MMA Viewpoint
A Road Well Chosen
If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will take you there. That is basically what the Cheshire Cat told Alice, and it’s what Glenn Tecker told MMA leaders and staff during a strategic planning retreat in July.
Tecker, a consultant and national expert on association governance, was making the point that organizations need to set what he calls “big audacious goals.” Both individuals and organizations can mistakenly rely on habit and history to determine their future rather than consciously choose a direction in which to go.
Tecker told the MMA Board of Trustees that its core function was to determine the MMA’s long-term goals and assess the organization’s progress toward achieving them. And he cleverly described what governance boards should not be doing including engaging in “snoopervision” (unwarranted micromanaging) or “administrivia” (being stuck on operational details).
The purpose of the planning session was to provide MMA leaders with a structured opportunity to consider what outcomes the organization ought to aim for and how to measure success. As part of the session, the board and staff members discussed in small groups the current conditions, trends, and possible future developments that could fundamentally change our profession. We also tried to anticipate opportunities for the MMA that others have not yet capitalized on.
Tecker then asked us to imagine that the year is 2020 and the MMA is receiving an award for having changed the world in a positive way. We were asked to imagine what the MMA did to win such an award. What did this new world look like and who benefited from our changes? This generated a lot of thought-provoking conversation.
With the board still in the midst of its planning process, I don’t want to share all the details of those conversations; but I do want to let members know that this process is underway. I also want to encourage all members to take a moment to imagine what they would like to see the medical profession, and particularly organized medicine, achieve in Minnesota during the next 10 years. I would love to hear your thoughts. Please send them to my attention at mma@mnmed.org.
If every one of our trustees and members spent time imagining a better future and looking for ways to make it happen, we would have a much better chance of traveling down a road that leads where we want to go.