The business of running a chapter.

• Author: Deitsch, Mimi
• Position: Running a chapter of the Financial Executives Institute like a business enterprise

The plane was in the air when the idea came to Paul Vilandre. En route to his first meeting with FEI's Western Area Operations Committee, the newly elected president of the Santa Clara Valley Chapter for 1990-91 had been brainstorming ideas for revitalizing the chapter. "Then I had a vision," he says. "I wondered if we could run the chapter as if it were a business."

Today, two years later, the Santa Clara Valley Chapter is one of the top-performing chapters in the Institute, and many believe it's because Paul Vilandre set the wheels in motion.

Like any good business executive, Vilandre took advantage of networking. When he arrived at the AOC meeting, he explains," I looked to see what my competitors [i.e., other chapters] were doing, and I wrote down all of their good ideas."

When he returned to the Santa Clara Valley, he formalized the list of ideas and floated it as a set of objectives among the other chapter officers and board members. Then he arranged for the incoming management team to meet for one half day, away from their business sites, to devise a strategic plan for the new fiscal year. By the end of the meeting, the Santa Clara Valley Chapter leaders gas established what they call their "measurable milestones" in support of each objective.

Here are several of the components of Santa Clara Valley's successful management-by-the-objective business plan:

* Improve communications - One of Vilandre's biggest peeves was the chapters roster. "It was at a point of disrepair," he explains, and with the high executive turnover typical of Silicon Valley, the board members felt the best choice was to make the publication flexible. They first invested in recreating the roster on a Macintosh data base, developing a reliable mailing system in the process. Then they collected and entered enough professional and personal background on each chapter member to fill an 8 1/2-x-11 page.

Vilandre also set up a fax network to speed the delivery or meeting notices to board members. Through a process known as "broadcasting," he connects the personal computer on which he writes the meeting announcements to his facsimile machine. Then, with the fax numbers of the board members already programmed in, he jets the notices to the group.

* Administrative help - Another big leap for the chapter was hiring a part-time business manager. This independent, professional secretary handles the invoicing for local dues, compiles information for the newsletter and manages...