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Strategic Plan Examples: Case Studies and Free Strategic Planning Template

By Anthony Taylor - May 29, 2023

As you prepare for your strategic planning process, it's important to explore relevant strategic plan examples for inspiration.

In today's competitive business landscape, a well-defined strategic plan holds immense significance. Whether you're a private company, municipal government, or nonprofit entity, strategic planning is essential for achieving goals and gaining a competitive edge. By understanding the strategic planning process, you can gain valuable insights to develop an effective growth roadmap for your organization.

In this blog, we will delve into real-life examples of strategic plans that have proven successful. These examples encompass a wide range of organizations, from Credit Unions that have implemented SME Strategy's Aligned Strategy process to the Largest Bank in Israel. By examining these cases, we can gain a deeper understanding of strategic planning and extract relevant insights that can be applied to your organization.

• Strategic Plan Example (Global Financial Services Firm)
• Strategic Plan Example (Joint Strategic Plan)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Government Agency)
• Strategic Plan Example (Multinational Corporation)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Public Company)
• Strategic Plan Example (Non Profit)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Small Nonprofit)
• Strategic Plan example: (Municipal Government)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Environmental Start-up)  

When analyzing strategic plan examples, it is crucial to recognize that a strategic plan goes beyond being a mere document. It should encapsulate your organization's mission and vision comprehensively while also being actionable. Your strategic plan needs to be tailored to your organization's specific circumstances, including factors such as size, industry, budget, and personnel. Simply replicating someone else's plan will not suffice.

Have you ever invested significant time and resources into creating a plan, only to witness its failure during execution? We believe that a successful strategic plan extends beyond being a static document. It necessitates meticulous follow-through, execution, documentation, and continuous learning. It serves as the foundation upon which your future plans are built.

It is important to note that a company's success is not solely determined by the plan itself, but rather by how effectively it is executed. Our intention is to highlight the diverse roles that a company's mission, vision, and values play across different organizations, whether they are large corporations or smaller nonprofits.

Strategic plans can vary in terms of their review cycles, which can range from annual evaluations to multi-year periods. There is no one-size-fits-all example of a strategic plan, as each organization possesses unique needs and circumstances that must be taken into account.

Strategic planning is an essential process for organizations of all sizes and types. It assists in setting a clear direction, defining goals, and effectively allocating resources. To gain an understanding of how strategic plans are crafted, we will explore a range of examples, including those from private companies, nonprofit organizations, and government entities.

Throughout this exploration, we will highlight various frameworks and systems employed by profit-driven and nonprofit organizations alike, providing valuable insights to help you determine the most suitable approach for your own organization.

Watch: Examples of Strategic Plans from Real-Life Organizations 

Strategic Plan Example  - The Bank Hapoalim Vision:  To be a leading global financial services firm, with its core in Israel, focused on its clients and working to enhance their financial freedom.

Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel's largest banks with 8,383 branches across 5 different countries as of 2022, has recently provided insights into its latest strategic plan. The plan highlights four distinct strategic priorities:

• Continued leadership in corporate banking and capital markets
• Adaptation of the retail banking operating model
• Resource optimization and greater productivity
• Differentiating and influential innovation

Check out their strategic plan here: Strategic Plan (2022-2026)

We talked to Tagil Green, the Chief Strategy Officer at Bank Hapoalim, where we delved into various aspects of their strategic planning process. We discussed the bank's strategic planning timeline, the collaborative work they engaged in with McKinsey, and the crucial steps taken to secure buy-in and ensure successful implementation of the strategy throughout the organization. In our conversation, Tagil Green emphasized the understanding that there is no universal template for strategic plans. While many companies typically allocate one, two, or three days for strategic planning meetings during an offsite, Bank Hapoalim recognized the significance of their size and complexity. As a result, their strategic plan took a comprehensive year-long effort to develop. How did a Large Global Organization like Bank Hapoalim decide on what strategic planning timeline to follow?

"How long do you want to plan? Some said, let's think a decade ahead. Some said it's irrelevant. Let's talk about two years ahead. And we kind of negotiated into the like, five years ahead for five years and said, Okay, that's good enough, because some of the complexity and the range depends on the field that you work for. So for banking in Israel, four or five years ahead, is good enough. "  Tagil Green, Chief Strategy Officer, Bank Hapoalim 

Another important aspect you need to consider when doing strategic planning is stakeholder engagement, We asked Tagil her thoughts and how they conducted stakeholder engagement with a large employee base.

Listen to the Full Conversation with Tagil:

Strategic Planning and Execution: Insights from the Chief Strategy Officer of Israel's Leading Bank

Strategic Plan Example: Region 16 and DEED (Joint Strategic Plan)

Mission Statement: We engage state, regional, tribal, school, and community partners to improve the quality and equity of education for each student by providing evidence-based services and supports.

In this strategic plan example, we'll explore how Region 16 and DEED, two government-operated Educational Centers with hundreds of employees, aligned their strategic plans using SME Strategy's approach . Despite facing the challenges brought on by the pandemic, these organizations sought to find common ground and ensure alignment on their mission, vision, and values, regardless of their circumstances.

Both teams adopted the Aligned Strategy method, which involved a three day onsite strategic planning session facilitated by a strategic planning facilitator . Together, they developed a comprehensive 29-page strategic plan outlining three distinct strategic priorities, each with its own objectives and strategic goals. Through critical conversations, they crafted a clear three year vision, defined their core customer group as part of their mission, refined their organizational values and behaviors, and prioritized their areas of focus.

After their offsite facilitation, they aligned around three key areas of focus:

• Effective Communication, both internally and externally.
• Streamlining Processes to enhance efficiency.
• Developing Effective Relationships and Partnerships for mutual success.

By accomplishing their goals within these strategic priorities, the teams from Region 16 and DEED aim to make progress towards their envisioned future.

To read the full review of the aligned strategy process click here

Download Now Starting your strategic planning process soon? Get our free Strategic Planning Template

Strategic Plan Example: (Government Agency) - The City of Duluth Workforce Development Board

What they do:

The Duluth Workforce Development Board identifies and aligns workforce development strategies to meet the needs of Duluth area employers and job seekers through comprehensive and coordinated systems.

An engaged and diverse workforce, where all individuals, regardless of background, have or are on a path to meaningful employment and a family sustaining wage, and all employers are able to fill jobs in demand.

The City of Duluth provides an insightful example of a strategic plan focused on regional coordination to address workforce needs in various industry sectors and occupations. With multiple stakeholders involved, engaging and aligning them becomes crucial. This comprehensive plan, spanning 82 pages, tackles strategic priorities and initiatives at both the state and local levels.

What sets this plan apart is its thorough outline of the implementation process. It covers everything from high-level strategies to specific meetings between different boards and organizations. Emphasizing communication, coordination, and connectivity, the plan ensures the complete execution of its objectives. It promotes regular monthly partner meetings, committee gatherings, and collaboration among diverse groups. The plan also emphasizes the importance of proper documentation and accountability throughout the entire process.

By providing a clear roadmap, the City of Duluth's strategic plan effectively addresses workforce needs while fostering effective stakeholder engagement . It serves as a valuable example of how a comprehensive plan can guide actions, facilitate communication, and ensure accountability for successful implementation.

Read this strategic plan example here: Strategic Plan (2021-2024)

Strategic Plan Example: McDonald's (Multinational Corporation)

McDonald's provides a great strategic plan example specifically designed for private companies. Their "Velocity Growth Plan" covers a span of three years from 2017 to 2020, offering a high-level strategic direction. While the plan doesn't delve into specific implementation details, it focuses on delivering an overview that appeals to investors and aligns the staff. The plan underscores McDonald's commitment to long-term growth and addressing important environmental and societal challenges. It also highlights the CEO's leadership in revitalizing the company and the active oversight provided by the Board of Directors.

The Board of Directors plays a crucial role in actively overseeing McDonald's strategy. They engage in discussions about the Velocity Growth Plan during board meetings, hold annual strategy sessions, and maintain continuous monitoring of the company's operations in response to the ever-changing business landscape.

The McDonald's strategic plan revolved around three core pillars:

• Retention: Strengthening and expanding areas of strength, such as breakfast and family occasions.
• Regain: Focusing on food quality, convenience, and value to win back lost customers.
• Convert: Emphasizing coffee and other snack offerings to attract casual customers.

These pillars guide McDonald's through three initiatives, driving growth and maximizing benefits for customers in the shortest time possible.

Read the strategic plan example of Mcdonlald's Velocity growth plan (2017-2020)

Strategic Plan Example: Nike (Public Company)

Nike's mission statement is “ to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world .”  

Nike, as a publicly traded company, has developed a robust global growth strategy outlined in its strategic plan. Spanning a five-year period from 2021 to 2025, this plan encompasses 29 strategic targets that reflect Nike's strong commitment to People, Planet, and Pay. Each priority is meticulously defined, accompanied by tangible actions and measurable metrics. This meticulous approach ensures transparency and alignment across the organization.

The strategic plan of Nike establishes clear objectives, including the promotion of pay equity, a focus on education and professional development, and the fostering of business diversity and inclusion. By prioritizing these areas, Nike aims to provide guidance and support to its diverse workforce, fostering an environment that values and empowers its employees.

Read Nike's strategic plan here

Related Content: Strategic Planning Process (What is it?)

The Cost of Developing a Strategic Plan (3 Tiers)

Strategic Plan Example (Non Profit) - Alternatives Federal Credit Union

Mission: To help build and protect wealth for people with diverse identities who have been historically marginalized by the financial industry, especially those with low wealth or identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color.

AFCU partnered with SME Strategy in 2021 to develop a three year strategic plan. As a non-profit organization, AFCU recognized the importance of strategic planning to align its team and operational components. The focus was on key elements such as Vision, Mission, Values, Priorities, Goals, and Actions, as well as effective communication, clear responsibilities, and progress tracking.

In line with the Aligned Strategy approach, AFCU developed three strategic priorities to unite its team and drive progress towards their vision for 2024. Alongside strategic planning, AFCU has implemented a comprehensive strategy implementation plan to ensure the effective execution of their strategies.

Here's an overview of AFCU's 2024 Team Vision and strategic priorities: Aligned Team Vision 2024:

To fulfill our mission, enhance efficiency, and establish sustainable community development approaches, our efforts will revolve around the following priorities: Strategic Priorities:

Improving internal communication: Enhancing communication channels and practices within AFCU to foster collaboration and information sharing among team members.

Improving organizational performance: Implementing strategies to enhance AFCU's overall performance, including processes, systems, and resource utilization.

Creating standard operating procedures: Developing standardized procedures and protocols to streamline operations, increase efficiency, and ensure consistency across AFCU's activities.

By focusing on these strategic priorities, AFCU aims to strengthen its capacity to effectively achieve its mission and bring about lasting change in its community. Watch the AFCU case study below:

Watch the Full Strategic Plan Example Case Study with the VP and Chief Strategy Officer of AFCU

Strategic Plan Example: (Small Nonprofit) - The Hunger Project 

Mission: To end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world.

The Hunger Project, a small nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, offers a prime example of a concise and effective three-year strategic plan. This plan encompasses the organization's vision, mission, theory of change, and strategic priorities. Emphasizing simplicity and clarity, The Hunger Project's plan outlines crucial actions and measurements required to achieve its goals. Spanning 16 pages, this comprehensive document enables stakeholders to grasp the organization's direction and intended impact. It centers around three overarching strategic goals, each accompanied by its own set of objectives and indicators: deepening impact, mainstreaming impact, and scaling up operations.

Read their strategic plan here  

Strategic Plan example: (Municipal Government)- New York City Economic Development Plan 

The New York City Economic Development Plan is a comprehensive 5-year strategic plan tailored for a municipal government. Spanning 68 pages, this plan underwent an extensive planning process with input from multiple stakeholders. 

This plan focuses on the unique challenges and opportunities present in the region. Through a SWOT analysis, this plan highlights the organization's problems, the city's strengths, and the opportunities and threats it has identified. These include New York's diverse population, significant wealth disparities, and high demand for public infrastructure and services.

The strategic plan was designed to provide a holistic overview that encompasses the interests of a diverse and large group of business, labor, and community leaders. It aimed to identify the shared values that united its five boroughs and define how local objectives align with the interests of greater New York State. The result was a unified vision for the future of New York City, accompanied by a clear set of actions required to achieve shared goals.

Because of its diverse stakeholder list including; council members, local government officials, and elected representatives, with significant input from the public, their strategic plan took 4 months to develop. 

Read it's 5 year strategic plan example here

Strategic Plan Example: Silicon Valley Clean Energy

Silicon Valley Clean Energy provides a strategic plan that prioritizes visual appeal and simplicity. Despite being in its second year of operation, this strategic plan example effectively conveys the organization's mission and values to its Board of Directors. The company also conducts thorough analyses of the electric utility industry and anticipates major challenges in the coming years. Additionally, it highlights various social initiatives aimed at promoting community, environmental, and economic benefits that align with customer expectations.

"This plan recognizes the goals we intend to accomplish and highlights strategies and tactics we will employ to achieve these goals. The purpose of this plan is to ensure transparency in our operations and to provide a clear direction to staff about which strategies and tactics we will employ to achieve our goals. It is a living document that can guide our work with clarity and yet has the flexibility to respond to changing environments as we embark on this journey." Girish Balachandran CEO, Silicon Valley Clean Energy

This strategic plan example offers flexibility in terms of timeline. It lays out strategic initiatives for both a three-year and five-year period, extending all the way to 2030. The plan places emphasis on specific steps and targets to be accomplished between 2021 and 2025, followed by goals for the subsequent period of 2025 to 2030. While this plan doesn't go into exhaustive detail about implementation steps, meeting schedules, or monitoring mechanisms, it effectively communicates the organization's priorities and desired long term outcomes. Read its strategic plan example here

By studying these strategic plan examples, you can create a strategic plan that aligns with your organization's goals, communicates effectively, and guides decision-making and resource allocation. Strategic planning approaches differ among various types of organizations.

Private Companies: Private companies like McDonald's and Nike approach strategic planning differently from public companies due to competitive market dynamics. McDonald's provides a high-level overview of its strategic plan in its investor overview.

Nonprofit Organizations: Nonprofit organizations, like The Hunger Project, develop strategic plans tailored to their unique missions and stakeholders. The Hunger Project's plan presents a simple yet effective structure with a clear vision, mission, theory of change, strategic priorities, and action items with measurable outcomes.

Government Entities: Government entities, such as the New York City Development Board, often produce longer, comprehensive strategic plans to guide regional or state development. These plans include implementation plans, stakeholder engagement, performance measures, and priority projects.

When creating a strategic plan for your organization, consider the following key points:

Strategic Priorities: Define clear strategic priorities that are easy to communicate and understand.

Stakeholder Engagement: Ensure your plan addresses the needs and interests of your stakeholders.

Measurements: Include relevant measurements and KPIs, primarily for internal use, to track, monitor and report your progress effectively.

Conciseness vs. Thoroughness: Adapt the level of detail in your plan based on the size of your organization and the number of stakeholders involved.

By learning from these examples, you can see that developing a strategic plan should be a process that fits your organization, effectively communicates your goals, and provides guidance for decision-making and resource allocation. Remember that strategic planning is an ongoing process that requires regular review and adjustment to stay relevant and effective.

Need assistance in maximizing the impact of your strategic planning? Learn how our facilitators can lead you through a proven process, ensuring effectiveness, maintaining focus, and fostering team alignment.

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• Case Studies

Case Study Basics

What is a case study *.

A case study is a snapshot of an organization or an industry wrestling with a dilemma, written to serve a set of pedagogical objectives. Whether raw or cooked , what distinguishes a pedagogical case study from other writing is that it centers on one or more dilemmas. Rather than take in information passively, a case study invites readers to engage the material in the case to solve the problems presented. Whatever the case structure, the best classroom cases all have these attributes: (1)The case discusses issues that allow for a number of different courses of action – the issues discussed are not “no-brainers,” (2) the case makes the management issues as compelling as possible by providing rich background and detail, and (3) the case invites the creative use of analytical management tools.

Case studies are immensely useful as teaching tools and sources of research ideas. They build a reservoir of subject knowledge and help students develop analytical skills. For the faculty, cases provide unparalleled insights into the continually evolving world of management and may inspire further theoretical inquiry.

There are many case formats. A traditional case study presents a management issue or issues calling for resolution and action. It generally breaks off at a decision point with the manager weighing a number of different options. It puts the student in the decision-maker’s shoes and allows the student to understand the stakes involved. In other instances, a case study is more of a forensic exercise. The operations and history of a company or an industry will be presented without reference to a specific dilemma. The instructor will then ask students to comment on how the organization operates, to look for the key success factors, critical relationships, and underlying sources of value. A written case will pre-package appropriate material for students, while an online case may provide a wider variety of topics in a less linear manner.

Choosing Participants for a Case Study

Many organizations cooperate in case studies out of a desire to contribute to management education. They understand the need for management school professors and students to keep current with practice.

Organizations also cooperate in order to gain exposure in management school classrooms. The increased visibility and knowledge about an organization’s operations and culture can lead to subsidiary benefits such as improved recruiting.

Finally, organizations participate because reading a case about their operations and decision making written by a neutral observer can generate useful insights. A case study preserves a moment in time and chronicles an otherwise hidden history. Managers who visit the classroom to view the case discussion generally find the experience invigorating.

The Final Product

Cases are usually written as narratives that take the reader through the events leading to the decision point, including relevant information on the historical, competitive, legal, technical, and political environment facing the organization. A written case study generally runs from 5,000 to 10,000 words of text supplemented with numerous pages of data exhibits. An online raw case may have less original text, but will require students to extract information from multiple original documents, videos of company leaders discussing the challenges, photographs, and links to articles and websites.

The first time a case is taught represents something of a test run. As students react to the material, plan to revise the case to include additional information or to delete data that does not appear useful. If the organization’s managers attend the class, their responses to student comments and questions may suggest some case revisions as well.

The sponsoring professor will generally write a “teaching note” to give other instructors advice on how to structure classroom discussion and useful bits of analysis that can be included to explicate the issues highlighted in the case study.

Finally, one case may inspire another. Either during the case writing process or after a case is done, a second “B” case might be useful to write that outlines what the organization did or that outlines new challenges faced by the organization after the timeframe of the initial case study.

* Portions of this note are adapted from E. Raymond Corey, “Writing Cases and Teaching Notes,” Harvard Business School case 399-077, with updates to reflect Yale School of Management practices for traditional and raw cases.

Strategic planning as inter-unit coordination: An in depth case study in Thailand

• Published: 25 June 2020
• Volume 39 , pages 201–224, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Paul Knott   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3142-6085 1 &
• Chatchai Thnarudee 2  

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We extend strategy-as-practice and strategy process studies of strategic planning by detailing empirically how its execution can take on an inter-unit coordination role in multi-business, multi-unit firms. In our case study of a firm in Bangkok, Thailand, we show how practitioners in diverse business and functional units coordinate their respective internal planning processes in a differentiated network of inter-unit strategic planning links. We specify four types of inter-unit planning link according to relative hierarchical level and function of the interacting units. Based on interviews covering 125 of these links, we analyse interactions between managers during the planning process, focusing on the practices they adopt including a newly identified practice we refer to as facilitating. We articulate patterns of interaction by link type, and ultimately show how managers combined these practices in four generic interaction patterns: bilateral, cohesive facilitation, ambassadorial coordination, and supervisory. These interaction patterns vary in the degree of horizontal and vertical inter-unit coordination they contribute to the business. We analyse how usage of the patterns varied across the firm, and hence set out more fully than prior literature how interactions driven by individual managers enable strategic planning to enrich inter-unit coordination through and across a business.

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Strategic Planning: Case Studies

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Instructor: Mike Figliuolo

Have you ever wanted to see strategic planning frameworks applied to real situations? Would you find it helpful to see an integrated strategic case study for an organization like yours? Go more deeply into the strategic planning process by diving into three real-world cases studies. Join instructor Mike Figliuolo as he shares examples from a consumer goods business, a professional services company, and a nonprofit organization. For each case he shares five key aspects of the strategy planning process: defining the strategic environment, determining how to compete, evaluating and prioritizing opportunities, assessing the initiative portfolio, and organizing and allocating resources. Use these thorough examples to think through how you would apply strategic planning to your own organization.

7 Favorite Business Case Studies to Teach—and Why

Explore more.

• Case Teaching
• Course Materials

FEATURED CASE STUDIES

The Army Crew Team . Emily Michelle David of CEIBS

ATH Technologies . Devin Shanthikumar of Paul Merage School of Business

Fabritek 1992 . Rob Austin of Ivey Business School

Lincoln Electric Co . Karin Schnarr of Wilfrid Laurier University

Pal’s Sudden Service—Scaling an Organizational Model to Drive Growth . Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School

The United States Air Force: ‘Chaos’ in the 99th Reconnaissance Squadron . Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School

Warren E. Buffett, 2015 . Robert F. Bruner of Darden School of Business

To dig into what makes a compelling case study, we asked seven experienced educators who teach with—and many who write—business case studies: “What is your favorite case to teach and why?”

The resulting list of case study favorites ranges in topics from operations management and organizational structure to rebel leaders and whodunnit dramas.

1. The Army Crew Team

Emily Michelle David, Assistant Professor of Management, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS)

“I love teaching  The Army Crew Team  case because it beautifully demonstrates how a team can be so much less than the sum of its parts.

I deliver the case to executives in a nearby state-of-the-art rowing facility that features rowing machines, professional coaches, and shiny red eight-person shells.

After going through the case, they hear testimonies from former members of Chinese national crew teams before carrying their own boat to the river for a test race.

The rich learning environment helps to vividly underscore one of the case’s core messages: competition can be a double-edged sword if not properly managed.

Executives in Emily Michelle David’s organizational behavior class participate in rowing activities at a nearby facility as part of her case delivery.

Despite working for an elite headhunting firm, the executives in my most recent class were surprised to realize how much they’ve allowed their own team-building responsibilities to lapse. In the MBA pre-course, this case often leads to a rich discussion about common traps that newcomers fall into (for example, trying to do too much, too soon), which helps to poise them to both stand out in the MBA as well as prepare them for the lateral team building they will soon engage in.

Finally, I love that the post-script always gets a good laugh and serves as an early lesson that organizational behavior courses will seldom give you foolproof solutions for specific problems but will, instead, arm you with the ability to think through issues more critically.”

2. ATH Technologies

Devin Shanthikumar, Associate Professor of Accounting, Paul Merage School of Business

“As a professor at UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business, and before that at Harvard Business School, I have probably taught over 100 cases. I would like to say that my favorite case is my own,   Compass Box Whisky Company . But as fun as that case is, one case beats it:  ATH Technologies  by Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard.

ATH presents a young entrepreneurial company that is bought by a much larger company. As part of the merger, ATH gets an ‘earn-out’ deal—common among high-tech industries. The company, and the class, must decide what to do to achieve the stretch earn-out goals.

ATH captures a scenario we all want to be in at some point in our careers—being part of a young, exciting, growing organization. And a scenario we all will likely face—having stretch goals that seem almost unreachable.

It forces us, as a class, to really struggle with what to do at each stage.

After we read and discuss the A case, we find out what happens next, and discuss the B case, then the C, then D, and even E. At every stage, we can:

see how our decisions play out,

figure out how to build on our successes, and

address our failures.

The case is exciting, the class discussion is dynamic and energetic, and in the end, we all go home with a memorable ‘ah-ha!’ moment.

I have taught many great cases over my career, but none are quite as fun, memorable, and effective as ATH .”

3. Fabritek 1992

Rob Austin, Professor of Information Systems, Ivey Business School

“This might seem like an odd choice, but my favorite case to teach is an old operations case called  Fabritek 1992 .

The latest version of Fabritek 1992 is dated 2009, but it is my understanding that this is a rewrite of a case that is older (probably much older). There is a Fabritek 1969 in the HBP catalog—same basic case, older dates, and numbers. That 1969 version lists no authors, so I suspect the case goes even further back; the 1969 version is, I’m guessing, a rewrite of an even older version.

There are many things I appreciate about the case. Here are a few:

It operates as a learning opportunity at many levels. At first it looks like a not-very-glamorous production job scheduling case. By the end of the case discussion, though, we’re into (operations) strategy and more. It starts out technical, then explodes into much broader relevance. As I tell participants when I’m teaching HBP's Teaching with Cases seminars —where I often use Fabritek as an example—when people first encounter this case, they almost always underestimate it.

It has great characters—especially Arthur Moreno, who looks like a troublemaker, but who, discussion reveals, might just be the smartest guy in the factory. Alums of the Harvard MBA program have told me that they remember Arthur Moreno many years later.

Almost every word in the case is important. It’s only four and a half pages of text and three pages of exhibits. This economy of words and sparsity of style have always seemed like poetry to me. I should note that this super concise, every-word-matters approach is not the ideal we usually aspire to when we write cases. Often, we include extra or superfluous information because part of our teaching objective is to provide practice in separating what matters from what doesn’t in a case. Fabritek takes a different approach, though, which fits it well.

It has a dramatic structure. It unfolds like a detective story, a sort of whodunnit. Something is wrong. There is a quality problem, and we’re not sure who or what is responsible. One person, Arthur Moreno, looks very guilty (probably too obviously guilty), but as we dig into the situation, there are many more possibilities. We spend in-class time analyzing the data (there’s a bit of math, so it covers that base, too) to determine which hypotheses are best supported by the data. And, realistically, the data doesn’t support any of the hypotheses perfectly, just some of them more than others. Also, there’s a plot twist at the end (I won’t reveal it, but here’s a hint: Arthur Moreno isn’t nearly the biggest problem in the final analysis). I have had students tell me the surprising realization at the end of the discussion gives them ‘goosebumps.’

Finally, through the unexpected plot twist, it imparts what I call a ‘wisdom lesson’ to young managers: not to be too sure of themselves and to regard the experiences of others, especially experts out on the factory floor, with great seriousness.”

4. Lincoln Electric Co.

Karin Schnarr, Assistant Professor of Policy, Wilfrid Laurier University

“As a strategy professor, my favorite case to teach is the classic 1975 Harvard case  Lincoln Electric Co.  by Norman Berg.

I use it to demonstrate to students the theory linkage between strategy and organizational structure, management processes, and leadership behavior.

This case may be an odd choice for a favorite. It occurs decades before my students were born. It is pages longer than we are told students are now willing to read. It is about manufacturing arc welding equipment in Cleveland, Ohio—a hard sell for a Canadian business classroom.

Yet, I have never come across a case that so perfectly illustrates what I want students to learn about how a company can be designed from an organizational perspective to successfully implement its strategy.

And in a time where so much focus continues to be on how to maximize shareholder value, it is refreshing to be able to discuss a publicly-traded company that is successfully pursuing a strategy that provides a fair value to shareholders while distributing value to employees through a large bonus pool, as well as value to customers by continually lowering prices.

However, to make the case resonate with today’s students, I work to make it relevant to the contemporary business environment. I link the case to multimedia clips about Lincoln Electric’s current manufacturing practices, processes, and leadership practices. My students can then see that a model that has been in place for generations is still viable and highly successful, even in our very different competitive situation.”

5. Pal’s Sudden Service—Scaling an Organizational Model to Drive Growth

Gary Pisano, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

“My favorite case to teach these days is  Pal’s Sudden Service—Scaling an Organizational Model to Drive Growth .

I love teaching this case for three reasons:

1. It demonstrates how a company in a super-tough, highly competitive business can do very well by focusing on creating unique operating capabilities. In theory, Pal’s should have no chance against behemoths like McDonalds or Wendy’s—but it thrives because it has built a unique operating system. It’s a great example of a strategic approach to operations in action.

2. The case shows how a strategic approach to human resource and talent development at all levels really matters. This company competes in an industry not known for engaging its front-line workers. The case shows how engaging these workers can really pay off.

3. Finally, Pal’s is really unusual in its approach to growth. Most companies set growth goals (usually arbitrary ones) and then try to figure out how to ‘backfill’ the human resource and talent management gaps. They trust you can always find someone to do the job. Pal’s tackles the growth problem completely the other way around. They rigorously select and train their future managers. Only when they have a manager ready to take on their own store do they open a new one. They pace their growth off their capacity to develop talent. I find this really fascinating and so do the students I teach this case to.”

6. The United States Air Force: ‘Chaos’ in the 99th Reconnaissance Squadron

Francesca Gino, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

“My favorite case to teach is  The United States Air Force: ‘Chaos’ in the 99th Reconnaissance Squadron .

The case surprises students because it is about a leader, known in the unit by the nickname Chaos , who inspired his squadron to be innovative and to change in a culture that is all about not rocking the boat, and where there is a deep sense that rules should simply be followed.

For years, I studied ‘rebels,’ people who do not accept the status quo; rather, they approach work with curiosity and produce positive change in their organizations. Chaos is a rebel leader who got the level of cultural change right. Many of the leaders I’ve met over the years complain about the ‘corporate culture,’ or at least point to clear weaknesses of it; but then they throw their hands up in the air and forget about changing what they can.

Chaos is different—he didn’t go after the ‘Air Force’ culture. That would be like boiling the ocean.

Instead, he focused on his unit of control and command: The 99th squadron. He focused on enabling that group to do what it needed to do within the confines of the bigger Air Force culture. In the process, he inspired everyone on his team to be the best they can be at work.

The case leaves the classroom buzzing and inspired to take action.”

7. Warren E. Buffett, 2015

Robert F. Bruner, Professor of Business Administration, Darden School of Business

“I love teaching   Warren E. Buffett, 2015  because it energizes, exercises, and surprises students.

Buffett looms large in the business firmament and therefore attracts anyone who is eager to learn his secrets for successful investing. This generates the kind of energy that helps to break the ice among students and instructors early in a course and to lay the groundwork for good case discussion practices.

Studying Buffett’s approach to investing helps to introduce and exercise important themes that will resonate throughout a course. The case challenges students to define for themselves what it means to create value. The case discussion can easily be tailored for novices or for more advanced students.

Either way, this is not hero worship: The case affords a critical examination of the financial performance of Buffett’s firm, Berkshire Hathaway, and reveals both triumphs and stumbles. Most importantly, students can critique the purported benefits of Buffett’s conglomeration strategy and the sustainability of his investment record as the size of the firm grows very large.

By the end of the class session, students seem surprised with what they have discovered. They buzz over the paradoxes in Buffett’s philosophy and performance record. And they come away with sober respect for Buffett’s acumen and for the challenges of creating value for investors.

Surely, such sobriety is a meta-message for any mastery of finance.”

More Educator Favorites

Emily Michelle David is an assistant professor of management at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). Her current research focuses on discovering how to make workplaces more welcoming for people of all backgrounds and personality profiles to maximize performance and avoid employee burnout. David’s work has been published in a number of scholarly journals, and she has worked as an in-house researcher at both NASA and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Devin Shanthikumar  is an associate professor and the accounting area coordinator at UCI Paul Merage School of Business. She teaches undergraduate, MBA, and executive-level courses in managerial accounting. Shanthikumar previously served on the faculty at Harvard Business School, where she taught both financial accounting and managerial accounting for MBAs, and wrote cases that are used in accounting courses across the country.

Robert D. Austin is a professor of information systems at Ivey Business School and an affiliated faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He has published widely, authoring nine books, more than 50 cases and notes, three Harvard online products, and two popular massive open online courses (MOOCs) running on the Coursera platform.

Karin Schnarr is an assistant professor of policy and the director of the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program at the Lazaridis School of Business & Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada where she teaches strategic management at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels. Schnarr has published several award-winning and best-selling cases and regularly presents at international conferences on case writing and scholarship.

Gary P. Pisano is the Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean of faculty development at Harvard Business School, where he has been on the faculty since 1988. Pisano is an expert in the fields of technology and operations strategy, the management of innovation, and competitive strategy. His research and consulting experience span a range of industries including aerospace, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals, health care, nutrition, computers, software, telecommunications, and semiconductors.

Francesca Gino studies how people can have more productive, creative, and fulfilling lives. She is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author, most recently, of  Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life . Gino regularly gives keynote speeches, delivers corporate training programs, and serves in advisory roles for firms and not-for-profit organizations across the globe.

Robert F. Bruner is a university professor at the University of Virginia, distinguished professor of business administration, and dean emeritus of the Darden School of Business. He has also held visiting appointments at Harvard and Columbia universities in the United States, at INSEAD in France, and at IESE in Spain. He is the author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books on finance, management, and teaching. Currently, he teaches and writes in finance and management.

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Case Studies

Robert   j.   glushko.

We now fulfill the promise of this book, with a set of case study examples that apply the concepts and phases of the roadmap. (The first four case studies appeared in the first print edition of the book. All the others have been contributed by students or other readers of the book and edited for consistency.——Ed.)

Navigating This Chapter

Case study template.

For the sake of consistency, we employ the questions posed in Design Decisions in Organizing Systems as a template for the case studies. We remind you of six groups of design decisions, itemizing the most important dimensions in each group:

What is being organized?  What is the scope and scale of the domain? What is the mixture of physical things , digital things, and information about things in the organizing system? Is the organizing system being designed to create a new resource collection, catalog an existing and closed resource collection, or manage a collection in which resources are continually added or deleted? Are the resources unique, or are they interchangeable members of a category? Do they follow a predictable “ life cycle ” with a “ useful life ”? Does the organizing system use the interaction resources created through its use, or are these interaction resources extracted and aggregated for use by another organizing system? ( “What Is Being Organized?” )

Why is it being organized?  What interactions or services will be supported, and for whom? Are the uses and users known or unknown? Are the users primarily people or computational processes? Does the organizing system need to satisfy personal, social, or institutional goals? ( “Why Is It Being Organized?” )

How much is it being organized?  What is the extent, granularity, or explicitness of description, classification, or relational structure being imposed? What organizing principles guide the organization? Are all resources organized to the same degree, or is the organization sparse and non-uniform? ( “How Much Is It Being Organized?” )

When is it being organized?  Is the organization imposed on resources when they are created, when they become part of the collection, when interactions occur with them, just in case, just in time, all the time? Is any of this organizing mandated by law or shaped by industry practices or cultural tradition? ( “When Is It Being Organized?” )

How or by whom, or by what computational processes, is it being organized?  Is the organization being performed by individuals, by informal groups, by formal groups, by professionals, by automated methods? Are the organizers also the users? Are there rules or roles that govern the organizing activities of different individuals or groups? ( “How (or by Whom) Is It Organized?” )

Where is it being organized?  Is the resource location constrained by design or by regulation? Are the resources positioned in a static location? Are the resources in transit or in motion? Does their location depend on other parameters, such as time? ( “Where is it being Organized?” )

As we discussed in “Where is it being Organized?” , when location is a constraint, it will typically be identified as such in the other questions. As result, we will only examine “ Where? ” as distinct design dimension in cases where it is warranted.

The Discipline of Organizing: 4th Professional Edition Copyright © 2020 by Robert J. Glushko is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Organizational Planning Process

The Organizational planning Process Organizational planning Is a well thought out and practical process Involving all levels of management: top-level (strategic managers), middle-level (tactical managers), and frontline (operational managers), as well as their departments, and the individuals that make up those departments. This process begins with upper management creating a mission statement that sets clearly defined reasons for the company’s existence, as well as goals for the company.

Strategic goals are then retreated to outline the future direction of the company as a whole, as well as defining the logistic needed to meet these goals. Tactical goals are then set on a departmental level, which aids In determining what work Is needed to accomplish the goals set by the company.

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Finally operational goals are set to enable lower levels of the company to assist in meeting tactical goals. All levels of management assign the necessary tasks to appropriate departments, divisions and to individuals, arranging those individuals into the decision making structure.

This process results in an organization that consists of several integrated parts acting as one cohesive unit, accomplishing tasks to efficiently achieve company goals. A well-executed organizing process would result in a work environment in which all levels of management, and all team members are fully aware of their responsibilities. If the organizing process is not executed well, the result will likely be frustration, confusion, and a loss of efficiency, leading to minimized effectiveness.

Of course strict planning doesn’t allow for much room to make changes and adapt as environments change and evolve.

This an cause a well-organized company to fall If an openness to contingency plans Is nonexistent. Scenario building Is visualizing future possibilities based on current trends in an effort to forecast future environments and minimize risks. This enables companies to be better prepared for multiple eventualities. Crisis planning is another technique used to prepare for the unexpected risk that could emerge very quickly, causing damage to the organization.

This type of exercise is a lot like conducting a fire drill and It works to better prepare the organization to quickly deal with unexpected changes and threats.

How well a company Is able to recover can often depend on how the company responds In the event of a disaster. The STOW analysis is a tool that can be used in an organization’s strategic planning process for the purpose of looking over and assessing external environments.

This allows the organization to better evaluate the risk of new competitors entering the market, the degree of rivalry between existing competitors, as well as the negotiating power of buyers and suppliers. STOW stands for strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This Implies the order that organizational planners should follow during the tragic planning process. However, the STOW analysis is neither the first nor the last step.

The first step in the strategic planning process should be a thorough analysis of the organization’s mission statement.

This statement should serve as a foundation for future planning activities. If the organization does not have a mission statement, the creation of that statement should precede any further development In the planning process. Once this Is accomplished then Internal resources need to be a STOW analysis. The last step in the strategic planning process deals with generating resources, managing organizational structure, and handling strategic adjustments. STOW analysis is an important step in assessing external environments, which is an important step in the overall planning process.

Decision making is a fundamental part of management and there are many models when it comes to managerial decision making. The goal in this type of decision making is not necessarily to make the best decision possible, but to make a good decision based on the information at hand, and the ability or inability to budge one direction or another when it comes to alternatives. The goals and objectives of the many may very well effect how decisions can be made, and complex interacting relationships within the company can make this process even more difficult.

Management decision-making is highly subjective by nature and whether a decision is seen as good or acceptable can depend on many variables. Managerial decisions can be broken down into two basic categories, programmed and nonprogrammer decisions. Programmed decisions are those that have come up so often that there are set instructions and rules on how to go about handling these decisions.

Nonprogrammer decisions are those that are made in response to situations that are UT of the ordinary.

All of this information is relevant to my future employment as I intend to open my own business. Knowing what is expected, and what is necessary when it comes to the organizational planning and managerial decision making processes will greatly increase my odds of success and I take pride in having a basic understanding of these processes. I understand that by undertaking the development of a company I am taking on the risks involved such a venture. This information will aid me, my managers, and employees in minimizing that risk and maximizing our potential for success.

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17.5 Formal Organizational Planning in Practice

• Understand how planning occurs in today’s organizations.

Studies indicate that, in the 1950s, approximately 8.3 percent of all major U.S. firms (1 out of every 12) employed a full-time long-range planner. By the late 1960s, 83 percent of major U.S. firms used long-range planning. Today it is estimated that nearly all U.S. corporations with sales over $100 million prepare formal long-range plans. 28 Most formal plans extend five years into the future, and about 20 percent extend at least ten years.

Encouraging Planning

In spite of the advantages to be gained by planning, many managers resist it. Some feel that there is not enough time to plan or that it is too complicated and costs too much. Others worry about the possible consequences of failing to reach the goals they set. Instead of preplanning, sometimes referred to as blueprint planning (that is, formulating outcome and action statements before moving forward), many managers simply fail to plan or at best engage in in-process planning (they read events and think about the next step just before acting). In-process planning works extremely well when individuals have a sense of what it is that they want to achieve and can improvise as they move forward in a sea of uncertainty and turbulence. This is much like skilled hockey players relying on their instincts, reading the defense, and improvising as they move up the ice and toward the opponent’s net. This process often works better than attempting to implement a detailed preplan, as often characterizes plays in football.

In situations where we want to encourage preplanning, certain techniques facilitate the process:

• Develop an organizational climate that encourages planning.
• Top managers support lower-level managers’ planning activities—for example, by providing such resources as personnel, computers, and funds—and serve as role models through their own planning activities.
• Train people in planning.
• Create a reward system that encourages and supports planning activity and carefully avoids punishment for failure to achieve newly set goals.
• Use plans once they are created.

In order for managers to invest the time and energy needed to overcome resistance to planning, they must be convinced that planning does in fact pay off.

Does Planning Really Pay Off?

Managers of organizations in complex and unstable environments may find it difficult to develop meaningful plans, yet it is precisely conditions of environmental complexity and instability that produce the greatest need for a good set of organizational plans. Yet the question remains, does planning really pay off?

We know from our earlier discussion that setting goals is an important part of the planning process. Today, much is known about what characterizes effective individual goals. (We discuss this issue in greater detail later in this chapter.) Although group and organizational goals have been studied less, it is probably safe to assume that most of our knowledge about individual goals also applies to group and organizational goals. The research suggests that effective organizational goals should (1) be difficult but reachable with effort, (2) be specific and clearly identify what is desired, (3) be accepted by and have the commitment of those who will help achieve them, (4) be developed by employees if such participation will improve the quality of the goals and their acceptance, and (5) be monitored for progress regularly.

While the evidence is not abundant, studies suggest that firms that engage in planning are more financially successful than those that do not. 29 For example, one study reports that the median return on investment for a five-year period is 17.1 percent for organizations engaged in strategic planning, versus 5.9 percent for those that do not. 30 Similarly, of 70 large commercial banks, those that had strategic planning systems outperformed those that did not. 31

Although planning clearly has observable benefits, it can be expensive. The financial commitment can be large for organizations with a formal planning staff. Even so, research suggests that planning is warranted.

The Location of the Planning Activity

Classical management thinking advocates a separation of “planning” and “doing.” According to this school of thought, managers plan for technical core employees and formulate most of the plans for the upper levels of the organization, with little participation from lower-level managers and workers. In contrast, behavioral management theorists suggest involving organization members in drawing up plans that affect them. Implementation of a management-by-objectives program (to be discussed later in this chapter), for example, is one means by which this participative planning can be realized. Researchers at the Tavistock Institute in England promote the idea of self-managed work groups as a means of expanding the level of employee involvement. According to their socio-technical model, work groups assume a major role in planning (as well as in organizing, directing, and controlling) the work assigned to them. Many organizations—for example, the John Lewis Partnership, Volvo, and Motorola—have had successful experiences with employee involvement in planning and controlling activities. 32

Planning Specialists

To keep pace with organizational complexity, technological sophistication, and environmental uncertainty, many organizations use planning specialists. Professional planners develop organizational plans and help managers plan. Boeing and Ford are among the many organizations with professional planning staffs. Planning specialists at United Airlines developed United’s crisis management plan.

Organizations have planning specialists and planning departments in place for a variety of reasons. These specialized roles have emerged because planning is time-consuming and complex and requires more attention than line managers can provide. In rapidly changing environments, planning becomes even more complex and often necessitates the development of contingency plans, once again demanding time for research and special planning skills. At times, effective planning requires an objectivity that managers and employees with vested interests in a particular set of organizational activities cannot provide.

A planning staff’s goals are varied. Their primary responsibility is to serve as planning advisors to top management and to assist lower-level line managers in developing plans for achieving their many and varied organizational objectives. Frequently, they coordinate the complex array of plans created for the various levels within an organization. Finally, a planning staff provides encouragement, support, and skill for developing formal organizational plans.

Managing Change

Using technology for a more efficient business.

The need to control costs has been around since trade, buying and selling, began. Each new technology creates new possibilities in production and cost reduction. Recent technology isn’t any different. Leaps in connectivity and data management are creating as many start-ups and new ways of identifying and solving problems.

Innovu uses new technology to help small and start-up business control the costs of their health benefits. Most small companies and start-ups are self-insured; that is, the company pays any covered employee medical bills or finances any wellness programs directly. According to Diane Hess, the executive director of the Central Penn Business Group on Health, employers account for 30 percent of the $2.9 trillion in health care spending in the United States, and workers’ compensation cost employers $91 billion in 2014. These costs included $31.4 billion for medical and $30.9 in cash payments (Hess 2016). Innovu mines employee claims to find trends and also provides data on costs due to absenteeism, disability, and workers’ compensation (Mamula 2017). As employers move to wellness programs to improve productivity and reduce medical costs, Innovu helps employers “make sure there are improvements to justify the expenses”(Hess 2016 n.p.).

In a similar vein, Marsh & McLennan Agency Michigan LLC is moving from simply providing insurance and generic “wellness programs” to helping companies focus on improving employees’ overall well-being. While traditional wellness programs focus on physical health to improve productivity, the emerging trend is to help employees with family, social, and financial issues as well. The most comprehensive program from Marsh & McLennan is its MMA Michigan’s Wellbeing University, which works to expand traditional wellness programs into nontraditional support services. The comprehensive approach of the program helps midsize employers “attract and retain talent, encourage employee satisfaction and reduce absenteeism.” The move beyond simple wellness is a move toward investing in employees. Bret Jackson, president of Economic Alliance for Michigan, said, “If you have a happy and healthy employee, productivity increases" (Greene 2017 n.p.).

Branch Messenger is a novel idea to solve employee scheduling. Employees are able to view schedules, cover shifts, and ask for time off, all from an app on their phone. It integrates with existing company systems to allow data analysis, but perhaps more importantly, it allows employees to connect. The start-up’s program has been adopted by large companies, such as Target, McDonald’s, and Walgreens, to allow employees to swap shifts simply by using an app on their cell phones. This process streamlines the process of swapping shifts by allowing employees to handle most of the leg work, “bridg[ing] the communication gap between workers and the companies that employ them.” The application is free to employees and runs on both iOS and Android devices. It can also generate digital schedules from paper schedules and create messaging channels that are workplace specific. Moving past simple shift flexibility, the application allows businesses to tap into an “on-demand” workforce that is more elastic. It also allows enterprises to “extend the value of existing workforce management systems without the need to switch costs” (Takahasi 2017 n.p.)

Allison Harden, a shift manager for a Pizza Hut in Tampa, Florida, likes the added connectivity of the program. “The messaging feature and the ability to share pictures and posts makes it really easy to stay connected with them,” Allison says. “It’s a way that I can do it outside a social network. Not everyone has Facebook and stuff like that—so it’s good and work-friendly, safe for work” (Branch Messenger 2017 n.p.).

“Safe for work” can carry connotations of “oversharing” on social media, but during Hurricane Irma, Allison and her crew relied on Branch Messenger for storm preparation, allowing the manager to post a safety checklist and update shifts. Then during the storm itself and after, drivers were able to tell each other which gas stations actually had gas, who still had electricity, and who was safe (Branch Messenger 2017).

Branch Messenger. 2017. “A Branch Customer Story: How A Tampa Pizza Hut Stayed in Contact During Hurricane Irma.” http://blog.branchmessenger.com/a-branch-customer-story-how-a-tampa-pizza-hut-stayed-in-contact-during-hurricane-irma/

Greene, Jay. 2017. “New course for Marsh & McLennan Agency as clients seek well-being.” Crain’s Detroit Business. http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20170806/news/635676/new-course-for-marsh-mclennan-agency-as-clients-seek-well-being

Hess, Diane. 2016. “Column: Using data to make business more efficient, employees more healthy.” Lancaster Online, November 8, 2016. http://lancasteronline.com/business/local_business/column-using-data-to-make-business-more-efficient-employees-more/article_c5887508-a529-11e6-98ae-4be5cc57a478.html

Mamula, Kris B. 2017. “Station Square data analytics company to use $6.5 million to grow.” Post-Gazette, August 10, 2017. http://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2017/08/10/innovu-ex...-pittsburgh-employee-benefits-health-insurance/stories/201708100025

Takahasi, Dean. 2017. “Branch Manager helps hourly workers swap shifts on mobile.” venturebeat.com. https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/02/branch-messenger-helps-hourly-shift-workers-schedule-their-lives-on-mobile/

• What ethical problems could surface with data mining as it applies to employee health records?
• What security risks would a company need to consider when utilizing smartphone apps for work?

Concept Check

• How do today’s organizations approach planning?
• Does planning pay off for today’s organizations?
• Which people in the organization should be involved in planning, and what are their roles?

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Organizational learning starting points and presuppositions: a case study from a hospital’s surgical department.

Jaakkola M, Lemmetty S, Collin K, et al. Organizational learning starting points and presuppositions: a case study from a hospital’s surgical department. Learn Org. 2024;31(3):337-357. doi:10.1108/tlo-12-2022-0160.

Organizational learning is a continuous process of integrating data and knowledge to ensure improvement. This qualitative study focuses on the starting points and presuppositions of organizational learning within a surgical department. Starting points for individual learning were informal and based on day-to-day work (e.g., solving a specific problem) and organizational learning encompassed more formal and intentional practices. Factors presupposing and framing the learning process can be divided into four categories: leadership and roles, practices and resources, collaboration and climate, and motivation and activity.

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Interorganizational health information exchange-related patient safety incidents: a descriptive register-based qualitative study. May 24, 2023

Register-based research of adverse events revealing incomplete records threatening patient safety. August 19, 2020

Reporting of health information technology system-related patient safety incidents: the effects of organizational justice. October 6, 2021

An analysis of electronic health record–related patient safety incidents. March 30, 2016

Preventable adverse drug events and their causes and contributing factors: the analysis of register data. February 16, 2011

Adverse events and near misses relating to information management in a hospital. June 22, 2016

COVID-19 has united patients and providers against institutional betrayal in health care: a battle to be heard, believed, and protected. August 19, 2020

Racial disparities in diagnostic delay among women with breast cancer. August 18, 2021

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Weaving a healthcare tapestry of safety and communication. July 16, 2014

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Optimizing Pediatric Patient Safety in the Emergency Care Setting. October 19, 2022

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The randomized AMBORA trial: impact of pharmacological/pharmaceutical care on medication safety and patient-reported outcomes during treatment with new oral anticancer agents. April 21, 2021

Nurse burnout predicts self-reported medication administration errors in acute care hospitals. January 20, 2021

A standardized formulary to reduce pediatric medication dosing errors: a mixed methods study. October 6, 2021

Errors in nurse-led triage: an observational study. December 2, 2020

Addressing mistreatment of providers by patients and family members as a patient safety event. February 16, 2022

Prescribing errors in post-COVID-19 patients: prevalence, severity, and risk factors in patients visiting a post-COVID-19 outpatient clinic. March 23, 2022

Health care quality and safety in a correctional system: creating goals and performance measures for improvement. August 17, 2022

Surgeon's narcissism, hostility, stress, bullying, meaning in life and work environment: a two-centered analysis. September 27, 2023

Patients' experiences and perspectives of patient-reported outcome measures in clinical care: a systematic review and qualitative meta-synthesis. May 11, 2022

Tools for establishing a sustainable safety culture within maternity services: a retrospective case study. April 26, 2023

How health care systems let our patients down: a systematic review into suicide deaths. July 1, 2020

Organizational and social-psychological conditions in healthcare and their importance for patient and staff safety. A critical incident study among doctors and nurses. January 21, 2015

Relationship of adverse events and support to RN burnout. October 8, 2014

Preventable mortality after common urological surgery: failing to rescue? September 3, 2014

Identifying facilitators and barriers for patient safety in a medicine label design system using patient simulation and interviews. July 23, 2014

Identifying high-risk medication: a systematic literature review. August 13, 2014

Evaluating implementation of a rapid response team: considering alternative outcome measures. May 7, 2014

Maternal sleepiness and risk of infant drops in the postpartum period. June 12, 2019

Implementing bedside handover: strategies for change management. October 27, 2010

Clinical handover of patients arriving by ambulance to the emergency department: a literature review. October 13, 2010

The impact of organisational and individual factors on team communication in surgery: a qualitative study. December 16, 2009

Why isn't 'time out' being implemented? An exploratory study. March 31, 2010

Partial do-not-resuscitate orders: a hazard to patient safety and clinical outcomes? March 16, 2011

Impact of a comprehensive safety initiative on patient-controlled analgesia errors. January 12, 2011

Hamilton Acute Pain Service Safety Study: using root cause analysis to reduce the incidence of adverse events. April 2, 2014

Socio-technical issues and challenges in implementing safe patient handovers: insights from ethnographic case studies. February 12, 2014

Team safety and innovation by learning from errors in long-term care settings. August 22, 2012

Quantitative assessment of workload and stressors in clinical radiation oncology. June 13, 2012

Handing over patient care: is it just the old broken telephone game? November 9, 2011

Investigating US medical students' motivation to respond to lapses in professionalism. October 3, 2018

The relationship between patient safety climate and occupational safety climate in healthcare—a multi-level investigation. August 16, 2017

Crossing the communication chasm: challenges and opportunities in transitions of care from the hospital to the primary care clinic. March 1, 2017

Patient safety culture: the impact on workplace violence and health worker burnout. February 8, 2023

How does workplace violence-reporting culture affect workplace violence, nurse burnout, and patient safety? December 7, 2022

Misreading injectable medications—causes and solutions: an integrative literature review. April 29, 2020

Work hours, work stress, and collaboration among ward staff in relation to risk of hospital-associated infection among patients. March 25, 2009

Hand-off communication: a requisite for perioperative patient safety. November 19, 2008

Bedside handover: quality improvement strategy to "transform care at the bedside." November 12, 2008

Outreach and Early Warning Systems (EWS) for the prevention of Intensive Care admission and death of critically ill adult patients on general hospital wards. August 8, 2007

What do medical records tell us about potentially harmful co-prescribing? July 18, 2007

Potassium and phosphorus repletion in hospitalized patients: implications for clinical practice and the potential use of healthcare information technology to improve prescribing and patient safety. February 14, 2007

Patient Safety Leadership WalkRounds™ at Partners HealthCare: learning from implementation. August 10, 2005

Patient safety culture in nursing: a dimensional concept analysis. July 30, 2008

Errors in the medication process: frequency, type, and potential clinical consequences. March 6, 2005

Potentially inappropriate medication use among elderly home care patients in Europe. April 15, 2005

Emergency medical services system changes reduce pediatric epinephrine dosing errors in the prehospital setting. October 25, 2006

Critical care nurses' role in rapid response teams: a qualitative systematic review. May 22, 2024

Pediatric Readiness in the Emergency Department. November 1, 2018

Patients' perspectives on quality and patient safety failures: lessons learned from an inquiry into transvaginal mesh in Australia. May 8, 2024

Supporting error management and safety climate in ambulatory care practices: the CIRSforte study. May 1, 2024

Organizational learning in the morbidity and mortality conference. March 27, 2024

Inter-hospital transfer is an independent risk factor for hospital-associated infection. March 20, 2024

How do we learn about error? A cross-sectional study of urology trainees. June 28, 2023

Green Cross method in a postanaesthesia care unit: a qualitative study of the healthcare professionals' experiences after 3 years, including the COVID-19 pandemic period. June 14, 2023

Patient safety trends in 2022: an analysis of 256,679 serious events and incidents from the nation’s largest event reporting database. May 17, 2023

The relationship between patient safety culture and the intentions of the nursing staff to report a near-miss event during the COVID-19 crisis. April 5, 2023

Quality and safety: learning from the past and (re)imagining the future. March 29, 2023

Evaluation of policies limiting opioid exposure on opioid prescribing and patient pain in opioid-naive patients undergoing elective surgery in a large American health system. March 8, 2023

The incidence of opioid misuse among the surgical patients with persistent opioid use. February 8, 2023

Am I safe? An interpretative phenomenological analysis of vulnerability as experienced by patients with complications following surgery. January 18, 2023

Patients' experience of patient safety information and participation in care during a hospital stay. November 16, 2022

A health system that won't learn from its mistakes. September 21, 2022

Variation in the reporting of elective surgeries and its influence on patient safety indicators. July 6, 2022

Creating a learning health system for improving diagnostic safety: pragmatic insights from US health care organizations. June 22, 2022

Learning environments, reliability enhancing work practices, employee engagement, and safety climate in VA cardiac catheterization laboratories. April 6, 2022

Morbidity and mortality caused by noncompliance with California hospital licensure: immediate jeopardies in California hospitals, 2007-2017. March 9, 2022

Failure to rescue following emergency surgery: a FRAM analysis of the management of the deteriorating patient. February 2, 2022

Filling a gap in safety metrics: development of a patient-centred framework to identify and categorise patient-reported breakdowns related to the diagnostic process in ambulatory care. October 27, 2021

Descriptive analysis of patient misidentification from incident report system data in a large academic hospital federation. October 20, 2021

Changes in hospital-acquired conditions and mortality associated with the hospital-acquired condition reduction program. September 29, 2021

Towards safer healthcare: qualitative insights from a process view of organisational learning from failure. August 25, 2021

Reducing failures in daily medical practice: healthcare failure mode and effect analysis combined with computer simulation. June 9, 2021

Learning during crisis: the impact of COVID-19 on hospital-acquired pressure injury incidence. June 2, 2021

Assessing patient safety culture in hospital settings. June 2, 2021

Achieving zero inequity: lessons learned from patient safety. May 27, 2021

Support for healthcare professionals after surgical patient safety incidents: a qualitative descriptive study in 5 teaching hospitals. May 26, 2021

To err is system: a comparison of methodologies for the investigation of adverse outcomes in healthcare. May 5, 2021

A human factors intervention in a hospital--evaluating the outcome of a TeamSTEPPS program in a surgical ward. April 14, 2021

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Ready. Set. Scale. Shaping leaders for hypergrowth

Imagine two talented entrepreneurs developing a groundbreaking, solar-powered flying car to revolutionize sustainable mobility. Propelled mainly by entrepreneurial spirit, charisma, and business savvy, their start-up builds a following as quickly as their electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype grabs headlines and dazzles consumers. Orders pour in from across the globe.

Now comes a critical inflection point. Can our hypothetical company scale from building a handful of bespoke eVTOL prototypes to establishing a global assembly line without losing the innovative edge at the heart of its appeal? The founders cannot afford to wait, but start-ups (companies whose funding stage is pre-Series B) face obvious challenges, including securing capital, maintaining differentiation in an emerging market, and contending with competition from more prominent players. A less obvious challenge—but no less essential to success—is bringing new leaders into the ranks (potentially including professional managers from larger companies) and undertaking rapid, effective leadership development to avoid the pitfalls that keep 80 percent of start-ups from succeeding. 1 Based on a sample of 3,164 companies with Series A funding in 2011 to 2013, assuming six to eight years to scale or exit, PitchBook data, April 2021.

Intentionally investing in leadership development can help hypergrowth companies 2 Based on McKinsey analysis, hypergrowth refers to a period of rapid expansion with a CAGR of 20 to 40 percent and three phases: build and launch (annualized return on revenue [ARR] of $0 to $10 million); grow (ARR between $10 million and $100 million); and scale (ARR greater than $100 million). counter the forces that may otherwise stand in their way, such as limited management skill sets, less experienced talent, and relative inexperience leading larger teams. Once start-ups manage to emerge from the early stages in which many fail, they need sustainable leadership capabilities to give the organization the flex and muscle required to adapt as growth continues.

To be sure, this leadership transition will present challenges, especially because leadership development should be what we call “at pace, on purpose”—that is, enabling rapid transformation while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and the core tenets of the organization’s culture. That’s a tricky balance, whether the CEO founded the company or stepped in during the growth phase. But it’s worth the effort. By recognizing the importance of leadership in the hypergrowth process and investing intentionally in its development, startups can not only make the transition to “scale-ups” (companies whose funding stage is from Series B to IPO) but widen their competitive advantage.

Leadership development is not optional

There are some things in business which, if done suboptimally, will not necessarily impose significant liabilities. Leadership is not one of these things. Well-developed, high-quality leadership has a profound positive impact on an organization and its operating model. 3 Claudy Jules, Alok Kshirsagar, and Kate Lloyd George, “ Scaling up: How founder CEOs and teams can go beyond aspiration to ascent ,” McKinsey, November 9, 2022. McKinsey research shows that the EBITDA of organizations performing in the top quartile of leadership is almost double that of others, while organizations are 1.9 times more likely to have above-median financial performance when the leadership team has a shared, meaningful, and engaging vision.

Case study: Investing early in leadership development

When consumers expressed distrust in providers of housing finance in an Asian market, one multinational conglomerate decided to act. Leveraging its brand reputation, it set out to show the market how housing finance should be done: with honesty, integrity, and care.

The company had successfully built many businesses before, but this was its first financial institution. Its executive committee didn’t want to acquire an existing company that was part of the problem, so it chose to create a start-up and attract the best external real estate and financial talent. Looking at the market potential, the start-up CEO and his new team felt confident and planned for hypergrowth.

But the CEO was also concerned. He noticed that his new team had significant differences in leadership styles and cultural backgrounds that were already leading to friction. And looking at the steep curve in talent attraction plans, he feared inconsistent ways of working and a fuzzy culture would, over time, slow the company’s growth. He wanted to get it right before launch.

The CEO chose to take his 30-person leadership team beyond the technical plans for growth. In multiple workshops with external facilitators, he and the team jointly defined the identity of the company by including its higher purpose, desired culture, and aspirational leadership style. The process provided not only a point of reference for the existing team but also a clear set of criteria for hiring future talent. With significantly increased cohesion, clarity, and confidence, the company entered the market.

In the eyes of investors, leadership quality can affect a company’s market value by up to 30 percent. 4 Derek Matthews, “Why founders should focus more on people development to increase startup value,” Forbes, January 31, 2019. In addition, savvy general partners in private equity know that founders and their top teams have an outsize effect on the culture and operations of a start-up—and they have a keen interest in evaluating leadership potential as they make investment decisions. This is because effective founder-led companies have the potential to outperform peers. For instance, S&P 500 companies in which the founder is still the CEO generate 31 percent more patents than the rest. 5 Chris Zook, “Founder-led companies outperform the rest—here’s why,” Harvard Business Review, March 24, 2016.

Yet investors also know that leadership is not a static characteristic and that leaders must evolve for a company to grow. This is especially true for start-ups, in which the skill sets and approaches crucial to early success are often quite different from those required as an organization rapidly grows. Why? Because start-ups typically have less infrastructure and fewer processes, rapidly changing environments, a strong sense of culture, founder CEOs who are often also direct managers, and senior leaders who take on multiple roles. Start-ups can’t wait until the dust settles to acquire and develop the leadership capabilities they need. For hypergrowth companies and typical market disruptors, the dust does not settle, and founders may not want it to: the excitement of the start-up mentality is arguably part of the ride that appeals to visionary founders (see sidebar “Case study: Investing early in leadership development”).

Priorities in tension: Moving at pace while retaining purpose

Two vital elements are essential for building leadership capabilities in a growing, founder-led organization: pace and purpose. Understanding each in the context of leadership development and capability building is crucial, as is understanding their interplay.

Pace is important because rapid growth often leads to instability, along with sizable gaps in leaders’ experience, skills, and capabilities. When it comes to purpose, the challenge lies in transforming leadership mindsets and skills targeted to the scaling ambitions of the organization, together with its vision. This is difficult, because the target is inherently a moving one: leaders need the stability to function with the size and scope of their existing teams but must also embrace the dynamism and ongoing growth that will match the organization’s evolution. 6 Chris Zook, “Founder-led companies outperform the rest—here’s why,” Harvard Business Review, March 24, 2016. Moreover, CEOs must manage any tension created between leaders who have been there from the beginning and those who arrive during the growth stage—coming from different company cultures and with potentially different ideas for how to scale.

The trick is determining how to keep the ongoing transformation occurring at a tempo that maximizes performance and aligns disparate units of the fast-growing organization while staying true to the company’s purpose. This means leadership development has to be “at pace, on purpose” to enable rapid transformation while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and the core tenets of the organization’s culture.

Four essential questions to guide leadership development

As the founders of our imaginary eVTOL start-up grapple with the challenges of growing their successful enterprise, they often ponder big questions that get to the heart of the company’s present and future:

• Who leads? Expand focus beyond the early few leaders to the top 40 to 50 critical roles and build capabilities early.
• How do we empower leaders? Give leaders authority as a way to expand their strengths and confidence.
• How do we keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive? Create a “founder mentality” throughout the organization and infuse the energy of the early days throughout all layers.
• What’s needed from us? Founders and top leaders need to shift priorities from building to managing relationships with shareholders and investors and preparing for a potential IPO or challenging times ahead.

1. Who leads?

As an organization expands beyond the start-up phase, it’s vital to understand what its leadership entails and demands. This requires a fundamental shift in how leadership is conceptualized: for example, from focusing on founders and a handful of senior leaders to a broader scope, shaping a few dozen critical top roles into one connected leadership team.

As leadership grows in structure and scope, the vital task becomes clarifying and articulating the company’s culture—the values and behaviors essential to the next generation of leaders. This is a delicate task involving some tension: founding teams must simultaneously embrace adaptation while doubling down on core values (see sidebar “Case study: The top-team leadership journey at an e-commerce platform”).

Case study: The top-team leadership journey at an e-commerce platform

A European e-commerce company experienced high growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a hard correction. To boost competitiveness and move faster, they sharpened their strategy, updated their operating model, and evolved their culture. The executive team realized that the key to improvement was changing the leadership behavior of the executive team and the surrounding top 50 roles. These leaders needed to work in different ways with each other and with the company. A project team was convened to create a nine-month leadership development journey comprising diagnostics, multiday workshops, and one-on-one coaching. The executive team aligned on priorities in the new strategy, drove decision making according to new roles, and mutually supported each other’s growth and development. The top-50 team shifted from a strict functional focus to a shared understanding of full company context, developed new behaviors around decision making and empowerment to speed up processes, and integrated new communication mechanisms to stay more connected.

Specific roles may change even as the founders and top team are charged with stewardship of the company and its culture. While leaders may wear multiple hats in the early stages, organizational growth will likely call for more structure and clearer roles. Moreover, the small circle of early leaders must acknowledge that the expanding enterprise will demand leadership and people skills that may be outside of their current knowledge and experience. As the company expands, it becomes crucial to enhance the matching of roles and profiles within the organization. This requires a thoughtful evaluation to “match the A players to the A jobs.” It may require hiring new people with different skills or investing in upskilling current employees to ensure the right individuals are in the right roles.

2. How do we empower leaders?

As start-ups grow exponentially, new hires are rapidly brought on, mostly for expertise. This often results in a wide range of leadership experience and leaders facing an ever-changing and expanding scope.

Case study: How tailoring leadership development built capabilities at a new joint venture

Leadership development should support both the business and cultural growth. A Philippines-based telecom company created a leadership development program that began with these objectives in mind, tying business skills and capabilities to the company’s vision and values. After carefully examining where things stood, it envisioned and built solutions, implemented them, and then—crucially—sought to ensure the changes and benefits could be maintained. Ultimately, leaders were able to draw clearer links between business objectives and their individual and collective roles. They were also equipped to cascade core skills and capabilities to the rest of the enterprise.

Maximizing leadership growth across a growing company hinges on creating highly customized programs that focus on the development of specific leadership skills and enabling leaders to understand their roles within the company’s big picture. Leaders at every level need to see how they contribute to the strategic evolution of the organization and have a shared understanding of the full company context in order to act as enterprise leaders beyond their functional scope. To do so, they need the opportunity and support to rise above daily firefighting. This is particularly relevant for younger talent with less experience leading others. A fast-growing consumer tech and media company implemented this by sharing internal data, such as subscription evolutions, with all employees to ensure organizational focus went in the right direction.

In addition, it’s common for leaders to feel overwhelmed or even burned out due to the execution pace. Companies can get ahead of this by building resilience through nuanced exposure to high-stress situations with the opportunity for reflection and debriefs (see sidebar “Case study: How tailoring leadership development built capabilities at a new joint venture”).

3. How do we keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive?

To ensure the continuity of a start-up’s original energy and spirit throughout its growth, it is vital to infuse the core “founder mentality” across all layers of the organization. This can be especially crucial at the stage when the company has grown such that core leaders feel more removed from employees. That’s when it can be particularly powerful to ensure all individuals—regardless of level or function—feel empowered to take ownership of the company’s culture, while also embracing the dynamism and agility that fuel growth (see sidebar “Case study: How a hypergrowth tech company cascaded its culture”).

Case study: How a hypergrowth tech company cascaded its culture

A rapidly growing Singapore-based tech company needed to ensure that its core business culture evolved from tacit to intentional as it entered its next phase of growth and prepared for an upcoming IPO.

The company invited about 100 functional and business leaders to participate in an 18-month program to build leadership skills that reinforced its values and future direction. This approach enabled participating leaders to test and pass along what they learned, generating an amplifying effect that allowed more than 2,000 colleagues to benefit from the program.

As companies expand, senior leaders can recognize their essential roles as coaches, mentors, and champions of the company empowering the next cohort of leaders. From a leadership development standpoint, it is valuable to work with individuals who excel at handling challenges and help shape them into purposeful leaders who grasp the bigger picture. In our experience, founders who adhere to proper delegation also tend to see empowered employees in response.

As organizations become more complex, there is merit to functions implementing their own objectives and key results (OKRs) to imbue structure and accountability in a more scaled environment. However, there is a risk of functions becoming overly focused on those OKRs, which is where leaders can benefit from fostering a “one organization” mindset and identifying early on what sets the company apart. 7 Blair Epstein, Caitlin Hewes, and Scott Keller, “ Capturing the value of ‘one firm,’ ” McKinsey Quarterly , May 9, 2023.

Embracing creative disruption is critical in maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit. But the founding company culture itself must change so that the company may scale. Gone are the days when growth was the only metric that mattered; investors want returns, which can incite companies to take actions that go against the founding culture, such as eliminating perks and cutting the workforce. A healthy culture can keep company spirit alive while also adapting to new realities.

4. What is needed from us?

All CEOs overseeing a growing organization—regardless of whether they founded it—are not leading the same organization in the scaling-growth stage as they were at the start-up stage. This may sound obvious, but, in practice, it is no small feat for founders and early-stage CEOs to acknowledge they need to grow and adapt to the same extent as their organizations—let alone take action to do so.

Complexity multiplies as companies grow. This necessitates, of course, increased delegation so leaders and top teams can prioritize what will become their most important role: the management of relationships with key stakeholders, including shareholders and investors (especially in turbulent times or in preparation for an IPO). If this results in a compounding number of granular daily tasks and decisions flowing to top leadership for vetting, it spells trouble: the speed of decisions will no longer match the organization’s speed.

Case study: Scaling a food pioneer in North America

A fast-growing food company found its broad ambitions challenged by the limits of its operating model. The CEO was the sole owner of enterprise finances, making accountability unclear across functions and geographies. Resources weren’t allocated for strategic effectiveness and efficiency, and SG&A expenses were spiraling as a result. Talent shortages in critical roles were hampering growth, and the enterprise lacked a performance culture. The company acted, starting with a comprehensive diagnostic followed by the design of a blueprint for how it should evolve. A talent “win room” accelerated hiring for key roles and helped build out the performance management ecosystem. Early results indicate that the company’s operating model is now more intentional, with appropriate profit and loss accountability and resource allocation as well as tighter control over SG&A spending. And the right people are in the right positions, with employees across the enterprise understanding their roles and being held accountable for their performance.

CEOs of growing firms must discern what is needed from them as the company evolves. How do they want to show up? Instead of trying to do everything—as they may have during the early days—leaders need to ascertain what they can and should do, delegating the rest to a top-quality team. But they also need to marry this distance from everyday tasks with keeping the needs of customers at the forefront of their minds. Managing this simultaneous awareness and delegation is at the core of how founders can drive business value as the company grows (see sidebar “Case study: Scaling a food pioneer in North America”).

Engage the questions to drive growth

While every company is unique, all must adapt as they grow. We recommend leaders take these four questions to heart, reflect on them, and discuss them in depth within the organization. It’s worth investing time and space to dig in because leaders who discern and articulate meaningful answers to all four may derive tremendous value for their organizations. This simple checklist provides founders with an effective way to assess their own leadership health, as well as that of their top teams:

• What have we done to focus closely on our top 15–20 critical roles that drive strategic value, understanding what they are and what they do?
• Beyond existing leadership skills, which additional skills are needed to scale to the next level?
• Which efforts help us define the values and behavioral characteristics of a shaper-leader?
• What crucial learning experiences have we developed with ongoing development pushes and apprenticeship opportunities?
• What highly customized programs, including comprehensive class options for different topics, do we have for learners?
• What pilot projects are creating resilience to prepare leaders in advance?
• How are we developing purposeful leaders with a strong understanding of why they are leaders?
• How have we developed a unified organization with a culture of “whatever it takes” for customer impact?
• How do we continually ask how we can make it better, disrupt, and create “business insurgency”?

4. What is needed from founders?

• How effectively am I delegating, spending less time with day-to-day operations and more time on big moves to drive enterprise strategy, such as M&A or product expansion?
• What can we let go of so we can stop trying to do everything and work on things we care about instead?
• How are we staying in touch with customers to ensure we maintain a deep “frontline obsession”?

Like our imaginary sustainable-mobility founders who hit on something revolutionary, today’s hyperscalers often have the potential to disrupt life as we know it with new ideas and the energy, discipline, teamwork, and persistence it takes to turn those ideas into reality. That opportunity is a compelling call to leadership. But achieving it requires a steadfast growth mindset, a tremendous dose of self-awareness, a commitment to ongoing adaptation, and a clear understanding that in the ranks of the world’s best organizations, leadership development is never finished.

Arne Gast is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, where Fleur Tonies is an associate partner; Claudy Jules is a partner in the Washington, DC, office; and Alok Kshirsagar is a senior partner in the Mumbai office.

The authors wish to thank Cornelius Chang, Kate Lloyd George, Michael Park, Karolina Rosa, and Joachim Talloen for their contributions to this article.

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A Process for Using LLMs in a National Security Research Organization

This article originally appeared in Forbes Technology Council .

Every company must forge a path to balance the disruptive risks and opportunities posed by large language models (LLMs). But for an organization like ours, working in national security, the stakes and complexity are considerably higher. CNA is an independent nonprofit that produces analysis for the military and for homeland security agencies. Our success over more than 80 years has depended upon government confidence in our research quality and in our ability to manage risk to our networks and privileged information. To balance the heightened risks posed by using LLMs with the need to get the latest tools in the hands of our researchers quickly, we engaged in a collaborative and flexible four-step process:

• Understand requirements and risks

Establish policy and guidance

Enter into a contract with employees, collect feedback and adjust, understand requirements and risk.

Our scientific and professional staff consistently demand the latest tools and technology, and they pressed us to incorporate LLMs into CNA’s infrastructure. Researchers wanted to use LLMs to summarize long reports, speed up programming, and quickly generate outlines. Professional staff wanted to rapidly produce draft position descriptions, policies, and company-wide communications. The trick was to address these demands while maintaining a secure, safe, and compliant infrastructure.

We tasked a team in our Global Information Security group at CNA to develop processes to assess risk. The public servers that LLMs run on concerned us most. As a partner in U.S. national security, CNA operates under many rules that govern our information technology infrastructure and security—especially what we can put into the public space. LLMs potentially create risks, especially to proprietary and sensitive data.

LLMs also introduce risks that could affect the analytical quality that sustains our reputation. One risk is that they can “hallucinate” or make things up. For example, LLMs claimed CNA had published a specific piece of work, returning a title and author, when an exhaustive search of our document repository showed that such a report doesn’t exist. Another is that LLMs are trained on internet data, which introduces bias and false information. A third research risk is that many LLMs do not provide complete citations for generated text, raising concerns about plagiarism.

We needed a collaborative approach bridging research and technology to address these risks. We formed a four-person executive team—the chief information officer, chief research officer, and two executive vice presidents. The team settled on four technical governing policies compliant with current government information technology regulations and security requirements:

• LLM governance policy, a new framework to harness the benefits of AI while managing risks
• Acceptable use policy, updated to describe acceptable and unacceptable employee behavior on CNA's network
• Bring your own device policy, updated to allow greater flexibility while ensuring safeguards to manage security risks
• Software/custom code development policy, updated to standardize secure software development for all CNA-developed code

In addition to these policies, we developed guidance that provides general direction to users and lays out validation and accountability requirements for LLM-generated content. Key principles include:

• LLMs are tools that can help with some aspects of the research process and corporate tasks.
• LLMs do not replace critical thinking by a human.
• LLM users may not enter into an LLM any classified or Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), nor any proprietary, privileged, protected health information, personally identifiable information, or business sensitive information.
• LLM users are responsible for any LLM-generated content, which must be validated by a human. This includes checking for biases and factual or statistical errors.
• LLM use must be transparent, described in the methodology section of reports and briefings and acknowledged in footnotes—including the name of the analyst who verified the results.
• LLMs cannot be authors.

Together, our technical governing policies and research guidance mitigate both technical and research risks, reducing the likelihood of an information spill and helping users apply LLMs in a responsible manner.

Establishing sound technical policies and research guidance is necessary for success, but it isn’t enough. We needed employees to acknowledge their responsibility for reducing risk through a formal LLM access request process.

To access LLMs, employees first read the technical governing policies and guidance. They then complete and sign an LLM Request and User Agreement Form. On the form, an employee specifies all LLM tools they plan to use for CNA work, whether on a company computer or personal device. The employee’s manager signs and approves the form, and the CIO’s information security team reviews it for technical risks before sending the approved tools list to the information technology team to allow user access. The process creates a record of requests and insight into which tools are most requested.

To encourage cross-organizational collaboration, we provide authorized LLM users with a collaboration space inside a Microsoft Teams channel, where they learn from each other, sharing what works and what doesn’t. We also collect feedback on the LLM user experience through regular surveys and small group discussions. So far, 94 percent of users find LLMs to be useful, and 80 percent will continue to use them. Still, 75 percent identified drawbacks, including wrong code, incorrect content, opinionated language, and nonsense answers. Many felt limited by the inability to upload proprietary documents or PDFs. In focus groups, staff asked for guidance on prompt development—to get the most effective answers to the questions they ask of LLMs. And they told us they wanted LLMs that could operate inside CNA’s firewalls. We are incorporating this feedback into program improvements underway now.

Developed in just under six weeks, our approach to access has enabled employees to stay curious, explore further, and witness firsthand the incredible power of language models within deliberate bounds. Since the regulations that organizations like ours work under cannot keep pace with the disruptive changes created by LLMs, leaders must learn to prudently manage risk. Cross-discipline collaboration at the leadership level has allowed us to find this critical balance between opportunity and risk in harnessing LLMs to further our mission.

Rizwan Jan is Vice President and Chief Information Officer and Kim Deal is Chief Research Officer at CNA.

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