Marketing-Led "Executive Visioning" Meetings:
Elevate Your Organization’s Strategic Focus and Raise Your Profile with the C-Suite

Discover the power of a unique 30-minute meeting to help organization leaders see beyond the pandemic to the future

A new Strategic Health Care Marketing webinar for health care marketers and strategists

Presented on March 10, 2022

Sponsored by Ten Adams

About Your Presenters:

Transcript

0:00
Welcome to today's webinar, Marketing-Led, Executive Visioning Meetings, Elevate Your Organization's Strategic Focus and Raise Your Profile with the C-Suite.
0:09
I'm Jane Weber Brubaker, Executive Editor, Plain-English Health Care.
0:13
We are the publishers of Strategic Health Care Marketing and eHealthcare Strategy and Trends, the producers of the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.
0:21
Listening is a valuable skill to have, especially if you're a marketer trying to help your organization achieve its vision.
0:27
What matters most to your leaders? What excites them?
0:31
What keeps them up at night, and how do you even start the conversation?
0:35
Today, you'll learn how to take a proactive approach and hear directly from your executive team.
0:41
And now, I'd like to briefly introduce our speakers for today's presentation.
0:45
You can read their full bios on our website.
0:48
Jennifer Horton is Vice President of Strategy for Ten Adams.
0:52
She seeks to improve the lives of health care marketers for sharing the lessons she's learned during her 20 years of marketing, strategy, and communication experience in urban, rural, in for-profit, non-profit hospitals.
1:04
Jimmy Phillips is Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Kettering Health, a growing, comprehensive health system serving date, and the surrounding areas of Southwestern Ohio.
1:15
Jimmy is passionate about driving sound strategy while building lasting relationships.
1:20
Today's presentation will be approximate 45 minutes, followed by a 10 to 15 minute Q&A.
1:26
We'll hold your questions until the end, but feel free to submit them at any time during the presentation.
1:32
Immediately following today's Webinar, we'll send out a PDF of the presentation slides, and in a couple of days, you'll receive a link to the recording.
1:40
Now we'd like to turn it over to our first presenter, Jennifer Horten. Jennifer, please go ahead.
1:46
Right. Thanks so much, Jane. Well, thank you all so much for taking a little time out of your schedule this afternoon to learn a little bit about what is Executive visioning and why it's important, and how did you start it. And as we get started today, I just wanted to give you a little background on executive visioning and and why we started this. As Jane said in the intro, Jeremy has also been healthcare marketers for a long, long time. I started my career, I think, in the Dark Ages, but when I started as a marketer, we were kind of more of those PR departments. We were The Departments of Parties and Posters, then press releases. That was kind of the four keys our own way.
2:26
But marketing and communication is really changing and evolving, and we really become our continue to become the strategic advisors for our organization. And so, executive visually really came out of that idea of how to become, how do we change that mentality of the organization, and how do we kind of claim that role a strategic advisor? And so, the idea of Executive visioning was actually born pre coded, a few months before. Covert had, we had a client at 10 Atoms that was getting ready to dig into her in your planning process for marketing. And she was looking for a way, how does she connect with the executive leaders, like many of us, she, she didn't, necessarily have a seat at that executive table.
3:13
So she wasn't hearing all the things that were going on. Yes, she got a copy, and she was a participant to the strategic plan. But it was really feeling like there was some disconnect between the strategic vision of the organization and her understanding of it as she developed her marketing plan.
3:30
And so that year we started developing this idea of executive visioning meetings and it's it's an annual planning tool. It's something that you would use prior to starting doing your marketing plan or even your strategic plan. For those of you who are our strategic planners and the audience, and it's a series of really simple meetings where we have one-on-one meetings with our executives, and we try to gain understanding out what are the strategic imperatives of the organization? What are those big priorities? What's happening? What's keeping them up at night, What's waking them up in the morning, and from those dialog, having one-on-one meetings with each executive and every organization.
4:12
It's a little bit different, but generally includes your CEO, your CFO, key VPs key, service line leaders, but really having a short meeting with each of them to kind of understand what's going on in the world, what they're seeing happening in next year, so that you can develop key themes and strategies to underpin your marketing plan.
4:35
And so, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jimmy Phillips, and he's going to walk us through a little bit of kind of why this is important to you. What does this add to to you as a marketer.
4:49
Thanks, Jennifer, to be with all of you today, Jennifer, and I've been working closely over the last three years to really, frankly, we're building from the ground up our approach to strategic marketing here at caring health to dispense a valuable counsel for me, which we'll talk through more, certainly hit on that more throughout our time together today.
5:11
A couple of reasons why executive visioning is not just about your organization and how it can help your organization, but how it can help you, both individually and the departments that you might learn, lead it, whether it's marketing or strategic planning, communication, wherever your exact value is.
5:32
I think all of this as well, Just hit on a few points and then we'll build out on these with individual slides.
5:39
First of all, we know sometimes that it is so important to have a seat at the table and you may have that seat at the table in the organization or you may have to create that seat at the table for yourself. And Executive Visioning is a great way to do that. By simply pro, actively working to get in front of your executives and spending time with them, you're gonna develop a relationship that enhances your credibility, eviction, more visual, visible throughout the organization.
6:10
It's so important to, to have air cover, however you wanna look at it, whether it's air cover, or a foundation, or your work.
6:18
This process allows you to ensure that your work is aligned with the vision of senior executive leadership from the outset, and it can be so crucial to that moment, nine months later, when somebody calls you and said, why aren't you doing this?
6:36
You can go back and say, our plan is based on the values and principles, and vision of our organization. We didn't just create these things out of thin air.
6:46
And, of course, if that shifts, that's important, and that's something that also hit on, is how executive vision it gives you the ability to be flexible in your plan. Without having to rework the worst thing. about an annual marketing plan or an annual strategic plan, is when you feel like it's outdated by January 31st to hear all the time having to update. That's not what an annual plan should be. And this process can help make sure that you get off on the right foot. And just at the end of the day, it really, really defines your role and responsibility within the organization.
7:23
B, Cell, so touching on credibility and visibility, some of you may be here as a chief marketing officer, or someone who is at the top level of your organization today. And you're involved in all of the major decisions that are made with, with your organization.
7:43
Some of you may be involved in some of it, and some of you may not be involved in an executive vision, and can help ensure that you have a seat at the table from the very beginning of those conversations. And you are, you know, it's kind of like, sometimes we feel like, especially as marketers, we have to constantly validate what we do.
8:03
And this is just a great way to get that started. It kicked off on the right. We're going to talk more about what this is as we get through so you understand that these are these are some of the reasons And it's important, just elevating your role in the organization. Regardless of your title, when we started this last year, I was actually the director of marketing communications. And Jennifer and I were still going through the same process. My transition into the vice president will happen in the middle of doing this. But it really didn't change our approach either way.
8:38
So don't think that you can't do this because you have a certain title, or your organization is a certain size, whether too small to bid.
8:47
I think that there's a way to make this work, regardless of any of those factors that are not within your control.
8:55
And it really positions you as a person who is coming to the table, proactively solving problems for your executive team. And really gone are the days where marketing and communication departments should be viewed as party planners and poster put her up. Yours, are so much more than that.
9:15
And at the end of the day, it's all about strategy And becoming a strategic problem solver for your organization. So that's such a critical element of executive visioning.
9:26
Jimmy, you know, adding to that and I probably should've said that earlier is that, you know, like you said, regardless of the title, we've, we've done 10 adams's, co-ordinate and facilitate these visioning sessions for, you know, rural, critical access hospitals, Large academic medical centers where we met with the, you know, the Dean of the medical school and the Dean of the Clinics and Medina the research. It's been really eye opening how well this works, regardless of the level that you are in the organization, and the level of the organization itself.
10:01
So I think it's it's really had that outcome, and I think we've done now well over 60 of the across the country, and they they really do give you the opportunity, as Jimmy said, kind of getting that seat at the table, elevating your role and kind of reshaping that function into being a strategic partner.
10:26
one of the things I'm most passionate about is ensuring, so our team here at Kettering Health in the Marketing Communication Department is about 35 people.
10:35
And one of the things that I'm really passionate about is ensuring that everyone on our team from our specialists, to our managers, to our directors, to myself, is, has insight into how their work contributes to the overall vision of the organization. working towards a common vision. And when you start your process by asking your executive leaders, what is important to them?
11:01
It allows you to come back to your team and build out themes that align your strategic work that flow down to the tactical execution work that your team is doing every day.
11:15
And so it is.
11:16
So if you do this correctly, it's so easy to connect the vision of the organization in its top, most senior leadership to the work your digital marketing specialist is doing on social media, on a daily basis, or the work, the article, that's your communication specialist is writing, or the website, or the brochure or pamphlet that your marketing specialist is putting together, whatever that is.
11:40
It allows everyone inside of your team to be aligned with the vision and to be on the same page from the start of the.
11:50
And this is something that we're, we're in the middle of working on.
11:55
We just did our first, strategic session around executive vision this past year. And so this is the part where it's really the activation of that throughout the year. And that's, I think, something that we may touch on later. But I think it's incredibly important that executive visioning essentially starts your strategic planning process, but as we all know, there's never a point where you're done with that.
12:18
There's things that are done throughout the year, but it ensures that you get off to the right foot.
12:23
And one of the best best best aspects of this is aligning the work that your teams are doing at the, on the front lines of your department, from day one throughout the year.
12:40
We've talked about roles and responsibilities a little bit earlier, and this kind of build off of what I was saying a few minutes ago. Yeah, I think, whether you're the executive of your departments, whether you have multiple departments that roll up to you, whatever, it may be, our role as executive is to ensure that the vision of our organization translates to the vision for our department, or our division, and the work that we do every day. And when we're When we have a seamless integration of those two things. Then our vision isn't our vision is disconnected. From the vision of the organization. And it allows us to give direction to the people that report to us to get whether you have directors reporting, to managers, executive directors, whatever it may be. And ensures that the vision of the organization and how that impacts your department is articulated in a way to your leadership team, your management team.
13:37
So that they can go down to the staff level of your department and ensure that the tactical execution is aligned with the vision of your organization.
13:50
I think that's such a critical, critical part of it. For me, it's been the most valuable aspect of executive visioning and you know, kind of being on both sides of it. It's so cool to see your team contributing to something, you know, maybe 12 months ago. We heard is a challenge for one of our hospital presidents, or our executive over HR, or whatever it may be, and it just allows you to have that North Star throughout the year that you can always go back to and, you know, continually make sure that that alignment is happening. And also, I think ownership is a critical factor. So these, these various levels show where the ownership should exist.
14:33
So to make it personal to Kettering Health aren't annual plan is built around the themes that emerge from our executive visioning sessions and those are built annually, so that I'm able to share that vision with our team, about the major buckets of work that we want to accomplish throughout that year. But that I've been kind of pull back a little bit, and I give my director and managers the ability to craft more specific strategies to accomplish those themes, or objective, or whatever you want to call them.
15:10
And that's when we're done on a quarterly or monthly basis. When we started doing the Executive visioning process last year, we've done that, one of our challenges that we have fallen into before with our strategic planning, is jumping right into the strategic discussion.
15:26
And I don't know about most of you, but for us, we're starting our planning for the upcoming year. Usually in the midst, in the summer. Right? The beginning of the summer. So June is kinda the timeframe.
15:38
When we kick off building our strategic plan or the following year, I don't know about you but it's really hard to assume, you know everything about what's going to be happening mid-summer the following year, when you're in the thick of executing that strategic plan.
15:55
And so, building themes that are specific enough, but not too specific for, that make up the basis of your annual plan, allows your team to then create the more specific strategies that shouldn't be executed on a quarterly and monthly basis. Which, of course, that flow down to the day-to-day work that your teams are doing. So, again, where every everybody on your team isn't owner, it's just creating ownership at the right level. And this slide is just an example of how we've done it. But there's so many different ways, it can be done regardless of your, you know, how many employees you have, how many levels within your department that you might have. Jennifer, would you want to add something there?
16:38
I did. I think the background of this slide too was really helpful.
16:42
You know, one of the things that, I think is a challenge for marketers in general, is that, um, so getting at that right level is that there's seems like there's oftentimes this disconnect where we don't get the CEO, the CFO in the room. Talking about, especially, I found like the CFO, has been an amazing conversation that we've been able to have to talk about. what are the priorities?
17:08
So what generally happens in health care organizations is, as the marketing leader, you're getting a service line leaders, clinic leaders, for who are always knocking on your door and saying, I need, I need this executive visioning gets to your executives around the table talking about organizational wide goals, what are the big picture, things that need to be done in this chart, really gets to that. Like your executives are in this big picture vision, your directors, your service line directors, your clinic leaders, your hospital directors. They're setting that midterm direction. And then you and your team are executing.
17:48
But what happens time, and again, to marketers, and hear it all the time, When they get called from a service line, they're like, I need a billboard to do X, Y, and Z This process by having executive visioning to set out the goals and the themes that the big picture allows you to make sure that all of those different service lines are in alignment and probably even prioritized. But, you know, Heart maybe focused a lot on heart last year because you had a new cardiovascular surgeon, and you got a new program.
18:18
But this year, because the strategic vision that you're getting from your leadership discussion, you may be pulling back a little bit on heart. You may be focusing on orthopedics. But this really does lead each level of the organization. Do what they do best. You know, second is setting Vision, and Goals. Director is kind of like, This is my business objective. This is what I'm trying to accomplish. And then allows you and your team to take that big picture goal, the direction, and find those tactics that achieve both of those things. It really helps us stop being the department that's doing a thousand things for one thousand different people.
18:56
And like Jimmy had mentioned, it allows you to stop something in the middle that, somebody's saying, Hey, I want you to change gears, and I want you to do that. You can go, you know, that really wasn't part of our vision. That wasn't part of the strategic direction at the beginning of the year.
19:19
This is one of the areas that I'm, that I'm most passionate about.
19:25
You build your themes, right?
19:26
So, the way executive envisioning works, and Jennifer is going to yeah into this a little more, after you do all of your meetings, and if this sounds complex, it's kind of a fancy word for a really simple thing. It's proactively meeting with your executives who have oversight over the organization as a whole. or executive level leadership in key functional areas, like HR, IT, business development, philanthropy, whatever it may be, simply asking them what's important to them. So this is a really like, fancy term for something that is really simple. But I have not seen, and we have not know, Jennifer and her career. A lot of organizations, from a marketing perspective are intentionally doing this, and making it a part of their annual planning cycle. And, again, I mentioned earlier, one of the things that was happening to us is, we build all of the strategies that, we wanted to accomplish for the following year, but there were so specific, and sometimes it's hard to think beyond first or second quarter.
20:28
So by the third and fourth quarter, the things that you've put in place, that you said you wanted to accomplish a year ago, you're basically outdated at that point.
20:38
And you just end up updating that annual plan on a quarterly basis or a monthly basis, which basically just means it's not really a true annual marketing plan.
20:49
And so this executive visioning process, what we've found and allows to happen, is you're gonna hear things that are going to kind of be consistent, although said, in different ways, by executive leaders across your organization.
21:03
And our process is that we essentially then theme those things up and put marketing language with them to understand what the big picture goals are, the objectives, the ideas that people feel like are important to accomplish or the sentiments such as staff morale is really low coming out of Kobe. So we need to create pride in the workplace that we create for our staff.
21:28
Marketing doesn't own that, and we can certainly play a role in that, right?
21:33
So, that process allows us to create themes that are relevant, regardless of whether the strategic objectives change throughout the year. And there's also going to be opportunities that come up, that you didn't anticipate. But if you build these themes, right, there's gonna be so much, it's not gonna feel like you have to redo them to take advantage of a new opportunity, or shift your work at the highest level.
22:01
So, that is one of the great things about building an annual marketing plan that is thematic and not too specific at the outset. Of course, there's things you need to do that are specific on an annual basis, like your media plan and all of that work.
22:16
But I think sometimes we miss the narrative of translating what is important to the organization down to the level of what should be important for a marketing and communication function.
22:29
And this this process allows you to redevelop or rethink day-to-day strategies on a regular basis. It allows you to explore new opportunities and all of that still harmoniously guides the organization towards the growth and towards the vision that your executive leadership has.
22:52
Great. Both jumping from that, and we're going to start digging in here now into the How. How do you do this? And wanted to kinda set that up with, it, really, is about seizing the opportunities, of capturing the understanding. It's the ability. As I mentioned, we've done these organizations around the country. And what we've heard so much of is, everybody's so focused on ..., that they really haven't had a chance to take a step back and think about, what are the important priorities, what is happening in the World Outside of coven. And so sometimes the organization, it's too big right now to say, well, we're going to do strategic planning. I need to have strategic planning retreat. We need you to be involved in the marketing plan. But this gives us a really easy way to jump into that. And so I'm gonna circle back on why it's important to your leaders. I think it'll be more helpful for you to understand the process.
23:49
So executive visioning, as we've mentioned a couple of times. It's really, really simple. Over the last few years, we've evolved it. We started out with this big PowerPoint deck, and we sat down with these leaders and kind of said, OK, here, slide number one, and what do you think about this? And here's slide, number two. What do you think about that?
24:09
But as we evolved, what we really found is that there are three core questions.
24:13
And so, executive visioning meetings are one-on-one meetings with executives, and we're asking them report questions, and I'll go into that a little more detail. So how do you do this? I've got a couple of questions in the chat about when do you do this. As we've mentioned, it's, if you're planning cycle, a lot of organizations start doing their marketing plans. either 3 to 6 months out, whatever period of time that you were going to do that, I would back this up to the month prior.
24:43
Um, and I would start the conversation, honestly, with your CEO and, or your one up? if you're reporting to somebody in the C Suite. Start the conversation with them and say, I would like to host these Executive Vision meetings to get this feeling of what's going on across the organization. I'm not going to take a lot of time, the meetings, only about 30 minutes per person.
25:06
And get that backing from your senior leaders, that you get your CEO here, what what you're doing. Then you basically schedule, and what we've done is, we generally have asked people if we know that the executive team really busy, will ask for only 30 minutes, most of the time, even our 30 minute conversations have the CEO, the VP, has extended into 45 minutes to an hour. So, you know, your organization asked for that length of time that you need, that you think you can get the conversation. You generally do kind of flow between that 45 to an hour, so, ask for an hour of time, and the meeting, we've, over time, we've thrown out the whole PowerPoint.
25:50
And the beating really is, we throw these three questions up on the screen, And so, I generally will facilitate the meeting. I've had a couple of people ask how and who's in the meeting generally, just want it to be that kind of one-on-one, So you as the marketing leader with that one leader, So the VP of HR and you, you're sitting down and then I have been facilitating, and so I generally throw these three questions up and say, really, we're going to talk about three things We really want to know.
26:21
What are your strategic imperatives for the next year? What do you want to accomplish? So, you're talking to the VP of our course. They're talking about the challenges of recruiting in the seat. We're talking about how do we retain employees? But if you also are talking in your next conversation, might be talking to the person who is over your clinic structure. their strategic imperatives. So you say, what are your strategic imperatives? And then I generally phrase it. What keeps you up at night? And what wakes you up an energy in the morning and then how can we help?
26:52
And as a facilitator, I'm asking those questions so that really like when when Jimmy is across the table from from 10, they're having a dialog about it. They can be equal parties, so it's not you as the marketer sitting there kind of asking somebody in a different level in the organization like we're facilitating and saying what are the strategic imperatives? What are the opportunities and challenges and how can we help you succeed?
27:18
Once you throw that, really, those first two questions on the table, really, let the conversation go where it wants to go.
27:28
I said, I'm going to hop back to this slide.
27:32
What has been really powerful about this is that the VPs, the C suite Executives have really loved the meetings. Because when you think about it, your VPs generally they're, their boss doesn't say, you know, what keeps you up at night?
27:48
The CEO is not asking the VP of HR and what keeps you up at night, and how can I help for someone to sit down with the VP and say, tell me what's most important to me, what are the challenges and opportunities? And let me help.
28:01
It's a major gift to give to somebody.
28:04
And, you know, like I've mentioned, we've done so many of these different types of organization. And these executives really just open up because nobody's asking them.
28:14
What's important to you, what is as you're thinking about and candidly, because of Code, that they haven't had time to think about their vision, their thinking about, how do I fix this next problem? How do I deal with this next thing? And so, to me, the executive visioning questions are really kind of a gift of a conversation between you and the executive, so you're talking about what's most important to them. You're giving them space to think about what are the strategic imperatives for the next year Talking about challenges and opportunities they're facing.
28:47
Then you're saying, how can I help you succeed? I think most of the people on the call today are marketing leaders. We, any change in the organization, were involved and we help with the Calm, we help with the messaging, and so it's an important part of, of understanding, how can we help you with that.
29:09
So, jumping back, come into this piece, what is the vision meeting? You're asking to schedule the 30 minute meeting with all with it.
29:19
I recommend everybody who's kind of in your executive team meeting, you have one-on-one with them, You probably have to schedule it over the course of a couple of weeks. They can be virtual. They can be in person.
29:30
But the main thing is to let it be conversational and let the clock the questions go with where they are.
29:37
And Jimmy, I think it was helpful for you like to be able to just kind of quiz in and ask into questions.
29:43
I would highly encourage you to have a facilitator. In my case, it was directly from my agency partner, so it also ensures that I'm not the only one hearing things Jennifer can translate. Or she's heard to her team at Adams, who is working very closely with my team. So it kind of insurance were aligned for the beginning. That's probably an ideal scenario.
30:11
Really, anybody who was gifted at facilitating, you may have somebody within your organization that is inside the marketing department that would come alongside you and help you facilitate these meetings. But it allows you to be more of the conversationalist listening instead of having to feel like you're, you're structuring the conversation, guiding it answers.
30:36
He knows that, lets you sit back and think a little bit, so I will just highly recommend the idea of, facilitator, just the one We did not, we didn't necessarily start with those three questions.
30:51
In fact, our first round, we had a PowerPoint on the screen.
30:56
It wasn't super long, but it was 10 slides or so. And when we didn't get past Slide one, we quickly scrapped it. and decide if this isn't a presentation this isn't something that we should try to get through.
31:09
It's a conversation.
31:11
And for some of those folks, the conversation was very, very, I guess I would say, like it's stuck on almost that idea of what keeps you up. Right? Your biggest challenges you face and that was 50 minutes, but we got at everything. we wanted to get it. Right.
31:31
Then for others, it was, you know, we've zoned did a lot on how can marketing help you succeed? But I think most of them don't really know the answer to that, and our job is to mine out what's important to them.
31:46
Then we know how to put strong marketing strategies with organizational problems. And that's the work that comes after the meetings are done, and you've really just filtered through all the nodes and just kinda segmented them by the common things that popped up across the board. So, I would just, I would highly encourage you to have a facilitator.
32:12
You can bring just yourself, I have toyed back and forth with rather to include my director in the meetings. I think that's up to you. We haven't gone that route yet.
32:24
Don't want to say that we want in the future, but those are a few thoughts on that subject, just can't recommend the facilitator idea.
32:34
Thanks, Jeremy. I think the other piece of this, so it seems so simple, you know, you're asking those three questions. I think jimmy's case, you know, it's got this great relationship with a lot of different leaders throughout the organization. You know, you're having all these conversations throughout the year with them. But even though there's that communication it, it never ceases to amaze me that there are little pieces and all of a sudden pop up that you have nothing. You know, it's like, oh, you guys are exploring, you know, buying this new piece of equipment. Oh, you're thinking about hiring. Oh, you have a challenge with the Orthopedic Surgeon that I just kept undoing a major marketing plan.
33:12
So it's also, you'll find some of these things that we struggle as, leaders to find out the other half of this executive visioning. So as you've had those one-on-one meetings with those executives, and so you've, you've heard what's important to the CFO and you've heard what's important to this chief nursing officer. And you've heard what's important to the HR. You've heard all those different pieces. And those are from their own individual standpoint.
33:41
The other half of executive visioning is to come back to the full senior leadership team as a team together and talk about the organization as a whole.
33:52
And so, when they were telling you their hopes, and dreams, and challenges and obstacles, they were talking about it from their specific point of view. But now you've gotta get them, and this is the other half. that's really important As you've got to get them thinking about the bigger picture for the network, or the hospital or the system as a whole, and where do you wanna go, and I think this part really helps underpin your marketing plan.
34:18
So as as here, thinking about this process, you've scheduled those one-on-one meetings, you're also asking to scheduled to meet with the senior leadership team, preferably for an hour. You can piggyback this onto their weekly team meeting.
34:34
And then, you're kind of asking them those first same three questions as we, as a leadership team, as you around the table, think about fiscal year 23.
34:44
What are the key strategic initiatives? What are, you know, the obstacles And challenges?
34:49
And really one thing that's really important to ask them when you're getting with that larger group is, what are our growth priorities?
34:58
Because every director in your organization who has patients, has been given the directive to grow.
35:06
But for you as a marketing department, as a function, you have to figure out the way to prioritize and figure out how your resource allocation goes.
35:14
And so we'd like to ask the senior leadership team for different questions, in addition to the three.
35:21
So we talk to them about, as you think about our brand and brand awareness in the community, what needs to happen? What are the things that need to move? And I'm actually showing you kind of the outcome of this question for a client that isn't Kettering.
35:37
But we we talked to the senior leadership team, we asked them about the brand engagement. We asked them about their employee engagement, the physician engagement, their community engagement, and we just get them talking, and what, again, with the senior leadership team, they get to talk about the brand, and community engagement, and our reputation. But, I will tell you that they have a lot of opinions about it.
35:59
And so, it's a great opportunity to ask them, you know, where does our reputation want to go? When you're talking about reputation, they're going to chime back to you Things.
36:08
like, people don't realize how advance our cancer program is, or people, you know, the the local newspaper always is running us, through the golly, and we need to work on that.
36:21
And then growth, and the growth, as I said, is one of the more important time for stations to have with all the leaders around the table, because that's where you prioritize what our service line tiers, which are the most important, because you can't market everything.
36:36
Just like you can't tell every reputational story, or do every engagement, this helps you prioritize by having this conversation.
36:44
And so in the example on the screen, when we got done with that executive team meeting, when we got done with each of the one-on-one executive vision meetings, this was kind of our summary report back to them, as we said, You know, here's what we heard, is that consumer research is really important.
37:02
And so finally, in this organization, the leaders were pushing on this.
37:06
And they finally had the backing that they needed to do consumer research, which they had put on hold for the last three years, Of course, During coven, they really want it to enhance the brand of cancer program. They felt like their collateral, all the printed publication pieces needed to move, the audit it and simplify. They need it to work on their website. They felt like their brand positioning wasn't as strong as it could be.
37:34
I'm not going to read all of these, but you can see that by having this, we were able to take this back to the senior leadership team, get consensus, a few of these things. They were like, you know what? Physician engagement isn't a big challenge for us. Let's take that off our priority list this year. and let's define it, serving our community as let's simplify our donation process.
37:58
And so, this really becomes a really simple tool to push into your marketing plan. And finally, have that strategic direction that you need from your senior leadership.
38:11
So, nothing on those opportunities. As I mentioned, we're, this is the once a year thing, but I think part of this, and part of this session, was about how do you get a seat at the table? How do you claim ownership? How do you continue to be seen in the strategic role? I think once you find out, and once you have this meeting with these executives, even if you just do the executive visioning one on ones, you're gonna find that your leadership. I think, in all the 62nd envisioning sessions I've done, I think I've only had one executive that was like, I'm not really sure about this. But the rest of them were all, like, this is great. And so, you can really leverage this, and keep the momentum going. So, whether you could do a quarterly check in or at least every six months, check in, you're that person, again, that's coming back to that executives, saying, hey, what's important, where the challenges you're facing? How can I help?
39:03
And who doesn't like somebody that wants to listen to them?
39:06
say, This is my big mission, and these are the challenges and I need some help and that you conduct this annually. Jimmie, I'll turn it over to you, kind of see like, how what feedback you've had from your leaders that you've done this.
39:21
I think I think people didn't really know what to expect last year when we did it for the first time.
39:29
The feedback around the intentionality of marketing has been positive and consistent.
39:35
And my expectation is that as they, as we come back and start scheduling, or this summer, there's going to be, oh, you guys are really doing this every year.
39:45
You're not just assuming that, you know what the organization needs are. What's important to me itself. We've gotten really positive feedback, and we've had enough.
39:54
one of the interesting things for us, is this actually overlapped a complete system rebrand.
40:00
So, marketing has been in the eye of the organization. We certainly haven't had a visibility problem over the last couple of years. Now. It is really refining what we're going to do with that new brand to maximize it and catapulted and use it as a catalyst or our organization's growth going forward. So, that's very unique factor for us.
40:22
We haven't really had the problem with being visible or no getting opportunities to share what we're doing.
40:30
It's more so than trying to figure out what to report out on and how to do that in a way that is meaningful.
40:36
So one of the things we did is we added the quarterly check into our next Network Executive Council, which is the first group that we started executive visioning with and every time we do that quarterly check and it's essentially, and here's what we did in Q one, here's what we're planning for Q two, right? And we always lean back the work that we're doing to the themes that bubbled out during the Executive Visioning. So they feel confident that this is all part of a really systematic approach and these aren't just one-off results that happen by accident or happenstance.
41:12
And from my point of view, I always give the credit back to them that you actually helped us clarify what was most important to the organization by being an active participant in this process. It's in our marketing planning.
41:29
I think you've covered this pretty well. The value of a facilitator, you can definitely do this either way.
41:36
You can have that one-on-one conversation, you can bring, you know, if you're the marketing person, maybe you want to bring your VP of strategy along.
41:45
You can, You know, we can help, but I think it's the important piece is that having that extra set up person in that room, that is, ..., allows you to be an active participant.
41:57
And ask questions, And be involved, and allows you to kind of focus on that. Whereas, it, as a facilitator, I'm kind of tracking on everything, and taking the notes, and making sure everything is getting captured as well.
42:10
Jennifer, one more thing I'd add here, is, we last year had some executives that were kind of grouped together because they had no their jobs related.
42:20
They had regional oversight. You get whatever it may be.
42:25
And I think we're going to have more meetings this year, because the one-on-one approach, not necessarily that you just have to bring yourself. Like I said, you can bring a facilitator, you can bring your number two, if you want to, whatever it may be.
42:39
But having it be focused on one person that, No, you can't do 40 of these, you probably can do, you know, 12 or 13, I would say, as a number. So, it's a pretty grind the grinding couple of weeks because you want to get these done in a tight period of time.
42:56
But I think the value of having one-on-one are definitely not more than two people.
43:01
You know, meeting together is important because there's internal dynamics that exist.
43:06
Enter personally.
43:08
when you add folks together in a room and you may not get the truest version of what someone thinks, yes, their boss or their co-worker or their subordinate.
43:19
So, I just found the most value from the 1 on 1 sessions and I think we'll try to build off of that.
43:26
And that's a great point is that sometimes like you'll be dealing with a service line and there, they're wanting to bring a lot of different people to the table.
43:35
I would say that that, what you want to say to that leader is, you know, this first meeting, this executive visioning meetings, just it's just kind of a one-on-one dialog. We're happy to have a strategy meeting where we bring medical director and your clinic administrator and all these people.
43:51
But, with the purpose of letting that executive be candid and conversational, but also that purpose of building that relationship, it becomes a whole different type of meeting. When you have the six other people they want to bring along. It becomes kind of like a business meeting, as opposed to this dialog uncovering meeting that, that we've been talking about. That's a great point.
44:14
And we actually had a few folks that basically said, Hey, can I invite such and such? And they tried to say, no, in a nice, and for the most part, that, that was successful. But I think that's a great point.
44:28
Because naturally, executives, they, they feel like you're going to expect something from them coming out of these meetings, and so they want there, know, they're, they're lieutenant's with them, so that they don't have to then go and download this, too, others.
44:44
But when you frame it as, Hey, we want to hear what's important to you, and this is not about, We're not coming with an ask here, We're not asking for you to do something. We just want to talk.
44:55
It makes it a little easier for them to just train themselves Yeah. Yeah. When they asked what the brain just say, coffee, bring a cup of coffee, or it's always helpful.
45:06
So as we kind of come to a close and open up for questions, it really kind of synthesizing it all down is that, it's just as simple step in your planning process. You do it prior to working on your marketing plan.
45:20
Scheduling those one-on-one meetings, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. Whatever amount of time you can get.
45:27
Having those meetings and then bringing that back to the full leadership team, that's as simple as it is. Jimmy and I were talking while back, and we had shared this at a conference, and it's really interesting, the that how powerful it is, though, you know, Jimmy, you were like, no matter where I go, this is this is a part of my planning process going forward.
45:51
Absolutely.
45:53
So with that, Jane, we'll turn it back to you to help us facilitate some questions.
45:59
OK, sounds good, excellent presentation. Lots to think about, and it's so it's so interesting that you started doing this in the middle of co goodwin was really, probably pretty hard to get people's attention in the first place.
46:09
So, kudos and being like, I know that probably people had a lot of problems they needed to solve and maybe welcomed, Somebody come in, asking them, What can I do to help?
46:19
So let's take a look at some of these questions that have come in.
46:25
Have you been able to be proactive in shaping the vision?
46:29
I know that you're sort of reacting to division as expressed by the executives, but it's also enabled you to be part of that process of shaping and vision.
46:39
I think so, part of that is just, you know, one of the goals we talked about the beginning is elevating the role of marketing, and when you're proactive like this, I just find that people get used to you being part of the group. So some of that can happen really intentionally, and so they can almost just happen as an actual assault of pitching. Your department has a strategic problem solver. And you might get old and in other areas.
47:03
So I would say, yes, we work with one prominent position in our organization who Jennifer and I met with, and he just started including me in like everything after this. Almost stuff that. Like.
47:16
You wouldn't necessarily normally include the marketing VP driver embrace it and developed a great relationship with him, and he's kind of rose in prominence throughout the organization.
47:27
And that has been so valuable and really started with, in many ways, this executive visioning process, so I think that's one example of how that.
47:37
Jennifer have anything to add to that?
47:39
I think I was going to flip back to this slide.
47:45
From the opportunity to shape the vision. Yes. Because, I think a lot of times without having these questions, without talking about brand engagement, growth, reputation, when you think about, I always say like when you think about the board, of the hospital, these are kind of the four things. They're, they're really focused on, you know, what's the brand, what is, what does this organization known as, you know, are the employees and physicians engaged, community engaged.
48:12
What's the reputation and growth?
48:15
I think this piece, and we call this bird, but this burge strategy really helps us kind of create a backbone nomenclature of, like, what is important to the organization.
48:27
And you're able to, I'll say, kind of subtly push the agenda that way. You know, you've heard all these different things. And we would never pull something out of thin air, that somebody didn't say. that, you know, as people talked about, you know, we don't really know what people think, and we don't really know these different things.
48:46
You're able to kind of synthesize that and go well as community research. I think that would be helpful.
48:53
So, I do think it allows you not just to be the listener of the strategy, it also allows you to help kind of insert some of that. Who we are and what we stand for and kind of drive the framework of strategy as well.
49:08
It's interesting going in with on an agenda but sort of shaping wiring. they're having a conversation. How does how does this process, or has this process helped to break down silos between departments?
49:23
Mmm hmm.
49:24
Well, I think when you think about marketing has Help with every aspect of the organization, or third strategy, that Jennifer just reference, That's how we plan.
49:36
So, actually, the engagement section you have fully So that might be traditionally owned by HR, but there are absolutely, Especially on the communication side, a lot of things that our team is a partner with.
49:52
You know, there'll, we're almost there, almost our client, if you will, to help solve employee engagement issues, especially as it relates to communication. So, again, starting that process with asking them what's important to them, even if we don't ultimately own that initiative, we play a role in it, and so it just gets us off on the right foot and allows us to work collaboratively with the departments that are our national partners.
50:20
All right. So, here's another one. How do How do you set good expectations? Do that refocusing when business priorities change, it's of course a change all the time. If new things become more important, how do you ensure people understand why things have shifted?
50:33
Tradeoffs have to be made.
50:36
And there's an important expectation to be said.
50:39
Third question is great, and that's never going to stop happening, right?
50:46
Which is why building your annual plan to allow for room, for things, to still shift and have it still go back and track to those same goals is incredibly important part of this process, and I know that sounds a little bit ambiguous, but if you just follow this executive visioning process, you theme up all of the results from it and put, you know, so basically in our plan, we've got 3 to 4 narrative statements per bird category. So we've got 3 to 4 things that we believe can the marketing department can do, to contribute to our brand. Same thing for engagement, reputation, growth.
51:26
Almost almost anything that comes up throughout the year should align with those priorities, even if the specifics change, right? And I think it's also, this allows you to ask the question of, Well, OK. Who's the one setting the prime?
51:45
Is it the service line director who's saying their priorities have changed? Have you validated that that's true from a senior executive level?
51:53
If you create this link with your executives to start your planning process, you can always go back and say, hey, I heard this from one of our service lines. How much, in your mind, shabak ship, the work we're doing, from these other things that we've already shared with you, or working on? And came out of the work that we did to understand where the organization was going last year. So, gives you a little bit of a filter to push back on, because sometimes what happens is we get a lot of those requests from that kinda middle tier management, that director level, and you don't really have any filter for if those requests are truly aligned with the executive level, plan or vision for the organization. This kind of a process starts to give you a filter to work through some of those things.
52:43
So maybe somebody's priority, but maybe not the people that are running that shook. Don't be afraid to ask that question. And it just goes back to not be reactive. And, there's also wins to achieve, that, don't, you know, a lot of times, especially on the marketing side, we think about priorities changing. as, you know, OK, we've got to adjust.
53:04
Half a million dollars in our advertising strategy, because such and such once 10 Billboard's. So, another part of this is, at what level should we really be investing our resources.
53:17
Priority May shift, but we may be able to accomplish it, and make somebody happy without really changing a lot of the structure of how budgeted, for example, because those are things that, again, we're going to talk about budgeting that much.
53:29
But the Executive Visioning process, if you do it and have it done before your budget season really kicks off, which is how we structure it.
53:38
It really allows you to proactively budget and align your dollars with the major priorities for the organization.
53:46
And so for me, I've had plenty of conversations this year that are like, OK, that sounds like a shift, will keep that in mind. Going into next year, will come and ask you, if that's still true, in a couple of months, unless you know, our CEO comes and says this is really important, I assume that my plan is mostly set, and we're on the right track. Because of how we've gone through this, this, this, this, this, process, and we're not going to just, you know, back and forth. What that will take us, where it does. That's a major part and a major benefit of be very proactive in this process.
54:27
OK, that's great.
54:28
Jennifer's, when for you in your experiences, this approach, work, even in a large, geographically, distributed health system, does it work better in organizations that are more centralized consolidated?
54:43
I think it really depends on how your, or your marketing, team, and structure, is aligned, as well.
54:48
So if you are large, geographically dispersed organization, I think you need to work within the structures of the organization. So if you have a system leadership that oversees everything, and you're doing marketing plans, like I'm doing the north-west Oregon plan, and I'm doing the California plan, and I'm doing the Texas plan.
55:15
You probably have to think about it a little bit, and doing it three times in that case. You know, Oregon, California, Texas. Those three different markets are going to be very different markets. They're going to have different leadership.
55:28
So, there are probably some things that you can do that, or system wide.
55:32
So, maybe you're talking to the system, Chief HR Officer, and you're talking about the benefits program across the organization, and how are they going to recruit? There. Might be some things that you are doing that are universal, but, then some things that you might have to do, at that kind of regional leadership level. Because your marketing plan for Texas and your marketing plan for California are probably very, very different things.
55:58
So I think it does work well to do it in a mixed fashion based on what is the purpose and how you work as a department. So sometimes in really large spread out health systems, they will actually have regional marketing offices.
56:14
And then that regional marketing office should focus there their executive visioning just on their regional office, but sometimes corporate marketing is corporate and it's for the whole thing.
56:26
So I think it really just depends on, you've got to think about the top and the bottom of it, like what's the plan that's going to come out of that? What's that serving?
56:34
And that's going to guide a little bit of which way you do the Executive Visioning and then how is your operational structure set up. How is your leadership structure set off The mat is going to guide the other end of it. And it's probably going to end up being a mixed bag. Some things are universal system questions.
56:49
And some things are regional questions.
56:54
Um, do you feel that the executives learned more about marketing through this process?
57:03
I've been on a journey into.
57:07
Make our organization more savvy with regards to marketing and this is part of that.
57:13
So, again, we didn't go into these meetings, trying to teach anyone anything.
57:20
I think that there's a natural again, go back to the work credibility. And you don't just to achieve credibility. By telling people what, you know, you achieve, credibility by being empathetic, being relationship focused and not being rigid, and these meetings contribute to that.
57:41
I don't think they, they serve to do that alone. And you have to follow it up, and you have to deliver on what you say you're gonna. do. And you have to figure out for you what the right ways to report out on the work are.
57:54
But if you can marry a strong planning process on the front end, where you're really understanding what's important to your leaders. And then coming back to them and saying, OK, you said this, and we've done this, and here's the results. Absolutely, they're gonna learn more, and you're gonna, You're gonna make them more savvy, and they're going to ask better questions. And you're going to elevate the role of marketing and educate people about why it matters naturally through that process. But, I, I would suggest that that's a full-time year, year over year thing, depending on where organizations, that, you may have a CEO that is incredibly marketing savvy.
58:32
It comes from that background, where you may have a CEO, was a CFO or has been in finance or something like that, His entire career, that doesn't know a lot about it, So, I think the approach, though, really stays the same, either way.
58:48
And you have to adapt and figure out what the right report out mechanism is for you and your organization, OK?
58:57
Do you mean just one last question?
58:59
Can you give some examples of the things that you've learned that might not have come out any other way, if this is the only way that they would have come out?
59:08
Yeah. Sure. I'll share maybe a couple.
59:12
Again, some of the things that end up in the plan are things like, you know, you want to do anyway as a marketer, but this, I started with that idea of the plan, giving you this process, giving you air cover.
59:25
If it truly alliance with what you're hearing from your leaders, that is not just your idea. Right. It's their idea, and you are executing on the vision of your organization. That a couple of things that came out. And some of these, again, if you're plugged in, you kind of generally know, But it's great to confirm it and hear it. For us, our organization has a rich heritage in innovation.
59:51
And that's been that's literally our hospital system was founded by the family of Charles Kettering who is probably the second greatest adventure in American history, only behind Thomas Edison. If you used a refrigerator or drove a car or turned on an air conditioner today, you have Charles Kettering for that.
1:00:11
There's been a groundswell desire for us to tell the story of our innovation heritage and how we continue and want to be an innovator in the future. And that's not something like, I necessarily would have pinpointed on my own, but it's absolutely a great marketing story to tell. So, there's things like that that you're kind of peripherally aware of. Really interesting. Some of the most interesting meetings, or with our HR folks and hearing them talk about challenges behind recruitment and workforce development and employee engagement. Again, not things we own, but, man, they share, there sure are ways we can be helpful throughout the year. We're aware of just how much of a struggle that is for those leaders. So those are a few examples, and there were probably others, those bubble up to me, to the top of the list.
1:01:05
Recruitment and retention are such big, huge issues right now, in healthcare, So, I'm sure you're a lot more about that than you ever have, so. Well, that's that's all the time we have for questions. So, I should thank you, Jimmy and Jennifer, for a great presentation. And thanks to 10 Adams Jennifer's organization for sponsoring today's webinar.
1:01:24
So just a reminder that we'll send out a PDF of the presentation slides immediately following the webinar and you'll receive a link to access the recording soon as it's been processed and is available for viewing. So, thank you for attending today's webinar, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

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