With the new year well underway, spring is a great time to open the doors and let the fresh air in. That includes our businesses as well. 

Last fall, amidst the uncertainty of the year to come, the ASA Education Foundation and the ASA Executive Committee committed to move forward with PROJECT VITALITY, the final of three ASA mega initiatives that comprise the Building One Future platform. Building One Future is tackling critical issues that pose the greatest threat to our members and the PHCP-PVF industry over the next 10 years.

On the PROJECT VITALITY front, we collectively identified distributors, manufacturers and manufacturers’ representatives need support and tools to assess their businesses for the future. The landscape is changing rapidly, and it is difficult to see how a business is positioned to tackle the changes and opportunities to come without looking through an external lens. Our members will need to think like never before, especially with the heightened levels of strategic thinking, planning, investment, growth and skill sets that will be needed in order to stay relevant.  

ASA, along with financial support provided by the ASA Education Foundation, retained New Edge, an innovation strategy firm that utilizes design methodology to create new insights for businesses.  

Project VITALITY will include an ASA Growth Assessment Tool to challenge our members to think differently about their business, and to begin to reposition their companies to compete in the future.  

This tool will be a confidential Operating Performance Report-type self-assessment that will help members with their future strategy by identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and where they need to invest to shore up their company’s ability to compete. 

We have assembled a task group to work with the team at New Edge in developing this exciting program, which we look forward to formally rolling out in June.

In addition to developing this robust growth assessment tool, the association is providing every member of the association complimentary access for 10 employees in their firms, making this confidential report extremely useful since it will be their individual growth assessment report (based on their team’s input), and what they and their teams need to do to take their business where they need to be in order to be relevant and successful in the future. 

 If you are not a member of ASA and you are serious about the long-term health of your firm, whether you are a PHCP-PVF distributor, manufacturer or rep, this is a great time to join ASA to get access to this highly valuable benefit.

This initiative, just like the opening of our D.NEXT innovation lab at the University of Illinois and the launch of the PROJECT TALENT careers recruitment program (the other two Building One Future components), is yet another way ASA is fighting for its members and helping secure their success for many years to come.

To learn more about ASA’s Building One Future, click here.

Help our Texas members

I would also like to take a moment to shed light on the situation in Texas. Our members and their communities need our help. Please keep them in your thoughts and lend whatever support you can to get them through this extremely difficult time. Contact ASA to see how you can help.