Volunteers Strengthened ASA’s Strategic Direction at Recent Planning Retreat

Back in February of 2008 at the associations winter meeting in St Petersburg, FL, the leadership of the American Supply Association established its first long range strategic plan based on the vision of both volunteer leaders and staff through a process called Strategic Governance.  Nearly seventy volunteers and staff participated in that first two-day strategic planning event. Since then, the association’s leadership continues to annually meet to review ASA’s mission, where the association is going, what has changed to our assumptions and mission and what needs to be tweaked to keep the association moving toward our envisioned future. Last year, the association enhanced this process with a new governance structure. Today, each of the four strategic goals are now driven by a Strategic Council with each Council establishing Task Groups that focus on short term tactical plans to achieve the long-range plan of each Council. 

Very few associations successfully pull off bringing together such a large crowd of individuals into a planning session and walk away united in purpose and thought. Not only has the association pulled that off in 2008 but it’s what’s driving ASA today!

Last week in Naples, FL, more than 100 members and staff once again met to keep the association properly focused on the future horizon, reestablish the assumptions that the association is making, what new initiatives the association will need to take and what successes we are making.  The strategic mission for each of the 4 goals are as follows:

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE GOAL

Support our member’s ability to be more profitable and sustainable through understanding market trends, enhancing operational efficiencies, and providing relevant data intelligence to enhance member’s decision making.

EMPLOYEE RECRUITMENT & EDUCATION GOAL

Create a strategic vision and plan to fulfill the ASA Recruit, Train and Retain strategic initiative to support ASA members in their ability to attract, develop, and retain a skilled and diversified workforce that will become the best in the industry.

ADVOCACY GOAL

Create an engaging, unified and proactive voice of all the stakeholders within the PHCP/PVF industry to secure our member’s common interests in legislative, regulatory, and code and standards across all levels of government while having a viable PAC to support these efforts.

EMBRACING THE FUTURE GOAL

To support our member's ability to succeed in the future, ASA will provide data, insights, and best practices to address disruption and innovation in the channel. 

It has been this strategic governance process that has enabled ASA to radically expand its value proposition to include economic forecasting programs, full time recognized advocacy efforts at the state and national levels as well as in the codes and standards arena, robust and comprehensive educational programs delivered to employees in a relevant and cost effective way, peer networking programs that engage all segments of a members operation, innovation and technology trends as well as building robust employee recruitment programs. In the next several weeks, the complete revised ASA Long Range Strategic Plan will be posted on the new association website at www.asa.net.