Our New Strategic Plan - What's next for FSRH?

Federico Moscogiuri, our outgoing interim CEO reflects on our journey over the last 12 months and looks ahead to our future priorities.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together  ” 

Every new strategy involves a new journey. There is a journey in arriving at the strategy itself, and then there is a journey in making it happen – in turning the strategy from a nice-looking document to something that genuinely guides our work as an organisation on a day-to-day basis, allowing us to be as effective and impactful as possible. 

Journeys of this kind are not as simple as going from A to B: they involve a gradual process of reflection, development and self-affirmation. Our new strategic plan is more than just a document - it is an ongoing point of reference for a more focused, more effective way of working.

A driver of transformational change

As well as being a focal point for what we do, the strategic plan will be a driver of transformational change across the organisation, helping to forge and shape a positive culture of continuous improvement throughout the next five years. It is ambitious, but realistic. Above all, it has been genuinely co-produced by all parts of the FSRH, involving many conversations among staff, Trustees, Officers and Council members over more than 12 months.

As a result of embarking on this journey, I feel that we’ve already grown as an organisation, and experienced some of that transformational change which the strategic plan aims to capture and convey.

“Our new strategic plan is a driver of transformational change across the organisation, helping to forge and shape a positive culture of continuous improvement throughout the next five years.”

Our areas of focus

The very first line of our strategic plan states that sexual and reproductive healthcare is a human right. Our vision and mission make it clear who we are and what our purpose is. Our five focus areas reflect and underpin the three key elements of what we feel is the solution to the challenge we seek to address:

• Skilled-up healthcare professionals who are fully equipped to deliver high-quality, person-centred SRH care
  
  
• A healthcare system that regards SRH as important and is capable of delivering co-ordinated, person-centred SRH care across the country and across the life course
  
  
• A population which is health-literate in SRH and able to access high-quality care.

The focus of our work will continue to remain on the first of these, as our core work, and the area where we feel we can make the biggest impact. But the education and training of healthcare professionals is not an end in itself: it is a means to achieve better outcomes and better access to high-quality SRH care for more people, particularly where the need is greatest.

So it is important to continue to raise awareness and influence decision-makers, and grow the SRH community in the broadest sense. We are experts and we are educators, but we are also thought-leaders and catalysts for change.

Our cross-cutting enablers, which include digital transformation, good governance and financial sustainability, underpin everything we do. They are key to achieving the transformational potential of our plan. Ultimately, these are the factors which will make the biggest difference to our work in the longer term because they speak to our organisational culture, and they describe what kind of organisation we want to be in five years’ time. We have already begun making good progress against many of these.

Our new FSRH organisational values

Last but certainly not least, our strategic plan for the first time shares our new organisational values, which were also produced and agreed collectively.

We care. 
We collaborate.
We enable.
We include.
We strive.

 

Each of these headings genuinely reflects our ethos as an organisation and as a specialty, and describes the organisation we want, and need, to be. The fact that it took very little time to agree on these - and present them in a very simple and attractive (and brand-friendly!) diagram - reflects how much we are already in sync and ready for the next five years as an organisation.

 

“We care. We collaborate. We enable. We include. We strive. Each of these values genuinely reflects our ethos as an organisation and as a specialty, and describes the organisation we want, and need, to be.”

There are and will continue to be many challenges ahead of us over the coming years, to achieve our vision and deliver our mission . But we have identified and armed ourselves with what we need in order to do so. There is much that we have achieved already, and many opportunities before us now.

I have no doubt that if we remain committed to achieving what we have collectively captured and articulated in our strategic plan, we will become a stronger, more resilient organisation. It will enable us to scale new and ever greater heights in the coming years, amplifying our voice and maximising our impact.

As for me, it’s off to pastures new in the new year, but it’s been a real pleasure being Interim CEO of the FSRH for the past year, and I wish everyone at the Faculty all the very best as they embark on this new journey into 2020, and beyond.