My apologies if this is a duplicate. I sent this over email earlier this week and had a major technical hiccup. Future updates will be sent via Substack to avoid this problem happening again. Much gratitude to you for your patience!
Cheers,
—Gabe
Now, onward for the newsletter 😀👇
Medicine Forward strategy & important updates — 9/28/21
Dear Medicine Forward believers,
I’m excited to share this week’s updates and continue to ask the question, “how do we best organize to have impact together?” We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire, so I will do my best to keep things on point.
Yesterday we had our biweekly strategy meeting. Tatiana, Brian, and I reviewed what’s going on in the organization and planned our best next actions. We were also honored to have Dana Corriel from SoMeDocs join us so we could learn more about her work and how we might potentially help each other. Several themes came up that I think are worth expanding on. First, as well intentioned as we all are, it can be easy to feel like we are running in a three-legged race. Everyone is trying to head for the same general goal, but that’s easier said than done. This can make it feel quite frustrating when we are here to show that doctors can come together to make a positive difference. Second, it was a chance to reflect on when we have felt most successful and in sync. As a group, we were most aligned last Fall after our culture session with Dave Logan & Ashleigh Rodgriguez. I believe we can recapture that alignment and energy. I would like to take responsibility for turning what we’ve learned over the last two years into a process that sets us up for further success.
One of the most helpful tools we used was the “Micro Strategy”. In a nutshell, 1) the group defines outcomes we desire to achieve, 2) lists assets at our disposal that we can leverage, and 3) brainstorms actions that can help us achieve the outcome we want. We did this for our launch Town Hall, and it was amazing to see how we went from a feeling of spinning our wheels to having everyone inspired & co-creating a project with a crystal clear shared objective. It didn’t feel like a three-legged race anymore, it was more like Elaine Thompson-Herah training for the 100m that she won in Tokyo. I fully believe that iterating a series of prioritized micro strategies is our best chance for Medicine Forward to have the impact we came here to have. I believe it will help us accelerate measurable positive change. I also believe it will keep re-aligning us with our core values and mission of restoring the patient-physician relationship.
These are the top priorities that emerged from our meeting:
Align our energy so instead of a 3-legged race we are Elaine Thompson-Herah running the 100m.
Continue to help the trainees move their team and their project forward to stand up for trainee wellbeing.
Continue to work on our process for how we will have impact. The best option on the table right now appears to be an iterative series of prioritized & goal oriented micro-strategies.
Continue to curate a list of important topics that people care about, and what can be done about them (including groups that are working on them already, policy, etc). Eg, prior auth.
Experiment with ideas to get our members engaged with each other on the Mighty Network. How can we empower each other as a network of change agents? How can we grow our collective strength?
Continue to brainstorm about what would make partnership with ACP amazing for them and for us.
Tatiana brought up a very crucial issue that keeps coming up — we need to accomplish a thing. All of our patience is running out, including mine. There is so much potential here, but we can’t let our energy and the energy of those who want to help us get diluted and give one more reason to feel helpless. We are not going to let that happen, and I look forward to embracing what’s next.
Our next strategy meeting is in two weeks.
The Mighty Network steering committee has its’ inaugural meeting Oct 4.
The trainee leaders continue to meet biweekly and are making great headway.
A prior auth taskforce is in the very early stages.
Our next meeting with ACP is Nov 1.
Thanks to you all! Our call to action remains the same. Please keep talking to each other and encouraging one another. Together we will be the change.
— Gabe
👋 Here is a super simple micro strategy I used today to write this. Keep in mind that it's only an example. For the organization, micro strategy is done collaboratively as a team 😀