At Ten Adams, we love a simple, straightforward way to accomplish goals. That’s why Executive Visioning holds a special place in our strategy-focused hearts. This process creates space and time to build better relationships with senior administrators, align your marketing plan with the organization’s high-level vision, and become a trusted partner and problem solver.
What Is Executive Visioning?
At its core, Executive Visioning is a planning tool. It involves a series of brief, focused meetings with senior administrators or executives that identifies key themes and strategies for the coming year. Marketers use the process as a way to inform or update the strategic marketing plan and get some important face time with the C-Suite.
“This concept is so simple, but it’s powerful. And it works.”
- Jimmy Phillips, VP of Marketing & Communications, Kettering Health
Why Is Executive Visioning Important?
The process of asking thoughtful questions and incorporating the answers into action elevates the perception of Marketing from taskmaster to strategic partner.
Your job as a healthcare marketing leader is to build brand awareness, improve engagement, enhance reputation, and drive growth. It can be very easy to lose sight of these core healthcare strategy areas and fail to prioritize them when you are constantly bombarded with requests for fliers and social media posts.
Firefighter marketing - giving priority to the things that pop up unplanned and pull you away from core objectives - prevents you from taking a seat at the organization's strategy table. Executive Visioning secures your spot there because it:
- Allows senior leaders to explain the big picture
- Aligns goals across the organization
- Enables Marketing to solve problems
- Builds credibility and visibility for your team
- Makes the strategic marketing plan more nimble
As it relates to marketing department tasks, employing Executive Visioning ensures flexibility in the creation and execution of a strategic marketing plan. In a rapidly changing environment like healthcare, the ability to adjust goals and tactics is critical. Who wants to write an entirely new strategic plan every time the hospital shifts course?
How Do I Set Up an Executive Visioning Session?
The (ridiculously easy) steps for setting up Executive Visioning sessions include:
- Make a list of the top 5-7 executives in your health system.
- Schedule a 30-minute meeting with each executive.
- Schedule a one-hour group meeting with all of the executives on your list.
- Make sure the head of Marketing attends each meeting.
During the session, the head of Marketing asks the following three questions and records the executive’s response. (Ask the same three questions of every person participating.)
- What are your key strategic imperatives for the next fiscal year?
- What are your greatest challenges and opportunities?
- How can the marketing and communication team help you achieve your goals?
The tone of the meeting should be conversational and allow the executive to articulate what’s on their mind.
Once the meetings are over, gather, analyze, and summarize key findings. Report back to the group and share findings. Incorporate the information into your strategic marketing plan as appropriate.
With a touch of planning and a lot of listening, Executive Visioning can secure you a seat at the decision-making table.
Need all the details on Executive Visioning and how it can work for you? Curious about how Ten Adams incorporated this and other tools into the highly successful Kettering Health rebrand? Then, connect with our experts.
