If you’ve ever struggled over when, how, and if you should charge for your content, Dan Loomis has put together another really useful post on the Big Ideas blog outlining how you don’t need to pick just one way of pricing content for, in the case of associations, members and nonmembers.

He advocates for what he calls a “hybrid content strategy” that includes a mix of free-to-all content (older evergreen info, teasers for premium content, etc.); free or discounted premium content just for members; premium content for conference attendee eyes only (such as conference content for 90 days post-con); and some fee-only content that anyone can buy.

This is his second post on this topic lately, and I like this one even more than the last one.

Maddie Grant thinks they are, and she makes a good argument that, when slapped onto a specific situation without tweaking to make it fit, they could easily cause some evil things to happen. But is that the fault of the best practice? Or is it more the fault of someone who didn’t use Maddie’s definition of a best practice when it comes to best practices? (Does your head hurt yet? Mine does.)

The argument rang a faint bell for me as something I once had deep thoughts about. Sure enough, we had a good go-round on best practices a few years ago, and upon further reflection, I still stand now where I did then on the subject: On the shoulders of Jamie Notter, who said at the time,

“Seeing something out there that inspires you to do your thing better is fine. But ‘best practices’ is more than that. It is a mindset. Best practices are answers. When you go looking for best practices, you are looking for answers, and you are likely not spending enough time thinking about your questions…I think if you are clearer about your questions, then the issue of ‘fit’ and ‘context’ with the best practices that you come across will be more immediately apparent. Then what other people are doing CAN inspire your own innovation.”

Some things you can adapt and adopt—to quote myself (definitely not a best practice!): Everyone wants “easy” without even adapting a form/template for their own work. Recreating the wheel isn’t always necessary; being smart and customizing is. Other things you need to start from scratch. Wisdom, methinks, lies in knowing the difference. Good luck with that!

Remember the infamous kerfuffle over $16 muffins that happened when the Office of the Inspector General said the Department of Justice was overspending on its conferences. Quickly dubbed “Muffingate,” some deemed that, even though in reality the “muffin” on the invoice was just shorthand for a continental breakfast of sorts for which $16 is a fair price, it still could be called an argument meetings can’t win.

But once The Colbert Report points out the absurdity of the whole thing, well, maybe we actually can call this one a win, at least after the fact?

Liz on the Biz, aka the brilliant Liz Zielinski, CMM, asks an interesting question: In the Battle of Tactics vs. Strategy, Which Wins? She then goes on to explain the roles of mission, strategy, and tactics in a very clear, clean, and concise way:

“The strategy is a deliberately constructed plan that will be employed in order to pursue the mission, and the tactics are the smaller actions taken to execute the strategy. If an organization’s ideology is compared to a pyramid, then the tactics are the supporting base, the strategy is the balanced design and the mission is the culminating tip.”

So it’s not possible for it to be a battle between strategy and tactics, is it? It’s not an either/or—for a meeting to succeed to moving an organization closer to achieving its mission, you need both strategy and tactics. Just as for a meeting to accomplish its mission, you need to have goals and the means to accomplish them, along with tactics such as meeting space that will work with you, not against you, and ways to keep participants moving easily from activity to activity.

I’ve always thought the strategy versus tactics frame of mind to be a counterproductive one, when it’s so obvious that you need to have both if you want to create an effective experience.

I’m no math genius, but even I can do these equations:
Strategy-tactics=mind-fluff/frustration
Tactics-strategy=an exercise in futility/tail-chasing
Tactics+strategy=mission accomplished

I’d add that this holds true for pretty much everything, not just meetings.