Good to Great?

So I was having a conversation with blogging buddy Ben Martin and ASAE Volunteer Relations Manager "DJ" Johnson on a recent trip to DC for an ASAE meeting, and we began discussing Circuit City and its demise. (Ben works out of Richmond where Circuit City is/was based.) He pointed out that they were actually a Good to Great company in Jim Collins' book, which took me a little off guard.

Really? A company that has begun liquidating was listed in this 2001 book as being one of the best companies in the country? It's amazing that it happened so quickly, but as Ben pointed out in our conversation, it wasn't that surprising.

Circuit City was slow to innovate and even slower to see that its competitors were beating its brains out by doing things more simply - having the merchandise on the shelves instead of in the back... You could walk up, pick up a DVD player, walk to the register and check out at Best Buy, while at Circuit City you would have to take a ticket, have an employee go to the back to find it, bring it back to you, and THEN you could check out. It was the convergence of convenience and simplicity, something that Circuit City FINALLY got, but it was too late.

So, I was thinking about that conversation, and about how we in associations should look at Circuit City's demise... Below are a couple thoughts I had:

Be Vigilant - If our associations are vigilant and see what we're up against in terms of competitors to our markets, we have a good chance of not meeting the same fate as Circuit City. However, being vigilant is not only about watching what our competitors are doing. It's also about knowing what our members are looking for, and figuring out how we can provide it simply and effectively.

Be Agile - Our associations need to be agile, which means that we need to be willing and able to change course if in our vigilance, we determine it's necessary. Agility is something that is not easy to master, especially with clunky strategic plans that are often five years or longer in length, but it is really a necessity.

Innovate Regularly - A failure to innovate is a failure to be great. The Circuit City situation is a bit of a cautionary tale of a once-great company failing to innovate and in the end failing to provide the value to its customers. It can also be a learning experience in that if we aren't innovating, we're essentially losing ground to our competitors.

Be Great - If your association is providing value, innovating in the right ways, developing new revenue streams while bringing in new members, all while being willing to change if you're not doing these things effectively, you're on the right track to being great.

I'm now off to the nearest Circuit City to buy up some of that inventory that they're selling at bottom basement prices... I hope your members will never do the same with your association's stuff.

A Lesson from Personal Injury Lawyers - Understand the WHEN of Communications

Let me first start out by stating that I don't condone many of the tactics of ambulance chasing personal injury lawyers... However, I do believe there is a lesson to be learned from them - getting your message in front of the right people at the right time is imperative...

I really hadn't thought much about this before my wife was recently in her second car accident within a month. She was recently rear-ended in her car, the police were called, and a report was made. (Don't worry, she's fine.)

What happened next was interesting... About three days later, she received two packages in the mail from personal injury lawyers saying essentially "we noticed that you were recently in a car accident in which you may or may not have been injured... Now is the time if you have been injured to get a personal injury lawyer."

I think the lesson here is that while chasing ambulances is not the way I would want to make my living, the fact is that had my wife been injured, having that message there at the time that it arrived would have been beneficial. They know their audience (injured people), know the right way to reach out to them (in the mail), and know the timing when it would be beneficial for their audience to have received the message (immediately after the accident.)

Our organizations should have similar planning and understanding of the "when" our messages are most relevant to our audiences. We do it with membership reminders, but do we do it well enough with our other communication pieces?

Take a lesson from the ambulance chasers out there - getting your message in front of the right audience at the right time is important. Who knows what might happen - you get a new member, a new volunteer or a new advocate because you were on the ball.

A Cool New Program to Provide Value to Customers... (Learning from the Corporate World)

We association-folk always talk about providing value to our members, and what people value in these tough economic times are both piece of mind and stability, whether from their associations or the companies from which they buy goods. These two little-mentioned aspects of the psyche of our members should be something that all of our associations understand, and are always working to address in our efforts.

Perhaps we can learn something from the corporate world...

I recently learned about an innovative program that Hyundai, the Korean automaker, has instituted to help American car buyers during these tough economic times called Hyundai Assurance. Essentially, it is a program that allows Hyundai buyers who for some reason are unable to make their payments within a year after buying the car to return it with no obligation. There are some restrictions, but all in all, they make complete sense, and provide the buyers with the piece of mind they desperately want as they contemplate a purchase like this.

That's innovation, and just might allow the company to gain some market share because they are giving their potential buyers what they value - piece of mind in these trying economic times.

How can we look at this innovative program to help provide piece of mind to our members as they struggle economically to fulfill their membership payment obligations in this downturn?

Are there any good ideas/programs out there in the association world that addresses the piece of mind aspect of providing value to members in these difficult times?

Transparency in Association Work

Personally, I believe that continually providing value to members and unabashed transparency are two areas that are EXTREMELY important in association work.

Does any association do a good enough job at either or both? I don't know the answer to that question. However, I do know that as I try to work my way up the ladder for a future career as an association executive, these are two areas that I would insist upon moving forward, while continuing to enhance and move forward the strategic plan of the association...

Speaking about transparency specifically, I once interviewed the president of a college in North Carolina who is a member of my current organization, and he had a tremendous answer to a question about his leadership style:

"I don’t believe in hiding the ball. My philosophy is, if you’re not open with the data, people are going to start speculating, and usually speculations are worse than the reality. They always think that if they’re not in a meeting that they think is important “I wonder what goes on there…” For example, in senior staff, we deal with the annual budget, the strategic plan, feedback from parents and students, what we’re going to have for lunch that day, and whole variety of big and little issues. A lot of what we discuss is boring, but folks on the outside don’t know it until they can see it. The other reason I do it is that, if I am make a decision after looking at a certain set of data or facts, and if I let those facts out to everyone else, people on campus should come to the same conclusion I did. And, if they don’t, I think there needs to be a discussion, because I could be wrong, or they could be wrong."

If you didn't know that it was a college president making that statement, you might think it was an association executive. It is so applicable to our work, that I think it is worthy of putting some thought into. In many instances I think that we aren't as transparent as we ought to be because we think of what the negative consequences of something will be as opposed to thinking in terms of what is best for the members that we're trying to serve. In the quote above, he is looking at the decision from the eyes of his constituents - what will they think? How do these decisions affect them?

Transparency is important, and by being open with the data and information, we are allowing our members to be involved in the process - a very positive way of doing business.

Anyone have different thoughts?
Have you seen or worked in associations that are completely transparent with their work? What has been the result?