Assessment 2: TOWS Matrix Analysis and Strategic Plan

Prepare a TOWS matrix (1-2 page grid) that summarizes a health care organization’s threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths. Write an analysis paper (4-5 pages) highlighting key findings from the TOWS matrix. Create a draft strategic plan (1-2) pages that describes four strategies for the organization to pursue based on findings from the first two course assessments.

Note: Each assessment in this course builds upon the work you have completed in previous assessments. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in the order in which they are presented.

An essential element in evaluating a health care organization’s overall strategy entails examining the company’s resources and competitive capabilities. Are they sufficient to allow the organization to pursue the best market opportunities, while minimizing external threats?

The most widely used tool in conducting this evaluation is a TOWS matrix. A well-executed TOWS analysis provides the basis for crafting the organization’s strategic plan. A key difference needs to be addressed here. SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis has been a popular way to display pertinent external issues and internal strengths and weaknesses. This type of analysis involves listing the organization’s strengths and weaknesses and perceived external opportunities and threats. SWOT, however, does not provide much insight into what strategy decisions might result from the list of strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats. As a result, the TOWS matrix (threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths) was developed to provide a better way to develop and evaluate specific adaptive strategic alternatives.

This assessment provides an opportunity for you to complete a TOWS matrix and corresponding analysis, as well as draft a high-level strategic plan based on your TOWS matrix.

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

• Competency 1: Analyze organizational structure, design, culture, and climate in relation to environmental forces.
• Incorporate methodologies from the knowledge-economy management approach appropriate for the organization.
• Integrate recent strategy management research findings into a strategic management plan.
• Competency 2: Develop a strategic organizational plan that provides human and financial resources to support targeted organizational outcomes.
  • Synthesize operational and financial components into a strategic planning process.
• Competency 3: Recommend an organizational structure and design to optimize a strategic plan.
  • Determine the organizational structure that best facilitates the strategy.
• Competency 4: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and consistent with expectations for professionals in health care administration.
  • Create a clear, concise, well-organized, professional TOWS matrix analysis and strategic plan draft.
  • Apply proper APA formatting and style guidelines to citations and references.

Note: Complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented. For this assessment, you will continue to work with the organization you selected in Assessment 1.

Preparation

Use the following to complete the assessment.

• TOWS Analysis Worksheet [DOCX].
• Common Strategies and Goals Health Care Organizations Develop and Monitor [DOCX].

To prepare for the assessment, you are encouraged to create a practice TOWS matrix, using the TOWS Analysis Worksheet. The practice matrix enables you to jot down your initial thoughts and then come back to it later to see whether anything could be expanded on in the matrix that you submit as part of your next assessment.

Consider your selected organization’s threats, opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses. In addition, keep the following key points in mind:

• Assumptions: What assumptions do people in the organization’s internal and external environment have? What alternative assumptions might be useful in these situations?
• Information: What information do your organization’s internal and external stakeholders have? What information are they missing?
• Evaluation Criteria: What criteria would you use to evaluate the quality of the information and the effectiveness of existing or suggested strategies?

In addition, you may wish to review the assessment instructions and scoring guide to ensure that you understand the work you will be asked to complete.

Note: Remember that you can submit all, or a portion, of your draft analysis and strategic plan to Smarthinking Tutoring for feedback before you submit the final version for this assessment. If you plan to use this free service, be mindful that the turnaround time to receive feedback is 24–48 hours.

Scenario

Your manager congratulates you on a fantastic job on the environmental analysis. She now needs your help with the next step in developing a strategic plan for the CEO—completing a TOWS matrix and accompanying analysis. After completing the TOWS matrix and analysis, your manager also wants you to prepare a high-level, draft strategic plan for the organization.

You know that a TOWS matrix is a decision-making tool for developing strategic alternatives. You also know that you will be better able to develop a more effective strategic plan based on an in-depth analysis and understanding of the current environment.

TOWS Matrix Analysis and Strategic Plan

Health care organizations play a critical role in ensuring that individuals get the healthcare services they need. It is important to note that the current and recent trend of the demand by patients and society for better patient care services has put healthcare organizations under pressure to deliver. In most cases, the patients prefer to go for care and treatment services where they are served best, making the healthcare organizations remain on their toes and be competitive (Jangland et al., 2017). Therefore, for better performance and competitive advantage, it is prudent for the organizations to always analyse their performances through well know tools or strategies such as the TOWS matrix.

Even though the SWOT analysis has been used for years for such purposes, it does little to provide sufficient insight into the strategies that may come from the identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Therefore, it is necessary to use the TOWS analysis, which incorporates adaptive strategies. This assignment aims to perform a TOWS matrix analysis for a healthcare organization and formulate a strategic plan.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource

 TOWS Matrix

As earlier indicated, TOWS analysis is a variant of the SWOT analysis, which additionally focuses on the organization’s internal factors to come up with a relevant strategic option that can appropriately be implemented by the organization (Baird et al., 2019). Therefore, this section will entail the process of identifying and writing down the organization’s threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths. Angels Home Healthcare Florida focuses on maximizing the geriatric population’s quality of life. The healthcare organization offers a range of services such as medical management, therapy, and nursing for injury or illness (“Angels Home.”, n,d). Even though the home health care services help reduce congestion in the hospital, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought various complications that need reformulation to help protect the patient and their families and healthcare professionals.

The high rates of transmission of the COVID-19 virus mean that various protective measures and preventive measures should be undertaken to minimize the condition’s risks and threats (Izzetti et al., 2020). Home Health care services are characterized by various aspects such as sending health teams to various homes to visit several families that need the services offered by the organization. It is worth noting that even with following the suggested safety protocol, the strategy of sending the health teams has to be re-evaluated, with the major focus being the avoidance of contagion between the sent health teams and the would-be patients. The implication is that the primary aim of the home healthcare services has to largely be modified.

Even before the pandemic, the management of waste practice needed some adjustments, and the coming of the pandemic only added to the need to make appropriate adjustments in reactions to the changing care landscape. As such, the TWOS analysis will mainly focus on the possible ways of transforming the threats brought forth by the Covid-19 pandemic into various opportunities for growth. Therefore, the focusing areas include dealing with home care wastes and the home care offered by the patient caregivers and the organization’s healthcare teams.

TOWS Matrix Analysis

The TOWS matric analysis is helpful in strategy formulation as well as selection. In addition, it plays a central role in generating, comparing, and eventually selecting business strategies. As earlier highlighted, the TOWS analysis goes beyond what the SWOT analysis does since, apart from identifying the internal weaknesses and strengths and threats and external opportunities. It shows the quadrant relationship and applies the internal strengths to capitalize on the internal weaknesses and external opportunities with the aim of assessing the vulnerability to external threats (Baird et al., 2019). Upon first identifying the threats and opportunities, identification of the weaknesses and strengths follows to enable maximization of the improvements and minimization of the threats and weaknesses. This section, therefore, discusses the individual threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths.

Threats

In most cases, the elderly patients and individuals having chronic conditions are the ones who usually receive home health care services. As far as the COVID-19 pandemic care is concerned, they are more vulnerable to complications or contamination due to the underlying conditions (Sinclair & Abdelhafiz, 2020). Since the first case was reported, various studies have since shown that the pandemic has a short transmission cycle; hence, the condition can be transmitted even before the first symptoms are observed. At Angels Home Healthcare, the professionals offering the home care service have to visit at least two residences in a day, therefore making family-patient-health care specialist interaction a possible active transmission route. The virus transmission may result from an individual having to get into contact with a contaminated residue or surface, continued utilization of the instruments in the care settings such as stethoscope, thermometer, and the medical records since the virus stay infectious for some time when on the surface.

Opportunities

The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought a lot of confusion and complications. Therefore, from the data and evidence connected to the mortality rates caused by the pandemic, various protection, management, and preparation measures, and surveillance have been undertaken (Sinclair & Abdelhafiz, 2020). These efforts have all been focused on helping in lowering the contamination risk and the spread of the virus. In addition, high levels of effort and management of the waste that has been possibly contaminated by the virus are some of the most critical strategies of lowering the risk of infection at Angels Home Healthcare.

Various laws and regulations in the federal government usually govern how the wastes with biological contents with a considerable risk of infection and handled and disposed of. As such, one opportunity that the coming of the pandemic has brought to the company is the possibility of discussing some of the possible short-term and long-term variations in waste management practices. Therefore, the opportunity arises for Angels Home Healthcare to improve how the health waste produced from the home health care service is managed for the present duration and even in the future.

Weaknesses

In normal practice, even the best and most performing organizations usually have weaknesses that always need to be addressed if the organization is to continue performing at high levels. One of the most common factors known to lead to poor functioning of organizations is insufficient training or lack of training (Rodriguez & Walters, 2017). The implication of insufficient training or lack of training is that there is a higher chance of resultant below par and poor practices, which raises the danger and security risks. Such risks usually have long-term, medium-term, and short-term adverse consequences.

Even though there are legal requirements or obligations of capacity building and training for individuals and groups of individuals engaged in the provision of health services, over seventy-five percent of the professionals offering home health care services have indicated that they have not been trained at all in the last five years on the waste management and strategies of waste management. Such lack of training negatively impact performance (Rodriguez & Walters, 2017).  In the last half a decade, nurses and nurse technicians reported minimal or no training concerning waste management, while nearly half of the professionals responsible for advising the caregivers on effective waste management reported not having done so. It is worth noting that in terms of the practices and strategies involved in waste management, only the sharps wastes are well separated and kept in the appropriate collectors before being availed by the responsible individual for proper disposal by the responsible authorities.

In addition, the caregivers and health care professionals sometimes fail to segregate other biological wastes and chemical wastes. Therefore, these wastes are usually disposed of together with other usual household wastes. It is common knowledge that the hospitals remain the largest producer of health waste and that the home health care service facilities produce considerable amounts of possibly hazardous waste which, when not properly managed, then there are high chances of the risk of infections to not only the family members and friends but to also the cleaning workers.

Strengths

Home health care services are effective as an option to other care approaches. Central to the home health care services are strategies and actions to rehabilitate, prevent diseases, and promote health through effective and continuous patient care services. Therefore, at Angels Home Healthcare, such services have formed part of proactive strategies to fight the pandemic. The organization achieves the feat by helping lower the cases of overcrowding and unnecessary hospitalizations in the health facilities, whether on an emergency or urgent.

One of the approaches proposed by the World Health Organization in reducing the rates of infections resulting from the pandemic is to try and minimize contact between people as much as possible (Izzetti et al., 2020). On the other hand, reducing the contact between the patients and friends or families through restricting visiting frequency and controlling the flow of people can easily make the condition of the elderly patients and those with chronic conditions worsen, hence the need for hospitalization. Therefore, Angels Home Healthcare will play a significant role in advising individuals in general care, clinical symptoms, and signs, and the prevention of contagions alongside lowering the need and demand of hospital beds for individuals presenting with severe symptoms.

Strategic Plan

Organizations should have sufficient knowledge of the appropriate management strategies to improve quality and maintain competitive advantage. Such strategies should focus on, among other things motivating employees to put more energy and effort to ensure that they do their best. Motivated employees work with vigor and passion, benefiting the organization in the end (Ginter et al., 2018). Proactivity towards motivating the staff may entail frequent training and carrying out orientation programs for new employees. An end result is a group of individuals with well-developed knowledge and skills that spur them to excellence in pursuit of optimum performance according to their ability.

Having done the TOWS matrix and analysis for Angels Home Healthcare, this section focuses on strategic planning. Strategic planning for Angels Home Healthcare will be critical in helping the organization to adjust operation directions in the phase of a changing environment, formulate agreements connected to the intended results or outcomes and strengthen operations. In addition, strategic planning will be essential in ensuring that the staff and other stakeholders are pulling in the same direction and towards achieving the established goals, prioritizing resources and energy, and setting the priorities right (Ginter et al., 2018). In relation to Angels Home Healthcare, various strategies will be helpful for the organization in collaboration with the local authorities in supporting the initiatives and monitoring the progress as well as the management process. As such, four specific strategies have been identified, defence strategy, reinforcement strategy, confrontation strategy, and offensive strategy.

Strategy 1: The Offensive Strategy

The offensive strategy is related to the strength opportunities. This strategy focuses on perfecting and increasing strengths to foster appropriate application of the opportunities and make them or transform them into competitive advantages (Ginter et al., 2018). As such, for Angels Home Healthcare, the listed below offensive strategies have been formulated:

1. Undertake frequent training programs detailing health waste management for the home health care service professionals connected and associated with Angels Home Healthcare.
2. Reconsider the logistics of waste associated with the Angels Home Healthcare as produced by the caregivers and the health professionals

• Offer detailed training to all the professionals to engage in the safe collection of the home health care waste and appropriately carry them to the designated and correct disposal sites.

Strategy two: Confrontation Strategy

The confrontation strategy is related to the strength threats (Ginter et al., 2018). Therefore, it entails the formulation of confrontation strategies that take advantage of the organization’s strengths to minimize threats. From the analysis, it was observed that one of the strengths of Angels Home Healthcare is the proactivity in addressing the threats of the paused by the pandemic. Therefore, various strategies have been arrived at:

1. Exploit and apply the benefits and versatility of telemedicine by the healthcare team in the remote care for every patient considered a non-priority during the ravaging pandemic. Such will be accomplished through video calls, cellular calls, or telephone calls by the nursing team and doctors.
2. Follow the World Health Organization’s directive of minimizing contacts and limiting social contact between the patients and other people to hinder the pandemic spread as well as low the risks among the most vulnerable individuals in the home care.

• Perform adequate and detailed orientation and education to the residents regarding fighting the pandemic through environmental strategies, acceptable personal hygiene, and ensuring that everyone involved in the line of the Angels Home Healthcare care activities is masked.

Strategy Three: Reinforcement Strategy

The third strategy, which is the reinforcement strategy, is related to the weakness opportunities. This strategy aims at analysing and overcoming weaknesses (Ginter et al., 2018). The implication is that the organization is capable of taking advantage of the opportunities. Therefore, upon doing the TOWS analysis for Angels Home Healthcare, various reinforcement strategies were formulated, including:

1. Managing and limiting the total number of the patients to be visited at home by the Angels Home Healthcare health professionals
2. Doing a rotation of the healthcare team and controlling the number of individuals participating in the daily care and those who come to attend. This ensures that the daily responsibility is exclusively left on a single caregiver.

Strategy four: Defence Strategy

The next strategy that Angels Home Healthcare will focus on is the defence strategy. The defence strategy is connected to weakness threats. This strategy focuses on the various activities capable of protecting the patient and the Angels Home Healthcare health professional team engaging in the care acts. Therefore, listed below are some of the defence-boosting strategies formulated.

1. Seeking for increased involvement of the local authority decision-makers in the efforts to appropriately manage the health waste.
2. Reinforcing and ensuring that there is always and consists use and exchange of the necessary personal protective equipment such as lab coat, hat, eye protection, gloves, and masks by the Angels Home Healthcare health professional team between observations and during observations and ensuring that every instrument is sanitized.

• Ensure that there is no or limited physical contact with the surfaces and furniture of the homes visited, caregivers, and the family members to control the potential spread of the virus and contamination.

1. Offer and make available the material and financial resources that can be used to effectively separate and appropriately pack and move the health waste from the homes that are potentially hazardous.

By applying the TOWS matrix and analysis tools, it is evident that Angels Home Healthcare should be promoting various strategies to help make better the home health care services offered by the organization. The organization can achieve this feat by optimizing the opportunities and the strengths while trying to minimize the threats and weaknesses (McGee, H. M., & Crowley-Koch, 2021). Indeed, it is prudent to preserve the safety and health of the Angels Home Healthcare health professionals and the patients at the time of the pandemic. During the course of this project, various care actions concerning the spread of the Covid-19 virus were considered, which led to the generation of various actions to add to the proposed strategies for managing the health waste created from the various services undertaken.

The last year of dealing with the pandemic has underlined the often-overlooked importance of home health care services such as the ones offered by Angels Home Healthcare. These organizations have taken a central role in sustaining and improving various people’s health during the pandemic. The implication is that novel or modified measures entailing health care waste management should be explored to focus on preserving the safety and health of patients, their families, and the healthcare professionals involved in the practices. As such, various strategies have been identified, including increased involvement of the public authorities in health waste management, especially during and after the covid-19 pandemic durations. Other strategies identified include making available the material and financial resources and training the professionals to improve their knowledge and awareness regarding contagion prevention and waste management.

Conclusion

A TOWS analysis is one of the tools for analysing the performance of an organization of interests. It additionally focuses on the organization’s internal factors with the goal of coming up with the relevant strategic option that the organization can appropriately implement in addition to various aspects of the traditional SWOT analysis. Therefore, this write-up has entailed coming up with a TOWS matrix, the matrix analysis, and the strategic plan based on the TOWS matrix analysis. It is worth noting that, from the analysis, the organization evidently has to undertake various measures to continue adjusting and adapting to the requirements of the changing landscape as triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The central focus should be improved health waste management and ensuring that the healthcare professional team, the patients, and their families are duly protected as much as possible from the risk of pandemic and infections.

References

Angels Home. (n.d). Home health care. https://angelsseniorliving.com/services/home-health/

Baird, A., Eaton, R., & Sumner, A. (2019). Digital Health Strategy: An Updated Approach to Teaching Graduate-Level Health Information Systems. The Journal of Health Administration Education, 36(3), 263. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aupha/jhae/2019/00000036/00000003/art00004.

Izzetti, R., Nisi, M., Gabriele, M., & Graziani, F. (2020). COVID-19 transmission in dental practice: brief review of preventive measures in Italy. Journal of dental research, 99(9), 1030-1038. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022034520920580

Jangland, E., Nyberg, B., & Yngman‐Uhlin, P. (2017). ‘It’s a matter of patient safety’: understanding challenges in everyday clinical practice for achieving good care on the surgical ward–a qualitative study. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 31(2), 323-331. https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.12350.

McGee, H. M., & Crowley-Koch, B. J. (2021). Behavioral systems analysis in organizations. Applied behavior science in organizations: Consilience of historical and emerging trends in organizational behavior management. Kalamazoo, MI: Association for Behavior Analysis International.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2018). The strategic management of health care organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Rodriguez, J., & Walters, K. (2017). The importance of training and development in employee performance and evaluation. World Wide Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development, 3(10), 206-212.

Sinclair, A. J., & Abdelhafiz, A. H. (2020). Age, frailty and diabetes–triple jeopardy for vulnerability to COVID-19 infection. EClinicalMedicine, 22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100343

Requirements

Complete this assessment in two parts:

Part 1: TOWS Matrix and Analysis

Complete a TOWS matrix and accompanying analysis. Download the TOWS Analysis Worksheet and complete it for your selected health care organization. Incorporate your findings from the current environmental analysis you completed in Assessment 1. Be sure to include a minimum of 3–5 items in each quadrant of your matrix, which will give you a total of 12–20 identified and categorized items.

After completing your matrix, summarize the findings from your analysis of each of the four quadrants and develop a high-level, draft strategic plan containing alternative strategies.

Part 2: Draft Strategic Plan

Prepare a high-level, draft strategic plan for your selected organization.

The focus of this assessment is to apply the insights you have gained from your TOWS matrix and the environmental analysis you completed in Assessment 1 to the strategic plan. The information from the matrix quadrants will serve as the foundational criteria for developing your draft plan.

You must be able to look at your TOWS matrix results and then formulate four overarching strategies with at least one operational goal to support each strategy. Whether your strategies are to enhance the strengths you have identified or to improve weaknesses, your draft strategic plan must align with your organization’s mission, vision, and values.

As you prepare your plan, it may be helpful to review common strategies and goals that many health care organizations develop and monitor. Use the following document to guide your analysis of the TOWS results for your selected health care organization: Common Strategies and Goals Health Care Organizations Develop and Monitor.

Include with each of your strategies the core assumptions regarding environmental opportunities and threats, organizational strengths and weaknesses, and organizational behavioral dynamics that are foundational to the strategy. For example, consider:

• Service/product life cycle.
• Product development.
• Organizational culture.
• Available funding to execute strategies.

Strategic Plan Requirements

The requirements, outlined below, correspond to the grading criteria in the TOWS Matrix Analysis and Strategic Plan Scoring Guide, so be sure to address each point. Read the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.

• Incorporate methodologies from the knowledge-economy management approach in a strategic plan appropriate for your organization.
• Integrate recent strategy management research findings into your strategic plan.
• Synthesize operational and financial components into your strategic planning process.
• Include your determination of the organizational structure (functional, divisional, or matrix) that best facilitates your strategies.
• Create a clear, concise, well-organized, and professional TOWS matrix analysis and strategic plan draft.
• Apply proper APA formatting and style guidelines to citations and references.

Additional Requirements

• Formatting: Prepare your TOWS matrix analysis and draft strategic plan using a familiar and appropriate document format used by health care organizations, such as a memo, business report, or white paper.
• Length: 1–2 pages for TOWS matrix.
• 4–5 pages for TOWS matrix analysis (roughly one page per quadrant).
• 1–2 pages for the draft strategic plan.

Submit all three documents for this assessment: 1) TOWS matrix, 2) TOWS matrix analysis, and 3) Draft strategic plan. Remember, you do not need to submit your practice matrix.

Proofread each document to minimize errors that could distract readers and make it more difficult for them to focus on the substance of your work.

Portfolio Prompt: You may choose to save your TOWS matrix analysis to your ePortfolio.

Supporting Evidence

Health care is an evidence-based field. Consequently, readers of these documents will want to know the sources of your information, so be sure to include applicable APA-formatted source citations and references.

TOWS Matrix Analysis and Strategic Plan Scoring Guide