Familiar Face To Head IPMA

IPMA's former international president, Carol Kraft, has been hired as the association's new COO. She says the group must be ready to change in order to survive.

by Bob Neubauer

It's taken almost three years but the International Publishing Management Association has a new chief operating officer at last. And the biggest surprise to many may be how familiar she is.

Fresh from her very recent retirement from Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Minnesota, former IPMA International President Carol Kraft has been appointed IPMA's full-time COO. She fills the position last held by IPMA Executive Director Larry Aaron, who left IPMA in 1999. The change in title to COO reflects IPMA's desire to redefine the role.

Kraft intends to move ahead quickly in her new position, and has already been on the road promoting IPMA. She was spotted at the recent On Demand conference in New York, and has been attending the Heidelberg/IPMA digital printing road shows that are touring the country.

The past few months have been a whirlwind of change for Kraft. She passed the International President baton to Craig Sedgwick in March, right before retiring from BCBS after 32 years there. She most recently served as vice president of technical operations and business support at BCBS, where she oversaw the St. Paul-based company's entire infrastructure.

Kraft's move to the role of COO at IPMA may have raised a few eyebrows, since for a time she was in charge of the hiring committee to find a new executive director, before Sedgwick assumed the task. She insists, though, that she had never intended to seek the job. Recruitment efforts had been going strong until the moment she came aboard, she says. In fact, she adds, her retirement came as something of a surprise.

"I actually was not planning on retiring from Blue Cross this early," she says, adding that she had always imagined she would go into something completely different when she retired, like community theater.

Her decision to leave BCBS came about because she was in a "grandfathered pension program" that was based on the cost of living and interest rates. The recession was moving those numbers in the wrong direction; had she stayed on, she would have lost a lot of money.

"It's kind of like you would be working for nothing," she points out. "It was just an incredibly emotional decision for me."

Asked To Stay Involved

After she announced her retirement, she says, Sedgwick asked her to think about continuing to work with IPMA. Kraft, who was named Manager of the Year by this magazine in 1991, liked the idea of focusing on something smaller than BCBS where she could make a difference.

Actually, she has already made quite a difference in IPMA, which she joined way back in 1978. She did an admirable job during her two terms as international president, a volunteer position, directing efforts to establish IPMA's Marketplace, which provides discounts for members through group purchasing, and redefining IPMA's Web presence. She worked to revamp the certification program, streamline the awards program and introduce virtual telephone seminars.

Still, it's no secret that IPMA has lost members in the years since Aaron departed. His long-vacant chair may have played some role in this decline.

But filling the position was no easy task, Kraft says. As head of the hiring committee, she looked at hundreds of resumes and interviewed many people from other associations—only to realize that a traditional association executive director was not what IPMA needed.

Breaking From Tradition

"Most associations are really struggling right now," she says, adding that they all have similar models. "My belief is, you have to break that model."

Most of the candidates Kraft talked to had the same stale ideas for "improving" the association. IPMA came close to hiring one candidate a few years ago, but he wanted to consider merging IPMA with a commercial printing association, something Kraft didn't want to commit to.

Over time, IPMA changed the qualifications for the new director. The hiring committee realized it would be crucial for the new director to understand the printing industry so he or she could create vendor relationships. So the search was broadened. Retired in-plant managers were considered, Kraft says.

Also, since IPMA's office staff in Liberty, Mo., had been operating well for three years without a director, IPMA's board felt that whoever was hired should focus more externally than internally. So instead of an executive director, the association changed the position's title to COO. That's the title Kraft assumed when she agreed to come on board.

Since being physically in the IPMA headquarters is no longer essential, Kraft will work out of her home office in Minneapolis, flying to Missouri once or twice a month.

An outgoing, motivated person—who's not afraid to join the band at social events and sing a few songs, when coaxed—Kraft believes strongly in the IPMA and the benefits it can bring to in-plants.

"The IPMA helped me advance my career very much," she says. Now she's eager to give something back.

"Certainly I'd like to increase our membership, and I have some ideas," she says. One of them is to create a coordinated marketing and branding strategy, something she's already working on. She also wants to reduce the amount of responsibility required of members in leadership roles by spreading jobs around to more people. Getting retired members involved in recruitment is another idea.

In the Internet age, IPMA must move beyond simply providing monthly meetings, she believes.

"We need to create an environment that is going to appeal to someone who is never going to come to a meeting," she says. IPMA's revamped Web site is already making a good stab at that, providing best practices data, printing strategies, business cases for new equipment and more.

She also sees herself acting as a consultant and spokesperson for the in-plant market.

As the first full-time COO in three years, Kraft certainly has her work cut out for her. Fortunately, she knows the organization extremely well and seems sincere about helping it thrive.

"I feel very lucky that I can do something that I really like," she says.