Author: Garth Jordan

Garth Jordan is the SVP and Chief Strategy Officer for HFMA.  Over the past 15 years, he has served in executive roles, including three different C-level roles: Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer. This purposefully-designed diversity of experience has given Garth the opportunity to lead diverse teams through strategic planning and successful execution; build businesses with excellent customer-value propositions; and develop a well-rounded business and cultural acumen geared toward achieving an organization’s goals through high-performing teams.

In recent years, Garth’s opportunities to design, create and build value have expanded. With HFMA, for example, he helped create a horizontal (versus hierarchical) organizational culture that to tackled several large-scale projects at once. One of those projects included Garth designing and facilitating a complete digital transformation of HFMA’s business model, helping it achieve its goal of becoming “the Netflix of associations.” The new member services have received rave reviews to the point that HFMA’s retention rates have increased significantly. The change management required for this project alone was quite intense, and only with a contemporary, team-based approach was HFMA able to achieve success.

Ultimately, for Garth, every day presents a new opportunity to: discover new connections, people and ways of thinking; design new ideas that push the envelope of continuous improvement; and build and prove value for the customers and staff for whom he works.

Jan
25

What If: Imagining a New Association Business Model

Associations are no strangers to challenges. Recognizing, emphasizing, and working to overcome the common hurdles we face in our industry is a continuous and consistent feature of any associations’ efforts. The challenges we face, moreover, are further complicated when they are communal. Sometimes, systemic challenges are being tackled by a variety of professions (and, therefore, associations) […]

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Oct
23

Try the less is more approach to non-dues revenue

All associations want to maximize revenue in order to better serve their members. Non-dues revenue channels can be a great opportunity for associations to broaden the range of services they offer and to build relationships with other bodies in their industry. But a deluge of products, conferences and publications aimed at increasing revenue can distract […]

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Sep
18

Are we all just copying each other?

CAAAAW! CAAAAW! The crow’s “caw” sounded unnatural and abnormally human. Almost like he was reading a script written by another crow. He kind of was, in reality. A while back, I was at The National Aviary in Pittsburgh. I was in a foyer with three cages individually occupied by two parrots and a crow. The […]

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Sep
07

How we jumped into Design Thinking

If you are launching into this article unsure about what Design Thinking is, you can make your way to part one. This second part covers my association’s plunge into the deepend, and what happens when empathy becomes your starting point. There is no roadmap for implementing Design Thinking into your strategic plan. Indeed, given that to employ […]

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Aug
14

Solve problems by putting yourself in someone else’s shoes

Design Thinking is about a starting point. In the face of a problem, a challenge or a task to be completed, finding the most effective solution is not just a matter of choosing the route. It involves establishing the starting line. Design Thinking is a problem solving process that starts with adopting the position of […]

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