Saturday, January 24, 2009

What's More Important Than A Web Site?

This week I learned that Leadership McLean County's web site was excluded from the Chamber of Commerce's upgrade. In other words, the Chamber decided not to spend money to update the web site.

The question is, how does that make me feel?

No one likes to lose resources, of course. But the most precious resource of all is teamwork, and the beauty is that this is one of life's many situations where all parties share a common goal, which will be reached as long as we put that ahead of those feelings of entitlement that have plagued me too often through the years.

If LMC is a revenue source for the Chamber that demands a certain return on investment, we can all rally behind that - these are businesses after all! If it generates some softer returns like publicity as well, super. LMC's stated purpose is to develop McLean County's future leaders, and that's not incompatible with a thrifty budget. As I've written before, that purpose is noble enough that I think LMC could even survive independently of the Chamber if it needed to (though that's no genius insight by me, really - Google points out several national examples of self-sustaining programs). But the partnership with the Chamber is mutually beneficial - and optimally so as long as there's fluid communication between all parties.

So does a web site really matter? Of course. If nothing else, we need to eliminate all out-of-date information (which might mean shutting down the whole site), to prevent any perception of incompetence or negligence. But a web site is not the higher purpose. Higher purposes inspire life.

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