Prepare a 10–20-slide presentation of the strategic plan you developed in Assessment 2, to be delivered to key stakeholders at a strategic visioning session.
Note: Each assessment in this course builds on the work you completed in the previous assessment. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.
SHOW LESS
The implementation and success of a strategic plan depends on the support of key stakeholders. This in turn depends on your ability to communicate clearly and persuasively with decision makers and to sell your vision of the future. You must also be able to lead the initiative and sustain strategic direction. This assessment provides you with an opportunity to showcase your strategic thinking and exercise the communication skills necessary to move your strategic plan forward toward implementation.
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
- Competency 1: Evaluate qualities and skills that promote effective leadership within health care organizations.
- Explain why one’s leadership qualities and skills are well suited to successfully implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction.
- Competency 2: Apply strategies to lead high-performing health care teams to meet organizational quality and safety goals.
- Summarize a strategic plan aimed at achieving desired quality or safety improvements within a care setting.
- Describe the necessary actions for aligning the structure, systems, shared values, management style, staff, and skills of a care setting with strategic goals.
- Explain how the implementation and outcomes of a strategic plan will be evaluated against current performance benchmarks.
- Competency 3: Apply cultural, ethical, and regulatory considerations to leadership decision making.
- Explain how relevant cultural, ethical, and regulatory considerations influence the design of a strategic plan and strategies for its implementation.
- Competency 4: Integrate leadership and health care theories into the role of the nurse leader.
- Explain one’s role, as a nurse leader, in successfully implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction.
- Competency 5: Communicate with stakeholders and constituencies to build collaborative partnerships and create inclusive work environments.
- Explain a strategy for communicating with stakeholders and constituencies who are essential to implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction.
- Communicate analyses clearly and in a way that demonstrates professionalism and respect for stakeholders and colleagues.
- Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.
Questions to Consider
As you prepare to complete this assessment, you may want to think about other related issues to deepen your understanding or broaden your viewpoint. You are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of your professional community. Note that these questions are for your own development and exploration and do not need to be completed or submitted as part of your assessment.
Reflect on the current cultural climate in your care setting.
- What aspects of the current cultural climate would aid in achieving one or more specific goals contained in your strategic plan?
- What aspects of the current cultural climate would present a challenge in achieving one or more specific goals contained in your strategic plan?
- What leadership theories, models, or strategies could help you turn this challenge into an opportunity?
Effectively communicating with internal and external stakeholders and constituencies can help in achieving strategic initiatives.
- How would you communicate the essential aspects of the strategic plan you developed in Assessment 2 to stakeholders or groups, both internal and external to your care setting?
Assessment Instructions
Note: In this assessment, you will develop a presentation to stakeholders for the strategic plan you developed in Assessment 2.
Preparation
Your strategic plan has been reviewed, and you have been asked to present your plan—including operational recommendations and strategic control mechanisms—at a strategic visioning session with key stakeholders (senior leaders if your plan is organization-wide, community leaders if your plan is for a community health project, or the nurse manager of a specific department or team). This session is the next step in moving your plan toward implementation.
Your deliverable for this assessment is a slide deck of 10–20 slides to supplement your presentation and facilitate discussion of your plan. You may use Microsoft PowerPoint or any other suitable presentation software. Please use the notes section of each slide to develop your talking points and reference your sources, as appropriate.
If you choose to use PowerPoint and need help designing your presentation, a link to Microsoft tutorials is provided in the Supplemental Resources in the left-hand navigation pane of your FlexPath courseroom. An additional PowerPoint guide is linked in the Resources.
Presentation Design Tips
Being able to effectively address any audience is a necessary leadership skill. Remember that you are the speaker, not a projectionist. Your purpose is not to present a slide show. Your audience is there to listen to what you have to say, not read your slides—or worse, listen to you read them. Design your presentation slides to compliment and reinforce your message and engage your listeners.
The following tips will help you create presentation slides that work to your advantage:
- Focus on the content of your presentation and the development of your main points. Remember that your purpose is to garner support for your plan and build partnerships for implementation.
- Consider your intended audience and how best to communicate effectively with them.
- Create slides that support your presentation. They should not be your presentation.
- Use a professional presentation template, or one used in your organization.
- Ensure that your slide background provides sufficient visual contrast for your text and graphics.
- Avoid filling your slides with text. Use speaker notes to record the details you want to communicate to your audience.
- Be judicious in your use of bulleted lists. You might even consider a separate slide for each main point.
- Use images and graphics, when appropriate, to illustrate information and make your points. Presentation slides are a visual medium. Images are more effective than text at engaging your audience.
- Avoid using images that are simply decorative. They can be a visual distraction and do not contribute to your message.
- Avoid using flashy slide transitions and animations. They can be both distracting and annoying. Keep your slide transitions consistent throughout the presentation.
- Add a slide to the end of your presentation to prompt questions from the audience.
Requirements
Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide, so, at a minimum be sure to address each point. In addition, you are encouraged to review the performance level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.
Communication, Supporting Evidence, and APA Style
- Present your plan in a professional and respectful way, with the goal of garnering support for your plan and building partnerships for implementation.
- Address stakeholders’ needs and concerns.
- Communicate the need to work collaboratively on implementation.
- Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support your assertions.
- Cite at least 3–5 sources of scholarly or professional evidence.
- Apply correct APA formatting to all in-text citations and references.
- Add a references slide to your slide deck.
- Proofread your slides to minimize errors that could distract the audience and make it more difficult to focus on the substance of your presentation.
Presentation
- Summarize your plan for achieving 2–3 main goals. Include corresponding metrics, targets, and initiatives to help achieve the desired quality or safety improvements in the care setting.
Note: It may be useful to think about what you hoped to achieve in addressing your care setting’s positive core or specific area of concern in Assessment 1. For example:
- Progress toward achieving the Triple Aim.
- Better patient safety outcomes.
- Lower readmission rates.
- Higher volume of patients and care.
- Increased financial gain.
- Minimizing staff burnout.
- Improved relationship and trust with the community or a specific population.
In addition, remember to consult the literature, research studies, and resources from professional and governmental organizations when developing metrics, targets, and initiatives.
- Explain how you will communicate your plan to those stakeholders and constituencies who are essential to implementing your plan and sustaining strategic direction.
- Identify the key individuals or groups with whom you must communicate.
- Identify the cultural or ethical factors, if any, that are relevant to the design of your communication plan, including how key individuals or groups typically prefer to be contacted.
- Describe the actions you will take to align your care setting’s structure, systems, shared values, management style, staff, and skills with your strategic goals.
- Describe the changes that are needed to achieve your goals.
- Describe the goals and processes for on-boarding relevant individuals or groups.
- Explain how you will evaluate the success of your strategic plan.
- Define successful implementation.
- Describe the successful outcomes for this project.
- Explain how will you compare outcomes to current performance benchmarks.
- Explain how will you collect data to evaluate whether you have achieved specific goals and outcomes.
- Identify your priorities, assuming you cannot accomplish everything.
- Explain how relevant cultural, ethical, and regulatory considerations influenced the design of your strategic plan and strategies for its implementation.
- Explain your role, as a nurse leader, in successfully implementing your proposed plan and sustaining strategic direction.
- Explain how leadership and health care theories support your role.
- Explain why your leadership qualities and skills will enable you to successfully implement your plan and sustain strategic direction.
- Explain why should you be the one to lead this initiative.
- Explain how have you demonstrated some or all of these qualities in past work.
Additional Requirements
In addition to your slide deck, submit any other relevant documentation or links for this assessment (if you used presentation software or technology other than PowerPoint).
GRADING RUBRIC:
1- Summarize a strategic plan aimed at achieving desired quality or safety improvements within a care setting.
Passing Grade: Summarizes a strategic plan aimed at achieving desired quality or safety improvements within a care setting, and notes inherent weaknesses or threats.
2- Explain a strategy for communicating with stakeholders and constituencies who are essential to implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction.
Passing Grade: Explains a strategy for communicating with stakeholders and constituencies who are essential to implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction, and identifies assumptions on which the strategies are based.
3- Describe the necessary actions for aligning the structure, systems, shared values, management style, staff, and skills of a care setting with strategic goals.
Passing Grade: Describes the necessary actions for aligning the structure, systems, shared values, management style, staff, and skills of a care setting with strategic goals; proposes criteria for evaluating the success of orientation and on-boarding.
4- Explain how the implementation and outcomes of a strategic plan will be evaluated against current performance benchmarks.
Passing Grade: Explains how the implementation and outcomes of a strategic plan will be evaluated against current performance benchmarks, and identifies areas of uncertainty or knowledge gaps.
5- Explain how relevant cultural, ethical, and regulatory considerations influence the design of a strategic plan and strategies for its implementation.
Passing Grade: Explains how relevant cultural, ethical, and regulatory considerations influence the design of a strategic plan and strategies for its implementation; identifies potential conflicts related to cultural, ethical, and regulatory considerations.
6- Explain one’s role, as a nurse leader, in successfully implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction.
Passing Grade: Explains one’s role, as a nurse leader, in successfully implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction, and identifies assumptions.
7- Explain why one’s leadership qualities and skills are well suited to successfully implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction.
Passing Grade: Explains why one’s leadership qualities and skills are well suited to successfully implementing a strategic plan and sustaining strategic direction, including plans that acknowledge opportunities for personal growth.
8- Communicate analyses clearly and in a way that demonstrates professionalism and respect for stakeholders and colleagues.
Passing Grade: Communicates analyses clearly, logically, and persuasively, demonstrating professionalism and respect for stakeholders and colleagues. Grammar and mechanics are virtually error-free.
9- Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.
Passing Grade: Integrates relevant and credible sources of evidence to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style. Citations are error-free.
