AAPG's President Pete Rose has called fiscal year 2005-06 "The Year of the Divisions."
As a result, the first joint Division Workshop was held in Dallas on Aug. 5; officers from all three Divisions were present, as well as Pete Rose and past-president and Advisory Council chair, Pat Gratton.
The meeting's purpose was to review the strategic plan for each Division and define their goals and tactics.
AAPG has three Divisions: the Energy Minerals Division, the Division of Professional Affairs and the Division of Environmental Geosciences (see box).
In the workshop's first stage we examined each Division and defined its current reality, e.g., what is the membership of each Division, and what is the value produced by their association?
This was a good exercise with remarkable focus of the significant contributions of each Division. For example:
- Even with the advent of state certification, DPA certification remains an important part of professional development and support.
- The EMD Web site is a significant tool for energy minerals information and professional interaction.
- DEG's Environmental Geosciences journal is a valuable peer reviewed publication.
Once the current reality was defined the second stage was to note how that reality is different from the ultimate goals of each Division. That process allowed us to ask ourselves, "How do we reach those goals?" This "strategic how" is critical to building the "tactical -- what, who, when and where" of an overall business plan for the Divisions.
I cannot describe the details of the tactical plans at this time, as each Division leadership is in the process of reviewing the results of the workshop. Once reviewed, each Division will modify its current business plan.
However, I will note the following three key categories we discussed:
- How do we solicit new members?
- How do we develop new products and services to increase the value of each Division?
- How do we fund current and new products and services?
The final stage of the workshop was to define a set of deliverables based on the strategic plan. For example, the leadership of the Divisions agreed to immediately request funding from the AAPG Foundation. As a result, in their meeting on Aug. 21-22, the Foundation Trustees approved $18,000 to fund two EMD publications and $22,000 to support the DEG Environmental Geosciences journal this year.
The workshop was an exciting opportunity for all three Divisions to work together on strategic goals. The Divisions are important to AAPG and provide a significant value to our membership.