NATIONAL SOCIETY OF BLACK ENGINEERS
advantage of point-in-time opportunities to advance its cherished 2025 goal to produce 10,000 Black engineers; while also deepening its operational and financial resilience, measurement capacity and continuing to diversify its revenue streams. The Power of Good Questions The strategic planning exercise was anchored by three central questions - a question of strategic vision and identity, one of strategic action and direction, and finally one of capacity and pragmatism: Strategic Vision: Who is NSBE at its core, and what impact does it want to have in STEM, the Black community and broader society? While NSBE Vision statements answer this definitively, we employed the concept of ‘Vision Snapshots” to what NSBE vision commitment might actually create in the world in the future - a strong and steady stream of graduating college and graduate students, etc. See the Vision Snapshots examples to stir your imagination.
Given this Strategic vision, we next explored what Strategic Direction & Pathways have the most vitality and promise to express NSBE’s vision and identity?
Finally, what will it take in terms of capacity and competency over the next 4 years to achieve these ambitions?
These questions - especially the last - come with a cultural twist. They ask NSBE to evolve a new kind of cultural flexibility that allows it to “course create and correct” (when needed) and in the moments when rigor counts to more systematically document and measure progress.
Leveraging Accelerators, Navigating Inhibitors From this strategic planning exercise’s start to finish, the environment around NSBE - as a member-serving professional society - was rapidly changing. Timely research by McKinley Advisors 1 and the Association Lab 2 provided some clear clues on the future environment and anticipated impacts on events, members and sponsors. Many of the top insights resonated with the exploration with NSBE members through the NetPromoter survey and the qualitative Listening Post inquiry. NSBE would have to find creative ways to address a number of competing demands: Sharpen its value proposition and where possible investment in members. Preserve its operational core strengthening the quality and timeliness of information and financial resilience and revenue diversity. Rapidly evolve virtual engagement and distant learning platforms and experiment with new and di erent member engagement tactics especially for collegiate members who may confront face-to-face schooling closures which can lead to greater isolation.
1 McKinley Advisors, Prosperity and Adversity: A Decade of Data and Insights, May 14, 2020, Washington, DC 2 Association Laboratory, Inc., The Strategic and Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Associations, March 2020, Chicago, Illinois
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