Professional Context
Critical analysis is a crucial skill for evidence-based leaders. Through organizational analysis, leaders gain the insight, data, and context needed to address organizational performance problems. This assignment challenges your investigatory abilities and provides an opportunity for you to analyze the performance of your chosen organization and the specific management or leadership issue or crisis you are addressing.
By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assignment criteria:
- Competency 1: Analyze contemporary health care issues from an evidence-based leadership perspective.
- Analyze the historical background of a current organizational leadership issue or crisis.
- Competency 2: Apply evidence-based leadership principles to problem-solving in real-world health care organizations.
- Identify metrics to evaluate current and future organizational performance.
- Compare the organizational leadership structure and approach in place at the onset of an issue or crisis to the current leadership structure and approach.
- Competency 3: Propose evidence-based leadership actions and strategic planning options that promote positive behavioral change, collaboration, workforce performance, and outcomes in contemporary health care organizations.
- Assess the organizational impact of a specific management or leadership issue or crisis.
- Propose an evidence-based strategy for resolving a leadership issue or crisis.
- Competency 4: Communicate effectively with diverse audiences, in an appropriate form and style consistent with applicable organizational, professional, and scholarly standards.
- Write clearly and concisely in a logically coherent and appropriate form and style.
Scenario
Congratulations! Your consulting company was awarded the contract, and you will be leading the effort to resolve the organization's management or leadership problem. Your introductory memo helped convince leadership to decide in your favor, based on your style, assessment of the problem, and proposed plan of action.
Your next step is to complete an organizational analysis. Some of the information you need to gather may be well-known by the organization. However, it is your job to assemble all of the relevant data and information for a concise written analysis of the situation, as well as the former and current organizational leadership structure and approach. Your analysis will provide the basis of an evidence-based strategy for resolving the current leadership issue or crisis.
Instructions
Write a 5–7 page analysis of the organization and the specific management or leadership issue or crisis that you are addressing. Refer to the article by Lafferty (linked in Resources), for an example of a simplified consultant report.
Your analysis should include:
- An introduction to the issue or crisis and its impact on the organization.
- A historical summary or background of the issue or crisis.
- Three metrics applicable to the organizational issue or crisis.
- An analysis of the leadership structure and approach in place when the issue or crisis arose and the leadership currently in place.
- Application of the Studer EBL framework to your strategy for resolving the situation.
- Summary of the topics discussed in this analysis.
Document Format and Length
Use the Organizational Analysis Template linked in Resources.
Your organizational analysis should be 5–7 pages of content plus title and references pages.
Supporting Evidence
Cite 3–5 credible sources from peer-reviewed journals or professional industry publications to support your analysis.
Organizational Analysis Requirements
The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the assignment 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.
- Analyze the historical circumstances leading to the current organizational management or leadership issue or crisis.
- What are the relevant cause-and-effect relationships?
- What assumptions are you making in your analysis?
- Assess the organizational impact of the issue or crisis.
- What additional information is needed to support a more in-depth assessment?
- What evidence supports your conclusions?
- Identify at least three metrics to evaluate current and future organizational performance.
- What evidence supports your conclusions about their applicability and efficacy?
- Compare the leadership structure and approach in place at the onset of the issue or crisis to the current leadership structure and approach.
- What are the key differences and similarities germane to the issue or crisis?
- Propose an evidence-based strategy for resolving the current leadership issue or crisis.
- How would you describe the rationale for your selected strategy?
- What evidence supports your proposed strategy?
- Write clearly and concisely in a logically coherent and appropriate form and style.
- Write with a specific purpose and audience in mind.
- Adhere to scholarly and disciplinary writing standards and APA formatting requirements.