ABSTRACT
Healthcare managers can lose their way through deflecting their gaze away from the strategic aims of the organisation. This is why an executive role is necessary to ensure subsidiary functions all work together to achieve the goals of the strategic plan. Organisational change should not be fragmented - rather it should harmonise with the overall strategic plan and consequently be directly informed by strategic analysis. A strategy is underpinned by values and translates into achieving goals in designated theme areas. Data management and interpretation are strategic skills necessitating a robust infrastructure to support data capture, recording and processing. A strategic-thinking skill set thus requires knowing the current state of the organisation as well as reading internal and external environments in order to identify and analyse gaps, and to develop an account of the 'shape' of the future of the organisation.
