There is a common scenario playing out in many healthcare systems right now: initiatives abound, staffing is tight, and silos remain. For healthcare marketers in this scenario, tactical requests often pile in and marketing is frequently told about projects or initiatives after they’re already being implemented. In today’s healthcare environment, where outcomes matter more than ever, it’s imperative that as a leader, you position your team as strategy partners. For those of you who are fielding tactical requests more often than you are being asked to weigh in on strategic problems, I offer some advice on moving in a different direction.
Now is the time to collaborate with internal customers to begin shifting the culture and further prove your team’s value to the organization. The advice below can be helpful whether you are just beginning this journey or are already on the path, because there is always room for improvement when it comes to supporting growth.
Ensure that your team obtains the business/ strategic plan(s). While it’s no longer a new concept that marketing’s activities should align with the organizational priorities, there are still examples of organizations who don’t share the plans with their support departments or include them in the making of them. Many marketing departments only hear about growth initiatives when a service line leader or other internal stakeholder requests support services. These scenarios result in inefficiencies of both time and money. Whether your organization has one business/ strategic plan that encompasses the entire enterprise or one for each key service line, it’s important that marketing sees and understands what’s contained in these plans. If you feel you might have trouble obtaining the plan(s), I encourage you to have a conversation with your supervisor about why it’s important. Bonus points if you can get yourself included in the planning process.
To those who are already thoroughly versed in the strategic priorities of the organization, I challenge you to explore how can you increase your effectiveness and efficiency in aligning your activities in support of them.
Complete an audit of your internal systems. In my current role, I prepared my team for this transition through a series of collaborative discovery sessions. The core premise was that we had to change our own processes and procedures before we could change the way we operated within the organization, and before we asked the organization to view us in a different way. It is an iterative team exercise that includes asking ourselves what we need to start doing more of and less of in order to be successful. As a healthcare leader, your team is your best asset in making a transition such as this. They will be the ones to tell you what will work and what won’t. Most importantly, they will be the ones to champion the changes, and will feel empowered to implement them in their functional areas. I’ll write more about some specifics of the audit in a later post.
Use structured strategy discussions to shift the dialogue with internal customers. When I have worked with teams to make this shift, a key component has been how we communicate with internal customers. When we received requests for tactical solutions to unclear problems, we instead sent invitations for strategy discussions. Tactics were discussed only after we had identified the goal and defined our strategy. I call these structured strategy discussions because it follows a process. Instead of starting with tactics, which often happens when marketing people are invited to a meeting, we started with the metric-based goal, and structured the rest of the conversation around the strategies that will help us meet the goal.
Personas and journey mapping can be very helpful here. Engaging in collaborative sessions with service line teams can give you invaluable insights into the consumers you are trying to reach, by understanding more about the patients they will become.
Develop dynamic plans. Create strategic marketing communications plans that are flexible based on the insights you gain from your analytics and other sources. Keep an open line of communication with your service line teams, reporting back on a quarterly basis (or more frequently, depending on the situation), so you can continue to harvest their valuable feedback. Finally, don’t be afraid to experiment. Status quo won’t cut it in a growth environment.
I’ve found that with consistent application of new processes and procedures, over time a shift happens in the organization and people start reaching out to discuss strategy. It can’t be overstated that as leaders our job is to support our teams. A collaborative team environment is key to the success of a shift such as this.
Christina Deidesheimer 