Two things:

First, thank you for your participation in and following of the Institute of Management Consultants USA blog. This is a valuable tool for reaching the IMC membership and consultant community and going forward I see this channel being critical in my communications related to IMC and its future. Additionally, I invite you to provide feedback - This is your organization, THE community of professional consultants who are committed to the excellence and advancement of ethics for the management consulting profession – and we can’t succeed without your ongoing support. I hope you will continue to stay engaged through this media, as well as through the website and other IMC emails.

I want to take this opportunity to provide you an update on the organization, as the Board has just wrapped up its annual strategic planning session. With the economic conditions of the past several years and the impact these conditions have had on both the membership and the organization on the top of our minds, we approached strategic planning with one outcome in mind: creating more value for our members to help them during these challenging times. The meeting resulted in the development of six major initiatives (with multiple tasks under each initiative), which are:

Member retention -- providing a richer, more demonstrable value for our members

Member acquisition -- creating more opportunities to attract new talent to our chapters and membership

Grow! -- elevating the conference to one presenting the exemplary reputation of the profession

University -- leveraging our competencies and ethics commitment through partnerships with top universities to educate consultants of the future

Certification -- raising the visibility of certification and continuing to build the reputation of the professional standard for management consultants

Education -- improving consultants ability to serve by renewing and reinvigorating our educational/professional development offerings

Again, all of these initiatives have one common theme -- creating more value for you. You will hear more detail about each of these initiatives in the coming months.

I am confident that the organization can achieve these initiatives with the support of our membership and I know this from looking back at your commitment to the profession in the past. The origin of this organization 44 years ago was a peer group of the large consultancies coming together to raise the level of professionalism and ethics in the profession. Over the past few years, with your input and work, we focused on offering new services, such as the Marketplace directory and increasing the brand recognition of our certification through the process of becoming accredited as an ISO/IEC 17074 certifying body.

So, what can you do to help? Please write to me at david.norman@imcusa.org, providing your suggestions for the advancement of the organization, and/or your interest in serving (for example, at the Chapter-level, on a committee or a task force) to carry out these initiatives. We are, after all, a membership organization run by volunteers -- the more collaborative the effort and energy, the better the results.

Second thing:

Today is July 24^th as I write this. Note that the Early Bird savings ($145.00) expires next week (July 31^st) for Grow! in October. Register now for the conference (click on the link for the brochure and to register at http://www.imcusa.org/?GROW_Intro) and for the hotel (the room block is approaching 60%, click this link to register at the Buena Vista Palace in Orlando: http://www.imcusa.org/events/event_details.asp?id=221782).

Thank you, again, for your membership and support.

Stay tuned,

My best,

David