Strategic thinking rarely occurs spontaneously

Health care historically has been a very siloed field that's organized around medical specialties - urology, cardiac surgery, and so forth - and around the supply of these specialty services. The patient is the ping-pong ball that moves from service to service.

Competitiveness is defined as the ability of companies to compete while maintaining or improving the average standard of living. If you are cutting wages to become more competitive, that's not really more competitive. It's raising the skill and the efficiency of those workers so that they can support and sustain that higher wage.

The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you're trying to accomplish.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.

If a strategy meets a goal: It's working. If a strategy meets a target: It's a success.