NAEC strategic planning session

Last week I was able to attend the NAEC’s strategic planning session in Asheville, NC. 

  [Sunday dinner before the meeting started and a toast by our current president]

Every 3 to 5 years the Association gets previous, present and future board members together to map out the strategic direction of the association.  A survey went out to membership a few months before our meeting to find out what needs the membership has currently and what needs they believe they will have in the future. The next step is at the meeting and includes reviewing survey results of member ship and throwing up ideas to meet the present and future need.

 [Day one of the two day planning session.]

While I have been on the board for 2 years, I am the youngest board member.  While I have been involved in the elevator industry for around 20 years, there are many people with much more experience and knowledge than I have.  I understood that when you get a group of motivated and competitive people who run and managed their own businesses or business units it may get crowded. The gravity of the knowledge and experience of my counterparts hit me Monday morning when we got down to business.  During the first breakout session, I was in a group with a few people that had twice the amount of contractor experience, 2 to 4 times NAEC experience and had a big presence during discussions.  I learned a lot from my interactions with these individuals and was very impressed with my counter parts.

During the next two days we took 50+ pages of data and 22 people’s contributions on how to serve the immediate needs as well as future needs of NAEC membership and boiled it down to something tangible.  The implementation time lines for these big ideas ranged from now to 10 years from now.  While I had been a part of a similar process it is amazing how the ideas shake out from data to ideas to implementation strategies.   

The brilliance of the process was taking all of our big, motivated personalities and capturing the strengths and knowledge that comes from different parts of the elevator business[Contractors & suppliers from California to Florida to New York and everywhere inbetween] and focusing it to transform a massive amount data into actionable items.  One of the keys of this successful exercise was that we had a great facilitator who could keep us on track and harness our energy.

During the last few hours on the 2^nd day everyone was running out of steam as this process is challenging.  What we came up with during these two days was 10 big ideas and the back end strategies how to accomplish these big ideas.  As I reflect on the experience on my 2^nd flight of the day to get back to Chicago I am very satisfied with our results and believe it is a good path for the association for many years to come. 

Frequently, I get asked what do I get out of being a part of the NAEC Board of Directors. This last few days was a reminder that every time I am involved in these activities, I learn from the process but I learn more from the people.   The NAEC is fortunate to have such great contributors and I am fortunate to have been asked to be one of them.

As always feel free to contact us at www.colleyelevator.com, email Craigz@colleyelevator.com or call 630-766-7230.