Moving Beyond the Basics of Strategic Planning: The Board’s Role

“Strategy is a word that gets used in so many ways with so many meanings that it can end up being meaningless.”1 This quotation by Harvard Business School professor and well-known author Michael Porter was not meant to imply that strategy itself is meaningless. Instead, it underscores his point that strategy should focus on what can make an organization unique rather than head-on competition with others. What does this mean in a period of upheaval in healthcare? What does this require of hospital and health system boards?