We Have Always Done It That Way

William Taylor, founder of Fast Company magazine (and speaker at last year’s ASAE & The Center Annual Meeting) has an article in the Volunteer Leadership Issue in Associations Now. His recent book is about “Maverick” organizations, so it’s no surprise that much of his message resonates with what we’ve written here at We Have Always Done It That Way.

He makes one point, though, that I think is important both for the “disruptors” he’s talking about in his article and for people who want to start doing things differently in associations, as we’re advocating in the book. And that point is that the smartest disruptors behave like diplomats.

“There is a difference between championing a distinctive point of view and inviting retribution from inside or outside your organization”¦. ‘What I learned so viscerally at Netscape,’ [Netscape's founder Michael McCue] says, ‘”¦is that you have to be willing to slow down in order to build the organization properly. If you grow too fast, if you try to do too much too soon, it backfires. Being a disruptor means being patient.’”

You may not be able to apply some of the ideas in our book overnight. If your association’s culture is entrenched in the status quo, then you absolutely won’t be able to do some of this overnight. In a battle between a good idea and an existing culture, the culture usually wins. So sometimes you need to make incremental change. Sometimes you need to find an area where you can get permission to try an experiment. Of course, sometimes there is value in getting in people’s faces and waking them up a bit. But a diplomat knows the environment deeply enough to choose the right course at the right time.

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