CEO Challenges and Opportunities

On Wednesday I attended a CEO Symposium led by consultant Seth Kahan. Seth has facilitated a couple of meetings for IBTTA, including our board meeting in January and our conference planning meeting in Plano, Texas last July. At this week's meeting, 14 executives from diverse associations met to discuss leadership during economic uncertainty. The CEOs in the meeting cited these trends:

• Meeting attendance and travel are constricted
• Membership dues are easy targets for quick cost savings
• Credit is frozen or sluggish
• Portfolios are shrunken, liquidity is difficult, and spending is onerous
• Alternative revenues are down

Kahan noted that the discussion “covered issues of critical importance, bringing together some of the best minds in Washington’s association industry. Emerging issues were identified, including the necessity to retool social media strategies and existing business models. Solutions for raising the value of face-to-face meetings were discussed as well as scalable solutions for serving members who are unable to travel. Of particular note was the spirited conversation about reversing long-held assumptions about how to run an association in the 21st century.”

I was impressed with the level of engagement and energy of my fellow CEOs, some of whom I already knew and others whom I met for the first time. I came away from the meeting with a heightened sense that marketing is more important to the success of associations today than ever before. By marketing, I don’t mean creating brochures and pushing information out to members. I'm speaking of marketing as the wide range of activities involved in making sure that you're continuing to meet the needs of your customers and are getting value in return. If you don’t understand your customers and their needs, then you’re missing the whole point of marketing. At IBTTA, we want every person on our staff to be marketer. It isn't a job only for a few; it is discipline and a way of thinking and behaving for everyone in our organization.

-- Pat Jones