How to Keep Volunteers Engaged During Your Slow Season

Slow Season?  If your chamber is like most chambers, there is no slow season, right?

Yes, but, there are times throughout the year when the normal pace is slower than usual and this is a good time to remind your volunteers to stay engaged.

The key is to keep thinking ahead of the curve and use your volunteers to identify those emerging trends that the business community is going to be dealing with in the next three to five years.

Do you have an Emerging Trends Committee or Task Force?

You probably have a handle on what's happening today - that's being reactive to what is sent your way.

Use your volunteers to be pro-active by identifying the big issues that will need to be addressed, in your community, by the business sector.  Just to name a few:

  • Economic development
  • Transportation
  • Technology
  • Education
  • The demographic shift of the workforce

If it's real work, they will enjoy the challenge!

For previous blog posts on volunteer management go HERE, HERE or HERE.

Decision-making 101: Why Practice Makes Perfect

I bet you're a lot wiser today then you were five or ten years ago in making decisions for your chamber.

Your decision-making process has probably evolved over the years.  That's called experience.

But as the title suggests, it's important to have a system in place that allows you to deliver the right decisions consistently.

That's where practice makes perfect.  It should become a natural process for you where you don't sweat the details.

We make decisions all day, every day, and having a process in place can keep you on track and moving forward.

Here’s my list of items I think about when making a decision:

  • Gather all the facts
  • Listen to different views
  • Don't make any knee jerk decisions
  • Communicate your decision clearly to all
  • Don't be afraid to re-access and change your decision, if warranted

That's my formula.

Don't make it complicated.  And don't be afraid to share your decision-making process with your staff.  I suggest you'll get better intelligence from them the next time you need to make a decision on an issue if they know the process you go through in making decisions.

Do you have a formula?

For a great resource on decision-making from the folks at Mind Tools go HERE.