While a bright sun was warming the beaches of Cancun, Mexico on Sunday, January 25th, thirty-five members of the LESI leadership team spent the entire day in a windowless conference room working on ways to improve the LESI value proposition. The attendees included the LESI Board, several past presidents, national presidents and committee chairs. The agenda for this Winter Planning meeting was three-fold: first, to review the various deliverables (i.e., a service or benefit that LESI offers to its members) that make up the LESI value proposition; second, to prioritize those deliverables; and, third to identify specific things we can do to improve the four deliverables of the LESI value proposition that have the highest priority. During the morning, a current or past committee chair or Board member led a discussion on a specific deliverable that is part of the overall LESI value proposition discussion We addressed eleven different deliverables that LESI provides to its members, and spent 15-20 minutes discussing how each different deliverable contributes to the LESI value proposition for existing and prospective members of LES Societies. At the end of the morning session, each attendee completed a ballot containing a list of each deliverable discussed. The attendee could assign a ranking from 1 to 10 (10 being the highest) for each deliverable. After all of the votes were tallied, the total scores for each deliverable refleced its respective priority. The four highest ranked deliverables would help us answer the question: "What should be the focus of our limited time and money during the next LESI year." After the votes were counted, the deliverables with the highest vote tallies were meetings, publications, communications, and education. The attendees then spent the afternoon exchanging ideas on how LESI can improve on these deliverables. A discussion leader for each of these top four deliverables will prepare a report that summarizes the key points made during the discussion, and present an action plan with a timeline and milestones for implementing improvements. These actions plans then will be reviewed by the LESI Board of Directors, and then presented to the LESI Board of Delegates. Many thanks to all of those who took time from their personal and business calendars to attend the Winter Planning Meeting. They all made important contributions to LESI. |