Who Can Think About Strategic Planning at a Time Like This?

The problem with strategic planning is:

• It seems like big company, highbrow academic, theoretical junk, not for small to mediumsized operations.
• It takes too much time, and in the midst of all the industry uncertainty, who’s got the time?
• You end up with something that is “nice” but can never be implemented with the costs involved and the amount of change you and your staff would have to endure.

So forget it, right?

No. Just come at it in a whole new way.

To begin, let’s clarify some terms. The idea of strategic thinking is no different than mapping a sales or customer service route. As my first sales manager told me back in the day, “You don’t want to be a star salesman.” Then he drew five lines on an area map that formed a star.

What it demonstrated was that if I wasn’t careful, I’d be zig-zagging all over and spending more time in transit than in front of customers. So the first thing you must do is strategic thinking.

Strategic thinking means deciding where you want to go. That can be defined by how you want to be regarded and who you want to work with (customers, vendors, referral sources, etc.) It can also include the areas you want to work in (products, services, industry segments, as well as geography).

Strategic planning becomes your map to get there. This includes defining objectives, goals, and tactics. Strategic execution is everything necessary to follow the directions and arrive at your destination successfully.

Thinking + planning + execution = greatest probability for success

Start with the Thinking

Assemble the necessary people to assist with brainstorming to plot your course. Do you need some of your key staff involved? Do you need an outside consultant? Can you get information from your state association? Do any of the industry buying groups have information that can help? Does your local chamber of commerce, area college or university have demographics and statistical tools to help?

Next, consider time and place. Can you find a suitable place with minimal distractions where you and your people can escape for two to three days? That’s right, it will take at least that initial time commitment to clear your head, understand the process, explore ideas and come up with a plan that makes sense for your business. And one other thing about people: Do you have someone to facilitate the process?

If you read industry publications, attend conferences and listen to experts, every product, every segment, every territory is poised for exceptional growth. And that may be true. A specific product suffers a legislative hit and experts warn re-thinking carrying it in your inventory. And that may be true.

You hear about this terrific model that’s working for a provider in Anytown that has allowed him to increase revenues. And that may be true. You just heard about the latest nationwide benchmark numbers for the industry and think you need to match those figures in order to succeed. And that may be true.

Then again, it may not.

With all of these facts and figures, your business is different — or at least it should be. Difference means distinction. Distinction means value-added. Value-added means profitability. In other words, you can’t, nor should you, take someone else’s model, plan, product mix or formula and try to replicate it.

Pick your own destination based on your desired lifestyle, your community’s character, your purpose for being in business. Also remember that communities and markets are very different. Things that work in a northeastern metropolitan area probably won’t succeed in a rural Central Plains state.

Next, Map Out a Strategic Plan

First, consider several essential areas you want to improve upon significantly. The following four are good examples (although they may not be your four): talent, sales and marketing, service and finances.

1. Talent: Make sure the right people are in the right places to do the right things to grow the company.
2. Sales and Marketing: Review and enhance programs, processes, product mix and referral networks to achieve maximum results.
3. Service: Provide for total commitment to and exploration of new ways to achieve an enviable reputation in customer retention.
4. Finances: Create relationships, models and appropriate systems to provide cash flow, profitability and fiscal capacity.

You’ll need to gather information and assess where things stand today with respect to each of your objectives. This will mean accumulating numbers as well as anecdotal feedback/input on things that may not be quantifiable by spreadsheets.

An example would be assessing customer service in terms of efficient, courteous, acceptable practices with actual customers. Depending on your needs or interests, you may want to have an outside service conduct surveys, interviews or actual focus groups with select customers. It’s more time-consuming and costs more money, but this will lend another valuable perspective on how you’re doing as a home health care provider of choice.

In the process of analyzing facts, opinions and other items regarding your business, you will no doubt want to consider a new take on an old methodology called SWOT analysis. This review of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats came out of the business schools a few decades ago and has become a staple of executive education, corporate and consultative practices in the strategic planning process.

However, don’t dwell on, exhaust and elaborate on the “Ws” and “Ts” that can almost sabotage the process from the beginning. While being aware of weaknesses, the time, energy and money spent on trying to overcome them would be far better spent on leveraging your strengths.

Maybe it’s the “half-full/half-empty” metaphor, but be aware without being consumed by any weaknesses or threats you perceive.

Next — and this will take the most time because people really have to put on their thinking caps — comes identifying factors that will significantly impact the achievement of your broad objectives. These goals are more specific in terms of how to make the objectives happen. There should probably be no more than six; more than that and the process can become too unmanageable or intimidating.

As an example, under the “finances” objective, six goals might be to:

1. Investigate lending alternatives;
2. Review expense procedures and policies;
3. Explore product/service mix for profitability, revenue generation and/or market appropriateness;
4. Investigate alternative vendor/supplier sources and/or more attractive terms and conditions;
5. Review business, estate and tax issues to provide for short-term and succession planning strength; and
6. Buy a lottery ticket (just checking to see if you are following along).

Another example in support of the “sales and marketing” objective might include these six goals:

1. Explore product mix to determine opportunities beyond current offerings;
2. Review sales rep compensation to ensure incentives are appropriate for product/service focus;
3. Assess current staff skills and explore additional training and development initiatives;
4. Examine efficiencies and effectiveness of order processing;
5. Examine referral sources for purposes of cultivating the most profitable; and
6. Review all marketing materials (including brochures, business cards, letterhead, signage, store displays, print ads, radio/TV, community support initiatives, etc.) to determine their professionalism, consistency and effectiveness.

The Final Step in Planning

Now you’ve reached the actual tactical or action items level. This is the no-nonsense phase that defines four distinct bits of information:

1. What specific action(s) needs to occur to ensure the goals you have decided on are met?
2. Who is responsible for championing and overseeing and is otherwise accountable for seeing the required actions are completed? (Actual name(s) should be written down.)
3. What is the timeline for your strategic plan? This may include a start and/or completion date for the task(s) involved.
4. When will there be review(s) to monitor progress? This ensures that a periodic checking occurs to see that no one falls behind in their piece of the journey to success. Depending on the action item, these reviews could be daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. Anything that isn’t reviewed within a month stands very little chance of focus or completion.

Given the HME industry’s current state of affairs, there are several other tactical issues that can contribute and must be considered regarding your entire strategic plan. These include:

• Accreditation and the significance that can have on your ability to compete.
• Payer mix and the impact of shifting Medicaid, Medicare, retail (cash, credit card, check, money order receipt), insurance, managed care contracts, and rentals vs. sales percentages on cash flow and profits.
• Consideration of tactical focus mix on adding customers, selling more to existing customers, increasing staff, expanding locations, remodeling existing locations to accommodate more/different products/services, eliminating products/services due to sales, profits, hassles, etc.
• Greater involvement and cooperation in allied provider events (hospice, hospital, nursing home, assisted living facilities, retirement communities, senior centers, meals-on-wheels, etc.).
• Supporting legislative activities aimed at reimbursement and bidding issues.

In strategic planning, everything must be on the table for discussion. If it isn’t, then as Einstein is quoted as having said about the definition of insanity, you’ll be “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The format, length and focus of your strategic plan should be as short, simple and easy-to-follow as possible. We have all seen pretty, multi-page, four-color bound plans with appendices, charts, spreadsheets and graphs that ended up dusty on shelves. But the simpler, the more powerful. If the least educated, lowest-paid, newest employee can understand it, you’ve got the makings of a winning plan.

After all, the HME business is simple: Find out what people want, provide it in an ethical and efficient manner, get paid, repeat. One other thing: Spend less than you earn.

Now, Execute the Plan

It sounds good, so why does it often fall short? The reason the strategic planning process fails is usually because something has been left out. Successful execution means monitoring to ensure all components are in place.

The ultimate success of strategic growth, whether defined by revenues, profits, number of locations, employees, etc., is found in thinking, planning and execution of strategies. The power of succeeding is realized not in looking at everything that might go wrong but in accepting what is in your control and taking mastery over it.

Strategic growth is about choosing your path and, with dogged determination, surrounding yourself with talented people and arming them with the tools to go for it. Remember, every giant provider started out small. Every strong provider started out with an idea, a few bucks and a desire to succeed.

Yes, this industry is in turmoil, but when was it ever not? Yes, well-meaning legislators do what they can without understanding the impact on a business or someone in need of quality products and services. Yes, margins, technology and procedures are constantly changing. But I’d venture no one reading this article doesn’t enjoy a good challenge, an opportunity to make a difference and the ability to pursue an enviable lifestyle that a business professional in America can experience.

Strategic planning to a home care provider is more than guesses, systems and policies — it’s about ensuring that your business revolves around the astute, honest and respectful management of relationships, and about leveraging strengths to accomplish more than you might ever have thought possible.

Think, plan, execute and succeed.

Vince Crew is a strategic business growth adviser and founder of Reach Development Services, Naples, Fla. He is the creator the HME Power Management Success System and is also the author of several books on leadership, staffing and strategy. Crew may be contacted through his Web site at www.reachdevelopment.com.

Vince Crew’s Strategy Modeling Tool