AAMC Reporter: October 2007

A Word from the President: "Strategic Thinking and Positioning — Charting Our Course for the Future"

As you read this column, a copy of "Learn, Serve, Lead—The Mission, Vision, and Strategic Priorities of the AAMC" may already be in your mailbox. Approved by the AAMC Executive Council in September, this document is the result of our Strategic Thinking and Positioning (STP) process—a yearlong series of conversations with our governance, membership, staff, and external stakeholders regarding the associations focus as we move forward.

It has been extremely gratifying to see this inclusive and very rich process unfold. More than 400 constituents from AAMC councils, organizations, and professional development groups participated through small group discussions. The sense of ownership that has emerged from this broad and deep participation is simply remarkable, and will serve us well in the years to come.

To me, the overarching lesson of this process is that the AAMC is a strong organization firmly headed in the right direction. Although the words in our mission and vision statements and strategic priorities in "Learn, Serve, Lead" are new, they affirm the basic direction set with our last strategic plan in 1994. In addition, with our world having grown increasingly complex since then, we have broadened our focus to include nine strategic priorities instead of the five strategic commitments articulated 13 years ago.

While all nine strategic priorities are of equal importance, their order in the document is deliberate, and I want to share with you the logic of their organization.

The first AAMC strategic priority is to serve as the voice and advocate for academic medicine. Our commitment to each of our core mission areas of medical education, research, and health care generated priorities two through four.

The fifth strategic priority—to increase diversity in medicine—resulted from active discussions stressing the need to make diversity both a stand-alone priority (and thereby formalize our longstanding commitment to this important objective) and an integral component of the other eight strategic priorities.

Strategic priorities six through eight focus on serving our members: by being a valued and reliable resource for data and information; by facilitating organizational and operational improvement among our members; and by providing outstanding leadership and professional development services to meet our members' most critical needs.

The ninth priority relates to the AAMC culture and commitment to be the "best AAMC we can be" as we serve our members and the public good. Like the preceding eight priorities, the emphasis on culture and core values has always been a vital part of our association, but now this emphasis is fully integrated into our strategic plan as well.

Some might read "Learn, Serve, Lead" and ask "So what is new?" In many respects, the process of bringing so many people together served to sharpen our focus and build strong consensus on many important issues. Importantly, it revealed three critical, cross-cutting themes that are essential to our association's future effectiveness: the need for better alignment within and among the missions and structures of our institutions as well as at the AAMC; the need for the AAMC to provide leadership on multiple fronts; and the role the AAMC should play in fostering collaboration throughout the academic medicine community.

In addition, the strategic thinking and positioning process renewed a shared commitment to our ideals, provided an important sense of ownership as we seek to fulfill our mission and realize our vision, and stimulated an eagerness on the part of all to move forward with the implementation phase. I am particularly excited about this next part of the process because it gives us a chance to unleash our collective creativity. For example, as we work to develop action plans for each of the nine strategic priorities, we must also tackle some important questions left unresolved by our discussions:

• As health care reform moves to front and center of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, how can the AAMC best influence the process? Should we develop a comprehensive reform proposal as the AAMC, or in collaboration with other organizations, or should we seek to influence the various plans that are proposed?

• As science becomes increasingly team-based and networked through new technologies, how can we help our institutions further develop the systems to support these efforts?

• With regard to professional development, should we shift the focus of our programs from development of the individual to the development of teams?

• What about interprofessional health education? What activities should we undertake to strengthen our relationships with other health professions? Though not articulated as a strategic priority, this was identified as an important issue on the immediate horizon.

In the coming weeks, AAMC leadership and staff will develop implementation plans for each strategic priority that will be reviewed by our governance at the annual Officers' Retreat in December. We welcome and encourage your thoughts about our implementation efforts, and invite you to send them to stp@aamc.org.

Although we are now shifting to implementation, I want to emphasize that strategic thinking and positioning will remain an ongoing process at the AAMC. "Learn, Serve, Lead" is intended to be a living, dynamic statement that we will periodically revisit, and its true test will be how well it helps us achieve alignment, foster collaboration, serve our members, and exercise leadership in the years to come.

Darrell G. Kirch, M.D., AAMC President

Editor's Note: For a PDF copy of "Learn, Serve, Lead," please visit www.aamc.org/about/learnservelead.pdf (13 pages).

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