1. Strategic planning is essentially decision making, deciding which strategy from among the many available alternatives the organization will pursue.

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1. Service delivery strategies and support strategies are not separate but, rather, interact and complement each other.

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1. Value-adding strategies must accomplish the directional, adaptive, market entry/exit, and competitive strategies and the action plans must accomplish the value-adding strategies.

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1. The human resources unit of a health care organization is generally considered to be engaged in value-adding service activities.

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1. The difference between the term "business plan" and "action plan" as descriptors of implementation strategies is that business plan is strategic and action plan is tactical.

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1. Identifying objectives, determining who is responsible to accomplish them, the resources required, and how results will be measured is an approach that keeps the strategic plan straightforward and comprehensible.

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1. Marketing research is NOT a pre-service activity.

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1. Market research provides information only about potential customers.

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1. A canon of strategic management is the need to change strategies over time.

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1. Strategies developed by matching the long-term competitive advantages with issues from the three external environments - general, health care, and service area - represents the primary adaptive strategies of an organization.

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1. Market entry/exit strategies are themeansfor accomplishing theendsof adaptive strategies.

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1. The initial strategic plan for an organization is usually the product of a relatively small number of strategic thinkers.

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1. Because everyone cannot be directly involved in developing a strategic plan, successive layers of management must communicate the overall strategy and provide guidance for the various units that will need to be engaged if the strategy is to be achieved.

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1. It is important to have specific milestones in the strategic planning process to provide updates for all employees, telling them that the process is ongoing and explaining expected timelines for the strategy to be handed over to those who will be responsible for carrying it out.

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1. An action plan identifies actions required to accomplish objectives and the sequence in which the actions should be undertaken.

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1. The choice of a strategic alternative creates additional direction for an organization but has little to do with shaping its internal systems.

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1. For health care organizations, revenue expectations from plan implementation are more important than cost estimates since the revenues will offset the costs.

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1. Extended portfolio matrix analysisincludes a sustainability dimension to the market share and market growth dimensions of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) portfolio analysis.

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1. Support strategies concern areas such as the behavioral norms, organization structure and flexibility, human resources, finance, information systems, and technology, and will play a major role in the implementation of the organization's overall strategy.

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1. Shared values represent the understanding of "the way we do things" and may or may not reflect the organization's "stated" values - it is the actual members' values that create the organization's culture.

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1. An organization that uses internal resources for entering a new market is deploying a development strategy.

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1. Health care marketing is simplified by the need to focus on a single class of customer - health care consumers (patients).

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1. Physicians are a minor target for marketing efforts because they recommend other health care providers for their patients.

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1. The primary value of the Balanced Scorecard approach is to focus the health care organization on those aspects of its operations that most directly impact the accomplishment of its strategies.

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1. Regardless of the level at which the strategic plan is developed, all action plans are required only at the unit level.

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1. A process is a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of inputs and creates and output that is valuable to an organizational stakeholder.

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1. Point-of-service is a transformational process that incorporates an organization's resources - human and non-human, competencies, and capabilities and its assets - into value-added service delivery.

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1. One of the valid criticisms of the Balanced Scorecard is that it evaluates strategy exclusively on financial criteria and neglects some of the "softer" aspects of strategic success.

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1. Once leaders announce a strategy it is likely to be successful even if it is not in line with resources allocation decisions made at various levels of the organization.

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1. Value-adding support strategies are implementation strategies directed toward the accomplishment of all other strategies.

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1. A major disadvantage of the positioning strategy of cost leadership is that prices will probably be higher than that of the competition.

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1. Strategic position and action evaluation (SPACE) analysis suggests the appropriateness of strategic alternatives based on factors relating to four dimensions: service category strength, environmental stability, the organization's relative competitive advantage, and the organization's financial strength.

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1. Diversification strategies are directed toward providing services of equal or better quality at a lower cost than competitors.

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1. Although there are many strategies available to health care organizations it is critically important that they focus on a single strategy and not pursue more than one strategy simultaneously.

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1. An example of market development would be a chain of urgent care organizations opening a surgical rehab unit next door.

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1. An effective strategic manager will always view the organizational structure as an impediment to strategy implementation.

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1. Functional structures organize activities around the mission-critical activities or processes of the organization and are the most prevalent structures for single product/service and narrowly focused organizations.

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1. When a health care organization decides to"ride the decline"and allow the service to generate as much revenue as possible without additional investment it is an example of harvesting.

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1. The adaptive strategy of a not-for-profit organization is independent of and not related to the programs maintained and emphasized by the organization.

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1. Human resources requirements of the selected strategies will vary considerably depending on whether the organization is expanding, contracting, or maintaining scope.

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1. Configuration theory argues that in a given industry such as health care, there is one and only one organizational structure that will be successful in accomplishing the organization's mission.

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1. Divisional structures sometimes create intentional or unintentional competition for resources among the divisions.

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1. The purpose of market entry strategies is to break into or capture more of a market.

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1. Positioning strategies must be selected based on resources, competencies, and capabilities (competitive relevant strengths), as well as environmental risks.

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1. In the maturing stage of the product life cycle rapid growth accelerates and organizations begin spinning off unprofitable units.

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1. One of the important things about market entry strategies is that regardless of the strategy selected they all require the same resources, competencies, and capabilities.

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1. The development of an effective strategy requires that care and attention has been given to what strategic leaders want to do - expand, reduce, or maintain the scope of the organizations operations.

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1. A matrix structure may be most appropriate when organizations have numerous products or projects that draw on common functional expertise.

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1. Organization structures are"tools"for accomplishing the strategy and leaders should feel free to use one or more are a combination of structures when the strategy justifies different approaches to organizing.

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1. Strategic control is the process of determining if the strategy is successful and, where appropriate, taking corrective action.

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