentivize your management team on the success of the strategic plan. Align management bonuses to the plan, either as a team or as individuals. There are pros and cons of each. Strategic plan incentives that are based on individual contributions to the strategic plan provide your team with intense focus, but it can also create silos. On the other hand, awarding the entire team equally on strategic plan performance might create a culture of teamwork and camaraderie, but it can also breed contempt, as the bottom performers receive rewards equal to the organization’s star achievers. I’ve seen both models work, depending on the organizational culture at hand.

Follow this six-point plan, and you will find that strategic plan accountability in your organization will become second-nature, and that your likelihood of success will be achieved.

I struggled with whether I wanted to venture into these waters, but there are so many brand lessons in the Tiger Woods saga that I finally decided to jump in feet first.

Tiger Woods is, arguably, the world’s biggest brand. On any level. In any country. In any industry. Period. Even if you want to debate that point, it’s hard not to agree with the premise that his brand is sizeable and robust.

And infallible. Or so we thought.

As the first athlete to earn $1 billion, his brand was once sterling. He was a Golden Boy. And now, his brand is fast approaching rubbish. Accenture has already severed ties with Woods. As the scandal continues to unfold, there will certainly be others. So what can you learn from this debacle that might save your own brand? Plenty. Here’s five lessons that will serve you well.

1. Brands are often tied to people, as organizations take great strides to personify their brands. Your hospital’s brand is inexplicably intertwined with the CEO, the physicians on your medical staff, and your employees. Woods only needed to manage himself. You have to manage 500 to 50,000 individuals, depending on the size of your brand. And any one of them can destroy your brand as quickly as Woods destroyed his. If you are going to manage your hospital’s brand, you have to also manage the reputation of your team — because they are a critical component of your brand.
2. Hubris almost always sinks a brand. It certainly sunk Woods. Because of his own arrogance and overbearing presumptions, he believed that he could behave badly without retribution. When hospital CEOs begin believing their own press releases, trouble is on the horizon. And when those same CEOs believe they are bigger than the organizations they serve, trouble is just around the corner. Hubris has killed many an executive — as well as the brands they were charged to protect and oversee.
3. It takes five to 10 years to build a brand. It takes five to 10 minutes to destroy it. We need brands. They serve as a trust mark, a sorting device. We make conscious and subconscious decisions all day long based on brand trust. Ever purchase Advil for $9.99, when the generic next to it sold for $3.49 and had identical ingredients? Maybe it wasn’t Advil. Perhaps it was Philadelphia Cream Cheese versus the generic. Or maybe it was the physician who was the recent subject of a Medicare fraud investigation that you passed by in favor of a doctor a mile further away. My point is this: The next time Tiger Woods talks about the values that was inculcated in him as a child (although I can’t believe this will happen anytime in the near future), how much of his rhetoric will you actually believe? Now take your answer and apply it to your collective community next time your hospital is trying to defend its brand and the values associated with it.
4. Even in times of utter and total brand turmoil, brands can survive. However, pulling this off takes skill. And speed. Tiger Woods displayed neither as he cocooned in his home, forgoing an appearance at his own charity golf tournament and hiding behind the “private matters should stay private” comment. Had Woods stepped forward into the white hot spot light and bared his soul, showing remorse for what he had done, and pledging to take steps to rectify his sins, many would have raised his pedestal even higher. We all fall at some point. Individuals and institutions. It’s not the fall that is unforgiveable. It is not rising up after the fall and soaring even higher.
5. It’s better to take all of your medicine in one dose, that have it administered to you over several weeks or several months. Woods is learning this lesson the hard way, as new stories emerge nearly every day. With each new story, the Woods brand continually erodes, and Woods has more to answer for. When your brand is in trouble, it is better to assume that the things you are hiding will eventually emerge, rather than hope they are never uncovered. Step forward, put it all on the table, and be done with it. Not only is this brave, it shows that you have taken responsibility for your actions — even those that have yet to be disclosed. It’s easy to forgive someone who tells the whole truth, shows remorse, and pledges to do better. It’ hard to forgive someone who does otherwise.

You’ve worked hard to develop a strong hospital brand. Take a minute to think about how fast it can come tumbling down, should your hospital accidentally kill a patient, the Justice Department launches an investigation into billing fraud, your purchasing manager is accused of taking bribes, or your CEO is charged with sexual harassment. Now think about what you will do to save your brand from ruin. The time you spend planning now could save your brand in the future.

I was recently facilitating a management retreat for a healthcare organization when an executive asked me when “brand conception” occurs. If a brand has a “Big Bang,” then when and where does it happen?

It’s an interesting question. One which I am sure will invite many answers.

I’ll explore some of the more plausible Big (Brand) Bang Theories.

Perhaps the easy answer is that brand conception begins with the name. Without a name, the organization doesn’t exist. And if the organization doesn’t exist, the brand doesn’t exist. But does the mere presence of an organization provide the sparks needed for the Big (Brand) Bang? I don’t think so. Consider two hospitals built and opened within days of each other in the same market. One is called Community Hospital and the other is called General Hospital. That’s all we know about either. Is it enough to set them apart from each other? Is there anything in their names that might differentiate their brands?

You might argue that I gave these hospitals names so vague as to carry my argument. Let’s rename them Community Cancer Hospital and General Heart Hospital. Or Starbucks Hospital and Apple Medical Center. I don’t think it really matters. Because as the age-old question asks, “What’s in a name?” The answer: Not much.

So, if the name is not the point of brand conception, then what is? How about the mission? In the mission we begin to see differentiation. Community Hospital’s mission is to serve the poor, ensure healthcare access for all people, and deliver health services to those in outlying impoverished areas. General Hospital’s mission is to advance technology to create an efficient and effective healthcare delivery system with the highest levels of quality attainable.

We begin to see brand differentiation, or do we? Are the mission statements powerful enough to create a catalyst for a brand? I’ve seen many mission statements that were strong in ideas, but weak in application. The organization may have birthed a mission, but it was not even a distant third cousin to the brand.

Let’s look at the vision. Community Hospital’s vision is to redesign the healthcare delivery system so that all people have equal access to every level of care, regardless of their ability to pay. General Hospital’s vision, on the other hand, is to create the highest quality, safest, and most profitable hospital in the world. Is this the point of the Big Bang, with the creation of a vision so unique, so energizing, that it single-handedly explodes into a brand?

I don’t know.

What about strategy, that omnipresent link between mission and vision. Can brand be conceived without the correct strategy that pulls it all together? And then, of course, there is leadership. Their role in the conception of the brand is critical, as without someone actually parenting the brand, the brand may never make it to full term.

Strong arguments can be made for any of these Big (Brand) Bang Theories, and I am sure many will. If I had to put one under the microscope for further study, it would be the mission. I suspect that the mission is where brand conception occurs. If not the mission, then it would have to be the vision. Or, perhaps it is a combination of the two, with conception occurring with the mission and the Big (Brand) Bang occurring with the vision.

It’s tough to say.

Your brand is like a small stone tossed into a pond. As it splashes into the water, it radiates ripples outward along the surface, each band growing increasingly larger than those preceeding it.

Rippling water is a wonderful metaphore for brand building. Consider the stone your mission and vision statements. The first ripple in the water is your executive team. The second ripple is middle management. As the ripples continue to gain momentum, we move on through your medical staff, employees, patients, and the community at large.

The fact that the ripples grow in size is not important. The key learning here is that the ripples have an order to them. In other words, there are a series of concentric circles that envelope your brand and eventually become your brand. And to give your brand strength, you have to move through these circles in a logical order.

Should you do much brand building with your patients if your senior leadership team does not represent the brand in their day-to-day actions? Is it worth your while to invest on an external brand-building campaign if your front-line employees don’t understand what the brand stands for? And should you train your staff on the critical components of your brand if middle management is not first serving as a strong brand ambassador?

The answers: No, no, and no.

To build a successful brand requires that you first have a stone to throw into the pond. Having meaningful mission and vision statements are first and foremost in brand building. Second, you then have to work through your concentric circles — one at a time — ensuring that each circle is entrenched in the brand before moving to the next outward ring.

Do this, and your brand has a much higher chance of success. But if you fail to pay attention to the logical order of your concentric circles, your brand will likely have a rocky childhood. If your brand is currently struggling, review your concentric circles and see if one or more was left out of your brand-building process. Chances are, you will find the source of your struggles somewhere within the ripples.