How to Understand Your Client's Goals

Abigail Vincent has asked you to attend the kick-off meeting with her. Though she will be leading the meeting, she would like you to take notes and then summarize your findings. Your team will prepare one deliverable to submit to your mentor.

The following step-by-step guide will help you do your work.

1. Review Ms. Vincent’s email. Make sure you understand what you are being asked to do. Contact your mentor with any questions.


2. Together with your team, create a plan for completing this task. You may find it helpful to review all the available support materials, so you have a clear understanding of what you are being asked to do. You may choose to organize the work any way you like, but be sure that everyone on your team is involved and each person knows what s/he needs to do.


3. Watch the Kick-off Meeting Video Clips. Take careful notes as you watch the videos. Keep in mind that you may need to view them several times in order to familiarize yourself with the client’s goals and perspectives. As you review the video, remember you are trying to:
   
   
   • Determine the hospital’s goals. What is important to Woodland Ridge Hospital? What are their major goals? What concerns do they have?
   
   
   • How do they prioritize their goals? What tradeoffs are they willing to make?
   
   
   • What are the arguments for or against specific proposals?
   
   
4. Meet with your team to discuss your notes from the video.
   
   
   • Discuss each person who attended the meeting, his or her ideas and positions.
   
   
   • Discuss any additional information you learned about the hospital and/or the proposals.
   
   
   • Keep in mind that some members of the team may have picked up on issues that others did not. Be sure to take into account each person’s ideas and observations.
   
   
5. Create a list of organizational goals. What key objectives did Woodland Ridge Hospital stakeholders bring up in the kick-off meeting? What goals do they want to achieve?


6. Prioritize your list of hospital goals based on the information discussed in the kick-off meeting. As you consider how to prioritize, think about the relationships between the hospital’s goals. As you describe the relationships, the prioritization should emerge. For example, the hospital may want an investment project to be profitable, but they would also want it to enhance their reputation among cancer patients. They would prefer a project that met both goals. However if they had to choose between goals, they would pick profitability over reputation. From this framework, all the proposals they were considering could be analyzed.

You are being asked to create a similar framework based on the Woodland Ridge Kick-Off meeting. This is the framework you will come back to at the end of the project, once the financial analysis is complete. At that point, it will guide you on how to weigh the results of your analysis and make a decision.

Tip: It might help you to describe the hospital’s goals using if/then statements.

Tip: Keep in mind you will refer back to this prioritization later in the rotation. Once your financial analysis is complete you will have an opportunity to see how the results of that analysis fit in with this list of prioritized goals you have created. Be clear and thorough as you work on this task, so you will remember what you were thinking when you review this work later on.

7. Develop a list of pros and cons for each proposal. These pros and cons should highlight how the proposal addresses or fails to address the goals of the organization.


8. Review your work. Finalize your organized notes and be sure that you work represents the efforts of all team members.


9. Submit your work. Using the instructions on the Submit your Work tab of this task, submit your assignment to your mentor.