On Saturday night I joined BNI members for a celebration of a 10th anniversary for this chapter. They were the chapter I joined and are now the biggest in the country – officially at 40 with two applications pending I am told. I sat there and looked around wondering what made this chapter so successful. It has never dropped below 20 – 23 being its lowest number, the meetings are vibrant and the chapter is about to hand over $1m for the year in closed business. The average membership is 47 months compared with 33 months for the country.
It is clear to me why they are successful and do the opposite to chapters that indeed take the slippery slope towards failure. No one, that is no one, in that chapter is above the ritual that is BNI. BNI is a franchise and comes with a set of systems that are proven – across the world. Yet consistently I see in failing chapters that strange idea that they are indeed different to the other 2500 chapters in the world and they do it differently. The chapters I look after tell that story – the ones who follow the process or are moving back to following the processes, are strong. The others – well they tell a very different story.
The thing that fascinates me the most is the lack of honour with people’s actions. Yes as harsh as it may sound, a lack of honour.
When you sign the membership application you agree to several things that are clearly stated on that form. Everyone who joins BNI is asked to do the same thing – the rituals that have made BNI the success it is for over 20 years and now in 40 countries. Yet so often people decide they are above the rituals and believe they do not need to honour this agreement. This I don’t understand and it says a lot about people who take this stance. I have been a director now for 7 years and I have seen the same thing over and over. The minute chapters begin to allow members to believe that they are above the rituals that are BNI, trouble starts. Your leadership teams are there to honour those rituals and to keep members accountable to the agreement they signed when they joined.
BNI works – it works incredibly well, however to decide that you need to do it differently is just silly. It would be like purchasing a McDonalds and then saying you know better.
So when you join BNI understand that you are not above the ritual – if you truly believe you are then maybe BNI is not for you.
1 comment
Dr Ivan Misner – the founder of BNI tells a great story about the comment “We are different” . He tells us that when he was starting to roll out BNI across the states, and around the world, that he was expecting to hear this from time to time – but that he first heard it from a chapter not a few miles from BNI Headquarters. It made him realize that in most cases, this is an excuse to lower the bar and that at the end of the day, it says more about the person(s) making the comment than about the matter at hand. It seems to me that the question is really, are you, as the leadership team of your chapter, prepared to stand within your own authority and to do what is needed, or are you going to seek to take the path of least resistance.
Comments are closed.