We Have Always Done It That Way

Yet another component of strategic planning that we feel needs changing is the tendency to structure the planning work by department. When it comes time to do the strategic plan, each department takes stock of its activities and translates them into quantifiable goals for the upcoming year. Predictably, the strategic plan has a section for each department, complete with goals, action plans, and timelines. While it is true that each department will spend time doing different things throughout the year, this approach to strategy has some major flaws.

First, it reinforces the status quo. Updating strategy morphs into merely updating the metrics on a previously devised strategy. The strategy stays the same each year: you do your meetings, your education, your membership activities””it’s only a question of how much. This year becomes last year plus three percent. This may generate results in the short run, but this approach removes innovation from the equation, so it will certainly fall short over the long term. Like every living thing, organizations (and their strategies) must change.

Second, it reinforces those “silos” that everyone complains about. Each department creates its own goals by itself, so it stands to reason that implementation will be a solitary activity as well. This can actually inhibit cooperation and information sharing. Departments can create priorities that eventually come into conflict, but as you were focusing on your department’s goals, you missed the opportunity to resolve the issue early on (when it was easy to resolve), and now it is a crisis. This is typically perceived as the “other” department letting you down, which creates an even deeper divide between departments.

Third, it inhibits a truly strategic reaction to changes in the operating environment. Sometimes a key strategic issue will emerge that impacts only one department””but that is rare. Strategic issues affect departments differently, but when each department plans and implements independently, you are unable to get a coordinated response. For one department it is a crisis, but for another it is a low priority, so they do not respond on the same time schedule, slowing the response time for the whole organization.

The solution to this problem lies first and foremost at the top of the organization. The CEO and the heads of each department must create opportunities for cross-program strategy generation and implementation. While there is certainly a portion of the senior manager’s attention that focuses exclusively on their department, if they do not devote time to hashing out overall organizational priorities on a regular basis, they will fall into the silo trap. When the senior team can work effectively through cross-program priority setting, they can then manage their own department’s priorities and actions more effectively.

Tags: Strategy, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
No Comments »

Many associations create public service announcement videos highlighting important issues on behalf of their members to the general public. However, PSAs are often run by television stations during low ratings time slots to use up excess advertising capacity that they were not able to sell. Hardly ideal exposure.

Enter YouTube, the online video sharing service that was founded in 2005. Anyone can post video to the site, which then allows others to comment and rate the video as well as share it via e-mail and blogs with their friends. Corporate marketers have recently begun posting video clips to the site as part of their marketing. They also peruse the comments people add to the videos as a research tool for how people react to the videos.

Associations should experiment with using services such as YouTube to get their ideas out into the greater web community. Be prepared to view the feedback you get on your video as valuable insight into how people react to your piece without getting defensive. Ultimately, sharing video via services such as YouTube may get your PSA much more exposure to higher quality audiences than traditional distriution can provide.

The real innovation will come, however, when your members begin posting their own video testimonials and commentary about your field on their own initiative!

Tags: Innovation, Strategy by David
No Comments »

Email is a wonderful tool, particularly for associations who need to manage communication with members and volunteers who are often spread out across the country, or even the world. Even among staff in the same building, it enables a higher volume and higher speed of communication. Without email, you couldn’t keep up with the communication demands of your association job.

Like any tool, however, email is not right for every job. Take, for example, that time when you were angry with a colleague or had a conflict with a volunteer about how to manage a project. You got an email from this person that you feel went one step too far. You then sat down at your computer and shot off an email response, laced with frustration and indignation (known in some associations as a “nasty-gram”). Of course, you made sure to copy a few dozen colleagues and/or supervisors, so everyone could see how “correct” your point was. It’s only a few keystrokes to keep these people in the loop. Isn’t email great?

The problem is, the email response you then get from your colleague is even nastier, and includes a now expanded list of cc’s. You’ll be frustrated because for some reason your colleague did not address the rational points you made in your email””he brought in new points that are only distractions to the issue at hand! You’d better get started on that reply email. Is there any way you can copy the entire staff and board?

Stop.

Stop using email to communicate in conflict situations. It never works, and it usually makes things worse. All conflict situations are complex. If they were very simple, they would be resolved by now. Communication in a complex conflict is not merely a literal exchange of words. It requires back and forth, clarification of positions, examination of assumptions, and communication at the level of logic and emotion at the same time.

It is impossible to do that by email, because in email, there is no tone. When two people talk to each other, most of the meaning is conveyed in nonverbal communication, particularly the use of tone. Which words you emphasize and the pattern of raising or lowering tone as you speak is absolutely critical for people to know what you really mean. Consider the following point you made in your email:

“Things were going great, and then Bob came into the room.”

The reader of the email has to figure out what you mean. On one hand, you might have felt that things were actually going poorly (you were being sarcastic by saying they were great), and you wanted to make a point about how relieved you were that Bob came in the room to save the day. On the other hand, you might have meant that things really were going great””until the moment Bob came in, and it clearly it went downhill from there. The only way the email recipient would know which of these two drastically different meanings is accurate would be through your tone (which does not exist on email), or by context. That is, if they already know that you don’t like Bob, they will guess that you were implying that things were going downhill.

So not only do emails rob communication of tone, making the communication inherently more confusing, they also force the recipient to determine what you mean based on their previous knowledge of who you are and what you think. In conflict situations, that is not likely to be an accurate (or pretty) picture, so they are even more likely to interpret what you are saying in the worst possible way. Clicking the “send” button on an email in a conflict situation is like clicking on an automatic “escalate” button.

The answer, of course, is to not send the email. Walk down the hall. Pick up the phone. Make it the norm in your association to de-escalate the conflict when you get that frustrating email by responding directly, instead of through a nasty-gram. It may take a bit more time in the short term (and you will need to brush up on your conflict resolution and communication skills), but saves volumes of time in the long run by enabling quicker and more direct resolution of conflict.

Tags: Staff Issues, The Way We Work Together, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
3 Comments »

Curriculum-based certificates are getting a bad rap. They’ve been called the “step-child” of professional certification, the implication being that they are inferior. I do not agree with that assertion.

This perception seems to stem from their inability to meet the current certification industry standards that stipulate that certifying agencies should not require training programs linked to the certification examination. Indeed, at the core of a certificate program is its comprehensive training linked to its examination.

However, discounting certificates simply because they do not meet the current ANSI and NCCA accreditation standards is short-sighted. Let me clarify that I am NOT implying the standards are flawed. I am a strong supporter of the standards for both ANSI and NCCA accreditation. In fact I am a lead auditor for the ISO/IEC 17024 standards required for ANSI accreditation. I use both sets of standards as the basis for my audits of client certification programs. My point is that certificates are a distinct type of credentialing program warranting their own set of quality standards.

To clarify, curriculum-based certificates are NOT just courses that provide a paper certificate after completion. There are a lot of programs out there called “certificates” that are not what I’m describing here. It’s a term that’s currently being used indiscriminately.

A quality curriculum-based certificate program typically includes these elements (and likely more; this list is starting point):

• It focuses on a specialized area within a field, not an entire field.
• Its content is identified through a job analysis.
• It includes comprehensive training on the identified content (knowledge and skills).
• It includes an assessment of identified content (knowledge and skill attainment).
• Its assessment is valid and reliable for the intended purpose, and systems are in place to monitor the performance of the assessment.

Here are the key differences between traditional certification and a curriculum-based model.

• Certification usually covers a broad body of knowledge – often an entire field. Certificates, in contrast, usually cover a focused or specialized body of knowledge within a field. For example, there wouldn’t be a “certificate in nursing”, or even a “certificate in pediatric nursing”, but perhaps there would be a “certificate in pediatric trauma care.”
• In certification the focus is on assessing current knowledge and skills. In a curriculum-based model, the focus is on first training individuals to achieve a certain knowledge and skill base and then assessing their attainment of it.
• Certification usually has eligibility and recertification requirements. Certificates don’t, although sometimes the certificates are dated (like a diploma) to encourage (or require) participants to retake the program at specific intervals to stay current.
• Certification usually awards a title and initial designation (e.g., ASAE’s “Certified Association Executive“ and “CAE”). Certificates award a certificate (like a diploma) so that individuals can list the attainment on resumes or other similar documents (e.g., Earned Certificate of Training in Adult Weight Management, Commission on Dietetic Registration, 2005).

So, the decision whether to create a certification program or a curriculum-based certificate program should be based on the current state of the field and specialty area being investigated and the goals an organization is trying to achieve.

Consider this successful model. In 1990, the American Dietetic Association (ADA) had a strategic goal of better positioning their members in the expanding (tee hee) area of weight management. Had they been short-sighted, they could have decided to create a certification in weight management. That would have provided a form of recognition and visibility for their members. However, they recognized that training was needed to advance member skill in new treatment areas before they would be prepared to be positioned in the marketplace. They could have just created training programs, but that wouldn’t have directly addressed the positioning element. Enter curriculum-based certification. The Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR, the credentialing agency for the ADA) created such a program (they call it a certificate program to distinguish it from their traditional certification programs). While ADA’s goal was to position members in the marketplace, CDR’s primary goal for the certificate was to protect the health and welfare of the public — a compatible match and reasonable aim for the certificate program. The certificate was created in much the same way as traditional certification ““ with a job analysis at the core. Yet, this job analysis formed the basis of not only a test content outline, but also a comprehensive curriculum. In short, participants are trained a specific curriculum, are tested for their attainment of it, and if successful earn the certificate. Five years into it, CDR has trained and issued thousands of certificates, and its popularity shows no signs of slowing. No one complains about the registration fee, despite it being almost twice the cost of the association’s annual membership. Consistently, over 95% of participants indicate they would recommend the program to a colleague. Now, have the members been better positioned in the marketplace? Has the public been better served? No quantitative data on that yet, but all indications so far are quite positive.

This is a unique model in the association world, and it’s one to watch. What role could a curriculum-based certificate have in advancing your members or the field your association represents?

Tags: Professional Development, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
No Comments »

There was a quote in the winter 2006 Journal of Association Leadership that reflects a fundamental stumbling block in the association community. In the commentary to an article about strategy making, Adrienne Bien expressed concern about the resistance the author encountered when bringing a new approach to strategy to his association:

“For most associations, this resistance would be a red flag, as we tend to avoid conflict and steer away from disruptions to the volunteer structures that are the backbones of our organizations.”

Forget just the volunteer structures: associations steer away from disruption. We want things to go smoothly. We want things to go as we planned them. We want the activities of the association to unfold predictably, resulting in universal acclaim and positive feedback.

And then there is real life. In real life there are disruptions. Yes, we can plan, and we can certainly strive to do things that people find valuable (maybe we’ll get all “fives” on our evaluation sheets!). As life unfolds, however, we are bound to find disruptions. People don’t show up. The program is not making participants happy. The staff does not like the new initiative we just announced.

At that moment, you need to embrace the disruption, rather than avoiding it. Disruptions are infinitely more valuable than your stack of “happy sheets” with all fives on them. Disruptions open your eyes to new possibilities. Disruptions support you in confronting the truth. Without disruptions, you would continue to do what you’ve always done””even if it isn’t working.

Avoiding or ignoring the disruptions is certainly tempting. At the first sign of disruption, you can look the other way. You can silence the disruptive voices. You can stop asking questions, in order to avoid disruptive answers. That feels more comfortable. By focusing on the positive messages, you feel good about the way things are going. If you need to, you can explain away the disruption””they don’t know what they are talking about, they are not a representative sample.

Don’t do that. Resist the temptation. Ask yourself which is more important: comfort or success? Your chances for success increase proportionally with the amount of information you let in, and by avoiding disruptions you close off a critical channel of information, resulting in missed opportunities for growth and change. The next time you have a disruption””even one in your volunteer structure””move towards it instead of away from it. Learn more about it. Ask questions. Dig deeper. The decisions that emerge will be smarter.

Tags: Innovation, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
No Comments »

I recently attended a conference where there was a rather robust conversation about creating local affiliate organizations for the national association that had organized the conference. This was my first time attending this conference and my background in associations was not well-known among the participants. I saw this as an opportunity to advance my thoughts on what we have traditionally called “chapter development.” Let me share them for you here:

1 Don’t start a chapter.
2. Create an “unchapter” instead.
3. Do that by thinking about everything you would do to create a chapter.
4. And then do the opposite.

I can’t find a good reason why we refer to local affiliate organizations as chapters, so there is no good reason to keep doing it. Call them communities, networks, clusters or something completely different. Whatever floats your boat. Just don’t call them chapters!

I see no reason why our local affiliates need to duplicate the burdensome bureaucracy and chair filling of our national organizations, so let’s not do that either. No officers and no board. Let’s have a small coordinating council instead that can make sure people are kept up to date about what’s happening. Streamline administration and communication.

And, in that spirit, I see no reason why our group needs to have a formal web site. Just put up a blog with all of the content the members might need. Much easier for volunteers to handle, much easier for the members to use and much more current in terms of sharing information.

I see no reason why these groups must have monthly in-person programs or lunches. Let each group choose its own approach. Some may want quarterly programming or only virtual programming or even no formal programming at all. I see no problem with any of those approaches so long as it works for the members. Not every group needs to fit the cookie-cutter image of the traditional chapter and nor should every group do the exact same things. The groups should differentiate, and then coordinate, cooperate and compete with each other as necessary.

I see no reason why our groups need to follow any mandate or requirement from the national organization other than staying true to vision, mission and strategy and remaining within the boundaries of legal, ethical and financial propriety. They should do their own things and do them as well as anybody else, including the national organization. Forget about the parent-child relationship. Think of it as cousins instead…

Associations need to dump the traditional model of “chapter development” in favor of a fundamentally new way of bringing people together at the local and regional levels. I’m sure the naysayers out there will point out everything they think is wrong with what I’ve suggested. Good. I look forward to that debate!

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Strategy, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
1 Comment »