Three Great Goals
William D. Novelli
Executive Director and CEO, AARP
Presented at AARP's All-staff Assembly
Washington, DC
July 11, 2001
I am truly honored that the Board selected me as AARP's new Executive Director. Tess, Keith and Ken, I want to thank you and all the members of the Board for putting your trust in me and for giving me this tremendous opportunity.
I am also very fortunate to be taking over with AARP in a strong position and in excellent health.
- We have a clear, powerful social mission,
- We have benefited from outstanding leadership,
- We have talented managers and staff throughout our Association,
- We have a large cadre of enthusiastic volunteers across the country, and
- We are financially sound.
On top of all that, we have built productive relationships with our service providers and other organizations that share our common interests. This is a testament to the dedication and skilled work of many people, and to the leadership provided by our Board of Directors and by Horace Deets.
I am well aware that working with all of you and working with our Board to lead AARP is an awesome responsibility, and no one knows that better than Horace. Horace, I want to thank you for all that you have done for AARP and our nearly 35 million members. And, I want to personally thank you for your wisdom and counsel, for your friendship, and also for your continuing advice during this transition period. You are officially "retiring", but we know you will continue to be a strong and forceful voice on behalf of the 50+ population. All of us - AARP employees, volunteers and members - have benefited from your vision, your wisdom, your leadership, and your dedication to purpose. We owe you - and Connie - our gratitude.
I am beginning my tenure as AARP's CEO with some very large shoes to fill, but also with the comfort of having those shoes planted on very solid ground. We don't have any holes to dig out of. Our direction is clear. We have come a long way, and our future is full of potential. I could not ask for a better foundation.
Nor could I ask for a better time to begin. Here we are at the forefront of a demographic revolution that is changing the world. But how it will change is an unanswered question. That's what makes it so exciting. It all depends on how individuals, organizations, governments and societies adapt and respond to these demographic changes here in the U.S. and in the world beyond.
AARP is well positioned to lead this revolution - to contribute ideas, to promote change and to influence how people and institutions respond. To do this we need to build on our successes and use them to achieve even greater things - what I am calling our "Three Great Goals."
Three Great Goals - all leading us forward, all consistent with our mission and our strategic plan, and all within our reach. Here they are.
Goal Number One: AARP will be the most successful and acknowledged organization in America for positive social change. We will focus foremost on our members, but the benefits will ripple out to all older people, including the less well off, and ultimately will impact all generations.
One of the important things that attracted me to AARP when I came here a year and a half ago - and I know this attracted many of you as well - was our mandate for social change. This has been my passion throughout my career. If there is one lesson I have learned, it is the importance of influencing the environment in which you operate. It is not enough to focus on the behavior of individuals alone. And AARP is one of the few organizations anywhere with the reach and the resources to create real social change.
Goal Number Two: We will deliver on our promise to each member: to help them make their own choices, reach their goals and dreams, and make the most of life after 50.
This is the very essence of AARP member service. This is how we connect with people. It's what we want them to believe when they see the AARP logo and read and hear our name.
Advertising and public relations help us to create awareness and shape perceptions about who we are and what we do. But this is about much more. We make good on our promise by delivering effective advocacy, useful, quality information and education, opportunities for life-enriching community service, and highly-regarded member services. In short, we must deliver on our promise by being valuable and connected to each and every member. And we can do that.
Goal Number Three: AARP will be a world leader in global aging. Working internationally is not new to AARP. We have been at it since our very beginning. But now we have the need to think more globally than ever before.
Governments, organizations, and leaders around the world respect our advocacy, our technical expertise and research, our volunteers, and our size and independence. In any part of the globe, 35 million members attract a lot of notice.
Just as we can contribute internationally, we can also learn, as well. And we can counter the negative viewpoint that global aging is a catastrophe. To provide the kind of global leadership to do that, we need a more focused strategy and we need to integrate it into our core work.
Three great goals:
- To be the most successful and acknowledged organization in America for positive social change.
- To deliver on our promise to each member. And,
- To be a world leader in global aging.
These are exciting challenges. They get the blood flowing. They address great issues and hold great promise. Now, how can we accomplish them? Through a combination of continuity and change.
First, let's talk about continuity. As I said earlier, we' re dealing from strength. AARP is headed in the right direction, and we have a solid foundation. Our large, stable membership base provides us with the ability to generate resources to fuel great enterprises.
We have a good track record in building and truly institutionalizing diversity, and we can do better. And, we have tremendous volunteer power, with the potential for much more.
We take great pride in our reputation and skills in legal and legislative advocacy. And, our growing state capacity is paying off in advocacy, communications, volunteerism, and community service.
Finally, we don't have any direct competition. While we have lots of predators trying to nibble away around the edges, we don't face any single large threat.
All of these strengths combine to make us an effective, forceful, and influential organization. But as I said earlier, in order to lead and shape this demographic revolution, and in order to achieve our three great goals, we cannot be complacent. We need to use these strengths as stepping stones to even greater heights.
My favorite historian, Will Durant, once observed that, "Most progress is made by water flowing down the middle of the river, not by the pebbles bouncing on the side." To reach our three great goals, we need to make sure we have a powerful, steady current, flowing down the middle of the river, and stay away from small efforts on the side.
Based on my experience and on discussions with the Board, and with many of you, as well as visits to state offices and state events, I have developed a view of where we need to change. As Horace once said, change is not a repudiation of the past; it is a recognition of the opportunities that lie ahead. I see several important areas for change - all interrelated - that we must make so we can achieve our goals.
First, we need a greater orientation on results. We are still too directed toward output instead of outcome. We can do more and do better with less process and consensus seeking, and greater accountability for deadlines, budgets, and results. Part of this is the need to clarify our performance goals and measures.
Second, along with greater attention to results, we also need more focus on what's important. This requires disciplined attention to our priorities throughout AARP and less on lower-value work.
Third, we need to strengthen key operations. We can all sharpen our performance, starting with the executive team. As one important step, we are going to implement a comprehensive human resources plan, a "people strategy," so that AARP management, in partnership with the HR Group, can build upon our considerable talent. Our objective is to have a workforce throughout the association that is trained, diverse, effective and world class.
Operationally, we can also strengthen the relationship and functioning between AARP and ASI, improve our programs, grow our grassroots effectiveness, and expand the important work and funding of the AARP Andrus Foundation for our constituents and for ourselves.
Finally, we must improve the use of our ample resources. We need strong revenue growth goals and strategies. We can do a better job of allocating budgets to priority needs and opportunities. And we must apply technology as efficiently as we possibly can. In addition, we need to focus on cost efficiencies. For every dollar we can save on the expense side, that's the same as a new revenue dollar. And, its another dollar we can invest in social responsibility and member service.
These important changes:
- Greater results orientation
- More focus on what's important
- Strengthening key operations, and
- Improving our use of resources,
will go a long way in helping us to achieve our three great goals. It will take all of us - from every part of AARP - working together, to maintain continuity and to create needed change. This will enable us to seize our many opportunities and develop them to their fullest.
Earlier I mentioned our strength in advocacy. But we can do more, and I am committed to increasing our advocacy leadership at the national and state levels. Part of this leadership responsibility is to get out there and engage in the great policy debates. So we are going to expand the high level visibility of our Board and management, including myself. We need to be seen and heard…and to represent AARP among America's influentials and opinion leaders.
In addition, we are going to launch a major, integrated, well funded and well planned national program that is going to make a positive difference in people's lives. It will center on the continuum of independent living, long-term care and end- of- life quality. There is no organization as well equipped to lead the nation in this critical area as ours.
And, we are going to expand our community service tradition by creating a big idea, a strategic expansion of community service that will put AARP in the forefront of the enormous untapped resource of older volunteers and their desire to give back
.Stronger advocacy, a national program on long-term care and expanded community service all fit together, and that is how we will do it - in an integrated way-- so that we can bring all our considerable resources to bear.
Making these changes and developing these opportunities takes focus and discipline. Creating social change is serious business and hard work. It requires a sense of urgency and a bold, aggressive style. But the potential rewards - for us, our members and society at large - are enormous.
Can you tell how enthusiastic I am about all this? I hope so. I believe that my experience in business, in government and in the not-for-profit world has all been training and preparation for this. And no place I have ever worked, or been involved with, was ever as capable of bringing about positive social change as AARP is right now.
I want to quote something to you. This is what makes me eager to hit the road every morning to get in to work. It comes from the Board's statement last year when it reaffirmed AARP's commitment to serve members and be a socially responsible organization:
"The collective strength of our membership enables us to serve the broader community, improving the quality of life for all people as they get older. We know that healthy aging requires an early start; therefore, our social responsibility extends to all segments of American society. It also includes sharing strategies and information with organizations across the globe."
I love this statement. It gives all of us as employees and volunteers a tremendous responsibility to live up to. It is an awesome challenge - and one we can meet by accomplishing our three great goals. It will take great teamwork and a lot of hard work - becoming the "best" or the "most successful" at anything always does.
As Keith mentioned, a couple of weeks ago the Board had its annual retreat, and the executive team was invited to be a part. We all came away with a very strong sense of partnership and a deep commitment to our Association's future.
Now, as we embark on this journey together, AARP needs your support, your commitment, your dedication, your best efforts, and your ideas. Speaking for myself and my executive team colleagues, we want to hear from you. As many of you already know, I am in the process of having coffee hours with staff on each floor at headquarters. I am also visiting state offices and regional meetings around the country, and having lots of conference calls with the field. I welcome your ideas at all of these events. And I thank you for the excellent ideas on those videos we saw earlier.
A man once came into my office back in my Porter Novelli days and said he had heard that I knew something about social change, and that he wanted to ask me a question. His question was, "How do you start a groundswell?" I had to answer that I wasn't really sure. But if someone asked me that question today, I would say, "Watch us here at AARP, because that's just we we're doing, creating a powerful groundswell on behalf of 50 plus America."
I am confident that we will do it, through continuity and change, and through teamwork and hard work. We will take our two mandates of social responsibility and member service and:
- Be the most successful and acknowledged organization in America for positive social change,
- Deliver on our promise to each member, and
- Be a world leader in global aging.
Together, we will make it happen.
