INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
New England Chapter

Memo from Your Lame Duck Prez

Nearly five years ago, when I began what became both a challenge and an adventure as the new president of IMCNE, I naively calculated that about two years would be sufficient time served, and then I would move on. But when those two years were almost up, Brad Hosmer, my predecessor, whose role it was to put together the next year’s slate of board officers, called to ask me if I wanted to continue or step aside. “I think I need one more year,” I told him, explaining that various initiatives were underway that I wanted to see through.

That conversation was THREE years ago, so that now, with a half-decade behind me as prez, it’s obviously high time for me to go! Not that I feel particularly burned out, fed up or depleted of ideas. It’s just that, at some point, it really is time for new blood in a position such as this, because otherwise a mysterious “sameness” sets in, an air hard to quantify but pervasive in the ions nonetheless.

Of course, change for change sake would not be enough. After so much progress here in New England , it does matter to whom my baton gets passed. We want to insure, after all, that the kinds of good battles we have been waging continue to be fought and won.

Thankfully I can announce to you, as I enter these final weeks of my lame-duck-ness, that we’ve lined up a highly qualified successor to take the ball from me and run with it farther down the field. Though I’m not prone to sports analogies, this one seems apt, since your next prez Carol Bergeron is accustomed to scoring big goals.

On May 13, when she officially takes over, our chapter will be ripe for Carol’s particular professional skills. In recent years we have built a chapter that is the envy of others in IMC USA . Our innovative solutions in finance, professional education, website development, volunteer participation (to name only a few) have inspired many around the country to stand in awe of what we have done. I often get questions from other chapter presidents about how we have set up this or that mechanism that has contributed to our success—the option of chapter affiliation, our event sponsorships, our annual New England Consulting Conference, our nonprofit initiative... to name just a few.

But now one vital area beckons us to tackle it head on (more sports imagery!) and bring it to the fore: membership development.

The challenge is to take all this good value we have created and leverage it to expand our membership rolls. In the same vein, we want to keep boosting our current members’ value as well. And to keep the chapter strong, how can we incorporate our members’ special skills and know-how into chapter operations in such a way that serves us all in ways that really matter?

Your next president can lead us there, specially knowledgeable as she is in the realm of talent development and workforce expertise. In her consulting practice, Carol explains her mission as empowering her clients to “build agile, robust, high performance organizations by integrating key business and workforce strategies.” Her website (www.bergeronassociates.com) lists objectives like “workforce strategies and solutions that unite business people with business strategy.” Nothing could be closer to our particular chapter needs today.

As if this weren’t good enough, Carol will be working hand in hand on this and other issues with our new President-Elect Mary Adams who comes armed with her own apropos skillset. Mary’s firm Trek Consulting (www.trekconsulting.com) helps client companies “improve their performance and value” via projects that produce “fresh” information, clear practical strategies and breakthrough results. At this moment in our history, fresh thinking, practicality and breakthroughs are precisely what’s called for.

Does that leave me to simply be put out to pasture? Not a chance. My new role in the chapter will be to serve as your active advocate to IMC National. In conjunction with Carol and Mary, the three of us will comprise a new Board-level “department” called The Office of the President (OOP). This means that henceforth the current president, president-elect and immediate past president will work together to provide coordinated leadership to keep us strong on the both local and national levels, so as to preserve and expand our chapter members’ benefits within the larger IMC network.

Ken Lizotte CMC
President