Don’t Let Organisational Culture Eat Your Institutional Strategy for Lunch!

By : Professor Datuk Dr. A Rahman A Jamal

Strategy is the buzz word nowadays in the university. In the business world, companies invest millions of dollars and also spend months conducting brainstorming sessions to come up with the best strategies. Apple, IBM, BMW, Samsung, Nissan, and many others, have changed their strategies over the past decade or so. For the businesses, new strategies are introduced to acquire a bigger segment of the market or to explore a totally new customer segment. For the academic institution, a strategy change may help improve the number of high impact research or rankings. I just want to share my thoughts on strategy based what I have learned, read and practiced. Every leader at every level should know about strategy and must ensure that this is communicated down to every level. Communication means more than just informing via letters, booklets or slogans. Strategy is not just about top management, but is about the survival and sustainability of the institution. In addition, we need the right culture in the organization to ensure that the strategies will work.

  1. Strategy is about having an over-arching goal and direction

Every institute must have a clear goal and this must filter down from the top management right down to the lower management. CEOs of top companies will say that even the doorman or the cleaner should know about a company’s strategy and their respective roles (for example, if the doorman is inefficient or rude then the company’s image will also be affected). Our National Heart Institute once had a slogan which said ‘Your heart is our passion’. This slogan was likely derived from a clear strategy to become the leading heart center in the nation. UMBI’s strategic intent is to be the nation’s leading research institute in molecular medicine. Those working in ¼¯ÃÀÂ鶹 should be able to state our university’s strategies. If they can’t, then we have a big problem.

  1. Strategy is about having a competitive advantage

Those who have MBAs or those who have attended leadership courses, retreats and workshops must know about Porter’s five forces of competition. There is a need first to do an environmental scanning, both internal and external. We need to be mindful or what is happening around us. We need to identify the competitors and to know what they are doing. If University Malaya and Universiti Sains Malaysia are doing better than us in the rankings, we should then analyse what both are doing in details. Sitting back and saying that we are different, will not get us anywhere. A research institute like UMBI must choose to focus in an area where it can position itself competitively. For example, if another cancer research institute is focusing on breast and oral cancers, then there is a huge unmet area in so many other cancer types. UMBI has now made colorectal cancer one of its thrust areas in cancer research, and our focus is mainly in fundamental research. With the presence in the ¼¯ÃÀÂ鶹 Medical Centre a strong colorectal surgery teams in Malaysia, the supply of patients and cancer tissues have given us the competitive advantage. The Malaysian Cohort Biobank, the largest population-based cohort study in the nation, which is managed by UMBI and the envy of many, has perhaps given UMBI its biggest competitive advantage for current and future research in non-communicable diseases.

  1. Strategy is about making trade-offs

Any one institution cannot be good in everything. If we claim that the ¼¯ÃÀÂ鶹 Medical Centre is good in all the clinical disciplines, then we must be really kidding ourselves. Being good is about showing the best outcomes. If we don’t have this data or people are not talking about how good we are, there is no basis for self-praise. Many of us will have heard of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in the USA. This hospital is the world’s best hospital for treating children with cancer. It has positioned itself by focusing mainly on cancers. The hospital have the top cancer specialists, cancer researchers plus also the best supporting systems and processes. They even welcome complex and difficult cases to be treated in their institution so that they could learn to be even better. St. Jude’s is so good that philanthropists donate millions to the hospital to help them continue to treat and cure children with cancer. Every young paediatric oncologist dream of getting a position at St. Jude’s. At UMBI, we used to have 8 research areas. We now only have two, cancer and other non-communicable diseases. We have to make the trade-off to allow us to focus our resources on strengthening our competitive advantage. With only a limited sum of money given to us by the university, we have to be sustainable and competitive to get other funding resources.

  1. Strategy is about having effective work plans and people to execute them

This is perhaps the most challenging part. We not only need good planners but good implementers. This is where we need to have 5% talk and 95% action. There are many ways to skin a cat but there is surely one way which is fastest and most efficient. If we need more talented researchers, we must continue to head-hunt them. It is not easy to spot real talent from just interviews. For a research institute, the best way to assess talent is by having someone come is as a post-doctoral fellow and giving a project for them to do. The problem in Malaysia is that anyone with a PhD can be given a tenured position the day after he/she graduates. In the USA and UK, you would have to wait years to get a permanent position. If we need new technologies, then we need to get funding to acquire the key technologies. But do make sure the utilization is optimal. There are many white elephants resting in research labs and which are used only ceremonially. For work plans to be effective we need the resources which includes people, space and money. Someone has to get these resources in place.

  1. Strategy is not static but need constant reviews

If our strategic plans are not giving us the best results, it is time to review and reassess the strategy. If the number of publications is coming down and the ranking is falling, there is an urgent need to relook at what has gone wrong. Take the Nissan company in the early 1990s. Their debts had soared to more than USD30 billion and there had a huge stockpile of cars unsold plus a supply chain system which are not cost-efficient. They decided to partner with Renault in what was the most unlikely marriage of all times in the automobile industry. On the surface, it looks like the clash of culture alone will make the alliance fail. They appointed a CEO from Renault to lead Nissan. He turned the company around in less than 2 years with clear and effective action plans. There are many other case studies in the business world showcasing the growth or the demise of big companies and there is much to be learned from them. Sadly, in most of our local institutions, we continue doing the same things and yet expect the results to be different.

There are other aspects which are critical to make strategies work including having the right leader, an organizational structure which is in sync with the strategic plans, optimizing the resources, managing talent and technologies. Last but not least, we must have the right CULTURE. As the famous Peter Drucker said, organizational culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner!