Learning From Each Other

I had the chance to recently visit with a client of ours during their program planning meeting. The meeting attendance was impressive: a consortium of some of the best-and-brightest at one of the leading medical associations in the world. There were individuals in the room I’d met before: an austere, stern doctor from a local hospital who was somehow even able to remain gruff in communicating the great news that he’d received a position as a department chair at an East Coast university. I congratulated him and indicated what a great place I considered that city and university to be. “That’s not my motivator, he replied briskly before walking away. There was the ever-present Doogie Howser stand-in; a prodigal, man-child doctor whose colleagues kept highlighting how smart he was—ever exaggerated by the fact that he was the spitting image of college buddies during our sophomore year (and I can assure you, none of them were “prodigal” on a daily basis). Yet at twenty seven, he is a leader in a major medical society. Impressive. There was the diligent, steadfast Middle Eastern doctor who looked somehow saintly in her hooded veil, as she works until long after midnight (I can attest, I stepped out for a breath of fresh air before bed after reading, and she was still in the lobby working just as hard as when I left her at 6:30 that evening). It made me pause to appreciate how committed all of these individuals are at staying focused on the reason they flew across the country, perhaps world, to be together. To properly answer my own question instilled by the terse doctor of the group, "What is their motivator?” The answer remains simple: to learn from each other. And, in turn, to help others.

This is an association at its core. As a software vendor, it is often easy to become caught up in the fact that all of the bits and bytes can feel more important than the member-user of our product. In fact, for association software vendors, the problem of appreciating this realization is often compounded by the fact that our buyer is most often not any real recipient of the knowledge-based collateral which our system manages. The buyer is most likely the administrator of this system, serving the members, yet providing a barrier between the software vendor and the true heir to the value of the product. I can definitively state that any supplier of association software, at any level, should consider attending a true member-focused event at least once a year to be reminded of the diligent individuals who benefit from their product offering. Certainly, not all associations that are gathered in a room, exhibit hall, or tradeshow floor are in the business of saving lives like my doctor friends mentioned above. However, regardless of whether you are talking to über-skilled hypothalamus-only brain surgeons or a trade group comprised of change-sorting apparatus-operators (I made those two up; they very likely exist), it is imperative to remember that they are serving a group of committed members whose goal is to become more effective, more efficient, and more educated. Association-lead meetings could never have a bad outcome, if done effectively. They serve each other, and the general public inherently benefits as well.

This brings me full circle to my own role in this whole process. As a product manager for software which serves associations, it is important that I set some of my metrics and measures for success around some of the many intangible variables which I have described above. "Have I made my end-users more effective and efficient at reviewing and planning quality programs for their members? Has the content and collateral, which our system manages, been able to be distributed to the most accessible, syndicated, enduring content channels? Have continuing education credits-earned increased as a result of a process that our system has helped to impact? Were members, who were unable to attend, able to take advantage of any of this knowledge remotely, using our technology?” Many of these questions might be answered with a simple “yes” or “no;" however, it makes sense to search for ways in which the true success-metrics we bind to our product take some of these considerations into account. I think that I will have my work cut out for me. In this particular case, attending a member event not only helped the members to learn from each other… I most certainly learned something as well.