The breakdown on building up

Most organizations and leaders talk about strategic priorities and plans. From the outside, sometimes it’s hard to tell if anything is really changing. For the College’s strategic priorities, I have some good and bad news. The good news: You will see things happen. The bad news: You will see things happen.

Our first strategic priority is “Focus on core business.”¹ A strategic priority is not typically about core functions of an organization, so why is this here? The CFPC, at its core, is about education standards and serves as the professional home of family physicians in Canada. Business functions such as substantial cost cutting, generating revenue aside from member fees, and promoting internal efficiencies have not historically been a focus of the CFPC. We want to make business functions like these foundational and cultural within the operation of the College so our purposes, like setting education standards and serving as the professional home of family physicians, remain strong.

I am not the first to identify this need. Before I arrived, the CFPC hired its first in-house legal counsel, allowing a broader vision of the business and a better ability to identify internal issues than external legal consultants could provide. With a new focus on business functions, we are looking critically at many aspects of what we do, but this can lead to disruptions and expose serious concerns.

An analogy from my early years at university comes to mind: I was having trouble with a cabinet drawer, which opened at a 10° angle. I asked my friend to lend a hand and, after 20 minutes of fussing about without success, he said to me, “Mike, sometimes you can’t fix things that are only partly broken.” Without warning, he then grabbed the drawer and tore it open so hard it burst apart, exploding pieces over much of the room. Motioning to the scattered fragments, he said, “Now, that we can fix.” One hour later, the drawer was working perfectly. The lesson? Sometimes you have to break it down to see the problem and its parts before you can fix it.

I suspect some of you are seeing issues arise. Some affect only a few members, while some affect us all. Let me share 2 recent examples. The first is one we shared recently related to CFPC membership classes. In early 2024, after certain concerns were raised by some members, we closely examined the ways membership classes had changed over the years, and we uncovered serious problems that had resulted, largely, from flawed advice provided by previous legal advisers. We are now doing everything we can to address members’ concerns, including finding a way to offer more membership options linked to improved member value. But we can’t get there until we address and fix past issues with our governing documents.

The second example involves our charitable corporation arm, the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine (FAFM). Unlike other charities, the FAFM has not collected administrative fees from any donation, endowment, or contribution, relying on the CFPC to cover overhead costs. While both organizations have shared functions, such as honours and awards, it is important for the CFPC to cut costs and, by doing so, foster best business practices. The CFPC is therefore reducing its support for the FAFM while the foundation re-evaluates its programs and activities to minimize its dependence on the CFPC over the long term and grow its charitable collections.

We are making major changes at the College to improve business functions, reduce expenses, continuously seek efficiencies, and add value to membership. We are also doing our best to be transparent, and that means you’re likely going to see some challenges arise as we break some things down to fix them. That’s the strategic priorities working, and that’s the good and bad news.

• Copyright © 2024 the College of Family Physicians of Canada