What is the strategic relationship between membership and participation?

In answering this question, leaders also will need to confront the even more fundamental truth that dues payments do not create members. Instead, going forward, association membership must be based on a personal commitment to participate, irrespective of dues payments. The approach associations adopt in this area must be open and flexible enough to accommodate both the absolute need to fully engage the payers of dues and the non-dues paying participant’s choice to be active in the association. While the former will pay for membership in order to participate, the latter will use participation as a form of currency to “pay” for membership.

This type of business model innovation is made necessary by what is happening online. The ease and simplicity with which anyone can make immediate and passionate contributions using free and inexpensive Web 2.0 technologies highlights the lack of an equally clear and accessible “architecture of participation” in most associations. A phrase that originated with the Web 2.0 revolution itself, a useful definition of an architecture of participation as it pertains to organizations in our community is “the collaborative design of pathways for meaningful engagement in and substantive contribution to the association’s work.” Designing an architecture of participation is about much more than simply offering opportunities for involvement. It is about innovating our associations for the future.

Association professionals must begin experimenting right away with developing new architectures of participation. Some of those experiments will fail, while others will evolve to become integral elements of new business models built for sustainable growth. To facilitate these processes of experimentation, staff and volunteer leaders can use the following six design principles:

+Keep it simple—In developing wiki technology, creator Ward Cunningham kept asking an important question: what is the simplest thing that could possibly work? In designing a new architecture of participation that will attract your next contributors, you should be asking yourself the same question over and over again. Try to create the simplest possible participation experience for everyone who wants to contribute by looking carefully at the factors that make your current architecture of participation complicated and less satisfying for your stakeholders.

+Tear down the garden walls—It is impossible for any association today to possess all of the ideas, knowledge and talent it needs to succeed. Fortunately, those resources are quite abundant, connected and mobile in the current marketplace, but they will not be attracted to our organizations if we continue to put up obstacles to keep them out. Just like the Web itself, your new architecture of participation must fully embrace open networks as a tenet of a new business model, and sunset the idea of the association as a walled garden.

+Take down the ladder—The ladder is the most enduring symbol of association participation. Contributors spend years, and usually decades, climbing these ladders in pursuit of leadership opportunities with increasing responsibility and authority. But what if your next contributors aren’t interested in climbing your ladder? What if they are comfortable leading horizontally and don’t necessarily want or need vertical authority to accomplish their goals? To address these questions, your new architecture of participation must reconsider traditional structures and roles, and fully engage the self-organizing leadership talents and coordination capabilities your next contributors bring to the table.

+Be modular—If the ladder is no longer the appropriate metaphor for association involvement, what should replace it? Think Legos. To fully engage your next contributors, your association’s new architecture of participation needs to be as modular as Lego bricks, allowing individuals and groups to quickly assemble, disassemble and rebuild “pieces” of different shapes and sizes to create new experiences that easily connect and enable meaningful collaboration with globally-distributed peer networks on a near real time basis.

+Trust first—Associations use a combination of policies, guidelines, requirements and similar mechanisms to enforce “synthetic trust” within their contributor communities. But community on the Web, as well as the trust that bonds the members of those communities, is considerably more organic, and it is this more authentic way of being that associations must embrace going forward. Your new architecture of participation can energize its next contributors by first demonstrating real trust in them, without requiring prior proof of their fidelity to the association.

+Make success a shared responsibility—Associations are still more comfortable with concentrating responsibility for success in the organizational core at a time when most of the energy for future progress lives at or near the “edge” of our organizations. By distributing real responsibility away from the core, associations can challenge their next contributors to direct their efforts toward executing strategy, advancing mission and realizing vision. Your new
architecture of participation can energize contributors by offering them the opportunity to connect their passionate interests and commitments to the long-term growth and success of the association.

The continuing decline of the membership-centric association business model means the end of association membership as we’ve always known it. To flourish in the years ahead, associations will need to shift their focus away from the inertia of transactional relationships and toward dynamic approaches that can unleash the full potential of passionate engagement.

Here is Kevin Holland’s post that sums it up nicely and gives his take.

In any case, I offer up an example of someone who tried something new in marketing their event, measured the results and learned from the process. I give you Kristi Donovan:

David asked me about the crazy idea – and I realize I never did tell the details. We decided to segment our marketing to our target audiences for the conference. I identified three sessions that each of our audiences would be interested in attending, put them on the cover of our brochure along with a statment such as: “We’ve designed the following sessions for chief executives like you!” Then we mailed that cover to our CEOs and COOs. We did it for 4 distinct audiences and then a generic for everyone else. We intended to personalize but that became cost prohibitive. (And maybe we didn’t even need it!)

Is this rocket science? No, not really. But a big, big step forward for us.

What was the result?

I am absolutely thrilled that my cockamamie idea in June that caused me and my coworkers so much stress has apparently resulted in an 85% increase in registration for our meeting over this time last year. Truly phenomenal. Some folks have suggested that may not hold through the rest of the reg period. Frankly, I’m just happy that something in our marketing mix is working. Heck, not just working, but kicking butt. If nothing else, we’ve gotten 85% more people to commit to our meeting earlier than ever.

Can’t beat that. It wasn’t so crazy after all!

Kristi’s posts are an excellent example of how thinking critically about your segments and making a targeted offer can pay off. And they did measure data to track results but it all started with trying something they had never done before.

Like Kristi says, this isn’t rocket science. What is different? She tried it! Breaking out of the ‘always done it that way’ rut and taking action puts her ahead of 90% of the field out there.

Albert Einstein suggested that “imagination is more important than knowledge,” and who am I to disagree with him. In a time of paradigm shift, what we think we know is increasingly less useful than what we can learn, imagine and create. In a recent post, Micropersuasion blogger Steve Rubel suggested that “the most important ‘tool’ you can have today in business is insatiable curiosity. The minute you lose it, you’re dead.” I think Steve is right on target and, from my perspective, curiosity and imagination go hand in hand: our curiosity feeds our imagination, and our imagination drives our curiosity.

Which brings me back to my inquiry about the possible imagination deficit in our community. I suppose what I’m really wondering is whether the work environment in associations today cultivates and nurtures the curiosity and imagination of staff and volunteers. One specific source of concern in this regard is the recent emphasis placed on so-called “data-driven strategies,” as advocated by ASAE & The Center’s 7 Measures of Success report. Without a doubt, there is a need to infuse the strategic decision-making process with useful data. But we must also recognize there are limits to what data can tell us, and there is good reason to challenge the notion that backward-looking information will always illuminate the wisest course of action for the future of our organizations. Associations definitely need clear, simple and focused strategy, but it should be “driven” by the value it will create for members, customers and stakeholders. Identifying and implementing that potential value necessarily will involve some combination of what we know, what we can learn, what we can imagine and what we can create together.

The powerful forces of paradigm shift are reshaping our society, and associations are going along for that very bumpy ride. But in the midst of this uncertainty, association professionals and volunteers have an extraordinary opportunity to envision a very different and more vibrant future for the organizations to which they have committed themselves. I challenge you to do just that by remaining curious and using your imagination everyday. If you’re able to do that, then in time the more important question won’t be whether there once was an imagination deficit, but what we did to eliminate it for the benefit of our community.

We need to make our organizations easier, clearer and simpler for everyone involved. We need to consistently, carefully and firmly identify everything we do that isn’t fundamental to advancing the larger purposes of our existence and get rid of those things as quickly as possible. This is what I mean by “radical simplicity.” In today’s world, less is not only more, much less is much more.

In recent months, I have come to view radical simplicity as a major strategic opportunity for associations that touches all aspects of what we do from governance to products and services to volunteer engagement. In far too many organizations in our community, the complexity we create ourselves interferes with our ability to achieve what we say we care about most, including supporting learning, building vibrant communities and delivering value to those we serve. We live in a complicated world to be sure, and there isn’t much we’re going to do to change that, except to the extent we are able to change both our organizations and ourselves.

“As simple as possible, but no simpler.” (Albert Einstein)

By suggesting we make radical simplicity a priority, I do not mean to imply we should “dumb down” our organizations. On the contrary, our organizations should be the hottest of hothouses, in which we plant the seeds of many new innovations, nurture them and allow them to grow in all kinds of surprising and unexpected directions. There is an important difference between the organic evolution of complexity in our thinking and the creation of synthetic complexity that so often occurs in our organizations. The former is a natural cycle of growth and change that systematically builds our capacity, while the latter involves the unnatural and unnecessary introduction of hierarchical and bureaucratic constraints into places and spaces where, if we took the initiative to cultivate them, trust, reciprocity and the capacity for self-organization could do the job quite well.

Radical simplicity isn’t about avoiding complexity altogether. It is about creating a markedly more intuitive and straightforward interface between our organizations and our members that enables us to make sense of the complexity we need and drastically reduces (if not eliminates altogether) the complexity we don’t.

“What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?” (Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki.)

On a very practical level, embracing radical simplicity in our work might make the difference between robust growth and anemic performance in key metrics. At the very minimum, a radically simpler organization should make for happier and more satisfied staff and members. For me, a focus on radical simplicity is itself a form of genuine innovation, and one that definitely can make a meaningful impact along multiple dimensions quickly.

To set your organization down the path of radical simplicity, consider raising the following five questions for discussion:

* What factors create complexity in your association’s work?
* How much of the complexity in your association is self-inflicted?
* How do “tried-and-true” solutions actually increase complexity in your organization?
* Why does your association have difficulty letting go of just about anything?
* What are the elements of a new business model that will allow your association to fully embrace radical simplicity?

To put your strategic thinking into action, consider one final inquiry: what three things about your association can you radically simplify in the next three months? If you can initiate these critical conversations, you will go a long way toward creating the right conditions for enduring success in your association.

1. It can’t be done–can you think of an organization of any kind that does “all things” equally well?
2. It shouldn’t be done–can you think of a good reason to pursue a strategy that sets up everyone in the organization for frustration and failure?
3. It doesn’t work anyway–can you think of a good reason why anyone would want to be member of an association that doesn’t get the first two?

Instead of being everything to everyone, consider being a single thing for most people, and let the others figure out where and how they want to play. I can’t tell you what that “thing” is, because it is going to be different for every organization. There are no ready-made answers. Figuring out what your association’s one thing should be is the whole point of strategy, but we tend to overlook this basic fact while we’re busy administering the thousand-and-one details contained in our multi-year, multi-page, multi-goal, multi-objective, multi-tactic and largely non-strategic strategic plans.

Why are we making it so hard, when we could be making it easier on ourselves and our members? Give up the illusion that being all things to all people is either desirable or achievable, and, instead, focus on the genuine strategic opportunities that will emerge as soon as you begin looking at the world in a new way.

Of course it does, and that’s why I can’t resist mucking things up by proposing a minor edit: let’s make 45% instead. And with the other 5%, let’s invest in the work of innovation for the future. After all, it’s a rule of thumb, not a rule, regulation or law, so we can make it whatever we want it to be. And just imagine the extraordinary impact that 5% of your reserves would have on the pursuit of innovation in the community your association serves!

There are great reasons to pursue this alternative. First and foremost, by investing 5% in innovation, you will be making a powerful statement that you value the creativity, energy and passion of the people who make up your association more than markets or financial instruments. Second, building a deep capacity for innovation creates tangible and intangible benefits for your association that will never come about from even the most successful portfolio of investments, including new ideas, new capabilities, brand equity, member engagement and new revenue streams. And finally, if your innovation efforts produces a winner, the financial upside to your future reserve fund investments could be quite considerable. Surely these attractive opportunities are worth an investment of 5%?

Well, I know what you’re going to say…we don’t like to take risks. You don’t think you’re taking risks in the market? Yes, I know you’re carefully managing your portfolio and doing the other stuff all smart investors do. That really isn’t the point, however. Risk is an element of today’s operating environment and present in every choice that leaders make. No amount of careful planning, smart implementation or wishful thinking will eliminate it altogether, nor do we want to eliminate it. (It would be incredibly boring and routine to run an organization in an environment of zero risk, wouldn’t it?) So, the issue isn’t whether your organization “likes” to take risks, but how much risk you’re willing to accept. And if you’re investing any of your reserves in the market, you’ve already decided that you will tolerate some risk in exchange for a certain level of reward.

Unfortunately, you exercise absolutely no control over the rewards the market will bring you. But you do have levers you can pull when it comes to innovation. By taking a strategic approach to innovation, your organization can invest its 5% in ways that minimize and manage risk by limiting uncertainty and controlling financial exposure, while maximizing whatever upside a given idea may produce. You can’t get away from risk, but you can take steps to make it work for you.

So, I’m thinking that just about every organization around could make do with 45% in reserves instead of 50%. I’m also thinking that the 5% your association invests in innovation will be, in the long run, the best investment it ever made.

Yet when associations place a higher priority on preserving and protecting what is known above exploring and understanding what is unknown, they may try to thwart the emergence of significant breakthroughs in learning and the creation of new knowledge. Associations operating as masters of orthodoxy may exclude, with or without sinister intent, divergent viewpoints that directly question accepted beliefs and conventional wisdom. But in a time of genuine paradigm shift, when the tools for creating and sharing new ideas and knowledge are in the hands of many–including quite capable creators who are purely amateurs in their fields–associations have no choice but to break down the boundaries they’ve created over many decades and open themselves to ideas that they might otherwise categorically reject, as well as the “dissidents” who propose them.

Heterodoxy is defined as “any opinions or doctrines at variance with the official or orthodox position.” In the 21st Century, associations will need to create new intellectual frameworks and environments that actively and consistently engage the broad spectrum of agreed-upon and profoundly controversial views in their fields. Embracing heterodoxy must become the new association tradition.

+Do I consider the implications of my actions/my organization’s actions for others?
+Do both my organization and I pursue the ethical path at all times?
+Is my integrity/the integrity of my organization intact?

Although framed as clear choices, these questions defy simple yes or no answers. Their intention is to help association leaders surface the underlying decision-making principles that enable consistent ethical conduct in the short term, as well as the creation of an organizational legacy of honesty, integrity and social responsibility that will endure in the long run. Sadly, there are far too many recent examples from both corporate and social enterprises of the kind of irresponsible, unethical and outright corrupt behavior that undermines the public’s trust and confidence in all institutions, including associations. Associations and their leaders will not get a pass from intense scrutiny of their conduct, and if the failure to act in an ethical and responsible manner erodes support among our constituents for the important work that our organizations perform, the historic role of associations in American society may be irreparably compromised.

Meaningful conversations about ethics and social responsibility are not likely to be at the top of the agenda for many association leaders. We are fortunate, however, that these questions are increasingly a part of our community’s dialogue, not as a matter of choice, but of necessity. But simply talking about these issues won’t be sufficient; decisive action is required. The best association leaders of the 21st Century already understand that a vibrant and sustainable future for associations depends, in part, on our community’s unswerving commitment to and full-throated public advocacy for ethics and social responsibility throughout our society. Anything less would be a retreat from the core beliefs that make our organizations great.

(1) reflecting on current practice to establish professional direction and goals
(2) identifying the gap between current and desired/needed knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)
(3) developing a learning plan based on identified gaps
(4) selecting and participating in learning activities that address goals and targeted KSAs
(5) evaluating how/if learning has been integrated into practice and what progress has been made in meeting professional goals

Associations can and should play an important role in providing support and tools in these areas to help members become more effective learners. Programming education just isn’t enough.

If you haven’t identified the current body of knowledge of the field in which your members work (or a portion of that field), consider:

• How do you determine what knowledge and skills are currently and will be needed by your members in the next 5 years?
• Then, how do you determine what to teach members in your educational programs?
• What do you use as your basis for selecting content for your publications?
• How do you prioritize research efforts to advance the field? (How do you advance a field if you don’t know its current status?)
• What is the foundation of your certification program examination?

It’s time for associations to get strategic and purposeful about how they will advance the knowledge of their members and/or advance the fields in which their members work. Identifying the body of knowledge can be an important first step. It may, but does not have to be an elaborate research project. How sophisticated the approach depends upon the identified uses for that body of knowledge. Certification, for example, does warrant a sophisticated approach ““ usually a formal job analysis. However, if you are trying to identify the gap between what members currently know and what they’ll need to know in 5 years (so that you can be purposeful in getting your members there!), qualitative research of key employers may do the job fine. So, that takes us back to strategy. Associations need to identify what their knowledge goals are first and then identify the strategies and action plans to get there.

Still questioning the value of a knowledge strategy? The Project Management Institute has been purposeful in its knowledge efforts and it has paid off: its Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge book is currently on the BusinessWeek Best Seller List!