In this pandemic year, the private and the public, the personal and the impersonal have been collided, liberated, and constrained as never before. Everything is exposed to the light. The digital world that was already surging in importance has exploded into relevance.
During our work with membership organisations, we have seen the challenges and frustrations this year has caused first-hand. However, we have also seen the improvements and successes of organisations that have tackled the challenges head-on and differently.
We wanted to explore this further and understand what has led some membership organisations to flourish in this harsh climate, where others have wilted.
To answer these questions, we enlisted the support of our strategic partners Rise Above, who specialise in leadership strategy and coaching, to carry out personal interviews with some of the leaders of membership organisations in the UK. These included leaders from several MemberWise Ambassador membership organisations, and MemberWise itself, as an extensive voice of authority of this subject.
Our aim was to understand how they had led through the pandemic, and what insight they could share with the industry.
The outcome is an uplifting story of success in the face of an existential global threat, which we have pulled together into a report with the key findings. To access the full report of leading through the pandemic click here.
What is included in the report?
There are 6 key areas that are covered in the report:
1. Belonging Together
2. Leading Apart
3. Pandemic Good
4. Pandemic Bad
5. A Changed World
6. A New Model
For the purposes of this post, we have explored the first two areas of the report in a bit more detail, to give you the key highlights from these sections.
Belonging Together
A member is someone who wants to be part of something bigger than themselves. A member is a belonger. The commercial aspects of membership that take the form of paid-for products and services are the transactional and most easily measured aspects of belonging. They are essential for financial health. But they are not what being a member is all about. The real benefit is bigger, more emotional. Being a member matters.
The pandemic has sharpened wants and needs into must-haves and demands. Membership, like a good brand, is and will always be about offering a particular balance of emotional and functional benefits, but membership is now much more about delivery too: what members get, how they get it, and at what price. Above all, members want it now.
The best member organisations answer the member’s fundamental question: What’s in it for me?
Leading Apart
There is a new blend of leadership qualities emerging from the pandemic, and perhaps a new kind of leader. The most successful leaders of membership organisations have five qualities in common. Resilience, purpose, clarity, passion for leadership and kindness.
These five leadership qualities, all of which pre-date the pandemic, have been thrown into sharp relief by it. The most successful leaders of membership organisations have them all, as individuals and in their teams.
In this context, some leaders we interviewed for the report argued that the pandemic has been a force for good in their businesses. As the head of marketing and digital transformation at a trade association says, ‘The pandemic has been a fantastic thing, just the jolt we needed. We were all suddenly on the same page.’
To read the full findings from these two sections, plus the full report, leading through the pandemic, visit our website where you can download your copy.
Granite 5 specialise in supporting membership organisations to harness their digital footprint to increase member acquisition and retention.
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