Leadership and Strategy: Case Study of King Edgar Hospital

This report delves into the concepts of leadership and strategy, primarily focusing on the application of transformational leadership within a healthcare setting. It begins by defining leadership and exploring various approaches, highlighting the transformational approach as particularly relevant to the case study of Tracey Burn, the Chief Executive Director of Nursing at King Edgar Hospital. The report analyzes Burn's leadership style, emphasizing her ability to motivate staff, improve processes, and foster a culture of trust and communication. It then transitions to strategic planning, outlining the key elements of strategic analysis, formulation, and implementation. The report assesses the impact of internal and external factors on strategy, specifically in the context of the King Edgar Hospital's challenges with patient discharge processes. The report highlights how Burn's leadership, particularly her use of the transformational approach, contributed to addressing these issues. It also discusses alternative leadership styles, such as transactional and laissez-faire, and contrasts their effectiveness with Burn's approach. The report concludes with an evaluation of Burn's role and the overall strategic plan, emphasizing the importance of adapting leadership styles to improve organizational performance and achieve strategic goals.

Leadership and Strategy
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Contents
Section A.....................................................................................................................................................2
Question 1- Leadership and its approaches..............................................................................................2
Leader’s Profile.......................................................................................................................................2
Transformational approach of leadership................................................................................................3
Question 2- Assessment of the role of Tracey Burn...............................................................................6
Section B.....................................................................................................................................................9
Concept of Strategic planning..................................................................................................................9
Strategic Analysis..................................................................................................................................10
Factors affecting the Strategic Planning............................................................................................10
Strategy formulation..............................................................................................................................12
Evaluation of the Strategies...................................................................................................................13
Implementation of the Strategy..............................................................................................................13
Relevant strategic plan for the organizational change- UW health organization....................................13
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................18
References.................................................................................................................................................19
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Section A
Question 1- Leadership and its approaches
Leadership is very significant part of the management of the hospitals and any other
organizations. Leadership is a very crucial process as it involves the communication between the
leader and the other staff to motivate them to work hard to achieve the organizational goals.
According to many scholars, the leadership is defined as the ability to provide the direction to the
team towards the future goals and objectives and build some strategies to manage all the
activities in the organization. However, it is also explained as the process that involves planning,
organizing, controlling and directing. Moreover, the leadership is to perform the actions by the
individuals or the group as per the instructions or guidelines of the leader. There are many
authors and researchers who gave different meanings of the leadership. The most important thing
about the leadership is that it has the power to bring a huge change in the organization. There are
two types of the leadership- one is formal and the second one is informal. A leadership is said to
be formal, when the managers of the hospitals, states its powers and in the framework of legal
approval by the hospitals. An informal leadership is defined when the staff member itself
motivates the other person (Jones and Bartlett, 2011).
Leader’s Profile
Mrs. Tracey burn is the Chief executive director of the Nursing Department of the King edger
Hospitals. She is very famous and well know personality that motivational, intelligent and hard
working. As an executive director of the nursing, she used to make plans and control the
discharge process at the hospital. Despite of this, Burns also conducts meetings and adjust the
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
schedule of the nurses to provide the accurate services to its patients. Some of the leadership
responsibilities performed by the Burns are motivation to the staff, direction, controlling and
evaluation of the staff as well as to improve the process of admissions and discharge in the case
of Accident and emergency (A & E) wards.
Transformational approach of leadership
There are many approaches of the leadership. After analyzing the case study, it is found that
transformational leadership is the most appropriate theory applied to the leader’s role,
achievements and their nature. The main focus of this approach is to motivate, guide and directed
its followers towards the goals of the company (Sharma & Jain, 2013). Talking about the main
goal of the Edger hospital, then it is the improvement of the discharge process at the hospital.
The problems faced by the patients are many like placing of the patients in the wrong beds,
delays in the discharge, increasing length of stay of the patients, high cost of admission, and
increased number of complaints by the patients. As after knowing these problems, Rodger
Andrew who is the Chief executive officer of the hospital decided to give the opportunity to the
burn to handle all these problems and lead in every department. She makes use of the
transformational approach by emphasizing on the employee’s commitment towards the main
goals.
In the literature review, it has been seen that transformational leadership is defined as the
empowerment of the others members to make them busy and work together to achieve the goals
for the preferred future. In the review of the literature, the researcher Russell and Swansburg
revealed the four main aspects of the transformational approach of the leadership. These four
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
elements or components are- Management of attention, trust management, management of the
meaning and self.
In the trust management, the decisions made by the leaders are based on the equality, honesty
and fairness. All these decisions made by the leader will be respected, followed and implemented
by the staff nurses as well as the staff of the A & E department. Also the judgement given by the
burn is consistent and sound. The management of the attention can be achieved by focusing on
the vision, goals and outcomes. As a leader, you know the skills of the staff members and
utilizing their skills in an effective way demonstrates the meaning of the self. Every health
organization or national health system (NHS) will be based on how it serves the community and
how it is performed to achieve the vision and mission of the company (Gosling, et al., 2003).
Talking more about the leadership approach, the leaders continue to gain the management as
well as the leadership skills to face the problems and make a strategic planning to solve and
control the problematic situation. The management of meaning refers to the staff encouragement
towards the commitment with the help of communication strategies and builds a strong culture
by conducting meetings, group discussions where the creativity and the innovation of the other
staff members are highly appreciated. Similarly, the Burn used to conduct the meetings and
workshops with the staff members to improve the discharge process at the hospital. These
meetings and workshops are valuable for the staff to direct them towards their commitments.
Moving further, Russell and Roussel focused on the fact that in transformational approach of the
leadership, it is very important that organization and the personnel will benefit from the
achievement of the goals and all these fulfillment of the goals is achieved by encouraging and
empowering the staff nurses as well as the other members of the hospital to trust their leaders
and keep some vision in their minds about the organization. It has been analyzed that the
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
transformational leadership can be experienced better in the health care organizations and in the
emergency department as those are some of the situations that are unstable and changing very
rapidly. The reason is that leaders like Burn will encourage the employee’s needs and thoughts
and also able to acknowledge the uncertainty and be flexible accordingly. In his approach, the
best way of motivating and empowering the employees of the hospitals is to appreciate their
views and involve them into the decision making process which make them feel important part
of the organization and part of the vision of the organization as well (Abri, 2011).
Apart from this approach, there many other leadership styles like Transactional, autocratic,
participative and Laissez Faire.
Transactional approach: - This is the second approach of the leadership that focus more on the
exchange of rewards and targets between the employee and the organization. According to this
approach, the staff members can be motivated by giving them rewards for their efficient
performance. This approach is mainly focused on the completion of the tasks and rewards. This
approach is not that much used by the Burn in this case study, but she is thinking to give these
type of rewards in the future period of time.
Laissez-Faire: - As this approach of leadership puts low emphasis on performance and people.
This style is not good for the situations where employees need supervision to work so it reduces
the productivity of employees and doesn’t provide good results.
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Question 2- Assessment of the role of Tracey Burn
In this case study the approaches of leadership and the strategies used by the Burn are
appropriate. If I had been appointed in the place of the Tracey Burn, then I will also prefer to
have the transformational approach to handle the things as this approach is found most suitable
and reliable as compared to other approaches of the leadership styles. As with the
transformational approach, the inspiration and empowerment of the nurses and medical officers
results in the high growth of the hospitals by building a strong relationship between the
employee and leader. As a leader, Burn possess all the qualities or the characteristics of the
transformational leaders. These qualities are as follows: -
 The ability of the leader to develop a sense of capability in the employees
 Offer vision and directed their team towards the commitments to achieve that vision
 Management of the trust among all the staff members
 Timely performance of the tasks
 At the time crisis or in the critical situations, to manage and take the risks effectively to
solve the problems.
 Effective communication between the staff and the leader.
Talking about more about the transformational approach, Burn treats all its team members of
nursing as well as A & E departments in a very friendly way and make them realize that delay in
the discharge process creates problems for the patients. Hence, a relationship of trust has been
developed between the staff and the leader. The tasks performed by the Burn are appreciable as
she is very much concerned about the needs and values of its employees (Association, 2015).
Burn conducts workshops as well as individual meetings with every staff member to understand
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
their feelings, needs and problems and reasons of their low performance. In these meetings, Burn
used to share the responsibilities and duties of the staff because of which the employees will
work harder and perform better to meet the goals of the hospital. Even I will also do the same
things to handle the situation and to improve the admission- discharge at the hospital.
Furthermore, she also used to hold the general meeting to share the planning strategies for the
improvement of the discharge process and also take the ideas from the staff to take the best
decisions for the king edger hospital (Abri, 2011). The involvement of the nurses, doctors and
many medical officers in the decision making and all these employees feels an integral part of
the organization. As the Burn believes in the equality and this is the reason that most of the
employees follow her decisions for the accomplishment of the goals. In simple words, the role
or activities performed by the Tracey Burn are as follows: -
 As a leader, she plans, organize, direct and controls and align the schedule systems of the
employees
 Delegation and allocation of the functions
 Organizing workshops for the employees on the discharge process at the hospital
 Development of the employee knowledge and skills
 Ongoing training programs for the employees
Moving further, all these tasks leads to positive outcomes and increased the staff commitment,
achievement of the goals and high job satisfaction. The skills and the knowledge of the staff
members is developed by providing them the online job trainings at the King Edgar hospital. The
nurses and medical officers will be able to handle the things more effectively after taking these
training programs as these will make the employees more capable and knowledgeable. The
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Transactional approach of the leadership also used by the Burn as she also offers the monthly
reward to the employees who will perform better and effectively in the future
(Nanjundeswaraswamy & Swamy, 2014). This is the best way to motivate the employees. This
leadership style of the Burn creates a situation of the give and take like give higher performance
and take attractive incentives in return. This is an exchange of the rewards and performance.
Also, this will also create a feeling of competition among the employees to perform better. The
movement of the senior physicians into the emergency wards is also a very effective initiative
taken by the Edward in the year of 2003. After all, the problem of the discharge process at the
King Edgar will be resolved and productivity will also increase.
Therefore, it is concluded that the role of leader played by the Tracey Burn at the King Edgar
Hospital is playing a very significant role to improve the discharge process as well as to resolve
the other problems facing by the patients. The patient satisfaction is also important to build a
good image of the hospital and the entire national health system of the country. If the company
appointed me as a leader, then I also followed the similar approaches to motivate the employees
as well as to solve the problems. The transformational leadership approach is the most effective
leadership styles used by the most of the hospitals. Leadership and the management are the two
separate concepts, but they are interconnected with each other as the leadership is used as the
best strategy in the management. Leadership is the part of the strategic management. Therefore,
all these tasks of the leadership lead to positive outcomes and increased the staff commitment,
achievement of the goals and high job satisfaction (Hintea, et al., 2009).
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Section B
Concept of Strategic planning
There are many definitions given by the different scholars to explain the meaning of the strategic
planning. Strategic planning is defined as a plan of action by focusing more on the available
resources, to set the priorities and motivating the employees to perform well to achieve the goals
of the organization. However, Strategic planning is the disciplined efforts made by the
organizations to take the best decisions and to give the directions to the company with regard to
its main focus on the future, how to achieve the goals, why it wants to achieve these objectives,
what will company do to achieve these goals in the future. Moreover, strategic planning is not
only about the directions and actions to get the success, but also focus on how to determine the
results.
There are many frameworks or the methods are used to develop a strategic plan. AS in the case
study, it is found that the King Edgar is the famous hospital and facing many problems with
regard to the admission and discharge process. As the problem was increasing day by day so
Andrew took a decision to handover the responsibilities to Burn and lead the organization. The
Burn used many strategies to solve the various problems (Gordon, 1998). The different attributes
of the strategic framework are divided into different categories and these are shown below: -
1. Strategic Analysis
2. Strategy formulation
3. Strategy evaluation
4. Execution of the Strategy/ Implementation of the Strategy
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Strategic Analysis
Before formulating any strategy, it is very important to analyze the working environment of the
hospital. There are many factors that need to be considered while making the strategic planning
in the internal and external environment.
Factors affecting the Strategic Planning
There are two types of the factors affecting the strategic management – one is internal and
second is the external environment. The Internal environmental factors are the communication,
leadership, decision making, job design and external environment factors are political and the
technological factors (Perera & Peiro, 2012).
Internal environment
 Communication: -In the King Edgar hospital, the most important factor that affects the
planning is the poor communication. As we know, communication is the process of
sharing their own ideas and thoughts with the leaders to take the best decisions. A
Decision and the communication are the closely related aspects as the staff nurses and
other medical officers will feel an important part of the organization and perform better,
if the importance is given to their ideas. The bad communication or zero communication
may lead to the failing of strategic planning and negative results for the organizational
performance.
 Leadership: - In the case study, the leadership is playing a very important as the Tracey
Burns was appointed as a leader to build strategies to handle the delays of the discharge.
Therefore, the strategic planning is successful only if the health organizations have that
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
leader who can use its skills and capabilities and has the ability to motivate the
employees to perform well towards the goal of the organization. A good leader is always
important for the successful implementation of the strategies. The supervision is very
important while the strategies put into actions. The actions performed by all the
employees should be thoroughly analyzed and assessed by the leaders or the managers in
the organizations.
 Decision Making: - Decision making is an internal factor which is significant in the
strategic management. The decisions can either be good or bad. In the strategic planning,
there are various alternatives available and it is very important to choose one best
alternative among all other alternatives. The bad decisions always have a negative impact
on the growth of the organizations (Harrison, 2010).
 Job Design: - The leaders in the organization have the responsibility to delegate the jobs
or tasks according to their skills. As burn decided to align the schedule of the receptionist
as well as the nurses in other activities as per their skills and abilities. The delegation of
the work is the important part to solve the problem of the delay of the discharge
activities. As a leader, it is the duty of burn to decide which task is performed by which
individual.
External Environment
Political Factors: -It refers to the factors related to the interference of the government as the King
Edgar hospital trust is the merger of 3 hospitals- clover, Frior and Bronte. These hospitals are
merged as the government wants to reduce the duplication and improve the services of the
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