With the AANS Annual Meeting in Orlando and the AANS fiscal year-end behind us, things are looking extremely positive for the AANS. But as much as members should enjoy the AANS’ string of successes, it wouldn’t hurt to also keep them all in perspective.
Although the actual Orlando numbers are not final as of this writing, the attendance and exhibits revenue is clearly ahead of projections. The current budget also is ahead of projections; if the investment portfolio holds, the AANS will post the third consecutive profitable year since the 2001 downsizing and retooling of the society.
 Thomas A. Marshall is the AANS executive director |
The evolution of the AANS from the severe financial and service crises it faced three years ago to the rapid stability achieved since is merely the “end of the beginning” of leadership and management’s phase 1 vision for reestablishing the AANS. That phase obviously had one goal: triage. Until we stopped the financial bleeding and created a stable infrastructure, any vision that leadership and management had for AANS beyond the short-term was basically speculative.
Now in phase 2, we’re engaging in far more than just rehabilitation. We are very quickly making up for lost organizational development time. We have more than caught up in the evolution to be where most professional membership associations operationally and philosophically exist: that is, significant reliance on multiple non-dues revenue streams, accurate and proactively meaningful fiscal policies, and appropriate levels of infrastructure resource development.
We are past the stage of massive restructuring and wild swings in our year-to-year financials. Now it’s about deftly managing our growth: wisely supporting the new programs and services underway, expanding the service mix that we based our rebuilding upon, and aggressively taking on new and innovative programming in a creative, yet fiscally reasonable manner.
Forward-Thinking Strategy Is Necessary
Most importantly, we all need to remember the lessons from our recent past-and in so doing, keep in mind a quote from one of the most fascinating of all the colorful and unique personalities in the history of chess, grand master Savielly Tartakower. (A compelling study in his own right, Tartakower was also a writer, poet, romanticist, gambler, lawyer, and an officer in both World War I and World War II.)
Waving his hand reverentially over a chessboard readied for the first move he remarked, “The blunders are all there, waiting to be made.”
For most unstable associations, the wild financial swings from red to black and back result when a cycle of leadership and management decides to live for today, rather than with a perspective that the current year is a part of a continuum of phases. Living for the moment without regard for its strategic direction-or ignoring the boundaries of its current financial position-will quickly devolve an association.
Growth and Expansion in AANS’ Future
The new “next phase” for AANS is at hand: AANS’ growth and expansion “in the black” must be managed as carefully as was its climb out of the red. It must be expertly analyzed and played-and always should be seen as part of a larger series of moves that, whether played in the opening or middle game, are all intrinsically linked in achieving the success of the endgame.