“We should be changing. We should be evolving. You can’t be around for sixty years and still be the same thing.” These words, spoken by WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani, apply to associations, too. We should be changing. We should be evolving.
According to CNN Business, after Sistani joined WeightWatchers in 2022, when the company was on track to lose about $250 million for 2022, “she began making radical changes: She ended thousands of the company’s in-person workshops, closed storefronts and shifted the company’s focus to new weight-management drugs like Wegovy. She also landed a massive deal to buy a telehealth business that can issue virtual prescriptions to patients for these weight loss drugs.”
Whoa. Read that again: WeightWatchers is now prescribing weight loss drugs. I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see that.
“What we do best is help people with weight management. That is the anchor,” Sistani said. “I think we have to be true and authentic to that and who we are.”
“That is the anchor.” Sounds an awful lot like an association mission, doesn’t it?
Here’s another quote that caught my eye: “The emphasis on in-person workshops and lack of a digital footprint was also hurting the company’s bottom line, especially in the social-distancing era.” Though social distancing seems to be over, associations are still emphasizing in-person workshops and lack a strong digital footprint. And we wonder why we’re having trouble engaging the next generations.
I see another threat as well: artificial intelligence. If we embrace it and use it to make wiser, quick decisions and help us market programs more effectively, I believe it’s going to help us evolve. If we ignore it, however, I believe it’s going to erode association strength since we are, by nature, content businesses. And what is AI good at? Creating content. Quickly and inexpensively.
We have a choice to make. Are we going to evolve? Or are we going to watch our relevance slowly decline? These are questions that all association boards should be wrestling with right now. I urge you to be brave and get the conversation started!