Strategic planning has become a major focus of AUPHA leadership during the last several months, as evidenced by my recent post to the membership in the Open Forum and by part of the theme from our Chair, Thomas Vaughn’s, recent post for the Exchange. Naturally, member programs all teach a strategic planning course and/or have students conduct a planning project or related application. As many of us find, teaching and doing are very different things. We must move forward, however. Adopting the perspective of an association as opposed to a program/department represents a challenge while thinking about planning for AUPHA. That challenge, obvious to some, was less clear to me and the solution, as I have thought about it, has some generalizable applications.
At first glance you might wonder, how hard can it be to seriously consider the many challenges health administration programs face? In our quest to prepare individuals for careers in healthcare management, the optimal way forward has never been perfectly clear but we have all seen uncertainty before. Sure, the healthcare system is undergoing fundamental change. Consequently, we must revise our content to reflect changes in the healthcare delivery system. In addition, we are finding that our education system is poised to change. In both cases, the driving factor appears to be a problem with the value of what is being delivered.
In any case, what we teach and how we teach will likely be very different in the immediate future. These are your challenges and the proper subjects of planning exercises many of you are probably pursuing. You must find the path that assembles and capitalizes on your inherent strengths and allows you to pursue opportunities that become available. At the same time, you need to address and rectify your weaknesses and prepare to defend against threats you face. These are not directly AUPHA’s challenges. Simply stated, our planning must identify what AUPHA can do to help our members become successful. Because AUPHA does not engage in training students, it can’t be the same exercise that you, our members, pursue. However, because the success of programs is necessary for the success of AUPHA, there needs to be a strong correlation among the two planning exercises.
The potential problem becomes clear when you consider the roles that individual members will play in our proposed planning process. We have committees, with committee leaders, taking on the vital role of directing and planning for AUPHA. We will consider mission, vision and values; the environment and context; and our individual SWOT analyses. Those engaged in planning for AUPHA must suspend their focus on the needs of their individual program or department and must effectively consider and assume the perspectives of our national association. Decisions essential for an individual program may be irrelevant to the association and vice versa.
Planning may require recommendations for AUPHA that would not be considered for an individual program. For example, AUPHA has already developed a Benchmarking strategy. The hope is that by sharing internal operating information with the association, all members may benefit. The association can assemble and report the information in ways that enable individual programs to compare their performance and make improvements. The collective information enables the association to make a stronger case for policy or other benefits that benefit all members. This is essentially the common good argument. This is a rational and commonly adopted strategy among associations. Most individual programs, however, would not normally post or present their individual detailed operational information for all to see.
Generalizing this observation suggests that developing the ability to adopt the perspective of an organization outside of your immediate work setting may be an important skill set for us all. It also demonstrates the importance of forming a planning group with highly divergent professional self interest. Some examples come to mind:
- You are asked to participate in a Strategic Planning exercise for your school and are a member of one of several departments in that school. Can you objectively consider a recommendation that is good for the school but not beneficial for your department? This may explain why so few of these exercises will recommend eliminating a struggling department.
- You are asked to participate in a Strategic Planning exercise for your University and are a member of one of several departments in multiple schools within the University. As above, can you objectively consider a recommendation that is good for the University but not beneficial for your school or for your department?
- At the national level, bringing in experts from the health insurance industry for planning or advice regarding the structure of that industry will rarely result recommendations to fundamentally change that structure. Single payer systems are unlikely to emerge from this type of group.
I suspect that the failure to fully adopt the perspectives of the organization for which you are conducting the planning may contribute to failure. As AUPHA proceeds, please consider how difficult the effort is and how thankful we all are to those willing to participate. We are not simply asking individuals for an extension of what they already do. We are asking them to step outside of their world and consider what is best for AUPHA. We have a long history of members stepping up to the plate for AUPHA in this regard. Those efforts have made us successful over the years. This year will be no exception.