Usually people who own their own business work very diligently to make that business a success. It is generally something the owner is very passionate about. Many times you will hear the owners say that they have put their blood, sweat, and tears into their business, and that is why they feel that it has become successful.
I just left a meeting where Glenn Tecker was speaking of an association's DNA. He expressed the idea that you, as a member of an association, are the owners of that association. Have you ever thought that you are an owner of NAON, or that you are responsible for the success of the association?
Not only are you the owners of NAON, but you are also the customers and the workforce. You are the owner because NAON belongs to you. You are the customer because you consume the products, programs, and services that are delivered by the association. You are the workforce of NAON because of your participation, energy, and commitment to accomplish work that contributes to the organization's ability to deliver value. We are a community with a common purpose: to advance the art and science of orthopaedic care. If we aggregate the intellectual capital of our membership, we can certainly lead the way to endless possibilities.
NAON strives to be the world leader in flexible, accessible education in orthopaedic and musculoskeletal care. To meet this goal, NAON produces an assortment of educational materials in a variety of formats to fit the needs of our members, other healthcare professionals, our patients, and the community. As owners of this association, I am asking you to step up to the plate to become leaders in NAON-to lead the way. We need your help in determining what programs, products, and services you find valuable, or what new programs, products, and services you would find valuable. It would be exciting to think that we came up with some new type of educational offering that had never been tried before. Not only that we came up with the idea, but also that we offered it, and it was extremely successful. Can you imagine being a member of a company where this happened: the stock goes through the roof, and everyone tries to get involved with your company. That is exactly what we want to happen to this association. We want our products and services to be so sought after that everyone wants to be involved with us. Not because we asked them to be involved, but because they so desire to have us affiliated with them, to lend creditability to them. This can happen to NAON if we all work together. By looking to the future and working to come up with new and innovative ideas, we will keep this association alive and thriving.
We all want to be a part of new and exciting things. NAON can be new and exciting!! We can increase our membership if we all work at it and help the leadership of this association come up with new and interesting ideas to draw others in. If you are truly the owners of NAON, then you will step up and work very hard to promote NAON to others that you work with, to your patients and administrators. Because NAON strives to be the world leader in flexible, accesible education in orthopaedic and musculoskeletal care, you will work to help make our 25th Congress the best Congress we have ever had. You will work with our Director of Education to determine new ways of presenting materials and new ways of reaching a wider audience. You will also want to write for the Orthopaedic Nursing journal to assure that we have the most up-to-date orthopaedic nursing articles. You will work with your chapters to make them successful or find new ways of meeting the needs of members in your local area. You will help the Web Advisory Team with new ideas to bring value to our membership through new and different Web offerings. You will work with your special interest groups to help develop the clinical arm of our association. You will work with our Director of Research and the members of the Research Committee to come up with ideas for research for this association to participate in, and through that research we will continue to advance the art and science of orthopaedic nursing. You will want to find a member of the Mentoring Task Force to work with, so you can one day fill a leadership role within this association of which you are part owner.
I hope as you look at NAON, you will see it a little differently now, and I hope you will want to take a broader role in development of the association.
As we move forward into the holiday season, my prayer for each of you is for health, for happiness, and most of all for love in everything you do during this special time of year.