Do Less Better
Building the Indispensable Association Through Strategic Focus
Summary
When we try to be everything to everyone, we often end up being nothing special to anyone. Strategic focus, or doing fewer things with excellence, can help us transform from traditional benefits providers into value engines that drive meaningful outcomes for all stakeholders.
This is an article about reducing the noise and making choices. Great associations are focused, thriving communities. These communities are member-centric in a way that drives connection by focusing on developing and delivering the right value to solve the right problems. Done right, this value creates belonging and the association is more than relevant: it is indispensable in spirit, purpose, and outcomes.
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The Importance of Focus
“Starbucks says there are more than 170,000 possible drink combinations available, but outside estimates have put the number at more than 300 billion. And the person in front of you always seems to be ordering 100 million of them.”
Bill Saporito
New York Times
I am a huge proponent of strategic focus in which we make explicit choices about our identity, direction, values, and priorities. This article builds on previous articles which emphasized value creation, leverage, shared decision-making, and the building of a crisp product portfolio:
Playing to Win. How to gain strategic advantage by making deliberate choices that serve your shared purpose. A focused, member-centric strategy is our most important investment.
Leading the Growth Association. A guide to strategic focus and growth readiness.
How to Create a Product Portfolio. The nuts and bolts of organizing your offerings for maximum impact and reach.
As you can see here, the value of committing to strategic focus are both broad-based and stakeholder-driven: for members, volunteer leaders, staff, and sponsors. Ultimately, this leads to two things we wish for the most: the solving of purpose, a stronger and healthier community, and consistent financial returns.
For members, strategic focus delivers tangible improvements in their association experience. They receive higher quality, more impactful programs built around a clear value proposition that demonstrates a positive return on investment. Rather than commodity benefits available anywhere, members access differentiated offerings that emphasize core value to help solve specific problems. This concentration on what’s most important makes it easier for members to seamlessly get what they need while opening avenues to engage and learn from peers.
This is also true for volunteer leaders who discover renewed purpose from strategic focus. Meaningful contributions through fewer, concentrated initiatives enhances the experience more than spreading themselves thin across scattered priorities. This can create deeper connection and reduce burnout while allowing them to see tangible results from their efforts. This can free volunteers up to provide strategic guidance and measure their impact in concrete ways.
Strategic focus can also help staff manage program bloat. By concentrating on high-value activities instead of marginal programs, staff reduce stress while gaining new skills and capabilities to serve a focused association. In turn, they also develop deeper expertise in core areas of organizational strength rather than maintaining surface-level competence across too many domains. This focus brings clarity to priorities and decision-making, creating space for genuine innovation and continuous improvement.
Corporate sponsors find greater value in partnerships with strategically-focused associations. They gain deeper access to more engaged and clearly defined member audiences, creating clearer ROI through programs that align naturally with sponsor objectives. Rather than choosing from scattered sponsorship options of varying quality, sponsors benefit from higher quality partnership opportunities that facilitate meaningful interactions with members. This strategic clarity and expertise in specific areas enables more innovative and impactful collaborations.
The financial returns from strategic focus compound in multiple ways. We reduce costs by eliminating underperforming programs while achieving higher margins on core offerings through enhanced expertise, quality, focus, and reach. Limited resources are strategically deployed thereby enhancing our ability to improve key programs. Strategic focus helps us focus on the right metrics for measuring success and ultimately drives greater and more sustainable value creation.
Everyone benefits from an investment in innovation and an emphasis on doing less better. For instance, the shift from broad, unfocused programming to more strategically-focused value creation allows sponsors to move beyond traditional transactional sponsorships to become true strategic partners, creating more value for both the sponsors and the association's members.
There are many ways to achieve strategic focus, but there are some best practices. In the next section, let’s look at a list of suggestions with links to previous articles from this newsletter, The Innovative Association.
The Path to Strategic Focus
“What you pay attention to will define for you what reality is.”
Oliver Burkeman
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: people don’t want more stuff. They do, however, want to be connected, desire to have their problems solved, and oftentimes want a stake in participating in what’s coming. This agency is the kernel of community building that is so important to achieving strategic focus.
Evaluate current offerings against clear strategic criteria
Identify core competencies and areas of true differentiation
Listen deeply to what members value most
Create a product portfolio of only highly-valued offerings
Make deliberate choices about what to stop doing
Build excellence in chosen areas
Communicate the value of your focused strategy
Resist pressure to expand beyond core focus
Success in our rapidly changing world requires us to move beyond the traditional benefits model to become engines of focused value creation. By making strategic choices about where to excel rather than trying to be all things to all people, associations can better serve their members while creating a more energizing and sustainable organization for volunteers and staff.
This, of course, is the seeding of our most unique value proposition: deep and abiding community. Great communities deliver compound value: we empathize and understand members who get their needs met, we design and cultivate community to provide member belonging, and we position all offerings as learning opportunities. These features together — a strong membership, a deliberately designed community, and learning journeys — create the strategically-focused, indispensable association.
Make Choices (and Stick to Them)
“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
Greg McKeown
By embracing making explicit choices about who (and how) we serve we can shift from satisfying members to motivating and challenging them to create and belong to a thriving community.
With strategic focus, we transform from trying to check every box to delivering exceptional value in carefully chosen areas. This shift creates a virtuous cycle: better programs lead to more engaged members, which enables further improvements and innovation.
The key is having the courage to say no to good but non-essential activities in service of excelling at what matters most. When associations focus their energy and resources on doing fewer things better, they create more value for everyone involved while building a more financially and culturally sustainable organization.
I lead the product community; we are a learning community because we believe great relationships help us create the value our members want. Remember, product-led growth fuels connection. Join the product community and flip your destiny.
About the Author
James Young is founder and chief learning officer of the product community®. Jim is an engaging trainer and leading thinker in the worlds of associations, learning communities, and product development. Prior to starting the product community®, Jim served as Chief Learning Officer at both the American College of Chest Physicians and the Society of College and University Planning. Please contact me for a conversation: james@productcommunity.us