Co-Creating for Better Strategic Development: A Day at the AMA Toronto Planning Session - Posted on - 12-07-2011
General discussion - Crystal MacLaren
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of participating in the American Marketing Association (AMA) – Toronto Branch planning session, to develop a strategic vision into 2013/14.
Alan Kay, past AMA Toronto president, former managing director of the Toronto ad agency, Harrod & Mirlin, board member of the ABC Life Literacy Canada, teacher to executive development students at the Schulich School of Business,York University member of
the Education Committee of the Canadian Marketing Association, consultant of The Glasgow Group and recently published author of Fry the Monkeys Create a Solution somehow also found time to facilitate this one-day strategic planning session.
It was an intensive day of planning that combined MBA students, AMA board members, and non-members across various marketing disciplines. There were 6 presentation topics that the designated MBA students had prepared and served as a launching board for various groups to discuss and brainstorm. Way too much information for me to elaborate on here. However, the big take-away for me was the incredible insights gained throughout the day by virtue of having an open, collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach to the day’s strategic development. I really cannot imagine that the ideas developed throughout the day would have been as robust had just the AMA Toronto board sat down and brainstormed, and that is meant with absolutely no disrespect to the board. : )
At the end of the day the plethora of ideas were distilled down to ‘transforming marketing that creates business leaders’ within the various areas of fostering:
- an eco-sphere
- opportunity
- competency
- motivation
This ultimately led to a (tentative) vision for the AMA Toronto moving forward into 2013:
An eco-system that creates opportunity, competency and motivation for its members to transform marketers into business leaders.
The AMA as a lean, members-driven organization has a distinctive uniqueness in the marketing association world. By virtue of being a voluntary and member-driven organization they are unharnessed from high overhead and the challenges of finding new revenue streams. This allows the AMA to evolve in a more organic and co-creative manner that I am certain will help to continue its’ differentiating characteristic as well as to increase its relevancy moving forward.
Working at AdWest, a not-for-profit organization, I could not help but find this strategic process fascinating and throughout the day continued to see benefit in
co-creating with agency staff, regional staff, members and emerging agency talent for our own strategic purposes. It’s a scary prospect letting ‘the outside world’ in to what traditionally has been a closed door process but when you think about the increasingly collaborative nature of our communications and participation with brands, etc., it makes a lot of sense to include shareholders and stakeholders in the strategic process.
Follow on Twitter:
Leave a Comment
(required)
(required) (will not be published)
Comment
