Memo to the ICIM BOD

Memo To: The ICIM Board of Directors
Re: Being a Market Driven Organization

In the course of my graduate studies, I am learning about the importance of being “market-driven” and I believe this term can be valuable to ICIM. I will give you a description of what it means to be a market-driven organization that will allow all of us to be on the same page as we work for success. This concept is not something to add to our Policies and Procedures document. Instead it involves a holistic goal: our “dominant beliefs, values, and behaviors emphasizing superior customer value and the continual quest for new sources of advantage” (Day, The Market Driven Organization, 1999, p. 6).

Before I begin, it is important to define what the business of ICIM entails. Our customers are our physician members and conference attendees, true co-creators of our product. We sell integrative medical education, an operant resource which our doctors then translate into excellent patient care. We educate, we try to give resources that protect our members from harassment and prosecution, and we work to be a community of support and friendship. Our marketplace is the spectrum of medical education and fraternity that is available, and the changing political conditions in which we operate.

To be market-driven means to have exterior focus on the wider marketplace and includes knowing who we serve and how. It demands that we have coherence within our organization, that our whole structure works together as one, bound by a common culture and able to share information freely and quickly with one another. Being market-driven also means that we must be flexible, quickly changing as the marketplace situation changes. This definition is outlined in The Market Driven Organization: Understanding, Attracting, and Keeping Valuable Customers by George S. Day (1999, pp. 12-13).

A large component that helps us to work together in this way is the capacity to find information that we need. Members of ICIM, employees, people serving on the board, potential exhibitors and patients, and physicians looking for integrative alternatives to their medical education need to be able to find the information quickly and easily. It has been my goal to make our website that place of shared information. Through our website, future leaders of ICIM will be able to know past decisions, and current leaders are able to work more effectively with easy access to documents and meeting minutes. Day describes the importance of this access to knowledge as “synergistic information distribution,” and I believe it is an essential part of working together toward a market-driven mindset (The Market Driven Organization, 1999, p. 104).

One thing that is sorely missing in ICIM is the availability of statistic understandings of the true effectiveness of what we are doing. We need to streamline our activities and energy primarily into the projects that do us the most good, thereby maximizing profitability and creative growth (Day, The Market Driven Organization, 1999, pp. 112-122). Here is a list of some of the knowledge that I think we need in order to get focused on effectiveness:
• How many of the people who call and E-mail ICIM looking for an integrative doctor actually make an appointment to see the doctor we recommend?
• How many doctors are there in each region who are interested in integrative medicine, but who are not affiliated with any educational group? What venues attract those physicians and bring them together where we could communicate with them?
• How many of our members are regular meeting attendees and why? How can we encourage conference attendance among our other members?
• Why do people really join ICIM? What are they looking for?
• What are the most common reasons for a member not to renew?
• How many people on our data base are seriously potential members or conference attendees? How many don’t care?
• How do our membership and exhibitor prices and service compare to our competition?


In a market-driven organization we must learn to take calculated risks, and let possible failure be an acceptable cost at times (Day, The Market Driven Organization, 1999, p. 93). As the economy and political situation swings, the only way we can stay competitive and relevant is by constant learning and creativity. Sometimes our ideas will not work, but the ones that do will make all the difference in helping us stand out. We can’t let ourselves become complacent and continue business as usual without questioning our assumptions and the changing needs of our members and the larger societal spectrum (p. 94).

As we strive toward our goal of being a sincerely caring community of colleagues and friends, we are already taking steps to achieve a market-driven status. Building community means hearing the stories of the challenges in the lives of integrative doctors. As we care for our members’ needs, we will observe the role ICIM plays in their lives and practices. As we share and identify our own challenges as integrative doctors, we will constantly search for how ICIM can provide solutions to those problems (Day, The Market Driven Organization, 1999, p. 89). Being a savvy business involves acting on the information we gather, making good decisions based on the marketplace, and striving to be the best choice there is in the field of integrative medical education.

References
The Market Driven Organization: Understanding, Attracting, and Keeping Valuable Customers,