President's Letter: Vision, Tasks, Hopes and Dreams
Karen O. Courtney, AIA, FSMPS; SMPS National President and Director of Marketing, Senior Associate;
"A vision without a task is but a dream; a task without a vision is drudgery; but a vision with a task is the hope of the world." Chiseled into the stone of a seventeenth century church in Sussex, England, this inscription is one of my favorites and has provided inspiration to me many times in my career as an architect and marketer. It first appeared over ten years ago in the SMPS Marketer as the lead sentence in an article I wrote on strategic planning. And so it seemed appropriate to use it once again to communicate to you about the vision of SMPS and the work planned for the upcoming year.

Each year in June the National Board - both the incoming and outgoing members - embarks on a strategic planning meeting to evaluate what is working well or not, and plot a course to strengthen our organization.  This year we were fortunate to have Weld Coxe, FSMPS, an SMPS founder, facilitate this session at his home base in Block Island, RI.  Through this process, two overriding objectives were set that we feel will strengthen our membership both on a professional and personal level, as well as create long lasting value.  We also had a desire to streamline the many committee and task force functions that have played such a strong role in helping the organization meet its goals over the last five years.

The first objective is focused on education. For many of us, our education about marketing professional services came from our attendance at chapter meetings and this still remains a strong driver in chapter development.  However, there are some programs that are of interest to our membership that are beyond the resources of a single chapter. As a national organization we want to fill that unmet need, and therefore bring more value to your membership.  This will be done by offering programs that do not compete with chapter programming and that are national in scope and universal in topic.  To this end, SMPS is launching a new webinar series consisting of 90-minute web-based seminars designed to deliver high level content in an interactive manner. Six of these seminars are in the planning stages with the first two highlighted this month in the SMPS News.

A second tactic in meeting our educational goal is the continuation of the very popular SMPS Business Development Institute's Best Practices Workshops.  Taught by veteran business developers Tom Boogher of PSI and Al Potter of Gilbane, six of these workshops are now planned around the country with dates highlighted in the left hand column of this issue.   This workshop will also be available as a pre-convention workshop on August 10 in New Orleans in order to maximize its availability to our membership.

Lastly, to provide insight and ideas, I am relaunching a long dormant national committee to focus on education. This committee will work closely with our national director of education to evaluate offerings, provide ideas and work to improve how best to deliver more educational opportunities to our membership. As this work gets started, expect to see a Zoomerang survey in the coming months to get your opinions on educational offerings and other services that your national team can provide.

The second major initiative is leadership training.  Strong leaders make strong chapters, and they are the lifeblood of SMPS.  Based on the success of our annual President's Leadership Symposium, your national team wants to offer more to help in developing strong leadership skills for our members.  We see this benefiting our chapters, but also helping our members professionally as they progress in their careers.  To meet this goal, a new committee has been formed to study and develop a curriculum appropriate to these needs.  SMPS is a member of the Center for Association Leadership, a think tank of sorts for associations of all kinds.  As we learned in meeting with them last week, they can offer some of the country's best association resources to help SMPS in this effort. Again, expect to hear more about this via a survey in the coming months.

Work on both of these major initiatives was continued at last week's first board of director's meeting of the 2004-2005 board.  In addition to this, we also tackled a long overdue realignment of national committees and task forces and drafted mission statements for each of these groups that are aligned with our overall SMPS mission.  We also developed between three to five goals for each group so that there is clarity about their purpose for the coming year. 

Most of the task forces, by their nature short lived and issue specific, have now completed their work. Many of the committees are continuing, but several are disbanding. For example, membership will now be carried out as a national staff function, designed to provide resources to chapters for their membership initiatives.  The technology committee has completed its work as has the anniversary committee, so they too will end. At the same time, the mentoring committee will be focused on communicating the value of mentoring this year while the national office studies the feasibility of a launching a national program.  The mission, goals and leaders of each committee and task force will soon be a part of the SMPS web site so that you can see what each is focused on accomplishing this year.

With all of this preliminary work now completed, it is time to actively solicit your help in making our vision for SMPS a reality.  Committee and task force work is the way to be a part of this.  Last year, a board of director's task force developed guidelines and a process for participation in national committee work. We did this so that the process is open and transparent.  Five years ago, the intent in forming national committees was to provide our members with a place to grow after they had served their chapters as leaders.  The first fruits of our members' labor should always be directed to making strong chapters, and so we require that a national committee member have a track record of serving there first.  These requirements are highlighted on the SMPS homepage as well as a listing of which committees and task forces are now in place. The e-mailed SMPS News does reach all of our membership, and so a written solicitation for interest in serving on national committees and task forces will also be sent to each member. In each case, applications need to be sent to the national office by October 29th, and they will then be reviewed by the committee chair, selections made and approved by the President.  It is my hope that we can accommodate everyone who has a desire to serve SMPS through this important work.

In closing this first President's letter, I am encouraged by all the preliminary work done thus far as a new board, but mindful of the work that yet needs to happen to accomplish our two big initiatives of providing improved educational offerings and leadership training for our members.  For this and other work of the organization, we need the minds and hands of many. Therefore, I reach out to you, the membership, to join us by your involvement in committees and task forces as a way to continue to serve SMPS and its mission.  As with most efforts, it starts with a dream, and our dream is best stated in our mission "to be the premier source for education, information and resources in marketing professional services for the built and natural environment."  The depression era humorist and educator, Stephen Leacock said it best when he stated, "It may be that those who dream most, do most."   And so, let us dream big for SMPS and in doing so, do the most for SMPS.

About the President
Karen O. Courtney, AIA, FSMPS, is Director of Marketing for BSA LifeStructures, (bsalifestructures.com), an architecture and engineering firm, based in Indianapolis, IN, with offices in Chicago and Charlotte, NC. Karen can be reached at (317) 819-7878 or by email at kcourtney@bsalifestructures.com. [ return to top ]