Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:17] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Bill Schankel with NAFA Fleet Management Association. Welcome, Bill.

Bill Schankel: [00:00:28] Thank you. It’s great to be here, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Napa. How are you serving folks?

Bill Schankel: [00:00:36] Sure. So Napa Fleet Management Association, we represent three just around 3000 fleet management professionals, automotive professionals. So those are everybody from our individuals in the government fleet. So groups like your public safety fleets, from law enforcement to emergency medical to fire to the corporate fleets, from your delivery services as Amazon and UPS to basic sales fleets of pharmaceutical groups as well as educational fleets from both higher ed and universities to the public schools and private schools that all of our children go to. So we have a broad range of types of fleets and individuals we represent.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:23] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in association work?

Bill Schankel: [00:01:27] So I’ve been in the association space for about 23 years now and it’s basically it was by accident. I applied for a job early on at the National Kitchen and Bath Association marketing job and really didn’t understand what associations were at the time going into that and then got into the business and really loved the the opportunity to not only learn an industry but really get to know the leaders in those industries. So I’ve been in multiple associations now throughout the years and one of my favorite things just is really getting to see all the types of people that get involved in these associations, the passions that they have, and learn a lot about leadership from, from various volunteer leaders that I worked with over the years. And it’s really been a great opportunity and great experience for me now.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:15] Has working through the pandemic had any challenges for you in your work that you hadn’t really encountered prior to the pandemic happening? Is there some things that you were like, Wow, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get through this?

Bill Schankel: [00:02:31] There definitely were. I’m sure we are like many other organizations, so we had some big challenges. Obviously, we so I was actually in the interim CEO role at Napa at the time, so I wasn’t even fully a CEO yet, but we had to face the cancelation of our in-person conference and trade show, which represented represents about 50% of our revenue. So it was definitely something I’ve never experienced before being new in a leadership role within an organization and then also having to face something as drastic as that where you had to potentially lose 50% of your revenue. We’ve had great support from our board and our volunteer leaders through all that. And what I found is we we just kind of worked our way through it, made decisions based off the data we had at the time. We actually did not cancel our event right away. We actually moved it and then had to move it again and got lucky. We were able to hold it last year at the end of the summer, 18 months after that first time. But it was really a challenge in communications as well, communicating back to members, making everybody feel safe and comfortable that Napa would be there for them after the pandemic was over, whenever that was going to be and really get through. And we learned a lot of different ways to deliver value that we never did before. So it was a great opportunity, particularly as a new leader coming in to try a lot of things and build somewhat of a change management culture because we were forced to change. And that was, I think, the positive experience of that, even though it was a very challenging time.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:05] Now when you are dealing with that type of chaos, it can be an opportunity, like you said, to to make changes where there’s maybe less pushback because these are such trying times. Is there any kind of lessons you learned that you will be able to use moving forward regarding that? When it comes to that type of change?

Bill Schankel: [00:04:27] I definitely will. I think one of the the big things that we that really we did during the we became very data centric during this whole process. So as we started to have to look at resources and understand every resource needed to have some type of impact, whether it be member value, how members rated and engaged with the resource financial. So what’s the revenue we brought in from that or also from an efficiency point of view, what what does this program take from a staff resource and or from an expense side for us to deliver? So as we went through the change and as we we were forced to look at some of these things, that was the way we made the judgment. And what what are the programs we can stop doing? What are the programs we need to do more of so that. Getting that mindset in when we had to. In the midst of the chaos, as you mentioned, it’s really something we carried forward now. And now as we look at programs, it’s not just an automatic assumption that, yes, we should keep doing that. We now look at that a few key metrics and say, are our members engaging with this? Is this something we need from a revenue resource? And is this something that is the way we do? It is not really efficient or we’re taking way too many resources to deliver on that for the the ROI we’re getting back. So those are some of the lessons that I’ve learned in this process that we carried forward, even as the pandemic comes to a close here.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:49] Now, when you are kind of leaning into data like you are, sometimes that brings about some change that you’re forced to make with some legacy programs that might have constituents that enjoy that status quo and are hesitant to move forward from that. How do you kind of thread that needle to keep your team engaged with programs that might have kind of run its course where that maybe it is time for a change and to look at things with fresh eyes, especially when you have data to back it up.

Bill Schankel: [00:06:25] Right. It’s definitely it’s definitely a challenge. And as you said, there’s people that are passionate about programs that as you start finding the data and looking at the the engagement and the involvement, knowing that they’re legacy programs, but they’ve they’ve they’ve played out or they’ve they’ve have dwindling value in today’s world and how things are happening. So it’s really trying to get some of those really passionate people to, to look at the data, understand the data, understand the reason for change. And I’ve been trying to engage them to be part of the solution, saying we’re not we’re not trying to throw out the history of this. Let’s take the best parts of some of these legacy programs and say, is there another way we can package them or or the benefits that you’re getting from some of these legacy programs? Are there other ways we can do that? And we’re going through that process right now with several different legacy programs that started throughout the pandemic that now are going to, over the course of 2022 and 2023, are going to really change. And we’re going to phase out some some longstanding programs just based off that data and that internal look we did. But we tried to engage as many of those what I’ll say, the passionate people that that had a strong support for those programs and keep them in the process and become part of that process to help us navigate that change. And in some cases, it doesn’t work out. It can’t say it’s always successful. Sometimes people just they just don’t see the see the data as that crucial. And and that’s fine. And that’s been another thing we’ve learned is that we are in the process of change. We can’t please everyone. So in some cases, we do have to understand where you have to go for the greater good and you are going to have to lose some people and change process. But for the most part, it’s been very people have been very supportive and want to be part of the solution.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:16] Now, when you take on a challenge of leading an organization and being new to it, and how do you kind of keep the culture while respecting the past, but also kind of making the change necessarily that you need to do into the future? That that’s a tricky needle to thread. And especially now, I think it’s even more challenging as more and more organizations are going to either a hybrid or a remote staff where there’s not even that face to face camaraderie, where we can all kind of feel like we’re on this team together now. Everybody could be spread out. So how have you been able to kind of manage the culture?

Bill Schankel: [00:08:56] Sure, we did. We we actually did go from an in-person, completely in-person staff to now we are completely virtual. We actually moved out of our lease. So we actually are completely virtual through that whole process. I mean, we did have a lot of really open and frank conversations with staff via I mean, we met a lot via virtual meetings, but really it’s really around communication. And I said those exact words you started two questions with is that we want to honor the history. There’s no blame or judgment in the fact that things have to change. It’s more circumstances that are causing changes that we need to move past some of the historical ways of doing things, some of the historical procedures and policies and processes we had in place. We just need to move past that because of other factors. So it was no blame. So that was one key thing is to make sure we get especially some of the long standing employees and members of board and volunteer leaders to make make it clear that this change was not an indictment on anything that anybody did in the past. But it’s really a need to move forward. And essentially what we do is just really communicate again with that, focusing on the end goal and try to get as much in. And involvement from the staff as we can. We’ve created some inter-departmental teams with our our staff because we do have a fully virtual staff. So we want to make sure that because our marketing team may meet on a weekly basis virtually, they don’t know how to talk with our education team or our membership team. So we created a few inter-departmental teams to ensure that representatives on all those teams getting together and talking once a week or once every two weeks just to get a sense of what’s happening, what are the projects doing. And then we do a full all staff meeting every week, virtually with a full agenda, letting people put any items on the agenda they want so they can ask any questions. And that’s really been helpful in building the culture out.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:57] Yeah, I think that as we move to a more remote virtual world that you have to be more intentional when it comes to communication and you have to kind of schedule these things, like things that you take for granted in person where like you bump into people or I’ll see them at some point during the day, you know, virtually that’s not going to happen unless you put it in a calendar schedule.

Bill Schankel: [00:11:20] That’s definitely what we’ve found. And the messaging, getting our staff to start utilizing messaging, the messaging tools such as a microsoft teams or and there’s multiple ones out there to ensure that those hallway conversations can still happen. But just think somebody on their laptop and and chat them up that way. So that’s been a little bit of a change because people at first didn’t think of it that way and we didn’t want them necessarily sending emails back and forth as their communication method because there’s other, more effective ways. So now we have we’ve built that into our culture to where people are much more comfortable in messaging each other through some of the instant messaging opportunities out there. And that’s been helpful as well to kind of build back in some of those hallway conversations that that won’t happen now that we’re virtual.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:09] Now, has there been anything that’s occurred where you’re like, okay, these are some breadcrumbs that we were on the right track here that I feel pretty good about this change that it’s occurring.

Bill Schankel: [00:12:21] We actually we do. We’ve so as we started changing and we’ve we’ve been putting out more calls for volunteers as staff, we’ve been doing some what I’ll call her not listening to us because we haven’t been traveling, but we’ve been calling members or talking to members and more of a town hall, town hall format. And I think the biggest thing we’re seeing is that the change is positive is we’re getting a lot of new members engaged that weren’t in the past. So I think like most associations, you have your corps of longtime volunteers, the stalwarts in the in the profession, in the industry, that everybody recognized those names. But now we’re starting to see some of the new people within our our membership base that people say, I never I never knew that person or I didn’t I don’t recognize that name. And we’re getting more and more of those. And now when we put out those call for volunteers, we’re in the past, it was a very similar roster of people that would volunteer. We’re getting much larger number of people. So that, in my mind, makes me feel good that more people see the see the vision, see the change we’re making and want to get involved and want to be part of this process. So I think that’s one that I feel really good about.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:32] Yeah, I think that that’s one of those unintended consequences of kind of people getting more comfortable with virtual. I think a lot of folks are saying, you know what, because things are virtual, I’m going to have to be more proactive and get more involved in my association. I’m going to have to be the the change I want to see in the world. And people, I think, are stepping up.

Bill Schankel: [00:13:53] They definitely are. And I think a lot of people that that may have been to your point and may have been more hesitant in the past, because I can’t travel to an event or I don’t have a travel budget to get there. I can’t go to these other meetings now that they see the meetings are more and more likely to take part, at least majority of them on a virtual session I can now join in and we’ve also been cognizant of that. People have less time now in today’s world. Even though we were all home for two years, it seems like people have less time to do things. So we’ve even tried to to right size a lot of our meetings and volunteer opportunities as well to say, we’re not going to put you if you volunteer, we’re not going to put you on an eight hour zoom call. We’re going to set up these meetings. So it’s 20 minutes every other week and we’re going to have you talk and we’re going to do things through a collaboration site where you’re not going to have to sit and meet a specific time, but we’ll ask the questions and you can give your input that way. So we’ve created new ways for them to get involved too, which aren’t a big time commitment, which I think they seem to like.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:51] Yeah, I think flexibility in time especially is a key component of today’s working world. I mean, people are demanding it.

Bill Schankel: [00:15:00] Yes, absolutely. And we understand that it’s extremely important for us to to make sure that we we make it as easy as possible. If somebody is willing to give us their insights and help us to leverage their professional experience and their thoughts, we want to make it as simple as possible for them to get involved with us and and get the more voices, the better it is for us as an association.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:23] Now, do you have any advice for the leaders out there on how to engage your members and how to kind of keep pushing the value line for members?

Bill Schankel: [00:15:34] So I think the the biggest things that we’ve heard is, is some of the things we spoke about is look at the data. Don’t just assume that because you’ve been doing a program for a long time, you are getting a lot of value out of it. You really look at the data and set some real clear metrics. I think all of the all of our members that are part of whatever industry associations are and their everyday job, they have clear metric that they’re working towards for the most part. And so from my point of view is when we had to start implementing change and pushing some things that people may have felt uncomfortable with, and we started going back to the data, here’s why we’re doing that and could show real tangible data points, whether they’re financial or engagement or resource driven, whatever they may be. It was a lot easier to tell that story and people could relate that more to their everyday job. So why? I know a lot of times associations tend to focus on the the emotion and the connectivity of of being part of an association. When we start putting more of that, the data driven content out and the reason of why we’re doing this, it seemed to help members get more engaged because, one, it gave them a clear understanding and a clear target of where we were going. But it also gave them a clearer picture as to why this wasn’t an emotional or a philosophical change. It’s more of a necessity or an opportunity change.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:01] So now what are the kind of the metrics that matter for you and you and your team? Like what are the things that get you high fiving the team at the end of the week or the quarter?

Bill Schankel: [00:17:11] So as most I mean, we’re, we’re obviously membership growth is important to us. Membership growth and retention is key for us. We’ve during the pandemic, we did take a decent sized membership because a lot of our particularly government fleet managers that had budget cuts needed to drop. So we’re focusing on building back up that member base. That’s definitely a key for us. We’re also we’ve also launched quite a few new educational opportunities. So we’ve set some metrics to see how many people we can engage both members and non members on some of the educational opportunities which are online seminars and and starting to do some in-person conferences. So seeing how many people can get engaged in those because those are some of the newer programs that we’ve just launched. So those are really ones we high five about because as we launch new things, did we hit the marks on the metrics and did we get the right people there? Did we get the amount of people there is really important to us because that’s when we really see that that change is making a difference and people are liking the vision that we set out a few years ago and they’re getting involved.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:20] So what’s the most rewarding part of the job for you?

Bill Schankel: [00:18:24] I think from my perspective, it’s it’s really the collaboration of getting all these groups together. I mean, it’s while it’s been the most challenging time I’ve ever had in my career the last few years, some of the proudest times I’ve had is when groups came together of both staff and volunteer leaders and suppliers to really put their heads together and all dig in and do work towards that common goal of how do we how do we move the organization together? To the point of early on it was how do we save the organization from not not going under with this financial hit, but just to the the the amount of passion, but then also the amount of level headedness from the from everybody involved and understanding of what’s on the line here and what our ultimate vision is, what we do for for our members, why that’s important and how we need to move forward. That’s one of the the I guess my favorite part of what happened over the last year is it forced that collaboration with people I may not have had the opportunity to work with to that degree, but just to see their passion and for them to come in and their willingness to work with us and help us was just really great.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:31] Now, is there a trend in the industry that you’re most excited about?

Bill Schankel: [00:19:36] So we we are very we’re very excited because obviously if you watching the news and everything that we are on the what I’ll say is a front lines for several things that you hear a lot about now. So supply chain issues, the electric vehicles changes some of the mobility and vehicle to vehicle communications, which is going to create a much more safer roadway. And some of the the alternative fuel opportunities that are coming down the road. We are we’re on the front line of those, both from a legislative side as well as from our members having to actually implement those changes. So it’s been great because our members see the values of both sides and from of everything that needs to happen and laying out really a realistic plan for how how can our members help reshape what the infrastructure looks like in a reasonable time? That doesn’t that doesn’t overpromise, but but sets expectations out there. And what we what organizations can do to to lay some of those things into their business practices. So that’s been, for me, the electric vehicles, the alternative fuel, and then also how we can assist in the in some of the supply chain issues that are happening has been really the the things that I’m really getting excited about every day to see what our members are doing and how naphtha can help lead the way in some of those initiatives.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:03] Yeah, strong organizations and associations like yours are the key to really make the biggest impact, I think in the industry. I mean, it’s important for folks to get involved with their association and really share those best practices and collaborate and just everybody wins.

Bill Schankel: [00:21:22] That’s really what we’ve found. And obviously we’ve done a lot from a legislative side in the recently and some of the infrastructure discussions that have happened over the last few years. So we’ve had a lot of input and impact to the point where we’ve had some of our members writing letters or actually providing some testimony to elected officials in both state and the federal level, because we realize obviously things are changing and we can we can be on the front line to help ensure that this is a a positive change for everybody and also something that that we can actually implement. So it’s not it’s we are our members are the real world examples of what a lot of the legislation you’re hearing about is going to impact. And they’re the ones that have to implement those changes. So it’s been it’s been really a fascinating time for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:13] Well, if somebody wants to contact you or get a hold of or learn more about the organization, can you share the website?

Bill Schankel: [00:22:20] Sure. Actually, they can go to WWE dot nafaa dot org and all of our staff information’s there. They can contact me. I’m happy to take any emails or talk to anybody we have and definitely check out our website. And like I said, I’m happy to provide any advice I can from a little bit I learned over the last few years.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:39] Well, Bill, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Bill Schankel: [00:22:44] All right. Thank you. I appreciate it, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:46] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on the Association Leadership Radio.