INNOVATION

Pairing Data With Action Essential for Strategic Success

Strategic development and marketing efforts are built on the increased availability of data, enabling teams to make calculated, site-specific decisions on how to run their organizations. However, data alone is only a part of what is needed to develop and implement effective strategies.

Determining how to use data in strategic implementation is necessary for achieving organizational transformation. This was the focus of a presentation titled “Anchoring Analytics in Strategic Implementation: Unifying Leaders Around Organizational Priorities” during the SHSMD Connections conference in September.

“Data isn’t perfect,” says Ashlie Hilbun, the chief strategy officer at Arkansas Children’s. “It only makes sense with context. Stories need data and data needs stories. Our biggest question is, ‘Are we making an impact for patients and families?’”

At Arkansas Children’s, Hilbun and her colleagues have engaged in a process aimed at anchoring analytics in the development of a shared narrative, which allows for developing an organizational strategy that unifies stakeholders around key priorities, and that communicates clear paths forward that set up individuals and teams for success.

Trying to build strategic focus and momentum is a journey that the team at Arkansas Children’s has been on for the last four years.

“For us, the strategic issues of the day are about how we reach children with the promise of a healthier tomorrow,” Hilbun notes. “Thinking through how we meet the needs of a diverse pediatric population spread over a large, rural area requires new ideas.”

Getting to that point, however, also required significant organizational change.

“We are the only children’s hospital in the state of Arkansas, and we were sometimes overly positive in the stories we believed about how well we were serving our community,” she explains.

This perspective resulted in “a lot of business as usual,” Hilbun admits.

“We didn’t have enough speed or focus when pushing ambitious strategies forward,” she notes. “We knew we had to reach further and farther if we were going to create more value for Arkansans.”

Transitioning from a traditional approach to a far more disciplined, educated execution required both developing deeper data sets and determining how to take that knowledge and turn it into actionable policy.

“We started to have a conversation with our team: ‘Are you ready to be different?’” Hilbun explains. “We used this as a rallying cry, both internally and externally, to ask whether we were ready to meet the needs of the day.”

The team began to build strategic momentum, starting in 2020, with the development of a broad-based strategic plan. During that process, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, threatening the progress that had been made.

“We stayed on track even in the midst of COVID,” Hilbun recalls. “Ultimately, it really empowered our team because it gave us something to be in control of in a very uncontrollable time in our lives.”

Developing analytics focused on the health care industry, specific markets and organizations allowed for organizational intelligence, which was foundational to development of the strategic plan.

“It’s our responsibility to always be scanning, understanding and spending time focusing on what’s happening outside of our walls and making sure we’re pulling that information in for our organizational leaders,” says Tracey Bradley-Simmons, the hospital’s director of strategy and planning. “You have to be very disciplined and focused to be in the know. This can be hard to do when you are stuck in your day-to-day work, but it is very important.”

Staying on top of trends and intelligence is an area that the hospital has identified as being a top priority for growth. Doing so, Bradley-Simmons notes, does not need to be as challenging as it sometimes seems.

“Allow yourself time to actually read the news and the newsletters that pile up in your inbox, and make sure you can inform the conversations that are happening throughout your system,” she adds.

“You often hear people say we need more marketing,” Hilbun agrees. “There are so many steps between a strategic plan and marketing who you are. One of the first steps is figuring out where you are in the market and in your organization—that’s why data is so important.”

Yet, data alone can complicate and confuse if it’s not well packaged and broadly understood.

“Analytics can’t get you where you need to go if you don’t know where you are,” says Clay Shuffield, the director of growth initiatives at the hospital.

Using data effectively, he notes, showcases the importance of market assessment, and it starts with storytelling. Misconceptions and orthodoxies regarding market share are common. Refining these old expectations is key.

“We began a journey looking at a single service line to investigate our current state,” Shuffield recalls. “We looked externally at market share [and other metrics]. And then we took a hard look at what the data were telling us and how we could turn that into a story.

“Not only do we need to understand this, but we need to be convincing when we tell this to service line leaders and executives,” he adds. “You have to start where you are. You cannot wait for perfect data or perfect tools. And you have to understand how internal data connects to what you are going to see externally.”

“We always start our conversations with our peers across the organization with ‘this is what the data says,’” Hilbun agrees. “This is different [from] saying, ‘this is the reality.’ Data is one piece—it’s an important piece, but it is one piece, and without context it often is not helpful.”

At Arkansas Children’s, the senior team gathers weekly on Monday afternoons for two-hour sessions aimed at discussing strategic initiatives. These meetings, Hilbun stresses, are focused specifically on action.

“When we come to the table, it’s really about what’s moving and what’s not moving. It’s not a theoretical conversation,” she says.

Currently in Year 4 of the strategic plan, the hospital has seen significant success. During 2023, the organization provided care for more children than ever before, achieved its highest ranking on the U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals” list, had record safety and quality trends, had its most productive research year on record, secured significant philanthropic gifts, and announced an ambitious eight-year plan that includes the largest facility expansion in the hospital’s history.

“This data analytics program has really underpinned our ability to move all of this work forward,” Hilbun says. “One way I know we are making progress is I go into a leader’s office and the strategic plan is tattered; it’s got stickers all over it and is starting to look worn. That’s what you want your strategic plan to look like.”