We Have Always Done It That Way

To reinvent eroding membership-centric business models, association leaders will need to answer a fundamental question:

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.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Strategy, Technology, The Way We Involve Others, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Ever since Good to Great hit the scene, the association community has gotten data religion. Count this, measure that, does this metric make my balanced score card look fat? The problem with too much data collection is that you can be paralyzed by an undifferentiated mass of input. You become the crunchee rather than the cruncher.

Repeat after me: If a piece of data can’t enable a decision to be made, it isn’t worth measuring. Using this simple rule will dramatically reduce your measurement efforts while simultaneously enabling you to take more action. What’s not to like?

This same approach can be invaluable for your Board of Directors and other leadership bodies. When you are pressed for more and more data, push back. Ask what decisions the requested data will support. If it doesn’t support any, it is in everyone’s best interest to not go through the labor of producing it nor the time of assessing and discussing it. You can move on to those metrics that really matter to your leaders making decisions about the future of the organization.

Do not allow your measurement efforts to crunch you and your leadership.

Tags: Leadership, Strategy, Technology, The Way We Execute, The Way We Manage, The Way We Think, The Way We Work Together, We've Always Done It That Way by David
6 Comments »

One of the most common arguments made in defense of the “we have always done it that way” approach to leadership in our organizations is that associations have existed for many years, indeed for many decades, and thus have a demonstrated ability to survive and thrive in the face of profound change. So, the argument goes, why should association leaders dramatically change their beliefs and practices to accommodate what’s happening today? Isn’t today’s brand of change simply an extension of what we’ve always known?

Let’s unpack this argument. First, there is no question that associations are resilient organizations. It’s absolutely true that many associations have managed to stick around for a long time, and the leaders of those enterprises deserve most of the credit for keeping them going during periods of considerable difficulty, including depressive economic conditions, social and technological disruption and world war. Whether these leaders made all of the right decisions in their time is immaterial as far as I am concerned. They accepted the responsibility of leadership, and they’ve earned both our gratitude and our respect for everything they achieved.

Going forward, however, the question is not where we’ve been, but where are going and how we will sustain what our predecessors entrusted to us. In our time, we face a fundamental question that those who came before never had to confront seriously: what role, if any, should associations play in our society? We are neck deep in a period of accelerated political, economic, social and technological shift that is unlikely to abate anytime soon. Precisely what it will take for our organizations to be successful in this environment remains somewhat unclear, making our historic resilience useful. What is increasingly clear is that our standard set of responses to new realities is no longer getting it done. We need new approaches, which diminishes the value of being resilient because it may prevent the deep and sober reconsideration of the conventional wisdom that is the basis for doing what we’ve always done.

So associations must continue to be resilient, of course, but not in a way that ignores the solemn responsibility to create a more vibrant future. We cannot defer the hard strategic choices that we certainly will need to make in the next few years. To do so, would be absolutely irresponsible. Rather, we must embrace the challenges and opportunities of a new era, and act decisively, confidently and responsibly. Our ancestors would expect nothing less from us, and we should accept nothing less for ourselves and our successors.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Strategy, Technology, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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The success of associations in the 21st century will depend, in large measure, on whether the leaders of our organizations choose to set aside their self-aggrandizing agendas, petty personality conflicts and micro-managing tendencies to embrace the real responsibilities of stewardship that come with the staff and volunteer roles they occupy. It’s clear to just about everybody in our community that current governance approaches aren’t working for many organizations. So, if we’re really ever going to extract the “we have always done it that way” DNA from associations, those legacy systems must be among the first challenges we tackle.

To make it simpler and more attractive for boards, CEOs and other stakeholders to adopt a new mindset, I have articulated a set of ideas around what I call “innovation ungovernance.” Ungovernance offers an alternative perspective on what association stewardship can be and what it can achieve if we’re willing to let go of old ways of thinking, acting and being, and embrace the necessity of innovation. It is a framework for driving organizational success that is more consonant with the world in which associations operate today, and it certainly can be a catalyst for a renewal in the critical role associations have always played in the fabric of our democratic society.

Below are five ways that ungovernance thinking enables innovation in our organizations. I hope you will share your reactions, thoughts and ideas as comments. Also, I invite you to join a virtual dialogue on innovation governance where you can help shape this conversation for our community.

1. Ungovernance questions existing assumptions and beliefs—Associations face daunting challenges in the years ahead, and chief among them is the need to complete the transition of our organizations from the last century into this one. Unfortunately, the outdated core beliefs that guide association governance practices interfere with this process. Ungovernance seeks to challenge such orthodoxies by asking different questions, posing fresh and perhaps unpopular perspectives and demanding more original responses from leaders. Associations are long overdue to eradicate the toxic influence of denial and nostalgia in their organizations, and it must begin with a radical shift in the way we think about association stewardship going forward.

2. Ungovernance focuses on the association’s business model—Associations don’t exist to be governed, but to create value for stakeholders. Indeed, the future growth and advancement of associations depends on their ability to create distinctive new value in a time when the traditional economic framework for such value creation is rapidly eroding. Organizations in our community—not to mention the community as a whole—face a competitive landscape that has changed dramatically in the last decade, and will continue to morph in the next one. In this new context, association leaders must cultivate both the freedom to discover and develop inventive new strategies and the discipline necessary to execute them intelligently. As the Ungovernance Doctrine states, the definitive responsibility of association boards and CEOs is the capable stewardship of sustainable business models powered by innovation.

3. Ungovernance distributes responsibility—Current approaches to association governance embody the concept of centralized control. The future of associations, however, lives at or very near the edge, with contributors who are already deeply involved with—or are actually creating—what’s next. Ungovernance recognizes that sharing real responsibility for long-term success with all stakeholders supports the kind of robust and energetic collaboration necessary to achieve it. Contributors must be invited to engage with the association on their terms, but within a coherent and sustainable strategic framework that capitalizes on everyone’s unique talents and capabilities and inspires them to innovate consistently. In short, ungovernance is about creating an ecology of stewardship.

4. Ungovernance builds trust—At best, legacy governance practices create a kind of “synthetic trust” that must be enforced through bureaucratic structures, burdensome management mechanisms and restrictive policies. At worst, association governance actively undermines trust by creating a culture of risk aversion and fear. In contrast, authentic trust is organic, and emerges only through an unswerving commitment to build it everyday. Ungovernance enables innovation by inviting leaders to adopt the notion of “trust first” as their new default position, while working hard to earn the trust of those they serve by “walking the walk” of innovation in their own work.

5. Ungovernance inspires creativity and unleashes passion—Associations desperately need creative, passionate contributors who are willing to advance the work of innovation by experimenting with powerful ideas. Ungovernance is all about removing onerous constraints that impede the freedom to think expansively and act with confidence, while applying “generative constraints” that help ignite new thinking around difficult problems. Ungovernance embraces possibilities that fuel the passion of contributors who will drive the association’s long-term success. At the same time, ungovernance requires clarity around which possibilities have the greatest potential to become worthwhile strategic opportunities.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, The Way We Think, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Fellow author Mickie started an interesting conversation on her own blog about the need to change the way we’ve always done PowerPoint. As I think about it, I can’t BELIEVE we didn’t write a post about that in our book?! Amy mentioned powerpoint in her post on Learning experiences not Conferences, but only briefly. I can’t think of a more worthy WHADITW topic than the way we use powerpoint in presentations in the association community (I remember sitting through a presentation where the presenter actually numbered the slides. It was even MORE painful knowing that that list of bullets was the 63rd I had seen that session!)

Mickie and others have been putting up good responses to the original post, linking to resources on this topic. Dave Sabol linked to Seth Godin’s writing on the topic, which, of course, contains some great WHADITW language:

The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).

Sure, this is different from the way everyone else does it. But everyone else is busy defending the status quo (which is easy) and you’re busy championing brave new innovations, which is difficult.

Tags: Technology, The Way We Execute, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
1 Comment »

Fellow author Mickie started an interesting conversation on her own blog about the need to change the way we’ve always done PowerPoint. As I think about it, I can’t BELIEVE we didn’t write a post about that in our book?! Amy mentioned powerpoint in her post on Learning experiences not Conferences, but only briefly. I can’t think of a more worthy WHADITW topic than the way we use powerpoint in presentations in the association community (I remember sitting through a presentation where the presenter actually numbered the slides. It was even MORE painful knowing that that list of bullets was the 63rd I had seen that session!)

Mickie and others have been putting up good responses to the original post, linking to resources on this topic. Dave Sabol linked to Seth Godin’s writing on the topic, which, of course, contains some great WHADITW language:

The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).

Sure, this is different from the way everyone else does it. But everyone else is busy defending the status quo (which is easy) and you’re busy championing brave new innovations, which is difficult.

Tags: Technology, The Way We Execute, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
2 Comments »

I’ve been thinking about this difficult question for quite some time now, but I’ve been reluctant to write about it out of a genuine concern that the question itself might sound like an unprovoked attack on hard-working association staff and volunteers. This is definitely not my intention. Rather, I’m hoping we can make our colleagues’ lives a bit easier by creating a more favorable climate in which they can always bring their imagination to bear on the work of their organizations.

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.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, The Way We Execute, The Way We Involve Others, The Way We Lead, The Way We Manage, The Way We Think, The Way We Work Together, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
4 Comments »

We are very pleased to let you know that the cover story in the current issue of Association Meetings Magazine focuses on WHADITW, and includes quotes from four of us. We want to thank fellow blogger Sue Pelletier, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, for approaching us with this idea and for interviewing us for the article. It was great fun!

I especially like the prompt the magazine uses to encourage its readers to provide their feedback on the article and on the ideas we share:

Tell us what you think: Are these folks on the money? Prophetic? Deranged? Naive?

Personally, I’m pulling for deranged. In all seriousness, though, we’d very much like to know your reaction to the article. We hope you will post your comments below.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Professional Development, Technology, The Way We Execute, The Way We Involve Others, The Way We Lead, The Way We Manage, The Way We Think, The Way We Work Together, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Associations have long built their value to members on creating information products. Conferences, magazines, journals, newsletters and web sites all have been traditional vehicles for creating and providing information and knowledge to members that couldn’t be had elsewhere.

Then the Web came along. Suddenly, we all have access to vast collections of information. However, this has brought a new challenge: finding the valuable stuff in that massive pile of information. Your association can continue to provide value in an information rich economy by developing the capacity to assist your members in sifting through it. Invest in understanding how search technology works and how it could be tailored for your members. Think like an information concierge rather than a publisher.

Make helping your members to find critical information and knowledge a key part of your value, wether or not you published that information in the first place.

Tags: Innovation, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by David
4 Comments »

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” (Leonardo da Vinci)

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.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
3 Comments »

I’m pretty sure I don’t need to write too much here, but in case you’re wondering why, here are my three simple, one-sentence answers:

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.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Shocker that a blogger writes about the benefits of blogging. But let’s take another look at this tool and some of the great personal benefits that blogging may have for you as an association executive.

How familiar does any of this sound? We travel; we work from an office; we work from home; we are busy managing work and all that life has outside of work; we work insane hours….
We spend a huge amount of time working in our “business” but much less time on our business.

We know that working ON the business is where growth happens. What are you doing to help capture your pearls of wisdom/late night thoughts/personal great ideas?

Here is one idea…

Thought #1: Create a personal blog as a simple, no-cost way to capture your ideas.
Thought #2: Not all blogs have to be public. Create a blog using a free tool like www.blogger.com and keep it private (for now).
Thought #3: Use the blog like an online diary. Play, experiment, dream, think — just get it all out of your head and into a blog posting.
Thought #4: The beauty of a blog posting is that you have the ability to edit, add to it, refine it, as links to resources, etc. You can create your own categories for topics as they make sense for you.
Thought #5: When you have had a chance to think through a concept fully, and you want to share it with peers, with staff, Board members, etc. you have a great tool to control the distribution.
Thought #6: You can invite people to see just one posting or your entire blog. It’s a great way to get feedback on your ideas in an electronic/flexible format.

Some of my best “personal learning” experiences occur by reviewing and reflecting on my personal blog. I can get access to it anytime I have an Internet connection, or I can draft a posting in Word on a flight and post it later. The great thing is that I have one place to keep all of my thoughts and ideas.

Tags: Leadership, Professional Development, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Amy
2 Comments »

The rule of thumb in our community is that an association should have an amount in reserves equal to 50% of its budget, just in case the organization’s financial position begins to deteriorate. So, for example, if I am the CEO of a $10 million association, I’m looking to accumulate $5 million in my reserve fund as expeditiously as possible. It makes complete sense, right?

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.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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By circumstance, tradition or choice, associations often operate as masters of orthodoxy, the de jure or de facto enforcers of accepted ways of thinking and acting within the industries, professions and fields they serve. Through certification programs, licensing, standards and other mechanisms, associations can create near impenetrable boundaries around what “professionals” in those fields must, should or can know. In some respects, this is an appropriate and vital function, especially in fields in which lives are at stake.

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.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Why haven’t more associations figured out that the impact of pushing content out to members is limited? Rather, associations should think of themselves as facilitators of knowledge creation and sharing.

How do we do that? Here are four strategies for “knowledgizing” associations: filtering, feedback, contextualizing and connections.

Filtering is extracting from the information masses only the relevant information for a particular audience. A few examples,

• content compilations of the “best” of the association’s content on one particular subject (pull from recent industry magazines, listserve archives, conference presentations, white papers, books, etc.)
• providing opt-in headliner e-mails that contain current news headlines about the industry that are linked to the actual articles (for broad fields, these can be issue-specific)
• website personalization (providing additional relevant content to members based on identified preferences or actions ““ think amazon.com)
• selling customized versions of your industry research (by industry segment, for example, rather than the full data set)

Bottom line value, save your members time by filtering out the excess or irrelevant.

Providing feedback means offering a constructive and informative response to the results of an activity. Examples include:

• coaching or mentoring programs
• self-assessments with guided learning (that is, that provide the correct answer and a detailed rationale)
• learning quizzes with guided learning within publications and courses
• template checklists and evaluation forms for members to use with their supervisors or peers to gather feedback on their performance

Bottom line value: members don’t always know what they don’t know; help them to discover it.

Contextualizing is adding meaning to content by relating it to specific circumstances. Examples include:

• an online interactive practice journal where specific cases are described and questions are presented within a chat or discussion forum.
• plan coordinated curriculum learning events (as stand-alones and as conference tracks)
• provide pre-conference recommended readings to attendees to set the stage for the material they are about to learn
• encourage speakers/e-learning faculty to build meaningful case studies and problem-solving activities into their sessions/courses
• build opportunities for both structured and unstructured peer-to-peer sharing into events

Bottom line value: Help members turn content into knowledge.

Facilitating connections is bringing together individuals with common interests, issues or expertise. Examples include:

• coaching or mentoring programs
• communities of practice
• online group collaboration (wikis, chats, discussion lists)
• social networking systems
• incorporating connection time and activities in association events

Bottom line value: Connections enable shared context and build community, both key to establishing a knowledge sharing environment.

Tags: Professional Development, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
5 Comments »

Many association staff are interested in adding blogs to the mix of communication efforts they employ. However, just coming out and pitching a blog as a solution to anything can often raise eyebrows among staff and leaders who haven’t gotten on the Cluetrain yet. You need to be a bit more subtle and start by pitching the benefits of blogging rather than blogging itself.

For example, go to your boss and say something along the lines of:

“I have found a way to easily develop new content for our web site every day that is highly compelling to our younger members. In fact, it would require very little investment in software or design and could be up and running almost immediately. I would need to spend about 5 or 6 hours each week working on it. I would like to start a pilot next week to test it out.”

It should be hard for anyone to respond to that with anything other than “Let’s do it!” This same approach should work for any technology you wish to use so long as you have identified the valuable outcomes it will achieve for the association (assuming it will do so!).

Tags: Innovation, Strategy, Technology by David
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Let’s try a thought experiment….

After numerous complaints from members over a three-year period, your board concludes the association’s dues are simply too high. They are so high, in fact, they have become the number one reason why even very good prospects don’t join. After extensive deliberation and discussion of the issue, the board votes to get rid of dues permanently, even though these payments represent at least 20% (and sometimes more) of your association’s revenue each fiscal year.

If confronted with this situation, what would you do differently?

If you don’t know, why? If you do, why aren’t you already doing it?

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Associations love to copy the work of other individuals and organizations. Best practices are a big thing in our community, probably because the scarcity and constraints culture of associations leads us to conclude that best practices will be easier to implement and more cost effective over time. Unfortunately for us, there is overwhelming evidence that you cannot and will not build a truly great and successful organization simply by copying others. True success and true greatness come from daring to do what others can’t do or won’t try.

Personally, I loathe best practices, but I do recognize that some people like them, so I’ll hold off on further critique for now. But I still would like to challenge those association leaders enamored with best practices to consider the truly radical and counterintuitive notion of not duplicating what others do before first. Instead, be original. Rather than constantly “tweaking” someone else’s existing solutions to your context, open yourself up to fresh, different and even plainly absurd ways of thinking. (In this vein, remember the words of Albert Einstein, “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”) Take the time to consider the unique and creative contribution you, your team and your organization can make to addressing both new and long-standing challenges in surprising ways.

Best practices stifle meaningful innovation and embrace status quo thinking. (Oh, did I write that out loud?…;>)) But I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Leadership isn’t about driving our associations down toward the lowest common denominator. Haven’t we had enough of that? Genuine leadership values and demands authenticity, creativity and originality in the work of every contributor and from the organization as a whole. Seize the opportunity to become a true pioneer, and let the laggards copy you. Before long, they will be eating your dust!

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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When confronted with a problem, human beings instinctively want to solve it. Most of the time, that instinct serves us well, especially when it comes to both routine difficulties and matters of life and death. But more often than we might suspect, there are golden opportunities not to follow our instincts and, instead, let the problems we face “solve us.”

Solve us you ask? It is an insight that I took away from my graduate work with Professor Robert Kegan in the late 1990s. As Professor Kegan says, “Each of us does the best we can coping within the world of our assumptive design.” To put it another way, the assumptions we make everyday about every aspect of our life experience shape the way we make sense of and interact with the world. In effect, our assumptions allow us to design the world in which we want to live, one that is often at odds with the “realities” experienced by others. We cope by resolving this dissonance, which is why we are very intent on solving problems.

But what if we had sufficient awareness to recognize that our problems might not be the actual problem? What if we could see that sometimes the problem is simply an indicator of flawed or, at least, untested assumptions? What if we could step outside of the problem and look at our relationship to it so that we might understand it in a new way? Without a doubt, it is easier to ask these questions than it is to do what they ask. Nevertheless, I believe what I am writing about here is an absolutely critical capability that both staff and volunteer association leaders must develop going forward.

Let’s think briefly about how letting problems solve us might influence our work on strategy. Strategic planning is clear-cut method for solving the problems we have with ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty. In strategic planning, we identify mostly what we know we know today, and we do a little bit of elaboration on it to give it a future feel. Then, we pre-determine the outcomes we want to achieve and work fastidiously toward reaching them. No mess, no fuss. This approach may be clean and neat, but it is neither authentic nor pragmatic, given what we know is true about the current strategic landscape. In contrast, letting the problem solve us challenges our assumptions along multiple dimensions, especially our commitment to knowing all the answers even before the questions are asked. Letting the problem solve us focuses instead on learning as we go, exercising judgment and constantly testing our assumptions. From this process, not only will we achieve different results, but our approach to strategic leadership also will be different.

So, the next time you confront a problem in your work, consider stepping back from trying to solve it immediately. Instead, see if the problem can solve you.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Membership, Professional Development, Staff Issues, Strategy, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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Associations are beginning to try taking their conferences ‘paperless’: no more handouts on chairs, no more frantic photocopying late into the night. All handouts are available via the conference web site and/or a jump drive given to attendees. This saves the association a lot of money and attendees don’t have to damage their spinal column adding a few pounds of paper to their luggage for the trip home.

However there is one problem: attendees actually like to have a handout in the room to refer to. Paper still has a pretty high usability factor. Speakers also like to have the ability to put something in front of attendees, especially if it provides a useful reference for them during the session. What to do?

One solution is to print less paper rather than none. Limit speakers to a single 8.5 x 11 page, front and back for an in-room handout. This should not be a tiny set of slides. It should be critical information the attendees should have in front of them during the session. The conference organizers can still put extended handouts online or on a jump drive for people to review in depth once they get home.

Providing one page paper handouts allows you to continue to provide a valuable resource in the room while still gaining most of the benefits of going fully paperless. It also encourages speakers to do more than provide redundant slideuments.

Tags: Innovation, Professional Development, Technology by David
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Many web site discussions within an association staff and leadership focus on their navigation. Web site navigation is hierarchical by nature and hierarchies imply relative values between the listed items. Top billing in the navigation system will usually be interpreted as an indicator of importance by content stake holders, which then leads to inevitable tugs-of-war over placement and wording.

My suggestion for the next time that conversation comes up: forget about navigation. What if your site had no navigation? What other tools do you have at your disposal to guide traffic around your site? (Hint: search and the content of your main entry pages!) How can those be used to effectively highlight the content and services you want to get in front of your members?

Having a conversation without navigation will allow you to use the totality of your site much more effectively.

Tags: Leadership, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by David
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Massive web site redesigns are often very disruptive. Significant changes to navigation and overall design will confuse your current users who knew how to work with the old site, no matter how unfriendly it may have been. How can you improve the site without creating this disruption?

Instead of waiting for a big redesign to make changes, look at making small, incremental changes every week that each improve the site a small amount. Over time, these will add up to a significant difference. Additionally, the change will be gradual so that your visitors can adjust to the changes easily as they happen, avoiding a big disruption.

For example, Yahoo! has added new options to their home page frequently throughout the years. Each addition was just a small change however the change from a few years ago compared to today is jarring.

Tags: Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by David
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In my frank opinion, the sooner associations move away from traditional conferences, the better. A highly controversial statement, I know. Merriam-Webster defines “conference” as (1) a meeting of two or more persons for discussing matters of common concern, or (2) a usually formal interchange of views.

I would argue that many conferences do a terrible job of those two things. The key words being “discussing” and “interchange”. For the first definition, we tend to subject our members to old-school, classroom-style learning experiences (sometimes with dimmed lights) and dreaded PowerPoint presentations. Little “discussion” occurs in most of these sessions. In looking at the second definition, conference sessions rarely allow for a ‘formal interchange of views’. They are simply one-way lectures with a few minutes of Q&A.

Ask any conference attendee where the value is and you will most likely here, “in the hallways” or “at the social functions”. Why? Becuase this is the place where real-time business issues can be addressed. But why don’t we foster this more across our association industry?

What would happen if you asked a typical conference attendee the following questions:

1. What is your #1 most pressing business issue you need to address in the next six months?

2. What is that business issue costing your company/organization?

3. What kind of information or interactions do you need in order to address this issue?

4. What would you pay if you knew that you could get assistance in adressing that issue by participanting in a learning experience? (notice I didn’t say conference)

These four questions alone can generate some very interesting results. By simply asking these questions (instead of filling out worthless smile sheet evaluations) associations can begin to position themselves as the knowledge center of their industry or profession. This also fundamentally changes the role of association educators to become learning facilitators, not just speaker inviters.

These four questions also allow educators to begin to reshape conference formats, features, and functions. Instead of inviting speakers to be the ’sage on the stage’ you are invited them to become the ‘guide on the side’ – a learning facilitator. It also confirms the need to create knowledge resources before, during, and after face-to-face meetings.

Social networking tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.) help individuals connect in a way that was never possible before. Using these tools as a way to generate grass-roots knowledge adds significant value to the learning experience. In addition, it can make face-to-face experiences more valuble because members can network with peers electronically beforehand, get useful information just-in-time, and can interact with individuals and information in a way that is not currently wide-spread.

As you begin a new planning cycle for conferences, why not completely rethink the way you “host” learning experiences?

Tags: Innovation, Professional Development, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Amy
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There is growing interest in associations around blogging, podcasting and social media tools. FINALLY! It’s about time we woke up and smelled the Marble Mocha Macchiato. We are long overdue to recognize these technologies are like manna from heaven for associations, and to begin capitalizing on them in our work.

Social media are all about participation, about getting people involved in creating and sharing content and engaging in conversations that are important to them. Indeed, the whole direction of the Web is moving toward the deeper engagement of the end user in more authentic and generative ways. In this spirit, blogging, podcasting, wikis, Flickr, del.icio.us and other social media tools offer associations the opportunity to establish entirely new relationships with their current and prospective members. By introducing greater richness and dimension to the discourse we have with our most crucial stakeholders, we can quite possibly renovate the eroding structures of traditional association membership and volunteer leadership for the better.

But only if we can get out of our own way. Going forward, associations will need to do more than pay lip service to the passion, energy and creativity of their members and staff. Going forward, associations will need to reconsider the long-term value of the current incentives that motivate members to invest their discretionary time and attention in the organization. Associations, by definition, are highly bureaucratic organizations. And, in the words of strategy and innovation author Gary Hamel, “the problem is, there’s little room in bureaucratic organizations for passion, ingenuity and self-direction.” Social media are the antithesis of bureaucracy. Social media are pure creation.

We have been given a gift, like manna from heaven. Let us not squander it.

Tags: Innovation, Membership, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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How would you like it if Amazon required you to create a new login for each of their partners when buying a non-Amazon fulfilled product? Not much I would guess. It is clearly user unfriendly and would rapidly diminish their partner sales.

However, many associations require exactly that of their members for their web-based services. Features such as job boards, stores, listserves and others are often more cost effective to outsource. However, most associations will allow the vendor to require their own separate login, which doesn’t match the login for the main association web site.

I think the time has come where any serious vendor in the association market should support authentication from another system for their product and associations should begin to demand it.

This level of integration is relatively easy to achieve via web services. Sure, each association/system will have its quirks that may require some tweaking but the basics are well defined.

Hostile user/login management systems immediately cripple your ability to create member value on the web. We, as an industry, shouldn’t tolerate it any longer.

Tags: Innovation, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by David
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Many associations profess that their focus is on fostering community among their members for the purpose of facilitating knowledge sharing and other professionally enhancing activities. ASAE even came out with a report recommending building community driven membership benefits.

Yet, many of these same associations limit or even discourage their staff from participating in similar activities. Some do not encourage staff to use time in the office to engage in online communities or skimp on professional development. Others specifically block access to “Ëœunauthorized’ web sites and limit the ability to use tools such as instant messaging. How can they reasonably expect their staff to develop effective and powerful community-based experiences for their members when they do not encourage their staff to engage in such activities themselves?

Association executives must encourage their staff and leadership to experiment with and model the behaviors and actions they want to elicit from their membership. Any association that does not do that will ultimately fail in their community efforts because they honestly won’t be able recognize it.

Tags: Membership, Technology, We've Always Done It That Way by David
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