Values-Centered Leadership and Value-Based Exchange: Healthcare Collaboration in Corporate Sponsorship and Beyond
Posted: 11/29/2010 10:20:55 AM by
Diane Knoepke | with 0 comments
Along with a couple hundred healthcare association executives, I had the pleasure of attending the ASAE Healthcare Association Conference on November 18-19, 2010, here in Chicago.
Whether and how to collaborate was the theme that connected all of the sessions and conversations in which I participated. This conference covered internal/departmental collaboration, association-to-association partnerships and relationships between organizations and corporations. What I was happy to see was an open conversation about whether or not to collaborate, rather than just a push for how to hook a partner fast. Each presenter, in his or her own way, put members and mission at the center of everything. There was no naive separation of people from practicalities, but rather a firm hold on how each association’s business and purpose can be preserved and elevated while the organization goes about its goals of solvency and professional advancement.
Values-centered leadership
Dr. Lance Secretan’s keynote, entitled “The Spark, the Flame, and the Torch: Restoring Inspiration in American Healthcare,” kicked off the conference with a discussion of leading by example, with values at the center of any leadership philosophy. While his evocative visuals and guru language around dreams may have seemed a bit soft and squishy to some of the skeptics in the audience, his underlying points were sharp and practical:
- How can we measure a group’s success if we don’t have a big, specific, organization-defining goal to hold our work against and to guide our subsequent goals? Secretan thinks most organizations’ mission statements fall short in meaning, measurability, and specificity.
- Is there agreement between colleagues, departments and third parties about the focus, clarity and high standards it takes to accomplish our goals, an agreement made even more difficult in the healthcare environment?
I also attended a session, conducted by representatives from the American College of Cardiology and the Heart Rhythm Society, entitled “Don't Compete—Collaborate! Working Together toward Common Goals.” The productive tension between the two organizations was palpable in the room. Here you have two organizations—one the big, broad membership, the other a small but mighty sub-specialty—that compete for grant dollars, members and attention from a wide variety of audiences. But the values of each organization led them to work together to create an Atrial Fibrillation resource site (afibprofessional.org). Not only did each organization’s values lead them to work together, their unique goals and cultures compelled them to create an agreement and have all of the tough conversations in advance to create an environment of trust and mutual understanding. Neither organization lost its identity in the mix, but rather each became clearer through the collaboration while creating a third entity with its own identity through the partnership.
Value-based exchange
The sessions mentioned above both provided clear lessons for any type of partnership, including those with corporations. More direct corporate partnership lessons came from a session called, “Successful Grant-Writing to Support Educational Initiatives: A Professional Society and Pharmaceutical Industry Perspective,” delivered by representatives from the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and Pfizer. While we regularly emphasize the differences in process, purpose and structure between corporate sponsorship and corporate grants, this session provided a great reminder of their core commonality: each is a value-based exchange. While corporate sponsorship is about marketing and business value, and grants are about educational value, each of them pushes all parties to predict, demonstrate and measure impact. The facilitators conducted a group exercise comparing two grant proposal examples and it was clear that the likelihood of impact on each participant was more important than how many participants, the size of the effort, or even the price tag. Value is about impact, not coverage or cost.
I co-presented a session with Carylann Assante, CAE, vice president of development and fundraising for ASAE. Our session, entitled “Good for Business: Nonprofit Partnerships that Build Social and Financial Value,” discussed ways for associations to bring together social and business impact through cause-like partnerships. Carylann shared statistics about association members and their higher-than-average likelihood to give time and money to causes they support. They do not, however, typically give that time and money to their professional associations. Carylann also shared research conducted with people who did not renew their association memberships. In 2009, the reason most often cited was “price,” where in 2010, the reason most often cited was “value.” So we discussed how to bring all of this together through cause platforms that support the profession and professional, solve problems within the patient population, and/or educate the public.
I shared four reasons that healthcare associations are increasingly looking to create corporate/cause platforms:
- Causes represent the fastest-growing segment of sponsorship. According to IEG’s 2009 projections, causes were expected to outpace all other segments, including sports and entertainment, in 2010 spending growth. These dollars represent an opportunity for associations to tap another type of revenue.
- Purpose-hungry audiences want corporate innovation and results for issues that matter. In a culture of increased access to people and information, consumer expectations are at an all-time high. We consumers expect the organizations and (especially) companies we support to show us how they are making money, creating jobs, coming up with new solutions to make our lives better, and change the world.
- Organizations are increasingly looking for effective direct-to-consumer (DTC) messaging. Many associations long employed a ripple strategy where they talked exclusively to their members and counted on members to talk to patients and the public. Now, many more are using a vertical strategy to talk to members, patients, public and other audiences about any given topic.
- Corporate revenue diversification is no longer a best practice, it’s a must practice. The corporate partnership lessons of 2008 and 2009 represented a particular sea change for the healthcare community. As so many regulations and ethics codes changed the way healthcare companies and organizations partner, what remains is a focus on substance and measurable exchange. Mission/values, culture, and business parameters will guide prospective partners on the types of funding and audience interactions that are both appropriate and impactful.
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Filed under: cause marketing, contracts, hospitals and healthcare, medical societies, nonprofit, associations