Is Your Work Worth Paying For?

The short version of a question for hospital planners and marketers: Is your work worth paying for?

The longer version:

"What have you done lately to earn the trust of your customers in the quality of your services, in your abilities as strategists, systems thinkers, communicators, builders of competitive advantage and a world-class repository of strategic knowledge?"

Not always an easy question to answer. You take things for granted as, in a sense, you become your organization's captive agency and, without the ability to choose otherwise, its leaders represent your permanent "clients."

But what if your employer suddenly threw open the doors to competition from anybody, anywhere? What if your "clients" could buy from you or go outside for better, cheaper, smarter, faster service?

Would your "clients" prefer YOUR ideas and expertise even when they're free to work with Joe Blow from Kokomo? How well would your team compete in that great big marketplace of ideas?

To answer, think VSOP.

Do you deliver exceptional value for the marketing dollar? Do you produce the highest possible return for the lowest possible cost?

Are your "clients" satisfied with your work? Is your work done on time, on budget, with exceptional quality?

Do you deliver better than the expected outcomes? Does your work have a positive, measurable, reproducible business impact?

Are your processes easy to navigate? Are you easy to work with? Do you meet even unexpressed "client" needs?

Getting to more 'yes' answers requires valuing these things above all else:

• Teamwork; and leadership practices that are visibly supportive of a team's need for learning and improvement.
• Quality; defined as "services and work output that exceed 'client' requirements and expectations AND that produce the desired results." 
  
• A scientific approach; an approach driven by data.  And by data collection systems focused on issues of importance to your "client."
  
• Customers; i.e. your internal "clients." You can't succeed unless and until your customers succeed.
  
• A process orientation; process thinking is not just for clinicians. Marketing and planning are collections of processes that can be understood, documented and improved.
  
• Continuous learning; your team acquires new skills and improves its ability to serve "clients" by continuously learning.
  

Do this, keep doing it and you will occupy your rightful place in the pantheon of world-class marketers and planners. And you will indeed be delivering work worth paying for.

Contact me if you'd like to discuss improving your planning & marketing department's value proposition, processes, scorecards, metrics, best practices, training, team functioning, coaching, mentoring.  It's all within reach.  Email me at healthcarestrategist@gmail.com if you agree.