We Have Always Done It That Way

Diversity is given a lot of lip service in associations. We see diversity initiatives, diversity committees, diversity scholarships, and more. However, diversity is most often viewed as a necessary evil at worst and a numbers game at best. Members of diverse groups (of a different nationality, gender, age, etc., than the “average” member) are purposefully placed on boards and committees to meet diversity goals and/or to be politically correct.

Diversity is usually not seen for what it really is: a business strategy. As Frans Johansson is most famous for expressing, diversity brings greater potential for a wider range of perspectives and ideas which can lead to new and improved products and services. A great strategy for getting out of the “we’ve always done it that way” mentality would be to truly embrace diversity and the value it could bring to your association.

And, contrary to popular belief, probably the first clue that an association hasn’t fully embraced diversity is that it still has a diversity committee.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Staff Issues, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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“Treat people the way you would want to be treated” is an adage that we hear a lot and on the surface it seems to make sense, but the problem is that it doesn’t often work when applied to staff or volunteer motivation/recognition. It assumes that all people want to be treated the same, and that just isn’t true. You might find a staff lunch a nice treat, but your staff might find a Starbucks gift certificate and keeping lunch to themselves a better treat. You might find being “employee of the month” a great reward, but your staff might find it embarrassing. You might find a Waterford crystal desk clock an extra-special gift; your past president might consider it next year’s number one re-gift.

You should treat people the way THEY want to be treated. The challenge is that this takes some effort. You need to get to know your staff and volunteers and discover what makes each of them tick. In the end, it will be well worth the time invested.

Tags: Staff Issues, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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So the story goes: Sony held a focus group to determine if they should make their new boom box yellow or black. They invited in their target demographic (teenagers) to ask their opinion. The focus group was unanimously in favor of yellow– as it was “hip”, “edgy”,”cool”. As a thank you gift for participating, all were offered a new boom box. There was a table covered with yellow and black boom boxes. Everyone took a black one. So, Sony made their new boom box black.

While I’ve not been able to find out if this is urban legend or truth, it has stuck with me for years and illustrates a good point: customers don’t always know and/or articulate what they really want or need. Yet, how often do associations base decisions solely or primarily on survey or focus group results? We ask members to choose topics for the next conference from a long list of possible topics, we ask if they would value some vague concept of a program we are considering, we ask if they would buy a certain product a year from now, and we ask what would increase the value of membership. But sometimes our questions are loaded and members tell us what they think we want to hear or they just don’t tell us anything at all. Sometimes our questions are are just too vague for meaningful responses. Sometimes members just don’t know what they want. Sometimes they don’t know how to communicate their needs to us.

It is important to recognize the inherent flaws in the research methodologies we often use to gather the data on which we base decisions. We need to figure out ways to gather more authentic data from members — through better questions in our research, but also through:

1. observations of their actions,
2. listening to their conversations, and
3. engaging in meaningful conversations with them.

Tags: Membership, Strategy, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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It’s uttered in association professional development circles all the time: content is king. But there’s a new queen in town and her name is CONTEXT.

While most associations still shout out that they are “the source” for information in the field, the reality often is that they are “a” source among many others, such as competing associations, .entrepreneurs – both member and non-member and maybe even past staff, and for-profits of all kinds. They are delivering content via journals, magazines, blogs, white papers, books, conferences, e-learning, among others. Take a few minutes to consider what other sources provide content related to your association’s field.

It is no longer enough to provide content. Associations need to provide context too.

Consider a typical association conference. Fifty to 100 sessions on different topics, targeted to different levels, with speakers rolling in and out for their sessions only. Some speakers are experts that can speak broadly and others are novices who speak only to their limited experiences. Attendees are on content overload — they are receiving isolated bits of information, but there is usually little to no context. And, context is critical for understanding and thus for learning because it is context that gives meaning to content.

So how can you provide context? Here are a few ideas for a context-rich conference:

1. Change the way you organize conferences. Don’t just plan lots of individual sessions. Tracks are better, but not enough. Plan the track as a coordinated curriculum and have speakers work together to build upon each other’s sessions.
2. Provide pre-conference recommended readings to attendees to set the stage for the material they are about to learn
3. Encourage speakers to build meaningful case studies and problem-solving activities into their sessions.
4. Build lots of peer-to-peer sharing into the event, both structured and unstructured.
5. Continue the conversations post-conference with list-serve discussions or online communities.

Consider how you can provide context to the content on your Web site, in your journals or magazines, in books, in e-learning courses, or elsewhere.

Tags: Professional Development, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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How often do association executives or volunteer leaders say that they can’t raise the member dues because their members can’t afford it or won’t pay it? How many times each year do those same members spend an amount equal or greater than that dues payment for something else? A conference registration? A certification? A suit? A purse? A set of golf clubs or a round of golf? Tickets to a theatre series? A weekend getaway? You get the idea.

I once sat through a painful house of delegates meeting (of an association that was in a dire financial situation) in which delegate after delegate pronounced that the association just could not raise dues because the members could not afford it and would drop membership. They spent the full meeting discussing why the membership couldn’t afford it, what billing options could be instituted, what programs could be cut instead, etc. Not once did I hear the suggestion that perhaps the organization could consider ways to increase its value for the dollar. Not once. And, consider that the same organization offered a training program that cost almost double the cost of membership that had for the past 3 years and was continuing to sell out at every offering across the U.S.

More often than not, it is NOT about the actual dollar amount. It is about the perceived value of what members are getting for it. If there’s little to no real value in membership, then any fee is too high.

So, instead of worrying so much about the impact of raising dues by a few dollars, focus on increasing the value of membership so that members won’t even blink at that dues invoice because not renewing isn’t even a consideration.

Tags: Membership, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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“Everything would be fine if it weren’t for [fill in the blank].”

How often have you heard such a statement in an association? This person could be a rank-and-file member, someone on the Board, or a staff person at any level. Whoever they are, they are definitely a problem. Too often, they are defined as the problem.

As such, the solutions associations develop in response tend to be focused on that individual “problem person,” but this too often makes matters worse. While it is true that there are individuals whose behavior or attitude can negatively impact the performance of an organization, it is rarely a case of simple cause and effect. Organizations are complex systems, and looking only at the problem person leaves out too many other important factors, so solutions that focus on the problem person usually fall short. As quality guru W. Edwards Deming said, “defects are always a sign of system failure.”

Consider three typical responses to problem people.

Termination
The obvious solution to a problem is to get rid of it. For staff, this means termination. If they are volunteers, it’s a bit trickier, but let’s be honest””there are ways to leverage the volunteer system to ensure that certain people do not volunteer any more. While in some cases, termination takes care of the problem behavior, in too many cases it does not””the problem behavior pops up in the form of a new individual. Problem people are often reflecting a frustration in the system. While it seems like it is one person’s personality (and that certainly would play a role), as long as the root frustration in the system is not addressed, new problem people are bound to emerge.

Write a policy
If you are afraid to get rid of the problem person, then the next means of control to which you can turn is policy. If you don’t like the behavior of someone, then write (or enforce) a policy that outlaws that behavior. A common example of this is when one or two staff people are perceived to be abusing flex time or not putting in enough hours, and suddenly the entire staff is then forced to punch in using a time clock. While that policy may convince your problem person to put in more hours, it also generates many new problems from the people who now feel like they are not trusted or have to waste time on bureaucratic details instead of getting their work done.

Train everyone
Similar to the policy solution, providing training to everyone in the areas where the “problem person” is perceived to be deficient is also a common solution. If people have trouble communicating with the problem person, then provide the Board with communication skills training. While this solution probably won’t hurt (who couldn’t use a brush up on communication skills?), it rarely solves the problem. The problem person usually sees through the ploy and gets defensive about the whole training, and the others often see it as a waste of time (“I already know how to communicate””the problem is him!”). The real value of the communication training is often lost.

So what’s the solution? First of all, the solution is not simple. These three typical solutions oversimplify the situation. There is nothing wrong with firing people, writing and enforcing policies, or providing training, but do not fall into the trap of using blunt instruments like these to solve complex and delicate problems. Second, problems require direct attention, and all three of these solutions involve avoidance. Even the seemingly direct answer of termination implies a long period of avoiding the problem person as the behaviors were developing. Confronting and dealing directly with both the problems (and the problem people) on a continuous basis will often resolve the problems before they escalate.

Tags: Staff Issues, The Way We Work Together, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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“We’ve tried it before and it didn’t work.” You have no doubt heard that conversation-ending, idea-busting statement before by association colleagues. You may have even muttered it yourself (but don’t admit it, please).

Of course there is great value in staff and volunteer leaders with a historical perspective of association activities. However, if you’re one of them, it’s important for you to realize that just as “we’ve always done it that way” is not a valid reason for continuing an approach, “we’ve tried it before and it didn’t work” is not a valid reason for abandoning an idea.

There may be situational or contextual reasons for past failures. Perhaps the timing was off. Perhaps the positioning was ineffective. Perhaps the target was inappropriate. Perhaps the implementation was weak.

The next time you are presented with an idea that you know has been attempted and failed in the past, don’t assume it will fail again. Describe the past attempt to the idea proposer and ask him or her what about the current circumstances is different leading him or her to feel the idea could succeed in the present situation. Give the individual time to investigate the idea, given this new (to them) information.

In the end, perhaps you will decide the idea really does stink or maybe you’ll discover it has great potential. The important point is that you don’t discount its consideration simply because it’s been done before.

Tags: Innovation, Staff Issues, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a past president of an association. She recalled her first meeting with the association CEO who asked her what her agenda would be for the upcoming year. The president was confused. “My agenda?” she asked. “My agenda is to meet the strategic objectives of the association.” Ahhh, how refreshing…and dare I say rare? I sometimes wonder how some associations get anything done, much less the right things done, with this revolving door of leaders and priorities.

Do the priorities of your association change with the annual installment of new officers? Now, honestly ask yourself: Do you in any way encourage this ridiculous presidential rite? Consider the scenario described earlier. That CEO started out each year asking the president what his or her agenda was going to be. Talk about handing it to them on a silver platter! Even if the president didn’t have an agenda before, you better believe he or she would create one. What type of initial conversation do your have with your incoming leaders? What a difference could be made by starting out with a discussion of the association’s current strategic priorities and asking what particular ideas the president has to move these forward. And, notice I said ideas, not mandates. The ideas leaders have should always be scrutinized to the same extent that any potential project or program idea.

Volunteer leaders want to make their mark, and to be fair, given their dedication, they probably deserve it. But, association CEOs need to establish a culture in which the leaders understand that the appropriate way to make their mark is to advance the association, its members, and the field it represents.

Tags: Leadership, Strategy, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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Let’s be clear about something really important: the members don’t really own the association. The overwhelming majority of associations are structured as non-profit organizations and there can be neither individual nor group ownership of such entities. Non-profit organizations exist for the public good, and not for personal or private aggrandizement.

I think all association professionals should keep this in mind the next time they are asked to defer their day-to-day experience, marketplace insight and strategic judgment to the myopic decision-making of volunteers who, more and more, lack the time, energy and attention to properly attend to the business of their organizations. I am deeply concerned that if we continue to buy into the old saw that it is “the members’ association,” we will be complicit in driving our organizations down the pathways of extinction.

I’m not suggesting that the members don’t have a say or a critical role to play in what occurs within the organizations to which they belong. Not at all. The active involvement of members is crucial to long-term success. But just as important is the active and direct involvement of staff, partners and other stakeholders on a co-equal basis. Associations are not manufacturers of widgets, but creators of knowledge, experiences and context. These typically intangible resources cannot be effectively cultivated and nurtured in command-and-control hierarchies in which some lead and others follow. Instead, they demand highly diverse and collaborative environments in which leadership and followership are shared by all in equal measure.

No one owns the association, but everyone involved in its work takes ownership of its success or failure everyday. Our community is long overdue in recognizing this fundamental fact.

Tags: Leadership, Membership, Staff Issues, Strategy, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Every association divides its work into departments. This is not unique to associations, of course, but associations seem particularly good at it. There are associations with less than ten staff people that are able to maintain six or seven departments! Division of labor is a rational thing to do, of course, and the department structure is not evil, but it does tend to generate a serious morale-buster: silo wars.

Even with one- and two-person departments, you will find people complaining about how the other departments are not pulling their weight, or are getting too much of the budget, or lack professionalism, etc. Nearly everyone complains about the “other” departments, and the complaints come from every level in the hierarchy. People waste time complaining about the silos, and they often end up constricting information flow because of unnecessary competitiveness. We’re all on the same team, people, why can’t we just get along?

Unfortunately, it is not just about getting along. No matter how strongly you urge your employees to cooperate and work cross-functionally, if you don’t take care of some important issues at the top of your organization, the silo wars will continue. It sounds counterintuitive, but working on issues among the senior management team is the best way to get the complaining at the staff level to stop. There are three key areas that require attention, all of which are areas that associations typically undervalue.

Focus your strategy
Silos will cooperate when they get clear messages about priorities. Association strategic plans typically break down by department, allowing each department to focus on their own goals, but also generating unending debates about whose goals are more important. All departments have importance, but your strategy still must have a focused rallying cry to guide the short- to medium-term. Everyone is important, but right now we’re focusing on this. When that is communicated clearly and consistently, people will more readily work together towards that goal.

Tighten your senior team
You must include accountability around silo competitiveness as a component of senior team effectiveness. Many associations do not. They overemphasize technical expertise (after all, government relations and meeting planning are fundamentally different things), allowing Vice Presidents to focus primarily on their own department. Issues of competition between departments then become “personal” (which means they are ignored, and fester). This dynamic needs to be nipped in the bud. Issues that generate competition need to be identified and resolved quickly and visibly at the very top of the organization. Without that behavior modeled, it will be too easy to start a campaign of justified complaining at the lower levels. When members of the senior team fail to do this, there must be consequences.

Make the time to do things together
You do not have to restructure into a “matrix” organization or send your people to an off-site to get them to work more cross-functionally. What they need most is a better understanding of what the other departments really do. To learn that, they need to spend time with their colleagues in other departments, working with them, talking to them, asking questions. This takes them away from their own work, and that is perfectly fine. The time you save in inter-departmental cooperation will more than make up for it. But the leadership must support this time investment and manage workflow accordingly. That might even involve modifying deadlines within your own department, if necessary. You must demonstrate your commitment to supporting cross-department cooperation if that is what you really want.

Tags: Staff Issues, Strategy, The Way We Manage, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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How many times have you kept a position open while looking for that someone with just the right experience and/or expertise for your association job? Well I think experience and expertise are over-rated. And, credentials, well it’s almost blasphemy for me to say so as a certification consultant, but they are trumped too. Let’s face it, there are many jobs within an association for which attitude is WAY more important.

Dealing with member requests all day can be challenging. I used to work for a certifying agency and sometimes took call after call from individuals who’d failed a certification exam (including a few members of the Board of Directors). It takes a person with a special attitudinal gift to handle calls like those with grace (and frankly, that person likely isn’t me).

I understand the desire to hire staff with association experience since association work is often quite different from the corporate world. But honestly, have you EVER hired a genuinely nice person that wasn’t able to “get” the member focus?

In many association jobs, experience means little if your staff member has a lousy attitude. I’m confident you can train an inexperienced person how to do most (although not all) association jobs, but can you teach a rude or disgruntled person how to “delight” the members?

Next time you’re hiring, look for experience, expertise, credentials, AND attitude…but don’t settle for the former three without the latter.

Tags: Staff Issues, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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Google any key word in your industry and the search will likely yield thousands of hits. Tons of information is already at our members’ fingertips yet associations keep utilizing precious resources to crank even more of it out — newsletters full of articles on anything authors volunteer to write, conference CDs (or audiotapes, if you can believe it!) for every conference session, and conference sessions selected from whatever came in through the call for proposals.

Members don’t need more information, especially when it’s of such randomness. But they could really use someone to help make sense of the plethora of information out there for them. Members don’t have time to sort through all the information available nor do they usually have the skill to analyze the relative credibility of the sources or relative merit of the information.

It’s time for associations to get serious about their important role as knowledge creators…that is helping members find meaning in all that information. Consider if your association prioritized key content areas (in which members face challenges, where contradictory or vast research exists, etc.) and engaged experts in the field to filter out the nuggets and/or summarize findings/trends. What a valuable resource that would be for members. I know there are a few key areas for which I’d pay a premium for someone to filter and summarize for me. Find those key areas for your members and let your experts spend 40 hours of research and analysis rather than your members collectively spending thousands of hours doing the same.

Tags: Professional Development, Strategy, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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In the March 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review, a short article described how the Inn at Little Washington’s restaurant takes a measure of each guest table’s mood on a scale of 1-10, with 7 or below indicating displeasure or unhappiness. The mood score is recorded in the computer and the goal is to get that measure to at least a 9 by the end of the meal. The strategies might include complimentary champagne, extra desserts, a tableside visit from one of the owners, or even a kitchen tour. A personal favorite: if a wife looks annoyed that the husband is paying a little too much attention to a well-endowed waitress, a waiter takes over.

Consider what the member experience might look like if associations similiarly targeted member mood during each interaction. Have you ever had secret shoppers assess how your staff are treating members on the phone, at busy conference registration tables, or elsewhere? If you haven’t, consider it. You might just be shocked at how often the member mood is depressed rather than elevated during these interactions. Too often, calling members are repeatedly transferred, unable to find a real person to talk to, or told no to their simple requests. About the only measure of mood associations take of members is through customer satisfaction surveys and conference evaluations. But isn’t that a little too little too late? Wouldn’t it be more effective to enter every interaction aiming to elevate the member mood?

How often do your members leave the interaction feeling GREAT about the experience? Consider how you might be able to apply the measure of mood concept to your organization.

Tags: Membership, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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Associations seem to be very good at high-level thinking. They love their vision statements and mission statements. They work hard on their keynote speeches. They really love platitudes:

We’re here for the members
Our priority is customer service
We support the development or perpetuation of the field

Associations are equally good at details. They love their action plans. They relish the debate about the color of next year’s annual meeting brochure. With a tradition of small staffs, it is not uncommon for senior managers to be immersed in the details of implementation throughout the year.

What associations really need to develop, however, is their middle-level thinking. They need to devote more time to discussing issues and making decisions that rise above the minutia of implementation, but have more subtlety or definition than the blanket statements of the mission and vision realm. Consider the following examples:

Strategy
Strategic plans typically start with the broad mission or vision and then present categories of activities, spelled out in detail. Plans basically “back in” to the middle level, by presenting it as the sum of all the detailed actions. Associations need to make more strategic decisions about the middle level. What really is our priority this year? Of all the things we usually do, which ones will drive our success over the next eighteen months? Those are tough decisions, but if you get clarity on them, it empowers staff to actually be more strategic during the year (rather than simply checking off to-do items from the plan).

Staff Issues
If problems or conflicts develop among staff members, the discussion tends to bounce between the high level (she’s not a team player; he’s not a good fit with our culture; we need her to be more of a leader) and the details (I saw her shopping online during work; he shouldn’t talk to me like that during staff meeting; I can’t believe she said that at a Board meeting). The opportunities for resolution, however, are in that middle level. Yes, you need to talk about the behavior, but you need to spell out how the behavior connects to those high-level conclusions. How is “team player” defined, and why, quite frankly, does everyone need to be one? What really is the culture here and will that drive our success? What is the impact of leadership style on what we are doing? When you work through those discussions, the examination of behavior is more meaningful and effective.

Program Evaluation
There was an article in Forum magazine in May 2006 examining how to decide to cut long-standing programs that perfectly demonstrated the lack of a middle level. The questions they posed tended to be high level (does this program impact the mission?) or detailed (what is the net revenue?). Those are both important, but you need some middle level analysis for this decision as well. How does this program impact our brand? Does this program help us develop internal capacity that helps us in other areas? Is this program taking resources away from our mid-level strategic direction? Without the middle level in this discussion, your evaluation tool becomes too blunt an instrument.

Tags: The Way We Think, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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As membership-based organizations, associations by definition must create themselves in a way that allows them to satisfy a large number of stakeholders. Within their membership alone they are guaranteed to find a broad range of preferences and priorities, and that range only expands when you consider other stakeholders (business partners, staff, policy communities, the public, etc.). Obviously there is value in creating a variety of experiences, products, services, etc. so that your differing stakeholders can extract different types of value.

For example, AARP produces a very successful magazine. A few years back they experimented with two versions of the magazine, including a new one focused on a specific generation””the newest retirees, the “Baby Boomers.” As they evaluated the success of the new venture, however, the results were disappointing, and they cancelled the new magazine. But they did not go back to one magazine for all of their membership. They started producing three slightly different versions of their magazine based on age groupings rather than generations: one for members in their fifties, one for members in their sixties, and one for members seventy and above. This approach has been more successful.

So shifting in response to diversity among stakeholders can be a good thing, but it also has its dark side, and associations too often fail to see this. At a high level, the dark side is obvious and captured in platitudes we hear all the time. You can’t be everything to everyone. Trying to go in too many directions at once makes it impossible to move forward. We all know that there is a limit to our ability to please all the different perspectives, interests, or motivations among stakeholders.

But we still try to do it. The problem is our devotion to our members. We take a good platitude (providing member value will make your association successful) and take it to an extreme that ignores the platitudes we mentioned above about being everything to everyone. We start, innocently enough, by doing research about the various needs and interests of our members and stakeholders. The more sophisticated we get with our research, the larger the variety of interests we discover. We use that knowledge to tweak our services or processes and we get good results (retention up! satisfaction up!). So we keep doing it.

Unfortunately, over time, it provides us with too many choices, and we begin to see clearly how many people will be unhappy unless we choose to meet their needs. So we choose to diversify even further. In the end, we lose the capacity to make choices, because we don’t want to make any stakeholder unhappy. It happens over time. No one makes the explicit decision that making choices is bad, but that is what happens. We add new programs without taking anything away. We respond to every member demand. We abandon a strategy if a focus group objects to it. We just end up there.

You have to choose. You have to take some people’s interests and desires and give them a higher priority than others. You have to make some people unhappy with your decisions, because if you don’t, then you are making weak decisions, and success requires strength. You have to choose some courses of action, knowing that you are ruling out a host of other options. You don’t have to be blind to what others want, and we don’t encourage you to ignore stakeholder groups and their varied interests and opinions. But you do have to choose.

Tags: Leadership, Membership, Strategy, The Way We Think by Jamie
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Marcus Buckingham has written extensively about how leveraging the strengths of your employees delivers dramatically better results than remediating their weaknesses. However, part of what comes with that power is finding a strength in your staff that they are passionate about. Here are a few questions, including a few follow-ups, that you can ask to get at that passion:

• If you could do anything you wanted here, what would you do?
• What do you want to be doing in five years?
• What would keep you here three more years?

These follow-up questions will work for any of the above to help you dig a little deeper and then tie it back to how you can leverage that passion:

• What are the steps you need to take to get there?
• Let’s talk about how we can work some of those things into your job and help you to reach your goal.

The key is that you have to be earnestly interested in helping them to achieve these things and be frank when you can’t. Staff will immediately sense lip service, so don’t bother if you don’t mean it.

Tags: Leadership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, We've Always Done It That Way by David
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