Learning That Leads: How Associations Can Drive Industry Growth

In this episode of Learning by Association, we explore how associations can successfully navigate digital transformation by rethinking their approach to learning and member engagement. Host Bill Sheehan speaks with guest, Ayça Donaghy, CEO of the Lighting Industry Association (LIA), who shares a compelling roadmap for how associations can gain the trust and approval of their boards, align with vendors and build learning strategies that drive industry-wide impact.

Donaghy offers practical insights into how she secured board buy-in by reframing learning as a strategic asset rather than a cost centre. She also discusses the importance of involving staff and members early in the process, treating learning platforms like integral parts of the team and using pilot programs to demonstrate tangible value.

They also spoke about a few key topics, including:

• The challenges facing associations today, including sustainability, regulation and widening skills gaps
• The shift from traditional in-person training to blended, scalable digital learning models
• How LIA repositioned learning as a strategic growth enabler to win board support
• The importance of board and vendor alignment—and how to foster it
• Member-driven course development and the power of volunteer engagement

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Ayça Donaghy and the LIA
• 3:22 Industry challenges: sustainability, regulation, skills gap
• 6:26 Engaging younger members and shifting learning expectations
• 9:37 Board alignment and reframing learning as strategic
• 12:17 Vendor selection and pilot program success
• 16:03 Building internal capacity and team alignment
• 22:32 Member involvement and volunteer contributions
• 25:40 Benefits of digital transformation: efficiency and scalability
• 28:48 Promoting the LMS and marketing the transformation
• 32:04 Keeping the board informed and data-driven decision making
• 36:11 Collaboration across stakeholders and LMS as infrastructure
• 39:00 Vendor partnership and long-term investment strategy
• 43:37 Real-time iteration and global ambitions
• 47:10 Final reflections and positioning learning as the backbone

Transcript

Bill:

Welcome to Learning by Association, a podcast brought to you by D2L, where we delve into the ever-evolving world of associations and the challenges they face in navigating the currents of change. I'm Bill Sheehan, and I'm thrilled to be your host. Join me and our guest as we explore the role learning plays in driving associations forward, and how it can impact every part of your organization, from recruiting to engagement and renewals to staff development, business strategy and more. So let's dive in.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Learning by Association. Today, I'm exceptionally excited to spotlight an organization that I believe is really setting a powerful example of how an industry association can lead with innovation and learning and member value, and really doing it through a digital transformation. And so, joining us today, and I don't want to steal her spotlight, is the CEO of the Lighting Industry Association, and it's Ayça Donaghy. And Ayça, let me flip it to you just to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your organization.

Ayça:

Thank you so much, Bill, and thanks very much for having me on. As you said, I'm Ayça Donaghy. I'm the CEO of the Lighting Industry Association, which is the UK's Lighting Industry Association, where our members include lighting and controls manufacturers, components suppliers and solution providers. And I was brought in as the CEO to modernize the association, so as part of a transformation, essentially, to increase visibility, relevance, and aligning with the current needs and expectations, which is, of course, where digital transformation comes in.

Just a bit of background to me, this is my first stint in the association world, but I do come from the lighting industry, I worked for one of our members, which I think gives me a really good perspective in terms of what members want. But the association world is very different, and it has been quite a steep but exciting learning curve for me. And in terms of the strategy of the LIA, as I'm sure we'll talk about a lot more, the industry, not just ours, but all industries are currently facing unprecedented change in digitization, decarbonization, regulation, and the strategy is really being a proactive, future-ready association, and of course, learning plays a fundamental role within that mission.

Bill:

You have a really unique background in what you're doing in the industry in that you've been on both sides, you've been a supplier, you've been a member, in a way, and then now you're running that organization. And I can't think of another association that touches our lives as much as lighting, you can't get up in the morning... And you've been in that industry for quite some time, and now you're running the organization that is there to protect, promote and advance that industry. Tell me, what are some of the shifts? What are some of those challenges you're seeing, or maybe you were experiencing in your professional career and now running an organization? I'm sure they're kind of the same shifts, but now you're looking at them through a different lens. So what are some of those shifts and some of the pressures that you feel that your industry is experiencing right now?

Ayça:

Yeah. Let's face it, the pace of change is absolutely relentless. So we've got new sustainability targets, not currently mandated, but you know they're coming, so there is upcoming change that associations are expected to be ahead of the curve on, so we can give our members more time to prepare for that change, and I know how important that is, having worn the industry hat previously. So there's sustainability. There's the regulatory frameworks, and I don't like using the B word, the Brexit word that much, but with that comes those challenges around potential divergence between the UK and the EU, so there's all of that.

There is standards updates. My team sit on international standards committees, European standards committees, UK standards committees, all of that changes and trying to align those. And then, of course, there is a skills gap, and we have a real issue with the aging workforce, where we have a lot of experienced professionals retiring from the industry, but actually, the younger people coming through that are perhaps earlier in their journey don't have the same experience as them, aren't quite getting to the levels that we require. That, I think, is very much an association's responsibility to do that.

Bill:

Absolutely. And I'll tell you too what's interesting, and I think this is happening across the globe, that the attrition of the older member, who grew up understanding the relevance and the importance of an association and how it can help advance their career, particularly as it comes to upskilling and keeping them abreast of the latest and greatest techniques to ensure that their career can be a very positive journey, and a lot of that they leaned on the association for, the younger generation is not seeing that. They're seeing there's a lot more competition for the younger folks coming out of the universities and the like, or even the trade schools and the skill schools, but they're not necessarily aware of the value an association can do. As an organization, how are you doing it, what are some of the ways and means that you go about ensuring that the association is promoting its value to that younger member?

Ayça:

Yeah. I think one of the key shifts for those less experienced members is they don't want transactional support, they want that ongoing professional development, they want strategic insights, and it's all about keeping themselves competitive, differentiating themselves from the rest of the industry for their success, for their progression and development, and I think that's... So yeah, where I think those younger generations coming in want things to be accessible in their own time and in a digestible way, in a way that perhaps the more experienced industry members are used to sitting in rooms and discussing them and traveling to the standards committees, that in-person exchange of information is just not the way that information is digested anymore.

And also, I think there is increased scrutiny on what membership delivers by those that haven't experienced it over decades, and if that value isn't tangible, then it's really easy to cut it in exchange for funding other business opportunities and closing a sale or investing in something for the company that has a very defined ROI, return on investment, it perhaps wins. So it's just the framing of what associations do that has to change with that change of mindset and the changes that are happening.

Bill:

Yeah, that's great. I'm excited, because you hit on, I think, such a critical and important point, and I'm glad to hear it coming from the CEO who's been in the industry, it's really understanding your membership and how they consume information, and particularly learning, how they do that. But you've touched on a point that's so critical, it's really understanding, particularly that younger member, how are they consuming education and learning? And it's in those, I would call them, it's a snack, not a meal, it's in bite-size, when they want, so it's all bespoke, it's when they need it and how they need it, to do that, and it sounds like the Lighting Industry Association is doing that, it's transformed itself to become that almost mass customization, in that however you need your learning, you can get it.

And what I think's important there was that strategic investment, both time and money, from the board, and really making that digital transformation. I'm curious to know, as you were coming in, how did you flip that switch with the board and looking at that? Because I think what you just touched on is they saw the return on the investment, but I think you had to bring it to light, and so how did you do that?

Ayça:

Boards play an important strategic role in association work. They approve the investments, but they also help shape the direction. Where these new initiatives touch on compliance and quality and member engagement, for learning, we needed to show that this wasn't just education for its own sake, but instead reference it as a tool for sector impact. And we reframed learning from a cost center to a growth enabler, and we linked it to member retention, enhanced reputation, wider influence, and particularly, as you touched on before, in policy and standards work. And that was the key shift, because that's the language that boards understand, learning strategy as a risk mitigation and future proofing is something that boards can relate to, and once we started talking about learning in those terms, they saw it straight away and they can link it to their day-to-day conversations about their own business.

Bill:

I've been a proponent of leaning on partners too to ensure that the folks that are providing you the service have to be in alignment with that thinking and that initiative, and being able to bring the right intellectual capital to bear to say, "Hey, we've been in this industry for 27 years, we understand how education has morphed over those and has transformed over the course, we understand learning from the young audience to the older audience."

But it's important for the association and the partner to be in alignment, because you touched on something too, that it's not a cost, but it's a growth opportunity for us, and vendors have to see that as well. And I think oftentimes, vendors are guilty of saying, "I just need to sell this and move on," whereas I think an association is about creating members for life, and I think vendors are starting to shift to create customers for life. And so, were there any aha moments when you started going through this transition, did you feel you had the support of not only the board and the staff, but also of the vendor working in that to ensure that we're in alignment?

Ayça:

Absolutely. So I'll touch on the vendor story first, where we spent a huge amount of time, way longer than we initially expected, because very quickly, it became clear how important that alignment is, and we could easily discard some, and then with the short list of vendors, it was just having those additional conversations to see who aligned best, both from a learning management system capability and functionality, but also from the team, from a support perspective. And one of the great things that we were able to do was a pilot, and that's where we then start talking about the aha moment for the board.

Before we dug deep into the depths of content creation, the first thing we did was just create some content, a small module, to showcase what is achievable before that big investment for the bigger picture, the long-term investment, and that was a really, really good way of getting the whole journey started on a very positive note, with tangible product to be able to showcase of what the vision is, and that is very important for boards, as I came to know very quickly. These ambitions and visions demonstrated graphically just won't do.

And the big, big aha moment was much more recently, which was the actual launch through pilot cohorts of our selling lighting and lighting design compliance course, because that's the first time we had a complete product to sell, so not just this pilot module, which was still essentially a bit of a conceptual idea and a short course, but this was high-volume popular products that are directly relevant to most of our members. Finally, and this is, just to set expectations, 18 months on from the initial small pilot, finally we had something that we could show measurable engagement with, we could show strong feedback on, we could show clear signals that we were addressing a clear market gap, and us as the team who were working towards this day, and sometimes night, we knew exactly where we were going, but until that became visible and tangible to the board, it felt to them like it was wishful thinking.

So now, with real member feedback, getting the board's own teams to take part in it, get firsthand feedback, allowed us to really win them over, and I feel like we're now on the more smooth sailing track.

Bill:

But it wasn't initially smooth sailing, was it? When you go through that transformation, I think you'll run into a level of, I think, concern, both from staff, "What's going on?" The board's like, "Okay, we need to start seeing some results because we're investing in this." And then, I think that third leg of the stool is the membership itself. How did you get that team together and make sure that everyone was in alignment with that? You had great experience, coming from the industry, but how did you get others involved to make sure that, wow, this is a strategic and calculated plan?

Ayça:

Yeah. So two lenses I'm going to look at that. One was it became very clear to me, as well as... So as an association, we're not an expert in education, and of course, we rely heavily on our vendor for that, and that's why that selection process was essential. But it became very clear to me very quickly that with me leading the association and not being an education expert or having any experience in this field, I actually employed our training manager, who did have very clear experience in developing competency frameworks and working with other industries and developing profession maps. So her own success in having achieved this before already helped me win confidence of the rest of the team, because she can speak firsthand as to how exactly it's going to work, how it's worked previously, and I feel like that was really, really important. I'm not saying every association needs to invest in a new head to be able to manage this, but I do strongly believe that having somebody who has some experience of rolling out an LMS and a profession map and a competency framework seriously helps.

And also, the other part I was going to say, so there is, for us, that additional person that could help gain the team's confidence and the board's confidence. The other side of that is also treating the learning management system essentially like a new member of the team as well, where we all know that without structure, without purpose, without support, no new member of the team are going to thrive, and that really resonated with everyone, that it was a team strategy, that without all of us having that input into making this big, exciting, new initiative work, we weren't going to allow it to succeed, and that really resonated.

Bill:

I love that idea. It's almost like the LMS is now on the organizational chart, you're actually part of the org chart, as it should be, because that's helping everyone learn. The association's not the learning expert. They're there to provide these exceptional services that help protect, promote and advance the industry. But what's really important is to increase that engagement, because the more you can get members engaged, the smarter the industry becomes in the industry, so you're really advancing that industry. Was part of the KPI when you were going through this, was part of it saying, "Yeah, we'd like to see more member engagement, we'd like to see maybe more member acquisition, new members coming on and using that," was that part of your plan as well, like, "This will be some of the success factors as we deploy this new offering"?

Ayça:

I think member engagement might happen quite naturally, and that would be a great bonus, but I think member retention probably was more of a thing, it's that demonstrating the value. And if they've got, for example, with the sales course, if they've got better equipped, more competent sales professionals to close those sales, and therefore increase the profits of our existing members, and they've had that training at a member discount that they wouldn't otherwise have had, that to me is the critical thing, because it always comes down to the bottom line, it's like, how much value is that actually adding to my own business? And same for the lighting design course.

Basically, we are hoping to develop courses for every single department of our member companies, so that every individual that works for them are more competent in their job, more productive, more out-of-the-box thinking, and therefore, the value actually does translate to that bottom line. Of course, if we have non-members that are now interested in this course, and then they realize there is more value to be had as well as discounts of our learning, which is how our model works, then we may get those members on board. But honestly, it was more about securing the long-term support of our existing members, and I guess the global access. So because it's not a member-only service, although there's a cost difference, this allows us to access the lighting industries globally. We've clearly done a lot of competitive analysis, and we didn't believe that fit-for-purpose learning exists that that is in line with the digital transformation of the world and the blended learning needs of industries, hence why we've developed this, and our ambitions in terms of going globally are very high, and already being realized, I'm glad to report.

Bill:

That's pretty cool. You're really future-proofing your association, which I love to see, because when you're saying you're creating courses for particular departments or particular sectors of the industry, that to me is critical, because it shows that you understand the industry and you're representing the industry and you become very, very relevant. Now, I'm going to put my old association executive hat on. I'm assuming, I'm sure you have folks on-staff that understand that, that get that, but are you also leaning out to the industry to say, "We're designing a course in this particular discipline," and are you reaching out to say, "Who's a subject matter expert in that field?" And then bring them on? The reason I say that is, again, associations, the staff are so busy, they want to think outside the box, they truly do, and they try to, but the timing can be tough and they need to begin to lean on the members a little bit more. Are you doing that same type of thing, to let the other associations know that there is a way to do this?

Ayça:

So for the success of any association, I think that member volunteer engagement is absolutely crucial, because associations themselves never have enough team members to be able to roll out all of those initiatives with our own subject matter expertise alone. So for the first couple of courses, we have had a few more consultants that have helped us as subject matter experts with content. But now that we've launched the two courses, it's been so interesting and exciting to see members wanting to be involved, wanting to put forward their employees as volunteers and helping with future courses, actually identifying what other courses are needed and then saying, "How quickly can we get there? And if I was able to put forward some volunteers, then would that speed up that? Because I've got this many employees that are absolutely desperate for this."

Some product design graduates, for example, that the universities do a great job of that general understanding of product design, but then when our members get them on board, that intricate lighting-specific knowledge is not there. So for example, that's the next one we're working on is we've got the lighting design, we've got the sales, now we're working on the product design, and that has been a very specific member demand. So not only does that show that they're really engaged, that the subject matter that we've put onto the courses are really resonating with them and hitting the nail on the head, but that they now have this vision of other courses that are going to help them even more. Without that support, we would not be able to have the ambitious launch targets that we have for the rest of our training offering.

Bill:

And I think that goes to show just how passionate your industry is, because you've got these people being very proactive to support and provide their intellectual capital unsolicited, they're coming in. That's what every association wants, that you have all your members raising their hand, saying, "How can we help?"

Let me ask another question too, because I think with regards to when we talk about digital transformation, that initial implementation can be tough, because things are shifting quickly, but the momentum is still the same on how you were doing stuff before and you've got to move into a new digital era. Are there certain things you can do now that you couldn't do prior to that digital transformation?

Ayça:

There is definitely a hidden benefit that can be overlooked sometimes, and that's that contribution margin. So what we've seen, by investing in an LMS and digitizing our learning offer, is we've significantly reduced the manual burden on our team, and that relates to tasks like registration and invoicing, tracking of progress, the follow-ups. And I really do think that in today's digital economy, if associations don't embrace these productivity tools, which is, as an add-on, what they are really, they risk becoming busy fools, and doing more but achieving less, and they will be left behind. Although we are still relatively early in our journey, we're seeing how these tools enable us to do more with less, and that targeted member engagement, we've also updated our CRM so that the back-end of how we manage our membership, and the two together work well for us to be more targeted in our approach.

And then, I think the other part that the digital transformation brings is the scalability and that blended learning element. You alluded to what you thought was probably our previous learning offering, which you were absolutely right. It was PowerPoint-based, it was tutor-led, it was often in-person, four or five consecutive days, travel involved, accommodation involved. People just don't have the time and are not willing to do that anymore, and by being able to digitize our offering, they're scalable and they're blended, so you don't have to lose out on the subject matter expertise and the importance of that network, the cohort, the learning together element, but you can mix it up so that people can use their time in self-paced learning to get the theory, the foundational learning, and then be able to apply that learning, embed that learning, through that cohort and the subject matter expert element of the learning.

Bill:

We talk to hundreds of associations a month, and one of the things we talk to them about is promoting themselves and what they're doing and what that benefit is. And what happens is, a lot of times, associations will implement a new service, a new offering, say it's an LMS or a new CRM or a new database or a new community platform, what have you, but they forget to let the industry know it's there, and that's not... Trust me, I know, you're busy. When you were doing this, were you promoting, "This is coming"? And then, once it got going, did you promote some of the successes you're seeing, so others are saying, "You know what, the fear of missing out, maybe I better jump in on this LIA LMS"? Was that part of the plan too, when you're talking about ensuring the success of this new launch and this new initiative?

Ayça:

Absolutely, and we started creating hype about this when we were still considering our vendors, and I guess maybe I was a bit ambitious as to how quickly it could be realized, and that was when we saw the real appetite for it. Straight away, the moment that we talked about the profession map and the blended learning, we started getting inquiries, and we were like, "Oh, hang on a second, we're not quite there yet." But I wouldn't change it, because I think that letting your membership move with you, keeping them up to date with even the challenges and the opportunities that it is going to bring, et cetera, has been really critical to, now that we've got the product, to be able to really have a secure pipeline already of those that have contacted us from those initial marketing efforts, et cetera.

But now that we have had the pilot cohorts go through the first two courses, we actually have turned those into member case studies, and we have allowed the learners themselves to have interviews with us and give their feedback of how they're different having gone through the learning and how they're going to approach things differently. And there's nothing better than hearing from industry colleagues, or competitors, in some ways, why they are now better as a result of this, than the association saying, "Oh, do our courses, this is brilliant, you should do it." So yeah, it's been a real marketing journey from our side as well, from something really conceptual to something very concrete that members are now talking about firsthand.

The other final bit that I'll say about it is also the opportunities that this has allowed us to have to collaborate with other industry partners that previously could have been seen as competitors, et cetera, but our industry desperately needed us to defragment, and at least as associations of the industry, to work together. I think that's allowed us to be a lot more transparent and collaborative with others that are within the lighting industry as well.

Bill:

Yeah, and that word collaborative too. So I love hearing that you're keeping the members informed and the membership informed. That's always so critical to ensure that you're reinstilling the relevancy of your organization. But also, I guess along the way too, you've also got to keep the board updated and informed as well. How do you go about doing that? Because I know sometimes, you'll have churn on the board too, and so you have new members coming on, so how do you go about ensuring that you're keeping them informed?

Ayça:

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess a key thing for the board that I always had to bear in mind was, throughout the whole process, showing the strategic alignment with the association's goals, how does the learning strategy tie into our objectives for the association and the industry we serve as a whole? But also, the evidence of need throughout the process was really, really critical. So that might be through proactive member feedback or member surveys that are linked directly to those topics, gaps we see during the audits that we perform with our members, competitor insights. So all of this data showing how we're serving our industry and what others are, or more importantly, are not doing, and where the gaps are that we can fill, and not speaking of that in subjective terms, but very clear data-led terms, was absolutely critical.

And then, those minimum viable products as we progressed through, of the module and then the course, and measuring it every step of the way, was really, really important. And then, framing it in the way that a board understands, that I've briefly touched on before, where framing it around risk mitigation and reputation and revenue, all those big words that really resonates with the board and constantly tying it to those key areas. So I think those are the bits, the topics, that boards are focused in their own businesses.

Bill:

I think you're smart in what you're doing. When you're talking to the members, your language and delivery is going to be a little bit different, and when you talk to your board, your taxonomy and delivery is going to be a little bit different. So I think how you're showing the success of this is going to resonate differently with a different audience, such as your membership members and then the board, so I love that you're bringing in what their buzzwords are.

Ayça:

Yeah. And I think not thinking of learning as a service or product and thinking of it as almost infrastructure. And that point I touched on about the new hire and giving it attention and guidance and clear outcomes, involving the team, all of those, the starting smalls, and turning what can seem like a huge hurdle for the board and a big risk to take, a potentially resource-heavy project can be tackled so much easier with the board in bite-sized chunks, that every step of the way, in every board meeting, you're able to report back on success before launching the new phase, improving that concept one phase or one step at a time was really, really useful.

Bill:

That's smart. I think you learned that from your experience being in the industry, this is what we will determine is successful, because again, when you're a company, you have one goal in mind, the success for your company. When you're running an organization, like you are, it's really success for the industry, and each member of the board and each company has different expectations, and it looks like you're touching on those.

And I think too, which leads me to the next question, we talked about there seems to be a lot of collaboration going on between the board and between your initiatives and between the staff and the like, and the collaboration also has to be, again, with the vendor, that company that is helping you, they need to be part of those conversations. And I think here at D2L, we're passionate about that, in that we really want to be... You touched on this, we're not a cost center, we're not just an expense, we are part of the ecosystem. Learning is part of everything an association does. When you're going through your discovery phase and going through the decision-making process of who that LMS is, I'm sure that had... What is this vendor bringing to the table beyond the technology? When you were looking at that... And I think that's continuum, even after the fact, after you're engaged. Was that part of your process too, when you're looking at when you're going through digital transformation?

Ayça:

Absolutely. I think that was the one differentiating factor, I have to say, in our selection process, was that we get a project manager and a client support manager that continues that support for... It's my training manager that has monthly meetings still, and as I said, we're, I think, year two of our engagement now, where they are able to update what the updates for the vendor are as well, of which, throughout this digital transformation phase that we're going through, there is more features added, there is more AI integrations and all of this wonderful stuff that we don't have to discover for ourselves, that we are proactively updated on, sometimes through communications that come through, but also in in-person catch-ups, and we're able to discuss what the next steps are for us.

Or a new idea emerges, for example, from our talent task force who oversee the education and training map and what comes next for us, it's a committee made of member volunteers, they'll come up with ideas that we haven't thought of before, and then instead of us trying to figure out whether it's possible or not, we talk to experts that are experts in the platform who can just go, "Yes, we can do that," or, "No, we can't." And sometimes we've had, "Oh, we'll add it to our pipeline for our own R&D projects with a platform to see if that's something we'll be able to do." So that collaboration, it is like having another person within the team, really, for my training manager to be able to rely on and to be able to get quick answers.

Bill:

Yeah. I love hearing that, because we truly believe that we want to be part of the ecosystem and truly a valuable extension of the staff throughout the process, and it goes beyond learning, it touches all parts of the association. Let me ask, and this is going to be more of just your individual thought process here, what would be your advice to those associations that are on the fence? And then, what would be the core elements that you need to really ensure that are on your side, like a board or a committee or somebody like that? But there's those associations that are saying, "I just don't have time to think about digital transformation, I will in four months."

Ayça:

I think think about what's at stake. Things are moving so quickly, that the longer you leave it, the less likely you're going to be able to catch up, and the risk is irrelevance, and that is the biggest risk that associations face, I think, today. And in my opinion, without a strong learning strategy, associations risk being bypassed in favor of things like events and consultants and self-serve platforms that members might invest in in the absence of an association that's able to support them in that way. In my opinion, learning is not a nice-to-have, it never has been. And more so than ever, this blended learning way of working, it certainly our lever for relevance, resilience and renewals, and those are the three big Rs for me that we talk about within the LIA. And for me, it comes down to the fact that you can't build a future-ready organization with yesterday's knowledge.

And then, you asked about the steps, the buy-in that you need to get, it has to be top-down and bottom-up. So the board have to be in favor, they need to be driving this. If it can be their idea and things can be framed in ways, that might [inaudible 00:41:21] so if the idea comes from the board or you get buy-in really early on, that is absolutely critical. The team need to be on board, they need to understand, they need to be part of the decision-making process as well, so that it's not something that's put on them, but something that's been decided with them.

And then, I alluded to our talent task force. That group is made up of some senior leaders of our industry, and they're not members of the board, but they are respected, well-known individuals that care about education and training and talent development and retention and recruitment. And having them own this topic and advise the board on it, as well as me advising the board on it, and the LIA team and my training manager advising them on it, has been a really nice cover, so that with so many groups bought into it, it just becomes a not-questionable decision really.

Bill:

See, I love that, and I think that's the way you're positioning it. I think a lot of associations today are guilty of putting together, for lack of a better term, an RFP, saying, "We're going to do this, this, this," and then send it out into the industry. And when I think you're doing that, I think you tend to look at an LMS, or any other type of purchase, as a cost, as an expense, and when you do that, you're saying, "Okay, I know there's organizations out there that can do all of the stuff that we need, but it's going to cost us a little bit more than we anticipated, so let's take them off the list."

And I think, personally speaking, and I'm putting my association hat on here, I think that's a mistake, because to a certain extent, you just don't know at times what you don't know until a vendor comes and says, have the discussion, "Why are you trying to do this?"

"Oh, there might be another way to do that."

So I think what associations have to do... I don't know, when you were putting your plan together, it sounds like it was a little bit more fluid than it was concrete, "This is it, and we're not going to move outside the box because this is the only budget we have," or, "This is what we're doing," instead of saying, "We might need a little bit more to gain much more relevancy within our space and to grow." Was that the thinking when you were going through this?

Ayça:

Absolutely. And I think it helped that we also had a really not-fit-for-purpose training that was losing momentum, that was declining in the revenue income that we were getting from it. So we had very clear, tangible P&L signals that we couldn't continue to do what we were doing, so it wasn't a question of if, but it was a question of what and how much. And we knew that this was a long-term investment as well, and that it needed to be a phased approach, that we needed to listen to the industry, it needed to be developed by the industry, for the industry, and it's not something that could have been done overnight.

So we budgeted accordingly, thinking this isn't a 12-month, we don't need to account for this in one year, we know that to have something that we can fully assess, it needs to be this much and the outputs have to be this and that, but then we know that we are going to continue to invest in this for many, many years to come and iterate it. And what's great about the learning management system we have is that it allows us to iterate in real-time, so as soon as we get the feedback from the pilot cohorts, we can actually make tweaks to it, and anybody who has access to that [inaudible 00:45:45] will have, in real-time, the changes that have been made to it.

And with the knowledge of that being possible, you don't need to rush things. Both from a budgeting perspective and from a staff resourcing perspective, you can just take your time and make sure that you have enough to show what you're heading towards, to listen back to the industry, and then develop the next phase once you've had that feedback. So it doesn't have to be a single risk taken all in one year, and for me, it's not a risk, it's a no-brainer.

Bill:

I think at that point in time, and it sounds like you got your board to buy in, the staff understands that, the vendor understands that, everyone's in alignment. And I think too, what I think makes the relationship work is collaboration, and by that, I don't mean give and take, I mean give and give. In other words, when we work closely with you and others, it's what does that future look like? We're here now, what's next? What has worked? What hasn't worked? What would you like to work better? I think those conversations have to help, as opposed to trying to fit you into our system, it should really work the other way around, because if it's going to work for LIA, it's going to work for 10 or 15 other associations.

So that being said, and I know we constantly have conversations, what is next, if you can talk about it, but what are some of the things you're seeing that you'd like to look at, or what that future for LIA is looking like from a learning standpoint?

Ayça:

Yeah. So I think for us, next step's going to be deeper integration of the LMS across the rest of our member services. So we have many technical and strategic committees that produce information sheets and guidance documents and technical statements, and now that we've got the LMS and the courses that sit within it, suddenly they feel really two-dimensional compared to what we can achieve through the platform. So I really want to explore how we can meaningfully expand our course library to incorporate those sorts of things and address industry skills gaps that our current offering doesn't already address.

And there's also a lot of policy shifts around education at the moment, and we want to be part of those conversations. So that will definitely be another step is liaising with the Department for Education in the UK and liaising with all the bodies that are responsible for the skills gaps that have been very clear, especially in the construction sector, the electrotechnical sector, of which we're a part of, and showing what best practice could look like. And actually getting our courses included within some of the funding that the government's proposing, so that we can make our courses even more accessible to, for example, SMEs, 96% of our membership is small/medium enterprises, and they are even more constrained by resources, both staff and budgetary, and how do we get them to access this? Also, exploring around microcredentials and verified CPD pathways, those are other areas that we're exploring.

Bill:

What you touched on, to me, resonates, and again, it comes from my 30 years being the association space, when you talked about that LMS integration. When a lot of people think of LMS, they just think of it as learning certification, accreditation, and that's it. But it extends beyond everything, it extends on to onboarding, it extends on educating your members on the policies that are happening, it's educating the influencers who could help you get funding from the government, what are some of the topics you have to learn and understand so that you can clearly articulate why we need to have funding for this industry. Membership events, HR, onboarding, it really touches the entire ecosystem of an association, so when you talked about that, that is music to my ears.

I just wanted to give you maybe a closing remark on really the importance that the LIA plays in its industry, and how your board has come together and is really supporting and helping advance the lighting industry.

Ayça:

So I guess if we're talking about this conversation, the whole point is about positioning learning as the backbone of a modern and relevant trade association, which I believe the LIA is, and that spans so many different topics, around compliance, around advocacy, around sustainability, and of course, around education, and we call that the CASE for the LIA, if you look at the acronyms of the words that I've just said. But the learning element is literally the backbone of every single thing that we do.

Bill:

That's great to hear, and I can confidently say that I think the Lighting Industry Association is in exceptional hands with you at the helm.

Ayça:

Thank you so much for having me, Bill, it's been a brilliant conversation.

Bill:

Thank you so much, and best of luck.

You've been listening to Learning by Association, a podcast where we delve into the ever-evolving world of associations and the challenges they face in navigating the currents of change. This episode was produced by D2L, a global learning innovation company helping organizations reshape the future of education and work. To learn more about our solutions, please visit www.d2l.com. And don't forget to subscribe so you can stay up to date with new episodes. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.