The pandemic has changed the way customers engage with businesses. The new customer has different wants and needs, and businesses that succeed understand the new customer journey and solve customer problems that really matter. Covid-19 and other major trends over the last five years have also changed our goals and priorities. Regardless of whether your… Read More Members on your side

My friend, Lowell Aplebaum, is an avid reader of any publication that covers topics on strategy, leadership and management. He is the founder and CEO of the US-based Vista Cova, a group of expert facilitators who support strategic planning, member engagement and governance design for associations. One of Lowell’s sharing in LinkedIn was an article… Read More ‘5C’ Aspirational Traits for an Association Leader

Richard M. Caballero is a man on a mission. Born in the Philippines, Richard is founder and CEO of Healthy Mind Solutions, a Canadian digital mental wellness company with a purpose to break the stigma of mental illness in the Philippines by providing research-based mental wellness solutions that are effective, accessible and affordable. The Philippine… Read More Minding mental resiliency

You must have heard or used the idiomatic and colloquial expression, “keeping the fire burning,” or similar variations. In the context of associations, it is keeping a sense of connectedness and belonging in a community setting. I learned more about what this phrase meant for associations when I attended a webinar recently on “Keeping the… Read More Keeping the Community Fire Burning in Associations

I first came to know about the term “diversity and inclusion,” or “D&I,” as a member of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). In August 2011, its board of directors approved a 3-year D&I strategic plan anchored on the principle that a diverse and inclusive organization is one that can attribute high performance to… Read More Understanding DEI in Associations

In my post about five years ago on October 5, 2017, “Beyond Traditional Revenue Sources,” I wrote about non-dues revenues (NDRs) which associations are now opting for as an alternative or supplemental business model. Aggravated by the pandemic, the days of associations relying mainly on membership dues to survive is over. Simply defined, NDRs are monies… Read More Not your grandma’s non-dues revenue

I only became familiar with association member onboarding midway in my career as an association executive. I knew much earlier the concept of onboarding is commonly used in human resource management, which refers to the process of fully integrating new employees into the workplace and to bring them “on board” to the company culture. Onboarding… Read More New member onboarding plan a must

If there’s one field in business management that I will find difficult to perform, it will be marketing. Take the “4Ps” of marketing into account—product, price, place and promotion—then the challenge becomes more complicated. While marketing management is extensively employed in business with much success, this is not the case for some, if not many,… Read More A tale of two marketing campaigns that worked!

I usually start my day reading a page in “Our Daily Bread,” a 365-day devotional booklet where I find inspiring human stories and biblical passages to deepen my faith. Since it’s Holy Week, the most sacred week in the Christian church year, I’m sharing a few short captions from the publication. I labeled these anecdotes… Read More A Daily Dose of Devotion

I first heard the phrase “it’s lonely at the top” decades back when I took up a university leadership course. I learned then that many executives shared the sentiment that more than half of CEOs experience feelings of loneliness in their careers. I started experiencing this myself when I became the CEO of an international… Read More Lonely at the top