Keith A.

“Make sure that your “cash cow” has plenty of hay to graze on before you start spreading it around to other activities!”
― Harrison Coerver, Road to Relevance: 5 Strategies for Competitive Associations

“An association with a strong educational position has an immediate opportunity when a new regulation is instituted. Members need to know how to comply efficiently to minimize the potentially negative costs or stress implications, such as a CPA society’s addressing changes in the tax law or a manufacturing trade association’s explaining a new environmental regulation.”
― Harrison Coerver, Road to Relevance: 5 Strategies for Competitive Associations

“We all die and disappear, but that’s because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“An in-depth, introspective analysis is required. It needs to be objective, candid, and thorough. Good questions, like the following, can help. They may not produce perfectly clear answers, but they are a starting point. (Note that they are from an external perspective to give you some distance from internal biases.) What would our competitors say we do exceptionally well? Where are we dominant in the marketplace? Where do we have high market share? Where have others attempted to compete with us and failed? If we asked members to play “word association” with us, when we say the “XYZ Association” what word or phrase would come immediately to mind? If we asked members to identify the one thing that we do that helps them most, what would they say? What are we not doing that we should be doing that expands on existing strength? Don’t allow your association to operate on “pseudo strength.” Make sure your strength is real.”
― Harrison Coerver, Road to Relevance: 5 Strategies for Competitive Associations