John L. Robinson, PE, CVS President Phone: 816-220-1105 Fax: 816-220-3050 Email: john@rsrsolutions.com

Changing Our Focus

In this month's article I want to share some of the recent organizational changes we have made to the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors. These changes were implemented to bring better leadership focus to the Board of Directors.

Many years ago, when we reconfigured the organizational structure of SAVE, we also set up an Executive Committee to handle the day-to-day operations of the Society. This committee was comprised of the:

1. President
2. Executive Vice President
3. Vice President–Finance
4. Vice President–Education
5. Vice President–Administration
6. Immediate Past President
7. Executive Director (non-voting)

A few years ago, the Vice President – Administration was renamed to the Vice President – Communications and the responsibilities were modified slightly. The role of the VP – Communications is to oversee and direct the activities related to Value World, Interactions, and the Honors and Awards Program.

As I reflected on the current needs of SAVE International® it seemed that the organizational leadership needed to change its focus. As a result, I recently proposed a reconfiguration of our Executive Committee, which has been approved by the Board of Directors.

There are two significant aspects of our Society that need attention. We need to focus more on our membership and we need to focus more on marketing. While this is certainly not any revolutionary insight, neither has it been a well-defined focus in the recent past. To bring more focus to these critical functions, we have replaced the VP – Communications on the Executive Committee with the VP – Membership and the VP – Marketing.

The following are a few of my concerns and issues relative to membership that I believe need the attention of the Board of Directors:

• I was pleased and yet disturbed by the number of people that were first time attendees at the 2003 Annual Conference. I suspect it is indicative of a high turnover in our membership. We need to understand why there is such a large turnover and take appropriate actions to retain membership.
  
• We have initiated a member service (Team Member Listing) that should be seen as a terrific value to our membership yet less than 10 people have signed up for it. I am puzzled. I think this needs a significant promotion because it provides a valuable member benefit, it promotes new members, and it has the potential to be a significant revenue source for SAVE. We need to find out why it is not growing and make the necessary adjustments.
  
• We need to develop some new ways to interest people in becoming members. I believe we need a paradigm shift to recognize and understand how the availability of information on the Internet is diminishing the perceived need to be associated with an organization like SAVE. How do we overcome this?
  
• We need to actively generate more sustaining corporate members. These members are often the same members that provide additional financial support to SAVE through advertising and sponsorships.
  

• ALL of our marketing materials (informational brochures) need to be updated. This was identified a year ago and is not completed yet.
  
• The SAVE International® exhibit needs to be updated. The condition and presentation of our exhibit is embarrassing. This exhibit has already been used twice this year to promote SAVE at the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) annual conference and at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) VE Conference.
  
• We have various inter-society agreements but we have no defined strategy for how we are actually going to capitalize on these relationships to promote the value methodology, develop new members, etc.
  
• The recent ENR article really brings to the forefront that many people still do not know what value engineering is all about. We must have a proactive marketing plan to enlighten the uninformed and the misinformed.
  

Because of the importance of addressing these issues, concerns, and opportunities, the Board of Directors felt we needed to add the Vice President - Marketing and Vice President - Membership to the Executive Committee so that we can maintain dialog on these and other related issues on a monthly basis.

The new Executive Committee configuration is:

1. President
2. Executive Vice President
3. Vice President–Finance
4. Vice President–Education
5. Vice President–Membership
6. Vice President–Marketing
7. Immediate Past President
8. Executive Director (non-voting)

As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.