EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT’S EDITORIAL Jim Bracewell Executive Vice President / CEO
Strategic Planning is Hard Work Dynamic” and “dynamite” are not words I generally associate with a fall weekend spent in a closed hotel meeting room while the leaves fall and football is played, but those are the two words that quickly came to my mind as I reviewed the events of October 11 and 12 at the Double Tree Hotel in Atlanta.
GPhA. I personally have never participated in such a productive exercise as we went through using techniques normally reserved for corporate board rooms in America. We fostered a team effort to lay out challenges for GPhA in simple terms and measurable quantifiable goals.
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This is not the end of the project, rather this is the beginning of a new way of looking at the future of our association and which needs we address for the profession.
When someone today suggests a Strategic Planning Retreat, most minds picture a rustic or resort setting with time to play team building games and some free time to hike, play golf or other personal time to enjoy yourself. The end product is often lofty ideals placed in a large three ring binder that looks good on the office bookshelf.
GPhA cannot be all things to all pharmacists, but we can be the forum for deciding what issues we can and should address for the profession.
None of this was the case for the members of GPhA who accepted the challenge to come to Atlanta for a virtual lockdown, hardnosed, work to the bones session with some of the brightest minds in GPhA.
The profession and the membership of GPhA owe a sincere measure of gratitude to these members and especially to David Miller, R.Ph., a former state association executive who coached this team through the weekend. At times he beat and drove the team through the weekend. Have you ever had people routinely say, “My brain hurts I have been thinking so intently?” You would last weekend. When you see these members remember to say “thank you.” If or when the Board of Directors adopts this plan it will be posted to our website and a feature article will cover it in the JOURNAL. You will have a resource to say this is where GPhA is going and this is what it is doing for me and the profession of pharmacy.
Their challenge, in twelve hours of intense focused team effort, was to address the needs of GPhA in the next 36 months and the next 60 months in a fashion that could be taken to the GPhA Board in January for their consideration for adoption. The Georgia Pharmacy Association has for years had phenomenal leadership at the helm as the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors, but we have never engaged a focus group of the membership to address the strategic direction for the
The Georgia Pharmacy Journal
7
November 2009