ICS President’s Letter to the Profession: 4 Key Pillars
By John Panopoulos, DC, ICS President
On the first weekend of February, the ICS board met for its annual planning session. This meeting included members of our board, ICS staff, and volunteer ICS members.
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The ICS typically formulates a strategic plan for the following 5-year period. The four subsequent yearly planning sessions have a narrower focus of measuring or adding goals to help achieve the grand plan. This year’s planning session was unique in that we were asked to create both a new 5-year plan and a long-term vision for the ICS. We hired Bob Harris as an outside adviser to help facilitate this activity. Mr. Harris is a nationally recognized association management expert who has helped other organizations of various sizes develop and maintain their long-term strategic plans. He was able to provide us with insight on current trends in both chiropractic and non-chiropractic associations and gave multiple examples on ways these associations overcame obstacles to developed a strong future vision.
4 Key Pillars
During the planning session, we discussed redefining our mission and vision as a society. We later established the framework of four areas of focus, which we named as our “pillars.” These “pillars” include Member Value, Strong Advocacy Voice, Visionary Leadership, and Practice Vitality.
On the second day of our planning session, the board and other participants divided into 4 groups based on the 4 key pillars to discuss and determine how we can achieve our goals. As part of the self-evaluation process, it became abundantly clear that important ICS communications about current and past initiatives and successes are not reaching our members. The question every chiropractic physician asks the staff and board at seminars is, “What is the ICS doing for me?” Most of the members are surprised when they see the long list of benefits, legislative accomplishments and initiatives we are pursuing that affect our profession. Unfortunately, in the age of electronic media, there are fewer face to face opportunities to share our goals and accomplishments with our members. Despite the ICS’ increased initiatives in providing electronic information, we understand that doctors are often too over-extended to review our online communications, such as “The Practice Edge” and “Legislative Alerts.”
One of the major goals of our 5-year plan is to determine methods of communication to better reach our members. Our committees are in the process of establishing metrics and progress reports for the various initiatives on which we are working. The first of these reports was released in the previous edition of “The Illinois Practice Edge,” containing our legislative accomplishments over the last 12 years. I urge each of you to share this information with members and non-members. We will release more information and statistics in a standardized format as our committees and staff establish trackable metrics for our initiatives. Going forward, these reports will be updated and published on a regular basis in a concise format.
Conclusion
In our private practice we generate and review our practice stats to measure the health of our practice. After reviewing your practice stats, I encourage you and every Illinois chiropractic physician to review the ICS practice stats and provide your input. The value of your ICS membership is considerably more than the dues we pay, and every chiropractic physician needs to take an active part in our future. My personal goal going forward is for every chiropractic physician in The State of Illinois to ask only one question: How can I afford not to be a member of the ICS?
