Meredith Low Consulting - Strategy, Research, Planning

What’s the competition for a conference?

Meredith Low May 15, 2013

“We might not be back next year. We are looking at our overall marketing budget and might shift conference spending into other categories where we’ve seen better results.” – High-level sponsor. “They have to come – they really don’t have any choice. We’re the only conference of its kind.” – Conference owner Understanding your competitive

Culture > strategy, or, what you do means more than what you say

Meredith Low May 9, 2013

This photo is a great illustration of how what you do far outweighs what you say. For our purposes today, let’s just accept that this distribution of trash cans is indeed dumb. Two blocks seems pretty far to go between trash cans (it’s a long way to hold a

Choose your moment – timing strategic planning

Meredith Low April 17, 2013

I have the privilege of getting to know my strategic planning clients pretty well. And why is that? Because a strategic planning process is a big commitment. There’s no point pretending otherwise. So I when I get asked, as I do frequently, when is the right time to undertake strategic planning for an association, I

Leadership & strategy in orbit: Insights from Commander Hadfield

Meredith Low April 10, 2013

I was an earthbound type of kid, I guess. I never wanted to be an astronaut and I never got excited about space travel breakthroughs. But now I’m following Commander Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut on the International Space Station, currently orbiting Earth every 93 minutes or so, and I’m a massive enthusiast. He’s been

You say you want to be customer-centric – why should we believe you?

Meredith Low March 28, 2013

Everywhere you’ll hear companies saying they want to be customer-centric, hospitals saying they want to be patient-centric, associations saying they want to be member-centric… But this can’t be just lip service – it’s a revolutionary idea, not to be taken lightly. Nonetheless, this term is thrown around pretty glibly. If this kind of language is

Putting the strategy into strategic planning

Meredith Low March 20, 2013

Imagine if we were to sit down in a conference room, and take 10 strategic plans of associations we know well, but with the identifying information removed. Would we be able to to tell whose was whose? We should be shocked – but I wouldn’t be surprised – if the answer was no. Given the

Why do you hold a conference?

Meredith Low March 14, 2013

Why do you hold a conference? That’s not meant to be a trick question. Really, what do you want to get out of your conference? Surely it’s not just for the sake of having a big event. Or is it? At the PCMA Convening Leaders conference in January, a speaker asked delegates if their deliverable

Don’t listen to your board!

Meredith Low March 11, 2013

I’ve written a guest post this week for Greenfield Services, making the case for not listening to your board – well, at least not without getting other sources of information. Check it out on their site

Bogged down? Try a blank sheet of paper

Meredith Low March 7, 2013

Feeling bogged down and frustrated, and worried these are symptoms of a broader malaise in your organization? The blank sheet of paper approach can be a very useful tool to tackle these challenges. After I mentioned this technique to him a few weeks back, my colleague Thom Singer blogged about it, so I thought I’d

Take a pulse before making strategic event decisions

Meredith Low March 4, 2013

Today’s post is a courtesy of a guest blogger, Meagan Rockett, who is Director, Client Solutions with Greenfield Services, Inc.. She works closely with professional and trade associations in consulting and implementing unique strategies to increase all aspects of member engagement. Have you ever felt that making a decision, any decision is better than not reacting? Unfortunately,

← Older posts