BNI 824: Your Director Said What? - BNI & The Power of One

Summary

BNI 824: Your Director Said What? - Detailed Summary

Podcast Information:

Title: BNI & The Power of One
Host: Tim Roberts
Episode: BNI 824: Your Director Said What?
Release Date: June 4, 2025

Introduction

In episode 824 of "BNI & The Power of One," host Tim Roberts delves into a pressing concern raised by a listener regarding changes in mentorship assignments within their BNI chapter. The episode focuses on the importance of mentorship programs in maintaining high retention rates and offers strategic insights into optimizing these programs for sustained success.

Listener's Concern: Director Consultant's Directive

At [00:25], Tim introduces the listener's question, which highlights a directive from a Director Consultant:

"Our director Consultant visited our 53 member chapter for the first time since November and informed us there's no assigning mentors to new members. Do your region still assign mentors?" (00:25)

The listener underscores their chapter's impressive retention statistics, boasting over 90% overall retention and high 80s% first-year retention rates. They question the rationale behind relying solely on the MSP (Member Success Program) and the Passport program instead of continuing the mentorship assignments that appear to be yielding excellent results.

Host's Response: The Vital Role of Mentorship

Tim Roberts responds emphatically to the listener's concern, emphasizing the critical role mentorship plays in member retention and chapter success.

Retention Rates Analysis:

[02:15]: Tim explains that achieving a 90%+ retention rate is exceptional and not commonly seen across BNI regions in the United States, where the highest regional retention hovers around 77% with first-year retention below 80%.

"There's no region in the United States of America with those kind of levels." (02:50)

He stresses that while high retention rates are commendable, they necessitate robust support systems like mentorship programs to sustain such numbers.

Challenges Beyond Control:

[04:10]: Tim acknowledges factors affecting retention that are beyond a chapter's control, such as members moving, retiring, falling ill, or facing personal tragedies. He highlights that these natural attritions mean that aiming for a 100% retention rate is unrealistic, and an 80% goal is both achievable and practical.

"We can't be 100% right. It's just like hiring. Nobody bats a thousand on these things." (05:30)

The Importance of Mentoring Programs

Effectiveness of Mentorship:

[06:45]: Tim draws parallels between mentorship in BNI chapters and employee retention in companies. He emphasizes that just as businesses benefit from mentoring employees to fit seamlessly into their roles, BNI chapters thrive when new members receive dedicated guidance.

"This mentoring program is designed to help chapter new members do that, get up to speed, get moving with the pack, get into it." (10:00)

Critique of Over-Reliance on Online Training:

[08:20]: Tim critiques the shift towards comprehensive online training systems like MSP and Passport, pointing out their limitations. He notes that while online programs can ensure completion rates, they often lack the personalized interaction necessary for effective learning and integration.

"Because it's online, a good percentage of them hit play and walk away or hit play and they're listening but they're not really listening to it because they're doing a variety of other things." (11:15)

Case Study: Florida Northeast Region:

[09:30]: Using data from the Florida Northeast region, Tim illustrates the shortcomings of solely relying on online training. Despite having one of the lowest "No MSP" percentages in the country (1.9%), the region experienced stagnant retention rates until they reintroduced live MSP trainings. This change led to a 6% increase in retention, underscoring the effectiveness of interactive mentorship.

"We went back to doing live MSP trainings to give those kind of things. So do we need to do it? Do we need to lot? Nope, by every account... our retention rate went up about 6%." (12:50)

Leadership and Program Implementation

Leadership's Role:

[13:00]: Tim criticizes the directives that undermine successful programs without understanding their impact. He suggests that leaders should be data-driven and seek to understand why a program works before discontinuing it.

"Sometimes they will look at things and say, okay, this mentoring program was implemented in blah blah, blah year and retention hasn't changed. So it's not working." (13:30)

Advocating for Mentorship Continuation:

[14:00]: He encourages chapter members to advocate for maintaining mentorship programs, highlighting their integral role in member success and retention.

"I would challenge you to push back or at least don't give up the mentoring program. It's still a part of being I connect. It hasn't gone away. So you can still do it." (14:10)

Conclusion: Upholding Successful Practices

Tim wraps up the episode by reaffirming the significance of mentorship programs in achieving high retention rates and fostering a supportive chapter environment. He urges chapters to maintain these programs, especially when they are clearly yielding positive results, and to question directives that may undermine effective strategies.

Closing Remarks and Call to Action

The episode concludes with Tim inviting listeners to submit their questions and topics for future episodes via the BNI Power of One website. He emphasizes the importance of feedback and continuous improvement within the BNI community.

This episode serves as a compelling reminder of the power of mentorship in business networking and the necessity of questioning and understanding leadership decisions that impact chapter dynamics and member retention.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Sam.

B (0:25)

Foreign welcome back to V9 the Power of One podcast. Thank you for joining me again today. Pumping out a couple more episodes to make up for last week and just have some great questions coming in, topics, suggestions, etc. So as always, if you have one, go to bnipower of1.com leave it there, let me know and we will definitely get to it. This one has been asked to leave all information out, which I'm happy to do as always, and I think you'll get a sense of why with this question. And listen, I want this podcast to be your podcast and to be as effective as possible. So I try to answer just about every question I can. I think there's only been maybe one or two where I was like I'm not touching that one. So you can imagine how crazy they might be. All right, so today's question says please withhold name, chapter, region. All that. No problem. Our director Consultant visited our 53 member chapter on I'm not even going to name the day just in case for the first time since November. Now this question is back from March, so I apologize about that. She informed us there's no assigning mentors to new members. Do your region still assign mentors? Our retention rate is the 90% plus levels. Our first year retention is in the high 80s%. Why would we want to just rely on MSP and the passport? Yeah, so your director consultant is a and you should be reaching out to whoever is above that person and ask why they would say something like that and what can they do about it? Because that's insanity. Because to your point, it's not just about why would we rely just on MSP in the passport. It's why wouldn't we do everything we can to retain members and why wouldn't we stop something that if your percentages are right, is clearly working. There is no region in the United States of America with those kind of levels. There is no 90% retention level and 80 plus percent first year retention level in the country. Now there might be a chapter levels and I don't have access to chapter level stuff. And so it sounds like your chapter is doing some pretty incredible things if those data points are to be real. Like the highest overall retention level of any region over 500 members is like 77% and first year is less than that. So let's just talk about that for a real quick reason. I think the overall goal for chapters and regions to try to achieve to is like 80% retention and that's because there are a lot of things that you can't control. There are just things that people are going to leave for things you can't control. And I'm not talking about the like the lazy and all that kind of stuff. I'm talking about they move, they retire, they get sick. Unfortunately there's deaths, there's deaths in family, tragic things that can happen. Big celebration things too. Like you said retirement, that kind of stuff you can't control. In fact, retirement's the goal. Like we celebrate. If a member is leaving their chapter because they're retiring, there'd be a big party for that. That's the goal. And so I think it's like 80% now the there's also a percentage of people that get into your chapter that you then find out aren't the right fit and they got to leave whether by their choices or the chapters. That comes down to how effectively are we doing our interview process and background checks and all that kind of stuff. But even then you can't be 100% right. It's just like hiring. Nobody's nobody bats a thousand on these things. If you're telling me you've never had to fire an employee or let somebody go and every employee you you've had, I would tell you you're probably not a great boss or a great owner because I've just never seen a really successful company bat a thousand on hiring. I've seen companies bat a thousand on hiring because they refuse to let people go but or you know, push their, their people to achieve things that where some people decide to go. So and I'm not saying you have to be like a jerk or anything, but that's just the reality of the situation. It's the same thing in a chapter. No chapter bats a thousand percent with like the perfect picks every time they accept somebody into the chapter and we find out after because people will some lie but otherwise tell you what they want to believe in an interview. Yes, I'm all excited. I'm going to show up every week and I'm going to do a one to one every week and I'm going to do all these things and then a few months into it they're not doing it. And I don't even think it's that they had intentions of not sometimes they had intentions of not doing and they just told you what they think you wanted to hear. Sometimes it's more than they thought they could handle or they don't have the operations in place or the time management place, whatever, it doesn't matter. So 100% retention is never going to be the goal. I think it's 80. So if your chapter is running at 90, 90 plus, that's just a ridiculously high number. So I would, I would talk to my director consultant if they walked in and be like, yeah, we're no longer doing, you no longer need to do that part. I'd be like, based on what results? Can you show me that that makes sense? Can you show me a chapter that's doing better than we're doing by not doing it? And the answer is going to be no. Now, based on your region and where you are and what I know about it, this comes down to the result of a couple things. One is an over reliance on online. So they want to rely on the MSP training and the Passport program because those are tracked online. Passport, there's still physical ones but you could do it online. And it's kind of member driven, chapter driven in that sense. Mostly member driven, msp knowing this region, all online. So they're not putting in any kind of training on it. They don't want to train on it. Part of that is when you get into cultural issues based off who owns the region and when corporate structures come into play when they're owning the region, sometimes things get cut because kind of dancing around. Let me tell you another story. Sometimes BNI changes things because somebody somewhere else in the world said oh, we don't do it or we do this and it works really well and without and well intended. People get into groups and they have discussions but they don't look at data across different regions, differences in data across different countries. They don't get involved in historical precedent. They don't ask questions to ask like why did this change and why should this, why was this implemented and what's working, what's not working? And sometimes they will look at things and say, well generally let's just think of this mentoring program which by the way, yes, we encourage our just full because you asked the question, we encourage our chapters and train our chapters to do it. But they'll look at it and say, okay, this mentoring program was implemented in blah blah, blah year and retention hasn't changed. So it's not working. And when you look at like a grand overview 30,000 foot view, they're probably right just based on that data. But what they're not asking is where is it working and why is it working there and not in the other places and how do we improve the places it's not working and then decide if it really is not something they need to do. But even if you decide it's something you don't need to do, what you don't do is walk into a place that is working and tell them to stop. That is crazy. And that, unfortunately, I believe, without knowing any of the characters in this, is probably coming from a director consultant who, who's just following orders and has no historical precedent on the program. Has no historical precedent on your chapter, what it's doing, why it's doing, how it's worked, or anything like that. They've been told, yeah, we don't do that. And thus they're just telling you verbatim, yeah, we don't do that. And that is not great leadership on any level. So, yeah, that's where we are with that one. I encourage the mentoring program. I believe the successful chapters, the truly successful chapters run it well. They assign new members mentors because again, a new member comes in and they are the new kid in school. I don't care how long they've been in business and how long. Like this is a new thing and Everybody's running at 100 miles an hour already. Because, you know, the current members have been doing it every week, some for years and years and years. And we, if we don't give them a good on ramp to catch up, like an on ramp on a highway. If you're on ramp on a highway is too short and you know you're going to have a lot of accidents. You need to give time for that car to get up to speed, to merge into traffic, to be moving with. With the rest of the pack. You can't. This is the mentoring program is designed to help chapter new members do that, get up to speed, get moving with the pack, get into it. And I mean without it. You're relying on an MSP training in this region that's online where they can ask questions, they can engage, they just go through the program. And because it's online, a good percentage of them hit play and walk away or hit play and they're listening but. Or they're hearing it, but they're not really listening to it because they're doing a variety of other things. You know, listen, we saw this. My regions in particular, my Florida northeast region, this is over a year ago now running. And when we, we went to the online MSP training, we're like, okay, everything's moving online. Let's try it. We were running at the lowest no MSP percentage in the country with like 8, 900 members. Okay. We were talking like 1.9% of our members hadn't completed the MSP training. And to give you like a point of reference on that, that's for new members. If I pull up today's no MSP percentage just for the country, like the average, the average is 24%. Okay. You look at all the regions in the country, the average of no msp percentage was 24. Okay. So we were running at like 1.9, but our retention was not where we wanted it to be. And what we realized was, yeah, you can give on. Like I'm just for case in point, Today that region's 1040 members and it's at 2.3%. So pretty ridiculous. There's a couple, there's one that said zero, but they only have 28 members, so I don't count that. But anyways, what we realized was, yeah, you can give all the online training and we can get our members to complete it. But what it was missing some effectiveness point. And for us, that's why we changed back to doing live MSP trainings to give those kind of things. So do we need to do it? Do we need to do lot? Nope, by every account. We could easily do online training because it's available, because it's auto assigned and, and just tell our chapters, no, we do online training but we went back to, now we do it on zoom just for scalability and stuff, but with a live trainer every week because we saw that the old way of having an instructor that you can ask questions to that can deep dive and do different things was more effective and our retention rate went up about 6%. So again, when you get people who are in leadership who are just told, oh yeah, we don't need to do that or we don't follow that and they just do that, they're not asking the right questions. And I don't think it's ill intended. I don't think it's like, you know, somebody's being malicious. I just think it's a little lazy to go into a chapter that's got those kind of numbers, if those numbers are true and say, oh yeah, don't do that anymore, instead of asking like, hey, I see you're doing that, it apparently is working. Why, how? And how do I get my chapters who aren't doing it to maybe do that? So there you go. And there's a lot of different things on different chapter levels you can look at and we can have discussions on or what have you that that's the case. So I would challenge you to push back or at least don't give up the mentoring program. It's still a part of being I connect. It hasn't gone away. So you can still do it. Use the mentoring program. If you're not using the mentoring program, use the mentoring program. If you need a better example than a chapter running at 80% first year retention, 90% retention levels as a reason to do it, there you go. Do it because it works. All right, great question. Hopefully you guys found some value out of it. And as always, go to benight power of1.com leave me your questions and topics. Leave a review as I love the feedback and I'll talk to you soon.