Andy sits down with Ashley Costello, Head of Virtual’s Technology Consortia and Standards Practice, to talk about the Five Disciplines of Healthy Consortia —Virtual’s new framework and advisory program that helps leadership teams evaluate organizational effectiveness, identify improvement opportunities, and build actionable growth plans.

Andy and Ashley cover:

• Why many leaders struggle to clearly assess their organization’s performance— and how the Five Disciplines can help.
• What the framework is and how it works.
• How boards and consortia leaders can use it to evaluate and strengthen their organizations.

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Explore the framework and start your free assessment: Visit the Five Disciplines webpage.

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Welcome to Five Minutes With Andy. My name is Andy Freed. I'm the CEO of Virtual, Incorporated. For the last 25 years, we've been helping associations, consortia, and standards bodies as they make their mark on the world. I'm joined today by somebody who's been helping a lot of organizations make their mark. And that's Ashley Costello, who leads our consortia practice.

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Andy: Ashley, thanks for joining me.

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Ashley: Hey, Andy, thanks for having me today. I'm very excited to be here.

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Andy: Now, I know you have been working on something, which is pretty cool, our client health index. Can you tell me a bit more about it?

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Ashley: Sure. A few of us got together and realized there is no strong board tool that they could use to evaluate, you know, how well is our organization doing? How well is it doing compared to others? Where are the gaps, and how can we develop a plan? So, we came up with this health index tool. It has, you know, 30 different practice areas, really down to five disciplines that are really what makes an organization grow and thrive.

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Andy: So, this sounds crazy complicated. Like it sounds like, is this like a 30-page document somebody has got to fill out to do it, or is there a way to do it kind of simply?

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Ashley: It's very simple. So, if you go to our website, it's on our website. It's an assessment. There's a bunch of questions that you'll go through as it relates to, you know, market relevancy. Do you have a strong value proposition? Is there brand awareness of your consortia? About engagement. Are your boards stakeholders involved? Are members contributing to the work actively? Do you have a member journey? How are you onboarding and getting people excited about your organization?

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We look at organization resiliency. So is your board diverse? Are you diversifying your revenue streams to make sure that, you know, not heavily relying on one revenue stream versus another, and do you have a succession plan if, you know, board leaders move on and you have new ones coming in just to make sure.

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And also, if you have enough cash reserves to make sure you're financially sound. The other areas that we look at is, organization stability. So, do you have the right governance in place, the right IPR policies, the right technology infrastructure to really drive the work forward?

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Andy: Now, what happens when I go through this whole thing? And if I don't get a 32 out of 32, Am, I just hosed, or is there an idea of what I can do next?

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Ashley: Now, so at the end of it, so we actually applied AI. So, you instantly get real time results of where you fall in each of these, focus areas. So, you might be a laggard in one area, and you might be leader in another area. So, it really allows you to hone in and focus on those certain aspects and build a plan.

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So, we meet you where you are, help you develop that plan, so that, you know, in a few quarters or so, you can look back and say, you know what? We really made a difference here. Now we can focus on other areas. The other thing that you want to think about is where you are in the life cycle.

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So, if you're a new consortia and you're exploring, you want to make sure you know, am I in a relevant market? Is this something that it's a market that is emerging and up and coming. And you want to make sure that the value you're going to provide to the market is there, is there a need, is there an urgency?

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Now, if you are in another part of your life cycle. Say maturity, you're really going to focus on, more of your member engagement.

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Andy: Can you tell me a little bit more about how AI is part of this?

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Ashley: Sure. So we took, you know, our decades of knowledge just helping consortia get together, combined with intelligence to quickly be able to give you a snapshot and a score of what you're able to accomplish.

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So rather than having an analyst or consultant come in and do a ton of interviews just to figure out where you are, we can quickly understand where you are and jump in and be able to help you.

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Andy: Now, have some clients already started going through this?

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Ashley: Yes. So, we've been using it with a few of our clients in our technology portfolio, and it's been very successful.

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You know, we've been able to help organizations pivot. It allows the boards to really pause and reflect and lift their head kind of out of the day to day and really see the different aspects of the organization, and we can help drive that conversation.

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Andy: So tell me again where to find it?

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Ashley: so you can find it on our website.

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All you have to do is give us your name and your email address, and you can take the test and you'll quickly get sort of a snapshot. And then we can go into deeper detail with you.

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Andy: And we're charging a lot for this thing, right?

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Ashley: Oh no. It's free.

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Andy: Wow. That's pretty cool. So Ashley, thanks so much for telling me about this.

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It sounds like a great tool for organizations to learn a lot more and be able to improve their health.

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Ashley: Yeah, we're really excited about we think it's going to be a game changer in the market.

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Andy: So, I think so as well. Thanks so much for joining me today. And thank you for spending five minutes with me today.

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If you enjoyed this Five Minutes With Andy and Ashley, then make sure that you click the button below to like or subscribe and join us again. Thanks so much.