By Barbara F. Cox, Former President, Twin Cities Chapter
It was Linus in the Peanuts comic strip who said, “There’s no heavier burden than a great potential.” That’s especially true for a person elected president of an S.A.M. chapter. That potential becomes a big challenge.
S.A.M. should be easy to “position” within any metropolitan area. People today are obviously hungry for management education. And the price is right the cost of an S.A.M. membership is extremely competitive with that of other professional organizations.
All those “shoulds” can quickly lead to burnout for an S.A.M. chapter president who decides to put S.A.M. on the map but tries to do it without first developing a strong leadership team.
Your best defense against burnout is to plan ahead. The best time for planning is early fall. This is also the time for you to determine those of your officers who are committed to working and those who are not. As president, it is up to you to replace those who are not committed as quickly as possible, or, if that fails, support them with a very strong committee chairman who, in effect, does their job. Standards will be set by your poorest performer, and others will quickly become demoralized if one key area is sliding. You can’t afford an officer whose hidden agenda is just to add another line to his or her resume.
Obviously, it’s tougher to manage a group of elected officers than it is to manage employees who work for you. That’s why a team-building session for your officers and committee heads is a good idea. I’d say a good time for one is during September.
Also, be wary of assuming that because you’re working with professionals, it’s simply a matter of setting goals and making people accountable for results. Monitoring is part of the job and should be done frequently.
Once you have your executive board in order, you can concentrate on marketing your chapter. The Twin Cities chapter, like many S.A.M. chapters, lacked visibility. To combat this, we gave a free membership to an advertising agency president who then assisted us with a direct mail campaign that boosted our membership 30 percent. We also upgraded our newsletter and set an objective to include information on as many members as possible.
We also published notices on upcoming meetings in a free downtown newspaper. These brought in 50 percent of our monthly audience!
To extend our promotion effort to our meetings, we purchased badges for board members and asked officers to work the crowd along with the reception committee. The nametags said in bold letters, “Ask me why you should be an S.A.M. member.”
Our monthly programs took two forms: either a lecture on a specific topic such as “executive stress” or “leadership” given before dinner and a workshop afterwards; or two related topics, one such as corporation politics presented before dinner and one such as corporate responsibility given after dinner. The program that brought in the most new faces was one on “How to Start Your Own Business.”
We thought long and hard about the actual topic title for each monthly meeting, since we believed that was the key to hook potential audiences.
To spark dinner conversation, we frequently had subject cards placed on the tables and asked an individual at each table to report back on dinner conversation based on that subject. We also asked people to introduce themselves at dinner and respond to a question that related to that night’s program-for instance, “What’s the toughest decision you’ve ever made?” or “What is the management skill everyone needs to be successful?” Interestingly, the latter created a highly charged discussion.
Monthly programming was supplemented with two or three half-day seminars, a full one-day symposium, and two evening career-planning seminars. The last has been run now for three years and has earned a fine reputation. Only 15 persons are admitted to the four evening sessions with a career-planning psychologist.
Although inspired programming can greatly help you to build your chapter, as president your best resources are your fellow officers. These people need encouragement and motivation. The president who preceded me was a master at it. After each program, he sent me a note telling me what a great job I was doing. His third note said simply: “Three in a row. Outstanding.” That’s still tucked away in my desk. SAM-NI
This SAM News International article is from our historical archive, information provided is for reference and archival research about the activities and developments of the Society.