Don’t Be A Bad Toaster
Seth Godin just wrote a blog post about buying the worst toaster ever, and his message is basically another version of David’s “Get Out of Their Way” post from the book.
Entries Tagged as 'The Way We Execute'
Why We Don’t Do Anything New
Thanks to Scott Briscoe for plugging the book in his recent Acronym post. He provides three reasons why associations don’t do new things: budget, no time, and culture. It’s a very interesting post, so check it out. I was disappointed to find no comments to the post (other than mine). What’s up with that?
Roundtable Rut
I kid you not that within seconds of posting Roundtable Ruse, I got an e-mail from an association for which I agreed to lead a roundtable. Here are my instructions:
Thank all participants
Start the conversation on your assigned topic
Moderate questions from participants
Serve as a resource where appropriate
Communicate any necessary information to the ____ staff
Here’s where the rubber meets the road. The association wants and is content with me letting the session “go where it may.” Am I?
Roundtable Ruse
I’ve noticed lately that many associations are discouraging speakers from lecturing (you know – be the “guide on the side” versus the “sage on the stage”). Roundtable discussions seem to be the “in” solution.
But there is a problem. Being an effective guide on the side isn’t easy. I once attended a workshop in which the speakers utilized great in-depth case studies to generate roundtable discussions. They had the groups discuss the cases, report out…and then they moved to the next case. Here were two individuals with combined 30+ years experience and they offered no opinion on how the cases could or should have been handled. They didn’t even identify if they agreed or disagreed with the solutions identified in the report-outs. We all had interesting discussions, but left feeling we still didn’t know how to handle the situations if presented to us. Anyone off the street could have “facilitated” that session. It was easy, but not effective.
If you have experts available, use them – I mean really use them. Don’t let them just organize table discussions; have them use their experience and expertise to facilitate meaningful discussions and learning. As one model, consider how the workshop I attended could be reworked:
- Experts shares enough information and context about the cases to enable a rich discussion
- In small groups, learners discuss case studies and generate ideas for how they would handle the situations
- Each group reports back ideas generated
- Experts debate, clarify and/or build upon the ideas/actions suggested (providing the rationale and/or evidence for their advice)
- Experts close the session by highlighting the key lessons to be taken from the each of the case studies
- Learners depart with knowledge they can use
Now, building a session like this is harder than assigning table topics and letting the session go where it may. Roundtables need a purpose and structure. So, choose your experts carefully and provide them guidance. Your learners will thank you.
Powerpointless
There seems to be a growing trend of associations providing Powerpoint templates for conference speakers. Really, what is the purpose here? Isn’t it kind of boring for each session to have the exact same slide graphics and color scheme? And why do they always seem to be orange? Plus, those header, footer, and sidebar images really compete with the content. Is your association logo more important than my content? (Don’t answer that.)
I understand the benefit of having the same look/message displayed at the beginning and end of each presentation – and I even understand the value of having the last slide serve as a promotion for association services/events. However, I do not see the benefit of mandated template slides for the core presentation.
Another problem is that requiring the use of template slides also implies speakers should use slides! And that’s a dangerous implication given the widespread abysmal use of Powerpoint slides. Of course slides have the potential to enhance a presentation, but when is the last time you were moved by a slide deck?
If you really want to make an impact to your conference sessions, nix the slide template and instead provide guidance and tools to your speakers to help them deliver more effective presentations, with or without visuals. A few ideas:
- Be flexible in room set-up and AV requests; requiring classroom set-up and a podium mike is begging for a traditional lecture.
- Provide speakers with as much information about the audience and their needs as possible; don’t assume they’ll do the research on their own.
- Ask speakers to identify and provide to you their key points (you’d be surprised how many speakers can and will present without ever identifying key points!).
- Provide a guidance document that outlines principles of effective presentations (you can find several model documents online).
- Provide speaker training sessions virtually and at your events - these could be by invitation only or for all potential speakers.
- Hire a presentation coach to work with your speakers one-on-one.
- Establish an arrangement with a presentation coach to offer discounted coaching sessions to your speakers in exchange for your promoting his or her services to that target.
Dump the Happy Sheets
I am going out on a limb here, because I am not an expert in research methods, but I think it is time that we stopped using the standard evaluation forms at conferences. I started my career in the conflict resolution training business, and at the end of each of our training events, we gave our participants an evaluation form. It asked five or ten questions about the quality of the event, the instructors, etc., using a five-point Likert scale. We compiled the scores and included the data in our report to the funders.
Can anyone guess what the scores were? Around 4. There was slight variation (down to maybe 3.5), as some groups were more or less impressed with the venue or the instructors or the content. I learned early on that the instructors derogatorily referred to these evaluation forms as “happy sheets.”
Flash forward fifteen years, and here I am speaking for the association community, anxiously waiting to get back my evaluations to see if I am staying above the magic 4.0 line.
Stop. Throw these forms away. Never use them again. Go back to the drawing board and ask again (or maybe for the first time?), WHY are you using these sheets? I am guessing that the standard answers are things like, we need to compare the quality of different speakers (or the same speaker over time), or we want to know if participants are satisfied with their experience.
Those are laudable goals, but are the happy sheets really getting you there?
Quality of speakers should be based on the impact they have on participants, which is not always measurable at the end of the session (or even a few days later). Some speakers (dare I say, some of my fellow authors!) design sessions specifically to provoke new thinking in the audience. This can be uncomfortable for the participant in the moment, but immensely valuable over the long term. Other speakers need to deliver specific content to help people accomplish a specific task. One person can get tremendous benefit from both sessions, but in the moment rate the provocative session lower than the “just what I needed” session, whose impact is more immediately apparent. Happy sheets don’t tell you who your good speakers are.
Happy sheets don’t tell you much about the participants’ real experience either. As Amy Smith wrote in the first edition of the book, there are critical questions you need to ask when designing your learning experience in the first place, like what are the business problems of your participants that you can help to solve. With those in place, you should design some research to see whether or not your event made progress against those goals. You may find that more qualitative tools will be more effective than happy sheets. Do interviews with participants. Sit in and observe the speakers. Have a session at the conference where a facilitator can have a back-and-forth conversation with participants about what is working or not working at the conference (entice them with some good break food!). Gather data six months later in addition to right after the meeting. If nothing else, you should at least experiment with some of these methods.
The happy sheets provide relatively instant feedback, so I know they are “satisfying” to an organizer. But that is about you. Your event evaluation should be about the event and the customer, and it should be focused on learning, not earning a score. Approach this as a research issue, and design your evaluation research so it will generate learning, which then leads to experimenting and changing the way you do things.
When Data Crunches You
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.
Spend Less on Promotions, More on Concept
Marketing is the full process of conceptualization, pricing, promotion, and distribution of a program, product or service. Intellectually you probably knew this, but do you live it? In reality, too often the focus of association “marketing” is a slick brochure or an e-mail blast. This, of course, isn’t very effective.
Try something different. For those products that aren’t selling well, cut your promotions budget in half. Then apply those resources to product concept (or re-concept). Why? It may be your product that is the problem, rather than the promotions. You can promote the heck out of a mediocre product but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a mediocre product. So, most of those promotional dollars are wasted. Even if you’ve created a gem of a promotional campaign and gotten buyers for that mediocre product, will they be satisfied buyers? Repeat buyers?
Consider this real case. An association has been offering a certificate of training program for the past six years. It spends very little on promotion - a listing on its website, occasional e-blasts, and a simple printed flier included in select mailings. Yet, almost all programs have sold out - many with a long waiting list. How? They spent their time wisely and generously on program concept and design. The program meets a real need, and exceeds participant expectations. Now, they don’t have to promote the program; it sells itself. Well, actually, graduates of the program sell it for them. Evaluations data show that over 95% of participants would recommend it to a colleague…and they do. Word-of-mouth marketing at its best.
Consider which of your products, services or programs aren’t selling well regardless of how much you promote them. Then, delve into the product’s concept. Who is the target? What are their needs? Is this product meeting a need? If not, can it be redesigned to meet a need? Is it a mediocre product or a remarkable one? Is it so remarkable that your buyers will “sell” it for you through word-of-mouth? Can you make it so? (Of course, remember that not all products are worthy of a redesign; some may need to be retired.)
A place to start: the product of membership. Do you really need to promote membership more…or do you need to work on making it worth buying?
Language Matters
On an association listerver discussion recently, several members debated the pros and cons of what to call their volunteer leadership group: board of directors or board of trustees. The consensus conclusion was that it really doesn’t matter. What matters is the way the Board does its work, not what we call it. We have heard this argument before. For example, since the first release of the book, we have engaged people in the association community in conversations about different approaches to strategic planning. When we propose a new way of doing strategy work, people often respond with, “Well, that’s what we do, but we call it strategic planning; this is an issue of semantics.”
While I agree wholeheartedly that action is critical, I think the association community is underestimating the power of language. Dee Hock, the founder of VISA International, has said, “Language is only secondarily the means by which we communicate. It is primarily the means by which we think.” The words we choose can actively change the way we see the world, and this can then change the way we behave. We are frequently not aware of the impact it has, so it is important that the association community pay more attention to the language it uses. Better execution is fundamentally about different action, and this requires careful attention to the words we use.
Michael Roberto is an expert in decision making, and he has done research that demonstrates the power of simple word choice. For example, at a hospital in Minnesota, a manager was trying to address the issue of medical accidents. She noticed that the language that was used in the official reporting of these incidents was focused on “accusing, blaming, and criticizing” individuals. The leader changed the language that was used in reporting so that it emphasized both the systemic causes and the importance of learning from mistakes that were made. When they changed the language, the hospital actually started reporting MORE accidents, but was also able to learn from them and make improvements.
It is rarely a case of changing a single word, like director to trustee. But if you wanted to change the behavior of your board away from individuals who seek to control and direct the operations, towards a group that worked to protect the interests of the enterprise, changing that word (and a host of other words) could be critical. You would also have to change some processes and have some important conversation with the Board members, but attempting to make the change without addressing issues of language can slow you down. The same is true if you want your staff to think more strategically on a regular basis, and the same is true if you want your people to place more attention to quality control.
Language matters.
Stifling Ideas, Stifling People
While finalizing an online learning program for preceptors (clinical setting teachers), I saw a table with the phrases preceptors should never use with students. I couldn’t help but share them here. I think the reason is obvious.
Phrases Preceptors Shouldn’t Use
That’s not the way we do things here.
I don’t think that will work.
We don’t have the resources to do that.
Don’t you think that’s more trouble than it is worth?
Please just stick to your responsibilities; I’ll worry about everything else.
The way we’re doing it now is working just fine.
Because I said so.
I began my career in association management at the age of 23. Through a fortunate series of events, I landed a great association continuing education job for which I was (on paper anyway) under qualified. I should have had 5-10 years of experience and a master’s degree. I had neither. But, in true GenX style, that didn’t stop me. I set out to transform my little corner of the association world. I had ideas and was ready to make an impact. Sadly, however, I hit roadblocks at every turn - many of them in the form of the statements above. Indeed I was young and inexperienced (naive, as I was reminded more than once). I didn’t know how it was supposed to be done in associations. My boss at the time did not see that maybe that was a good thing, maybe that allowed me to see the possibilities. My boss just saw my youth and asserted that I just needed to “stick with the program” and not try to change anything until I had more experience (until I was fully entrenched into the way they’d always done it?). Well, the status quo isn’t really my thing, and I would not have lasted long under those conditions. Luckily for me, a consultant came in to lead the department during a time of transition and she supported and even mentored me in making significant changes. I will never forget the contrast of the WHADITW and “you are too young to know” attitude of the boss versus the consultant’s value of ideas and change and her ability to see beyond my age. (BTW, they were approximately the same age.)
I’ve now been in the field 17 years — yes, I’m 40, the eldest of the Independent Thinkers, I might add. 
— and I am ashamed to say that every once in a while I catch myself starting to question the merit of ideas based on the age of the idea holder. To be honest, I more often jump to the conclusion that a Boomer or beyond is of the WHADITW mindset than I conclude youth equals ill-informed idea. But when that happens, so far I’ve been quick to catch and scold myself not to make any conclusions until I hear them out. Do you?
Do you let preconceived notions about people hamper your ability to hear them? Are you so entrenched in the ways you do things that you close yourself off to the possibilities? Are you stifling the creativity of those around you?
The next time someone approaches you with an idea, just stop right there. Don’t judge; don’t react. Pause. Say, “Tell me more.” Then, really listen (not listening with the intent to respond, but listening with the intent to understand - which is very different). Then, even if you are not convinced about the idea’s merit, consider the risk of idea failure relative to the potential learning and empowerment opportunity for the individual. What do you really have to lose?
And, by the way, if you ever hear me utter the words, “Because I said so.’, just shoot me.
Would anyone notice?
Cindy suggests we should all stop some things and see if anyone notices! Great idea, Cindy. In her case, it was a print newsletter that didn’t go out - and nobody did seem to notice or care. What little (or big) things are you doing just because you’ve always done it that way? Are you spending time or money on things that wouldn’t be missed?
For starters, how about:
Standing meetings or teleconferences
Detailed meeting minutes/reports
Expensive marketing brochures (that one’s for you Scott)
And, for the record, I would NOT have missed the seemingly expensive CenterU calendar I just received in the mail. An e-mail with a link to the calendar would do just fine.
Don’t Feel So Bad
For all the criticisms we have of “always done it that way” thinking, we should probably point out that there are some strong psychological forces that push us in that direction. This quote is from an article by Donald Sull in the MIT Sloan Management Review:
Psychologists have documented a depressingly long list of factors that keep people locked into the confines of their established mental models. For example, people often escalate their commitment to a failed course of action in order to avoid admitting any mistakes, or they fixate on data that confirm their expectations while ignoring or downplaying any contradictory information.
Sull’s suggestion, then, is to ensure that organizations build in “frequent and rigorous” opportunities to make revisions to strategies and plans.
Beyond PowerPoint
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.
Beyond PowerPoint
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.
The Psychology of Always Done It That Way
The folks at 37 Signals put up a nice post that gets at the psychological traps that can snare us in WHADITW thinking. Their solution is to start projects with ONLY four hours of work, before they “come up for air” and reevaluate.
“When you’ve done nothing, you don’t have a realistic view of what it’s going to take. But when you’ve spent days or weeks on something, you can get too invested. It becomes hard to change, admit you’re wrong, or that what you’ve been doing isn’t actually worth more effort.”
Imagine if you’d been doing it that way for years! Oh…right….you can.
Is there an imagination deficit in associations today?
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.
The Status Quo Losing Status
The folks at Acronym seem to be in an “Always Done It That Way” mood lately. From the last two posts:
But you could take the time to sit down and say, “What fossils are there in our structure and processes that we can dig up and evolve beyond?” I bet you’ll be surprised at where they’re buried.
Lisa Junker
Tells me that too much reward is given for meeting the status quo and not enough emphasis is being placed on finding creative or innovative solutions to the many needs that are constantly evolving around us.
Scott Briscoe
WHADITW authors featured in Association Meetings
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.
We’ve Done It That Way for 362 Years!
The Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper just decided to go digital only and stop printing a paper version of their newspaper. It was started in 1645 by the Queen of Sweden as a way of updating the populace on government affairs. Now it consists primarily of legal notices from companies and government agencies in Sweden (up to 1,500 a day) which is really better suited as a database application in any case.
Just goes to show that you can make significant change even when bucking centuries of tradition.
Example of Far Reaching Change from a Single Event
This story in the Washington Post provides a tragic and inspiring example of change: A Crash’s Improbable Impact. The story is about how the crash of Air Florida on a DC bridge in 1982 illuminated how communicating as they always had in the cockpit decreased the safety of the flights. It then led to dramatic change in how pilots, ship captains and even surgeons interact with their crews. Here is an excerpt:
As experts and airline executives digested the safety board’s report, they began to more closely scrutinize other problems in the cockpit that day. It emerged that Pettit and Wheaton were emblematic of aviation’s lingering cowboy culture, a residue of an era when fighter jocks from World War II and Korea flew for the airlines. In that gung-ho environment, captains were always right. They did not need advice, and co-pilots and other crew members often were afraid to assert themselves.
“It was a more romantic time frame when aviation, wasn’t just a transportation system, but that needed to change,” said Larry Rockliff, vice president of training for Airbus North America.
It Really Isn’t So
How many times have you read or heard that people remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, 50% of what they see and hear, etc. The theory is rampant in the training field. I’ve read it in the literature and seen it on many Powerpoint presentations, including several of ASAE & the Center’s. Well, get this: the information is bogus. This is according to Dr. Will Thalheimer, President of Work-Learning Research Inc., whose goal is to provide research-based information to the training and learning community. On his blog, he outlines his search for the source of the data (which appears to be non-existent, by the way).
Dr. Thalheimer is not suggesting that learners don’t benefit from multi-faceted or collaborative learning. He is simply pointing out that the percentages of retention by learning type that we have all assumed to be truth are, in fact, fiction. Just goes to show that you can’t believe everything you’ve seen, or heard, or seen and heard”¦
Makes me wonder what other false “truths” are being perpetuated in our community. How often do we just trust the information we hear? Should we?
This makes me think of the conversations I’ve heard lately about the 7 Measures project. There has been criticism that the research did not include small associations, and the question posed about whether, then, the results can be applied to them. One of the research leads publicly commented that
“our findings are very consistent with the literature on systems and learning organizations. Most of the organizations with which I work in my consulting practice have budgets of $3,000,000 or less. My experience with such associations and my understanding of systems research tells me that the principles that make large organizations remarkable holds true for smaller organizations. ” In the presentations I’ve heard on the 7 Measures, they are being advocated for associations of all sizes. Is there harm in that? Not likely, since the measures are sound business principles. But, it is important for us to distinguish between what the data actually supported and what it didn’t.
We’ve Never Done It That Way, But Would You Read It?
We Are Smarter Than Me is a new effort to publish a book that is collaboratively written by thousands of volunteers. The topic they are focusing on is how collaborative efforts can impact traditional top-down corporate activities.
A few books have recently been written on this topic, but they all fail to confront one central paradox. While they extol the power of communities, they were each written by only one person. We’re putting this paradox to the test by inviting hundreds of thousands of authors to contribute to this “network book” using today’s technologies.
This approach takes the idea of beta publishing to the extreme end of the continuum of participation. Beta publishing leverages a book’s audience to improve the quality of the book. However, there is still a single author whose vision and voice is embodied in the work. I honestly have my doubts about how well this concept will work when extended to authoring as well. It will require strong editing skills to hold together as a coherent book.
What do you think? Is this an interesting one-off experiment or the new wave of publishing?
Ignoring the Means
(Note: the idea for this post was generated by Ben Martin over at the CAE Blog. Thanks Ben! Is this what you had in mind?)
Association executives are understandably results-focused (pardon the jargon). The CEO of an association answers to the Board”â€a group of people who are not expected to be experienced in running nonprofit organizations, and are expected to change positions or rotate off the board every year. If you want to keep your job in this context, then you had better produce visible results.
With this focus on results, however, comes a tendency to ignore the very powerful impact of the means used to produce those results. There are always several paths to the results we seek, and the choices we make along those paths have real consequences for staff, volunteers, and other stakeholders as well. While the attitude of “I don’t care what it takes, let’s just get it done” is in fact admired in our culture, it can get you into trouble.
For example, several researchers in the area of emotional intelligence in the workplace have noted that the “pacesetter” style of leadership is only effective in the short term. Leaders that drive people hard”â€and in the process run roughshod over emotions and relationships”â€may produce results in the short term, but over the long-term the negative impact of that behavior on other people in the office takes its toll. Systems cannot sustain themselves in that kind of environment, and long-term results are better supported by environments marked by understanding, compassion and empowerment.
It doesn’t need to be a harsh, pace-setting environment, however, for the focus on results to become a problem. Too many associations, for example, end up putting too much pressure on their senior staff to get things done (and done “right”Â). Out of a desire to get things done, senior staff in associations often end up hoarding work to themselves. It’s easier to just do it themselves, they argue, than to include other staff in the process or delegate parts of the work to others in the organization. While it is true that when they do it themselves they generate good results, they also create an environment where talented younger staff learn that they are not trusted to do substantive work. This will sap initiative from these younger workers and likely lead to higher turnover. The time saved and the decreased risk of quality problems are often offset by overall productivity and turnover costs.
Even at the Board level, the means are just as important as the ends. Too many associations hire consultants to deliver complex strategic planning processes that focus almost exclusively on the ends: an elegant and detailed strategic plan. In most cases, they are successful in generating those results (the plans are quite nice!), but in the process they have failed to develop the capacity of the Board or the staff to think or act strategically on an ongoing basis. How you develop the plan is as important (if not more important) than the plan that emerges. With increased attention to the means, you can still generate a clear strategy, but you can do it in a way that will actually increase the chances of an organization being able to leverage the strategy for long-term results.
In the long run, knowing that the means to an end is an end in itself is a far more efficient and effective management principle than the ends justify the means.
Beta Publishing
What would happen if you took the first draft of something you were writing and actually published and distributed it? We know this feels counterintuitive”â€why not wait until it has been reviewed, edited, proofed, etc.? Why risk tarnishing your image by putting something out there that is still rough around the edges?
Of course, rhetorical questions like these are precisely why we are writing this book. Those questions assume that the way we used to do it is the way we should do it today”â€an assumption that mistakenly discounts the speed of change in today’s environment. While “products” have traditionally been tested, refined, and developed within the walls of an organization and then released as finished goods, the influence of the software development community is changing the way things are done. The software industry has been able to grow and be more effective by actually releasing “beta” versions of programs. Users recognize that these products are not finished (thus not perfect), but in exchange for the rough edges, they get to provide feedback to the designers and actually have an impact on the final product. This concept has now been extended to the book publishing field as well, particularly by Pragmatic Programmers Press.
And if you are reading this in hard copy form, then you are experiencing this trend first hand. The five authors of this book decided months ago to write a book, titled “We’ve Always Done It That Way: 101 Things the Association Community Must Change.” Not content to release only a final version, we have been posting sections of the book to the Always Done it That Way blog for some time. With approximately one third of the text written, we decided to publish a small amount of hard copies in beta format. With this limited distribution we intend to get feedback from readers”â€we want your help in creating a final product that people will find useful, inspiring, and thought-provoking (you can actually provide feedback on the book’s blog at http://www.alwaysdoneitthatway.com).
We are not “concerned” about publishing this draft, because we are open to seeing the value in new ways of doing things. We know that beta publishing demonstrates our trust and faith in our customers. We know that customers that are involved in the creation of the product are more likely to evangelize it. We know that the meaning and relevance of the word “polished” are changing, and we are willing to change the way we have always done things in order to be more successful. Are you?
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