Case Study Description of Children's Hospital Boston (A)
Five year old Matty died at Children's Hospital Boston as a result of elective neurosurgery to "cure" his epilepsy. The organizational system, not the surgery, had failed. During post-operative recovery, he experienced a prolonged seizure that resulted in his death. Confused leadership, organizational differentiation, structurally induced silence, and organizational mis-alignment contributed to the death. How could this happen in such a world class medical facility?
Swot Analysis of "Children's Hospital Boston (A)" written by Scott A. Snook, Jeffrey C. Connor includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Children's Death facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Children's Hospital Boston (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Crisis management, Influence, Leadership, Leading teams, Risk management and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Children's Hospital Boston (A) casestudy better are - – technology disruption, increasing energy prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Children's Hospital Boston (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Children's Hospital Boston (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Children's Death, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Children's Death operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Children's Hospital Boston (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Children's Hospital Boston (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Children's Death
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Children's Death
Strengths Children's Hospital Boston (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Children's Death in Children's Hospital Boston (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Children's Death has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Children's Death to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Children's Death has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Children's Hospital Boston (A) Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Children's Death is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Children's Hospital Boston (A) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– Children's Death is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Scott A. Snook, Jeffrey C. Connor can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Children's Hospital Boston (A) Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Children's Death in the sector have low bargaining power. Children's Hospital Boston (A) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Children's Death to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Children's Death has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Children's Hospital Boston (A) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Children's Death is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Children's Death in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Children's Death are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Children's Death has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– Children's Death is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Children's Death is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Children's Death is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Children's Hospital Boston (A) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses Children's Hospital Boston (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Children's Hospital Boston (A) are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Children's Hospital Boston (A), it seems that the employees of Children's Death don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Children's Death has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Children's Death even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Children's Death, firm in the HBR case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Children's Death products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Children's Death needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Children's Death is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Scott A. Snook, Jeffrey C. Connor suggests that, Children's Death is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Children's Death has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Children's Hospital Boston (A), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Children's Hospital Boston (A), in the dynamic environment Children's Death has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Children's Death has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Children's Hospital Boston (A) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Children's Death is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Children's Death has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Opportunities Children's Hospital Boston (A) | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Children's Death to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Children's Death to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Children's Death can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Children's Hospital Boston (A), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Children's Death can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Children's Death has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Children's Death is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Children's Hospital Boston (A) case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Children's Death to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Children's Death can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Leadership & Managing People segment.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Children's Death has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Children's Death to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Children's Death can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Children's Death in the consumer business. Now Children's Death can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Children's Death can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Children's Death can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Children's Hospital Boston (A) suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Children's Death can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Threats Children's Hospital Boston (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) are -
Increasing wage structure of Children's Death
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Children's Death.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Children's Death needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Children's Death has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Children's Death needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Children's Death.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Children's Hospital Boston (A), Children's Death may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Children's Death is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Children's Death with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Children's Death high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Children's Death business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Children's Death demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Children's Death in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Children's Death in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Children's Hospital Boston (A) Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Children's Hospital Boston (A) is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Children's Hospital Boston (A) is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Children's Death needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.