At The Community Roundtable, we try to practice what we preach and lead by example. Our business model relies heavily on building relationships, which in financial terms means we are constantly focused on generating more value for our stakeholders – friends, guest experts, members, clients, team members – than they contribute. We believe this is how generative and compounding business models work.
Because of this approach to running a business, we’ve always been customer- and value-focused first, and revenue-focused second, although we also believe in a sound, sustainable financial model.
Ten years in, we’ve benefited enormously from this approach. One of the outcomes of a relationship-first approach is that we’ve had very few contentious conversations with any of our constituents. Building great relationships is wonderful from a personal perspective, but it also returns amazing value to the business.
A reflection of that approach is our 2019 Member Advisory Board. We worked to create a board that is diverse, both personally and professionally. Board members come from different sectors and include people who hold Masters degrees in areas such as instructional technology, public health, and English. They represent non-profits, finance, and software companies and all have storied community careers. Perhaps most importantly, they are all friends and supportive critics – helping us see more sharply what we have to offer and challenging us to do better.
We are incredibly honored to have these members of TheCR Network step up to advise us as we make choices about where to spend our resources and focus our efforts. They have already done so much to help us understand their needs and challenges by being open and honest with us.
2019 is already flying by and we look forward to flying even higher because Heather Ausmus (Ciena), Allison Brotman (Ultimate Software), Sam Creek (Pantheon), Jay Graff (JM Family), Patty McEnaney (Envestnet), Will Scarborough (City Year), Eric Schmautz (Wells Fargo), and Lisa Tallman (YMCA of the USA) are in our corner.
