The evolution of the relationship between the AANS and its corporate partners reached a critical milestone this past July with the first formal meeting of the AANS Corporate/Leadership Council. This inaugural meeting, held in Chicago, heralded a new dimension in identifying equal needs by both groups and the willingness to explore methods to proactively address those needs.
The recognition of how industry support of neurosurgery helps to satisfy the AANS mission has always been in evidence, most visibly in the exhibit halls of annual meetings and at AANS educational courses as well as other offerings throughout the year. However, this recognition occasionally has been obscured by more immediate organizational priorities that may have made the gratitude the AANS has always had for the support of its corporate partners more difficult for them to recognize.
Such was the case in the first years of this decade when the AANS undertook a complete reinvention of itself that addressed its physical infrastructure (moving its Executive Office from Park Ridge, Ill., to Rolling Meadows, Ill., in spring of 2000 and radically downsizing the organization to eliminate 10 percent of its operating expenses within the next year), its strategic vision (inaugurating a new dedication to and methodology of strategic planning in 2003), the manner in which member services were generated (instituting a revised biannual member needs assessment in 2001), and the resources to deliver those services to its members (via cutting edge technology and in the most cost-effective manner).
While never losing focus of the critical role played by its industry partners, the AANS corporate relations program seemed largely off the radar in the early years of this decade. It wasn’t. But the urgent priorities under way then were seen by the AANS as vital to its own transformation into an equally desirable partner that industry could find value in and rely upon. As a flight attendant invokes at the beginning of every flight, “Secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others.” Essentially, the AANS needed to make sure that it was a dynamic, stable organization with a vision-in theory and in practicality-before it could expect industry partners to increase their AANS participation.
Beginning in 2002, the combined efforts of the AANS Development Committee, Long Range Planning Committee, Board of Directors, and AANS leadership and management began the long journey of many small steps of reaching out to partners with a renewed vision of a truly mutually collaborative partnership. The establishment of the AANS Pinnacle Partners program signaled that a key milestone had been reached, and heralded a new recognition by the AANS that its industry partners had needs, beyond recognition of their participation as exhibitors at its annual meetings, which the AANS could address.
AANS leaders visited corporate partners to assess, identify and implement concepts of cooperation and mutual interests. Input gleaned from these visits generated not only a better understanding of each partner’s unique needs, business environment and niche, but also pointed to a consistent desire expressed by virtually everyone with whom we met: a more consistent and formal opportunity to interact with AANS leadership.
The most critical step of the AANS corporate partnership program occurred last year: AANS leadership approved the establishment of the Corporate/Leadership Council. The goal was to take what had been learned over the past several years and create a collaborative summit that would address the needs of both AANS member surgeons and the corporate community. Topics to explore for collaboration would run the gamut from current and future trends in neurosurgery to the evolution and future direction of AANS educational offerings.
The significance of the inaugural Corporate/Leadership Council meeting is therefore twofold. It is a milestone in the renewed recognition of the mutual partnership between the AANS and industry, and it marks the “end of the beginning” for the AANS reengineering process which created a dynamic, stable organization with a clear vision. In so doing, the AANS entered into a new realm of effectiveness and advocacy for its members that existed only on flip charts in a hotel meeting room at the beginning of this decade.
Thomas A. Marshall is AANS executive director.