By William Murray
Work-life balance is struggle. There seldom are enough hours to accomplish our top priorities, let alone those things that we intend to do "when there is time."
As a result, tasks that aren’t considered urgent or immediate often fall off our list of priorities—even though they may be vital to the long-term success of an organization.
For the estimated one million Americans who work in trade associations and membership organizations, visiting with members is one of those important things that is frequently overlooked because it’s not a task that’s screaming for attention. But such visits—specifically, organized outings for staff to better understand their members—should be part of a mandatory professional development curriculum for every association and society team.
Why are staff field trips so important?
Trade association staff members come from many walks of life, sometimes with backgrounds in the professions they serve, but most often not. While the role of trade association and membership staff is to serve an industry or profession, the function of those staffers is usually several steps removed from the business of its members.
Association staffers serve as government affairs experts, meeting planners, volunteer organizers, marketing and communications professionals, and more, often simultaneously. For staffers who do have backgrounds in the industry they serve, keeping up with evolving business practices is crucial. In both cases, field trips meet an essential need.
Your members need to know that your team understands their business. For many years, I worked at a trade association that represented major film and television producers. Our team members weren’t movie-makers, but we needed to understand everything from script development to film financing in order to effectively represent the industry.
Visiting with your members helps you make new contacts. Often, simply knowing who to call is key to finding a solution, and meeting people on their own turf is a great way to make connections and to better appreciate those folks you already know.
Staff field trips can sharpen your teams’ focus and boost morale. The empathy, energy, and understanding gained from a site visit can make your team better and more effective professionals.
Eight Guidelines
Every field trip will be different, but here are eight aspects of your field trip program to think about as you plan your approach.
- Strategy: Every membership organization or trade association categorizes members, by size, specialty, customer base, or place in the supply chain. Design your visits so that you hit different demographics.
- Cost: If the budget won’t support offsite visits, consider virtual tours, or bring members to your office to speak. Our association is based in New York City, with members around the world. (Bad news for our staff: We’re not going to Hawaii to learn about Kona coffee unless there is a subway connection I don’t know about.) A great network of mass transit connections often makes it cost effective and easier for us to get out.
- Timing: Plan your visit when the team can enjoy the trip and isn’t distracted by pressing deadlines.
- Participation: Everyone in your organization can benefit from better understanding your members. To the extent practical, don’t leave anyone out of the process. Break up a large group. Stagger opportunities.
- Agenda and structure: "Hi, we’re here" isn’t a plan. Work out an agenda, with time slots, so that you take no more time from your hosts than is needed, and so that you can cover the aspects of their business that you most need to learn. Even better if your hosts offer to set out that plan, since they know the intricacies of their business better than you.
- Confidentiality: Your visit itself isn’t confidential, but you may get behind the scene glimpses. You must respect the trust your hosts place in you, lock away confidential information, and instead take away learnings about innovation, approaches, relationships, or other things that make your sector exciting. Your entire team needs to understand and appreciate this.
- Learn and teach: If appropriate—meaning, if your host finds it useful—the field trip can be an opportunity to present a summary of your association and its work to a new or broader audience. But keep it brief; this isn’t supposed to be a sales call, and your primary purpose is to learn.
- Extend appreciation: Our members, from all across the coffee supply chain, have been welcoming and generous with their time as we’ve planned our own trips. In fact, I wrote this post on a Metro North train returning from our most recent field trip, where we were given a firsthand look into coffee importing and trading. We had a great cupping session to taste specialty, arabica, and robusta coffees, and walked away with a much deeper appreciation of what it means to be a coffee trader. In return, we sent along a gift basket of…well, not coffee!
Next Steps
Take this post to your next staff meeting, or share it with your HR director, and start the conversation. Is this right for us? How can we work together to make this happen? What should our goal be—perhaps something as simple as one or two visits a year?
I’ve had the good fortune over the years to have served truly fascinating professions —first, the film entertainment industry and now the world of coffee—but I've often found that passion is infectious, and the more you learn about a subject, the more interesting it is. No matter the field, if you are truly passionate about what you do, there’s no better way to reenergize yourself, learn something useful, and better fulfill your role than by visiting with your members, and there’s no better time to start a field trip program than now.
William Murray is the President and CEO of the National Coffee Association and can be reached at wmmurray@ncausa.org. This article was original published in LinkedIn on April 9 and is reprinted with permission.