How Healthy Is Your Consortium? Introducing the Five Disciplines Framework
By Ashley Costello
Your board agrees: the organization needs to grow.
But how do you know what to fix first — or whether you’re even focused on the right challenges?
If you’re like many of the organizations we work with, you can sense when momentum slows — but without a clear, data-driven way to measure organizational health, it’s hard to know where to focus next.
That’s where Virtual’s Five Disciplines of Healthy Consortia comes in — a practical framework and customizable advisory program that helps leadership teams see what’s working, where to improve, and how to move forward with confidence.
A Framework to Measure What Matters Most
Built on Virtual’s more than 25 years of experience partnering with global associations and consortia, the Five Disciplines of Healthy Consortia defines the practices essential to sustainable success.
The frame work identifies five key disciplines that shape healthy, high-performing organizations — the areas where strong leadership, alignment, and execution make the biggest impact:
- Market Relevance – Meeting a necessary and urgent need
- Strategic Alignment – Driving toward shared impacts
- Operational Stability – Ensuring predictable outcomes
- Engagement – Delivering timely results
- Resiliency – Redirect change towards growth
Together, these disciplines give leaders a structured, data-driven way to evaluate organizational health and focus resources where they’ll make the greatest difference.
How it Works
Once leaders understand what to measure, the next step is how to act on it.
The Five Disciplines of Healthy Consortia turns this framework into a practical, interactive experience through a free online self-assessment tool.
Organizations can use this to evaluate their performance across the Five Disciplines — Market Relevance, Strategic Alignment, Operational Stability, Engagement, and Resiliency — and receive an instant report highlighting strengths, opportunities, and tailored recommendations for each stage of growth.
Here’s how it works:
- Take the assessment. Leaders answer a short series of questions aligned to the Five Disciplines.
- Get instant results. The tool generates a data-driven report showing performance across 30 practices, with actionable recommendations based on the organization’s stage of growth — from Exploring and Launching to Scaling and Maturing.
- Take the next step. Organizations can review the report on their own or engage Virtual’s team for a deeper advisory partnership to build and implement an action plan.
The process meets organizations where they are — delivering quick insights up front and the option to go deeper through customized advisory support.
A Smarter Path Forward
As technology, markets, and member expectations evolve faster than ever, the Five Disciplines framework gives leaders a structured, accessible way to measure what matters — and use those insights to grow stronger.
Whether you’re forming, scaling, or reimagining your consortium, this framework helps you see where you stand today and chart a smarter path forward.
Hear more: Listen to the latest 5 Minutes With Andy episode, where Ashley Costello joins Andy Freed to talk about what makes a healthy consortium and how the Five Disciplines came to life.
Explore the framework and start your free assessment: Visit the Five Disciplines webpage.