MBI'S Perspective
Tracking Engagement as Part of MBI's Journey with
BY CHAD KLEPPE PRESIDENT/CEO
Many of you may recall a speaker MBI brought to the membership back in the fall of 2019. His name was Gino Wickman and he is the founder of EOS® Worldwide. EOS® stands for Entreprenurial Operating System and is defined as a complete set of simple concepts and practical tools that help entrepreneurs get what they want from the business. Over 300 individuals participated in that program and all wanted to learn more about how EOS® could help improve their respective business. Many of the MBI Board members and staff were also in the audience and in the aftermath, it became apparent that MBI’s leadership team would benefit from adopting the EOS® process. MBI – from an operations standpoint – saw that an approach like EOS® would be a great fit in how the organization can better meet its mission and provide greater overall value to members. After taking the EOS® plunge, we soon learned that many 2
MBI members were also using EOS® to allow their respective leaders to spend more time working “on the business” and less working “in the business”. When MBI decided to follow the strategies and processes laid out through our initial EOS® journey, we took a hard look at all the metrics and measurements we track to determine whether or not we are getting better at serving members. We would look at membership growth; revenue and profit; registrations for educational programs and trainings; and many others. All of these are important, but the one measurement that we learned was our guiding principle was engagements. From MBI’s perspective, engagements can be defined as touches or instances in which an individual (can be a member or non-member) participates or “engages” with MBI in some way. Our engagement number is an accumulation of various levels of participation. For instance, someone attending a Regional Meeting is one engagement. Another example is someone attending a class at the Annual Winter Conference or a follower of MBI’s LinkedIn page are all regarded as “engagements”. It is also important to know that a single individual can have multiple engagements over the year. For 2021, we tracked every instance in which a member firm and/or individual participated or “touched” an MBI service or program. When all was said and done for last year, we logged over 20,000 engagements. What is significant about this number is that it was an increase of over 2,000 from the previous year. As the organization works to enhance value and services to the membership, we also have quarterly and yearly “engagement” targets. If we hit those targets, all other aspects of MBI’s service to members seemingly fall right into place. For instance, our membership number continues to grow (437 for this year so far). Our training and education participation rates continue to hit the marks. Our social media efforts are growing as we gain more followers and enhance the presence of MBI programs and services via platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. In fact, if we are hitting our engagement targets, every other metric is also meeting its respective goals. Hence, the “engagement measurement” is MBI’s leading indicator on whether the Association is meeting its mission to serve the Iowa construction industry. With this subsequent focus on engagements, we are confident that MBI members will see a greater return for their membership investment.
