A Three-Year Strategic Plan for the AAPG 69313

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy.” – Michael Leboeuf

Sun Tzu, the Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher, is credited with authoring “The Art of War,” a 5th-century text that has been used by many modern-day organizations to frame their strategic thinking. In his text, Sun Tzu writes, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before the defeat.” Regretfully for the AAPG, we have been living in noisy times for the past few years, and it is time for us to quiet that noise.

Presidential terms at the AAPG run a single year and the presidents-elect gets to serve on the Executive Committee for one year before taking the helm for their own year-long term. Effectively, this gives the AAPG president one year to make an impact. And if there is not alignment or consistency between the president and the president-elect, the organization can lose its focus and decisions might be made with a short-term mindset. The executive director, however, is positioned to provide continuity to the organization and his or her employment spans the duration of elected leadership. 

This is why we have decided to author a strategic three-year plan for the AAPG. The goal is to provide focus, stability and forward alignment for the organization, coupled with a plan to address the issues confronting the AAPG today and in the future.

Four Questions

To draft the plan, we wanted to answer the following four questions:

• What is our vision and how do we define success?
• What is our value proposition and what value is delivered to our stakeholders?
• What is the strategy to achieve our vision?
• What is the roadmap and plan of action for the next three years?

An initial draft was prepared and vetted by the AAPG staff leadership to ensure the document was feasible and complete. The second and third drafts were then circulated between us for improvement and clarification. From there, the Executive Committee reviewed and approved document before it was routed to the Advisory Council. The Advisory Council is made up of past AAPG elected leaders and representatives from each section and region. One of the Advisory Council’s charted duties is to “serve as a long-range planning body to review the Association’s activities and recommend to the Executive Committee appropriate changes of programs and policies.” Based upon their review, additional enhancements were made to the document. Finally, the three-year strategic planned was presented to the House of Delegates and Corporate Advisory Board for comment. 

What is presented below is the product of all these discussions.

What is Our Vision and How Do We Define Success?

Business book author and university professor Michael LeBoeuf argues that “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” Happy customers are returning customers and good brand ambassadors who invite more customers to join. As such we wanted to make sure that our vision statement was member centric. We believe our vision is best articulated by the following paragraph:

“We deliver relevant and useful quality content and data for professional enrichment, learning, and research, while advocating and advancing the economic application of the science of geology, especially petroleum, subsurface, energy, and environmental geology. Additionally, we connect our global members with other members, companies, and academia to foster professional success.”

These two sentences were the most debated portion of the three-year plan, in particular the “especially petroleum, subsurface, energy, and environmental geology” phrase. Some maintained this sentence extension was not needed. The science of geology is inclusive of all these areas and by including the phrase we limited our options going forward. Others felt this language was needed to define our niche and differentiate ourselves from other professional organizations. 

On a different level, this debate was about us being first and foremost petroleum centric. This is our proud legacy. Yet our membership since 2015 has been declining at a compounded annual rate of about 9 percent and fewer are being employed by the petroleum industry. The correlation factor (R2) of our total membership to U.S. oil and gas employment over the past 10 years is 0.9. The climate change debate and energy transition has also left the oil industry with an employment image challenge. What does this foretell of our future? Do we need to broaden to welcome more geoscientist into membership? 

According to the American Geological Institute, only 4 percent of the geoscientists employed in the United States are in petroleum or mining. Sixty-five percent are employed in environmental applications and 20 percent are employed in engineering related careers. Compounding this concern is that only about 3,500 students graduate each year in the United States with a geoscience undergraduate degree. Regretfully, we could not locate a global data source, but 3,500 multiplied by 4 percent equates to only about 140 potentially entering the oil industry annually in the United States. This is a small prospective membership pool. We should also add that many geoscience university programs are being disbanded or rolled into earth and environmental studies programs.

Lastly, several noted in our discussions that the AAPG has already broadened our focus. Our Division of Environmental Geosciences and Energy Minerals Division already focus on the environmental impacts of subsurface energy development and energy derived from subsurface heat or mineral systems.

In the end, we preserved the “especially petroleum, subsurface, energy, and environmental geology” phrase to ensure members and non-members know about our applied economic focus on subsurface geoscience.

Goals and Guiding Principles

In addition to stating our vision, we added statements about our organizational goals and guiding principles. We felt these were important to document, as they will guide our actions and behaviors going forward.

Goals:

• Feed the natural curiosity and imagination of geoscientists.
• Facilitate collaboration, networking and knowledge-sharing among the subsurface community.
• Generate sufficient financial resources to reinvest in the science of geology to benefit the members and partners.
• Ensure the longevity and relevance of the geoscience profession as a critical component of future global energy resilience.
• Retain and add new members to power growth. 
• Enable volunteerism opportunities in support of professional enrichment and leadership skills.

Membership guiding principles:

• Advance the science and economic application of geology and foster the spirit of scientific research throughout our membership and among our corporate and academic partners.
• Disseminate information through face-to-face and digital modalities.
• Proactively communicate in a positive, constructive, and collaborative manner.
• Provide professional benefits and enrichment to those who engage with us.
• Recognize excellence and outstanding contributions to geoscience.

Technology guiding principles:

• Promote the technology of exploring for and producing subsurface energy resources in an economical and environmentally sound manner, including the use of advanced data-driven tools and intelligent systems to enhance decision-making and operational efficiency.

What is Our Value Proposition and What Value is Delivered to Our Stakeholders?

The next step in the three-year strategy was to articulate the value members and key stakeholders receive via their relationship with the AAPG as a professional society. It was challenging to concisely state these benefits and to capture the breadth of stakeholders we impact. Identified stakeholders are in underlined text below and please note we attempted to remain very member centric.

• Our members gain access to resources, content and events that enable them to learn, research, network, volunteer and advance themselves professionally.
• Deliver insights and information that help members achieve their business and professional objectives, enabling them to make informed decisions and stay competitive in an ever-changing world.
• Our members build global connections, communities, networks and friendships that support their career advancement and entrepreneurial spirit.
• Provide industry with access to relevant content, data and mentoring to develop employees, power learning, explore opportunities and enable success.
• Our platforms facilitate the sharing and validation of research across academia while supporting student development.
• Facilitate engagement and foster collaboration with affiliated professional societies.
• Our studies and technical programs inform governmental policy, research and public exchange.
• Our expertise supports and informs interested members of the applied scientific community and their professional ethics.

What is Our Strategy and How Do We Achieve Our Vision? 

With this framework, what is needed to ensure that our vision and value proposition aspirations become a reality? Successful practices indicate that having no more than three or four focus areas is a good rule of thumb. If an organization has too many strategic initiatives, it can paralyze itself trying to be all things. We chose three core focus areas and then one rotating focus area that aligns with the signature interest during the president’s term. By having four focus areas, the staff’s efforts can be better aligned with the needs our Association and its members.

Compelling Value Proposition

The first strategic focus area will be to create a compelling value proposition. Define why individuals should want to be and remain a member, communicate for the value for them, onboard new members, help new and existing members find their member benefit opportunities and deliver superior customer service. Please note this first focus area is intentionally member centric. We have described this strategic pillar as follows: 

“Foster a growing, vibrant professional community for geoscientists by delivering an excellent customer experience. Members and business partners will receive applied learning solutions; networking opportunities; events and experiences; career benefits; volunteer opportunities; digital engagement; shared industry insights; access to data resources; and advocacy for the profession of geoscience.”

Diversify and Grow Revenue Streams

The second strategic focus area is more about the financial health of the AAPG organization. The AAPG has delivered negative net income instead of the targeted zero net income for eight out of the past 12 years. This is not sustainable for our nonprofit Association and we cannot continue to rely on interest from our emergency cash reserves to stabilize us financially. Membership dues represent 20 percent of our revenues and on a standalone basis do not cover our publication costs for the EXPLORER and the Bulletin. Events generate about 70 percent of our annual revenue. To sustain AAPG going forward, we must diversify our revenue streams, leveraging our existing assets and capabilities. This could come in the form of offering professional education opportunities leading to a certification; or leveraging our peer-reviewed technical publications for AI or machine learning; or we could leverage our talented events staff to deliver events for third parties. 

We described this strategic growth pillar as follows:

“Strengthen the financial position of the AAPG by creating products and solutions that generate additional, annual recurring revenue streams, while strategically leveraging the vast body of technical knowledge accumulated since the association’s founding in 1917. By applying advanced data-driven methodologies, we will unlock new value from this legacy to support innovation and long-term sustainability.”

Build a Resilient Future

The other forward-looking strategic pillar is to fortify our organization and make it resilient. To do this, we need to position the organization for the future. We believe the future will be more digital, more social, with a broad base of geoscience disciplines. We need to be ready to meet our members where they will be in the future, while still meeting the needs of our current members. To deliver this to the membership we must make sure our staff resources are aligned to deliver our member value proposition.

We need to future-proof the organization so that it fulfills the professional needs of its multi-generational AAPG members across the globe and serves its corporate customers via strategic staffing, digital media, engaging events and data-asset-driven product developments.

Current President’s Focus

Students, young professionals and mid-career professionals are the future of the AAPG. Presently, nearly half of our membership is over 50 years of age and a fifth of our membership is over 70. To ensure the resilience of the AAPG, we must attract more members and deliver exceptional value. In our minds, this starts with individual students, Imperial Barral Award contestants and student chapters. Coming out of the pandemic, some of these programs have lost momentum and in some instances we have put unnecessary barriers around these programs that stifle growth. We will focus on bringing them back with modern delivery and relevance. 

We have articulated this strategic focus as follows:

“Inspire geoscience university students and early career professionals to pursue meaningful careers in the subsurface energy industry by championing engagement, exposure and healthy competition in a manner that leverages the resources of the AAPG and its corporate and academic partners. Foster a strong sense of community, volunteerism and shared purpose for the responsible development of energy resources, while promoting ethical standards and professional integrity throughout a career.”

What is Our Roadmap and Plan of Action for the Next Three Years?

The last step in our strategic planning efforts was to think operationally. We created a list of tasks and activities that needed to be completed to execute our strategic pillars and vision. The staff is already working to address some of these items, like updating of our website. We have also added needed marketing and member engagement muscle to improve our communications and member retention.

Conclusion

We believe authoring this living three-year strategy is critical to maintain our relevance and resilience as a professional organization. It is our engagement plan for a better future and will help future leadership to guide our organization. The vision and strategy have been discussed and refined to best meet the needs of our members. It is now time to execute this strategy and deliver to our members what they expect and have earned. Thomas Edison once said, “Vision without execution is a hallucination.” We hope that you find this strategic plan compelling and we invite the membership to get involved in order to deliver a new vision and value proposition for AAPG.