Organizations develop and change over time, just like people. Evolution is shaped by the outside world as well as the interiors where we value, believe and act collectively. The qualities of organizations vary according to your perspective. We know this because we have begun a process of organizational self-examination.
At UCSF’s School of Nursing, we are in the early stages of a process of renewal that will soon move into development of a strategic plan. The point of strategic planning is to set priorities for decision making about resources (time, money, human capital), but the process begins with an inward reflection. Borrowing on Peter Drucker (Five Most Important Questions: Enduring Wisdom for Today’s Leaders, 2015), we begin by considering four questions:
- What is our mission?
- Who is our customer?
- What does our customer value?
- What are our results?
And the answers to these four offer direction to the final question:
