In 2002, the American Hospital Association Workforce Commission1 recommended that hospitals develop a succession plan for every supervisory position. The target date for its completion is 2007. Having taught leadership to over a thousand frontline healthcare managers in the last 3 years alone, most of them nurses, I am able to attest to healthcare's commitment to preparing for its future leadership needs. The growth of leadership programs throughout the country would seem to substantiate the effort to develop future leaders in nursing. The good news is our future leaders are engaged, hungry for knowledge, and committed to a quality healthcare system. The question remains as to what have hospitals and other healthcare organizations done-or more accurately what will they do-to mesh these new leaders into the future of the organization. In other words, has management planning taken on a new perspective?
Currently, institutions are shifting away from a primary internally focused, structural management planning approach toward a broader one built around the concept of intellectual capital. Intellectual capital, defined by one of this issue's authors (Weston) is the ability of an organization to create, capture, and utilize knowledge. If knowledge rather than prior position is key to success, then management planning takes on an entirely new perspective. Making key knowledge readily available to all and identifying those inside or outside the corporation or organization who are most adept at understanding and taking advantage of these parameters are now driving management planning. Increasingly, corporations are even going outside their own industry to find managerial talent. Can this happen in healthcare? You bet. The American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) just released the findings of their most recent study, titled Chief Nursing Officer Retention and Turnover: A Crisis Brewing.2 Their findings can be found on the AONE Web site, and a few of them relate directly to the essence of this NAQ issue. Of the 634 CNOs surveyed, 40% turned over at least once in their career. Approximately 62% of the respondents anticipate making a job change in less than 5 years, with one quarter of those planning to retire. A follow-up telephone survey to 26 current CNOs, past CNOs, and healthcare executive search professionals in phase II yielded several recommendations. One of them was as follows: succession planning and building skills for the success of the next generation of CNOs were reported as vital. Think of the impact on the intellectual capital of both nursing and the entire organization as those 393 CNOs move from one organization to another, from one healthcare sector to another, or in some cases out of healthcare altogether. What steps are we taking to preserve the intellectual capital to cover organizational losses and take advantage of the intellectual capital their replacements bring?
Nursing, along with the healthcare industry, is poised on the edge of a knowledge precipice. We need to address these same issues and initiate strategies that will secure our intellectual capital. Fortunately, nursing has developed an arsenal of weapons to shore up our own intellectual capital. Dr Tim Porter O'Grady's issue on evidence-based practice eloquently points to that burgeoning field.3 The Nursing Administration Research Council findings from our preeminent nurse researchers are presented in the subsequent NAQ issue.4 Phil Authier has written a capstone in his end article making the transition of intellectual capital to caring. To all the nurse leaders-past, present, and future-thank you for doing what you do every day to make our health system a safe and caring one. You have paved the way to succession planning for nursing to hold and retain its intellectual capital.
-Elizabeth (Betty) Falter, MS, RN, CNAA,BC
Executive Director, Arizona Healthcare Leadership Academy, Tucson, Ariz
President, Falter and Associates, Inc
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