Developing the Strategy for the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine
CLIENT
Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM)
SECTOR
Medical Colleges
DATE
August 2024 - February 2025
Challenge
With their 2022-24 Strategic Plan ending, ACEM's President recognised that multiple ongoing and interrelated challenges required deeper strategic thinking, not just another planning cycle. CEO transition presented an opportunity to separate strategic thinking from operational planning. The Board wanted a more thoughtful, consultative process that would engage their diverse stakeholder community while maintaining Board accountability for strategic direction.
Response
Initial workshop design: I facilitated a commencement workshop with Board, staff and advisory committees as a deep inquiry into what ACEM needed from their strategy and how to best develop it.
Roadmap development: The workshop produced a clear roadmap:
Broad consultation: students, Fellows, staff, stakeholder groups, and representation beyond east coast Australia
Strategy, not planning: high-level thinking about value and purpose, not action lists
Member engagement while preserving Board leadership and accountability
Comprehensive consultation process: After ACEM considered multiple consultants, they chose Purpose in Practice to deliver the full strategy development through September-December 2024:
Group consultations online and face-to-face in SA, WA and Aotearoa New Zealand
Deep listening at Manaaki Mana Indigenous Health Conference and Annual Scientific Meeting
Online surveys of community representatives and three open-invite staff workshops
Continuous refinement with Executives and Board members
Work-in-progress presentation at Annual Scientific Meeting with three days of iterative refinement
Strategy document creation: structuring and authoring with internal design team and incoming CEO
Results
Clear 2025-2030 Strategy including:
Identity descriptions and areas of activity
Simple diagrammatic description of how the College adds value
Areas of effort structured according to value creation
Seamless blend of strategic responses to specific risks and opportunities with organisational health (finance, culture, governance) and organisational impact (training, advocacy, inclusion, partnerships)
Increased stakeholder connection:
The highly visible, transparent process built engagement and trust, strengthening Member-Board-Staff relationships and creating the foundation for implementation
Changing to a Strategy from a Strategic Plan has stimulated discussion about the difference, and been a useful engagement tool: “spiking interest rather than people’s eyes glazing over”
Client Testimonial
It was excellent to have such deep discussions, getting the difficult stuff out on the table
The value diagram is so clear and simple, it makes sense of the work we do
The consultation process ensured that the strategy has broad support without making it a bland document that doesn’t really say anything
