A Journey to Pathology 3.0: Next-generation, Strategic Focus

There’s something inherently charming about our instinctive preference for the provocative over the merely reasonable ideas. And much less so about the path of minimum resistance we often take, preferring creative evasion to hard truths and nuanced intellectual pursuits. Unfortunately, strategy work is not light entertainment; its majority is actually tedious and systematic elbow grease; in other words, it is rather dull, repetitive and exhausting.

In its essence, strategy is about focusing finite resources to address critical challenges. The keywords are “finite” and “critical”. If we have unlimited resources to tackle all perceived challenges, we could live happily ever after without strategy.

We have already mentioned Richard Rumelt's classic "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" and the need for a competent framework, ?a strategy kernel, to deal with challenges. The initial and often most challenging hurdle on this journey, which appears to be a stumbling block for many, is obtaining a diagnosis.

I am surprised that this is often true even for pathologists who live off diagnostics. We all know that a good diagnosis is more than just describing the situation. It involves a detailed analysis to identify the problems and challenges that must addressed, and, to be helpful, it offers a streamlined view of reality. Good diagnosis requires a strategic focus and a disciplined approach that rigorously analyses specific problems.

Strategic diagnostics requires in-depth knowledge of one's industry- recognising its political, economic, societal, scientific, technological, HR and competitive landscapes and anticipating political, policy, ?and regulatory changes. This is why strategic diagnostics, sometimes conducted by a very expensive proxy, may alleviate some discomfort but ultimately fail to deliver. Only an in-depth understanding of one’s industry can generate ideas on exploiting asymmetries in the ecosystem. One of the objectives of strategic diagnosis is to identify leverage points where small interventions can create meaningful impacts. This approach can help optimise efforts and resources by choosing high-impact activities.

And again, an effective strategy is not about setting grandiose goals or, in keeping with contemporary perspectives, pursuing unlimited growth. Pathologists should know better than anyone else that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. ?

In many ways, strategic diagnosis is like conducting research. Perhaps the chronic depletion of research pursuits in our current training curricula, coupled with oversaturated service work, plays a role. However, that is a topic for another article. We should view strategy as a hypothesis rather than a fixed plan. This perspective emphasises the importance of testing and adjusting our thinking and our journey based on feedback and evolving conditions.

Obviously, all this is easier said than done. Many pathology teams struggle with strategic focus due to internal politics, cognitive biases, lazy otherness and a tendency to avoid confronting difficult issues and having difficult conversations. Sadly, strategic focus requires a certain level of pain tolerance.

Essentially, the matter of strategic focus is simple. A sharp strategic focus will help us to make informed choices and take deliberate actions that effectively address specific challenges. A blurred one will deliver fluff or a superficial vision lacking substance and broad goals without actionable plans that will fail to face critical issues.

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