How to Fix Decreasing Membership for Your Organization

LEADERSHIP COACHING CASE STUDY

The Customer

The organization is more than 100 years old, highly regarded, and faithful to its mission while conservatively successful. The Members of The Board of Directors were some of the more influential and affluential people from around the area, and some had held their positions on the Board for decades. They had the resources just among themselves to do almost anything that needed doing. The one thing the organization lacked was a shared vision for the future, beyond doing what it has always done in the way it had always done it.

The Problem

The organization began losing membership and participation at an alarming rate of almost 5% per year – for several years in a row.

As is often the case, the Board was quick to assign blame to reasons beyond its control, such as the economy, competition from other organizations with similar missions, the media, or modern culture.

If you can place blame on that which is beyond your control, you don’t have to accept responsibility. About all you then need do is complain, assign blame, wring your hands, and go into survival mode – all of which this Board did exceedingly well. This isn’t because they were bad people or dumb people or inexperienced people. Quite the contrary; they were among the best anywhere!

Service We Provided

Without a Vision was enlisted to conduct customer satisfaction research.

We brought our experience conducting reliable research, a bias for action and problem solving, and experience in having been in the trenches in a variety of leadership positions over a long period of time. Lack of personal bias or selfish goals, coupled with a fervent desire to help others, Without a Vision was able to approach the situation from an angle not possible when you’re on the inside.

Listening is our specialty. Getting it done right is more important than getting it done fast. Our objective was to deliver the client a plan they could both embrace and could implement

Without a Vision Consultancy brought focus, clarity, and energy to the process and function of planning for the organization. This allowed the wise person – and the organization she runs – to embrace planning, and especially visioning, as a vitally important responsibility of leadership.

Proven Results

Without a Vision conducted high-quality, reliable, original research. It revealed wants, needs, and wishes among the customer base that made intuitive sense but hadn’t really been seriously considered by this too-experienced Board. After all, the Board knew what to do because they had been doing it for decades.

Even this experienced Board and organization found the outside perspective of Without a Vision Consultancy critical. Without a Vision was able to suggest an approach others hadn’t considered – or lacked the skills/knowledge to do.

After learning the results of the research, the Board responded quickly by taking the necessary steps, including raising millions of dollars in new capital, to address the customer satisfaction issues. Participation and membership decline stabilized and began to increase.

Your Turn

Without a Vision Consultancy brings more than 50 years of in-the-trenches experience in thirteen different leadership roles to the challenges and opportunities faced by you and your organization. Start seeing results like this client did by requesting a no-commitment consultation.