Strategic planning is a critical organizational management practice that allows leadership to set goals and priorities and allocate time and resources to meeting those benchmarks. It provides a clear roadmap that keeps teams focused on the most impactful and important initiatives. In this time of workforce challenges and lean resources, few things are more important than working efficiently on targeted objectives to advance your business.

Once you have a strategic plan, it is important to then update all stakeholders and constituents about progress, delivering metrics to show movement toward achieving the desired outcomes. By carefully and thoughtfully measuring progress, the team is able to assess deployed tactics and identify adjustments to improve results.

The FGIA Board established a plan for our organization in May 2022. The four primary strategic objectives have become known as the four E’s: Events, Education, Experts, Explore. We’re proud of the progress that’s been achieved in these areas to support high-value FGIA events, strengthening our leadership position in the industry, and advancing technical innovation and education across the marketplace.

Events

FGIA conferences offer a renewed focus on a blended experience of technical work groups and timely industry information along with social events that promote building community and networks. Beginning in 2025, all Annual and Fall Conferences will be exclusively in-person events. The U.S. will host the 2025 and 2026 Annual Conferences as well as the 2025 Fall Conference while the 2026 Fall Conference will be booked at a Canadian location. Additionally, the Summer Conference will become a virtual-only series of informational and educational presentations offered over fewer days and at a lower registration fee than the in-person events. This shift to Summer Summits supports the continued opportunity to engage more of your team in the organization and allows a broader segment of your employees to leverage the benefits of corporate membership.

Education

Our education objective has been an exceptionally active area with many exciting developments. Our new learning management system was launched in April offering a much more user-friendly interface and streamlined exam scheduling and delivery. Around that same time, the re-imagined online Leadership Development Program, featuring a mix of live webinars and asynchronous modules was released.

The majority of 2024 has been focused on developing the coursework for the next iteration of the FenestrationMasters® Program – known as version 3.0. Targeted for release in November, this curriculum reflects updates based on technical documents published since version 2.0 as well as three entirely new modules addressing Canadian codes, insulating glass and the NAFS Canadian supplement. These new segments align the overall program with FGIA’s current product and geographical scope. And with the significance of the NAFS standard and IG performance to our organization, those two modules are also now being offered a la carte, making them readily accessible to anyone in the industry, even if they’re not pursuing a full professional certification credential.

Experts

The “experts” objective is about establishing FGIA as a well-known brand and enhancing our recognition as an industry expert. Earlier this quarter, a brand recognition research project was initiated. This work supports measuring the effectiveness of initiatives to increase awareness and will also inform future discussions around the long-term management and possible eventual transition of the AAMA and IGMA sub-brands.

Explore

The “explore” objective is about building a strong and consistent research program supporting standards development. The tactical plan focuses on increasing the visibility of research projects and opportunities, simplifying the project management structure and application process, and generating funding from general operations to more readily support project execution.

The Time is Now

With the coming of a new year, now is a great time to think about strategic planning. Identify the areas of your operations with the most potential to positively impact your business and your bottom line, implement thoughtful plans to advance those objectives, measure outcomes and re-visit the plan often to adjust as needed. Strategic plans are always a work in progress; living documents that require focused attention to achieve successful results. Prioritizing these plans across your organization can bring your team together and get everyone rowing in the same direction to reach your targeted destination.