The best strategy in the world isn’t a good strategy unless it can be communicated and executed. Although the CEO is responsible for leading the strategy development process, and the Board has ultimate fiduciary responsibility for determining strategic direction, an organization is missing an opportunity if it doesn’t engage the entire staff in the development of strategy.

This week’s blog post on speaker coaching is re-posted with permission from Aaron D. Wolowiec,  founder and president of Event Garde, a professional development consulting firm based in Grand Rapids, Mich. Website: www.eventgarde.com.

Think about the old 80/20 rule – you get 80% of your results from 20% of your effort. As an association with limited resources, you can’t be all things to all people. So it makes sense to be strategic about where you’re investing your time, energy, and resources when working on growing membership.

If you survey your members and conduct ongoing research, you should be able to segment them by their perceived value of your organization, and then by how much they are investing on an annual basis. You’ll want to group them by:

For associations, continuing education has become increasingly important as a membership benefit. In a recent study from Pew Research Center, 73% of respondents identified themselves as lifelong learners.

That means that there’s a huge and growing opportunity for your association to engage with both members and non-members.

Einstein has been quoted as having said “if I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes. In other words, he would spend significant time figuring out what the problem is.

When developing strategy, it is imperative to think strategically. And, a key component of strategic thinking is creative thinking. Creative thinking is also vital when solving problems outside of the strategy development realm.

Promoting the right membership packages and add-ons to the right people at the right price is fundamental to both member acquisition and member retention. Once you’ve taken the time to understand the needs of your members, you can develop more flexible pricing strategies to generate reliable revenue streams.