Acronym

This was originally meant to be a comment on Joe's post yesterday on "lovable loser" programs, those programs that lose money but are too important to kill. The comment seemed too important, so I'm making it a post on its own.

What Joe makes me think about as he coins a new term, is that organizations are what they measure. Dollars is obviously a basic measurement of a program/product/service. I'm not saying we shouldn't measure financials; you obviously have to. But so often that's where the measurement stops - or maybe you measure a few other things (you know the list, recite it with me: butts in seats, total members, member retention, etc.).

I've never seen an association mission statement that mentions the profitability of the organization itself, so it's a shame when so many of our programs and products use that as the primary measuring stick. Most mission statements talk about making a profession or trade stronger, or helping those in a profession or trade be better at it. Finances and the other measurements (cue the chorus: butts in seats...) are at best distant measurements of such missions.

We could easily get one step closer by figuring out how to measure engagement. Even developing some rudimentary metrics around engagement would go a long way to killing Joe's new term - and that's my goal with this post. I think he's right, where associations are right now is calling such programs losers. But start measuring engagement and I'm guessing those lovable loser programs are actually winners, maybe big winners, in the metric that gets closer to telling you if you're being successful in working on your mission.