We Have Always Done It That Way

2008 is fast approaching, and it is going to be a very significant, and quite possibly, historic year for both our country and our world. Not only will America elect its 44th president next fall, but all eyes will be on Beijing during the month of August as China plays host to the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. On a very personal level, I’m looking forward to celebrating my 40th birthday in March 2008. Well, that’s not exactly true. I’m neither “looking forward to” nor “celebrating” the conclusion of my 40th year of life, but I am paying close attention to what I can learn from the inevitability of this important milestone, as well as what new inspiration and imagination its arrival will bring.

This spirit of discovery and possibility in the face of inexorable reality fills me with a genuine hope that 2008 will be a momentous year for our association community as well, a time in which our commitment to meaningful innovation is dominant, and our “we have always done it that way” reflex is in decline. To help nurture this hope in others, I want to propose three “commitments” of learning and action for the association community to pursue in the coming year. Individually, each of these commitments is about building stronger organizations and, by design, a stronger and more authentic community of associations. When taken together, progress on these commitments could be a wellspring of innovation, with broader positive implications for society.

+Commit to build new capacity for association stewardship—Far too many associations, especially small organizations, continue to struggle with the profound challenges of making a complete transition into the 21st Century. The ambiguity and uncertainty unleashed by rapid and on-going paradigm shift creates unprecedented difficulties for all associations. Our traditional business models are decaying, and our standard practices are not delivering their usual impact, if they still work at all. To flourish in the years ahead, our community needs boards, CEOs and other senior leaders who are willing to be inventive, decisive and bold in the pursuit of new forms of success.

+Commit to tear down our irrelevant, self-imposed boundaries—One of the major business imperatives for all associations is the full embrace of inclusion in every conceivable dimension. Diversity is not (and has never been) a human resources buzzword, but a true reflection of our enormous national promise. It is now time for our community to demonstrate that it can fully realize this reservoir of untapped potential. At the same time, we should acknowledge that inclusion isn’t merely a domestic issue. Associations must stretch beyond the limitations of geographic borders, shake off the fear of what we do not understand and reach out to a global, dynamic and diverse network of colleagues to connect, collaborate and create value on behalf of our members and customers.

+Commit to take action on strategic social responsibility—In 2008, all associations will have the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to a critical dialogue on the importance of strategic social responsibility to our community, our country and our planet. The Global Summit on Social Responsibility, which ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership will convene in the spring of 2008, will be the platform for a robust exchange of ideas around how associations can capitalize on the exciting new business opportunities created when we collaborate to develop solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental and social problems. Strategic social responsibility isn’t about community service or doing good works. It’s about protecting and investing in what was entrusted to us to ensure that it is sustainable for those who will inherit it. It’s not about self-interest. It’s about shared interest.

If we are able to act on these three commitments, we can be catalysts for the kind of deep-seated change and innovation that originally inspired the creation of this book. So will you accept the challenge?

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Strategy, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jeff De Cagna
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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?

Tags: Professional Development, The Way We Execute, The Way We Lead by Mickie
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In the first edition of this book, I advocated separating “strategy” and “plan.” The primary reason is that when we do “strategic planning,” we end up bolting the weight of our strategy to the details of our plan, making it hard to change, to take in new information, and, in many cases, even to implement. Planning and strategy are simply two different things. They should be “tethered” together, not “bolted.”

But the standard response to my argument since that first edition has been: “Okay, but if we don’t do strategic planning, what do we do instead?” The answer is, you do the real work of strategy. Unfortunately, too many associations find the real work of strategy unfamiliar, and even uncomfortable.

The real work of strategy focuses first on strategic direction—clarifying precisely what drives the association’s success and orienting all decision-making, implementation, and learning in that direction. Honestly, most associations do not do this. They are good at identifying their mission, and they know what programs and services they have, but they rarely can articulate “middle level” strategic thinking that helps everyone from the Board down to the staff understand not only where they are headed, but how they can best get there given the current operating environment. Strategy becomes a guide that everyone uses to evaluate decisions and understand changes in the environment, rather than a thirty-nine-page instruction manual that tells people what they should do.

The second focus of the real work of strategy is learning. What if the world weren’t linear? What if you had to articulate a strategic direction, knowing that you would need to change it on an ongoing basis, but at irregular intervals, based on how the real world unfolds, rather than on the availability of your executive committee? If the world did work that way (and, of course, it does), then you would need to build your organization (structure, process, culture) around learning. Suddenly the work of strategy becomes integrated at all levels, as everyone learns from what they are doing and feeds that learning back into strategic decisions.
Strategy may not be a new concept in your association, but what about the real work of strategy? If you want to go down this road, then prepare yourselves to do things differently. For example:

• Demand creativity. Thriving without creativity only happens in that non-existent linear world.
• Bring more voices into your strategy process. It’s not just beneficial; it is required.
• Describe your association’s entire strategy on the back and front of one page. If you can’t tell a simple story, the system won’t be able to make it happen.
• Re-evaluate your meetings. To learn from what you are doing, you need better conversations.

Tags: Strategy, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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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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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.

Tags: Innovation, The Way We Execute, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Mickie
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There has been a positively raging firestorm of personal attacks in the association blogoclump on the idea of marketing. OK, more like spirited debate of the ideas while maintaining respect for each other individually but that didn’t sound as exciting.

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

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

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

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

What was the result?

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

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

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

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

Tags: Membership, Strategy, The Way We Involve Others, The Way We Lead by David
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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
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Organizations are hierarchical, and associations are no exception. As membership organizations, a hierarchy is unavoidable. There are thousands of members, but you can only have so many on the Board. Authority cannot be distributed evenly, so structures are created to hold that authority, giving the small number of people in those positions the ability to wield the authority.

But we do not refer to it as authority. We call it leadership. Most associations refer to “volunteer leadership” when they are speaking of the specific positions of authority and decision making power that they have created for members (Board, committees, etc.). On the staff side, “the leadership” refers to the CEO and, if the organization is large enough, the senior management team. These people get the title of leadership simply because they have authority to make decisions, commit resources, and tell other people what to do.

There is nothing wrong with authority, but it is not the same as leadership. I would challenge association executives to actually develop a clear definition of leadership (it is one of those words whose meaning is assumed, but never made explicit). In order to get you thinking, I will provide a definition of leadership given by management guru Peter Senge (author of The Fifth Discipline):

Leadership is the capacity in the human community to shape the future.

Senge broadens the definition by referring to the “human community” but you can replace those words with smaller systems, like “your association.” Leadership is a capacity that exists throughout the system, not just in the positions of authority. While your positions of authority are important, they are only a small slice of leadership in your association. Think about the implications of this.

Leadership development activities on the volunteer side typically include a multi-year journey through task forces, committees, and, eventually the Board. What else can you do with your members to enable them to better help you shape the future? Do they need to meet in person twice a year to do this? Do they need to have been in the association for ten years? What can you do at our annual meeting that develops leaders, but without expecting or promising a tour on the Board?

On the staff side, the same questions apply. What are you doing to develop the leadership capacity of your entry-level employees? Feel free to continue training your authority positions in how best to wield authority, but don’t stop there. Senge mentioned in a lecture recently that nearly all positive, long-term change programs in organizations are created by line managers (not the executive team). The Executive Team has a critical leadership role in making that change happen, of course, but if you want to more effectively shape the future (and get better results), you need to build capacity at all levels.

Tags: The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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Seth Godin has a nice post about business’ resistance to change. I particularly like the last two paragraphs:

Business as usual is almost always lousy marketing, because there isn’t a lot of room for growth. The opportunities kick in when an external force requires a brand new story, when consumers are choosing to pay attention because they’ve got no other choice.

It’s easy to argue against change. It disheartens shareholders and even employees. But external change is the most likely lever of growth, because it puts you back on the agenda of attention.

Although it raises a question for me: do associations really want growth?

Tags: The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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Every few months a discussion pops up on the ASAE Executive Section listserve about how to get young people onto the Board. Some even consider creating a permanent slot for a single young leader to occupy.

This really misses the point entirely. This is not a structural governance problem. It is a recruitment problem.

A Board that is heavily loaded with people who have been around the association for decades has failed to recruit new blood. Creating a token slot for a young person will get you just that: a person who will be discounted from the start because they are a token to diversity. Fundamentally changing your recruitment practices to identify leadership candidates throughout the membership will provide a more diverse array of candidates and most likely find some leaders you would never have known about.

To get better leaders you need to become a better recruiter.

Tags: The Way We Involve Others, The Way We Lead by David
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There is a great article on leadership in Harvard Business Review (I also blogged about it on my blog). It suggests four basic areas of leadership (not all of which need to be mastered by that sole leader at the top of the system):

Sensemaking
Relating
Visioning
Inventing

We must make sense of the world and our particular context, we must have positive relationships with others, we must create a compelling story about the future, and we have to make it happen. These all seem to resonate with what we wrote about in the book, but the last one, inventing, has a distinctive WHADITW ring to it. Here’s a quote:

In fact, inventing is similar to execution, but the label “inventing” emphasizes that this process often requires creativity to help people figure out new ways of working together.

The article provides four tips for cultivating inventiveness:

1. Don’t assume that the way things have always been done is the best way to do them. [Amen!]
2. When a new task or change effort emerges, encourage creative ways of getting it done.
3. Experiment with different ways of organizing work. Find alternatives methods for grouping and linking people.
4. When working to understand your current environment, ask yourself “What other options are possible?”

Tags: The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer has a great WHADITW column in Business 2.0 this month. It talks about the “competency trap”:

“The concept is deceptively simple. Organizations try things. If what they do succeeds, they ‘learn’ that what they have done breeds success. So they persist, becoming ever more focused in what they do, and ever more specialized in the skills they acquire.

But two things invariably happen to undermine success. Competitors soon learn how to do the same thing, and conditions change, so that what worked in the past no longer applies. Companies have trouble adapting because they often build competencies that don’t advance new products, markets, or strategies,. Hence the phrase, ‘competency trap.’”

His response? Avoid excessive specialization, develop peripheral vision, and understand that success breeds its own problems.

Tags: The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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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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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.

Tags: Staff Issues, The Way We Execute, The Way We Involve Others, The Way We Lead, The Way We Manage, The Way We Work Together, We've Always Done It That Way by David
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Associations are afraid of rejection. They want to please everyone. They do not want to offer something unless they know that people will show up and will provide universally glowing evaluation forms. The desire to produce high-quality and high-value products and services, of course, is laudable. But it is important to remember that the path to that high-value endpoint will often take you through rejection and frustration. To assume that you can always get it right simply denies our own experience.

Who makes the right decisions all the time? Who accurately predicts what people will want or need with 100% accuracy? The very best hitters in professional baseball fail to get base hits 65% of the time. We learn, grow, and are successful in life by trying and sometimes failing. As long as we learn from what did not work, we make great progress. The more we try, the more we learn, and the more successful we are.

But associations forget this. They are reluctant to experiment””what if the members don’t like it? What if we get low scores on the evaluation forms? Two of us were planning a session for a conference with the client and we proposed a format that was non-traditional for this client. They balked. Their main concern: what if people come into the room, see the nontraditional format, and then leave for another session.

Our response: great! This session is not designed to please everyone. Some may want to go elsewhere, but we think some will like it and want to stay. But we will only know this if we try. We will only learn what works if we risk being rejected.

Tags: Innovation, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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Yet another component of strategic planning that we feel needs changing is the tendency to structure the planning work by department. When it comes time to do the strategic plan, each department takes stock of its activities and translates them into quantifiable goals for the upcoming year. Predictably, the strategic plan has a section for each department, complete with goals, action plans, and timelines. While it is true that each department will spend time doing different things throughout the year, this approach to strategy has some major flaws.

First, it reinforces the status quo. Updating strategy morphs into merely updating the metrics on a previously devised strategy. The strategy stays the same each year: you do your meetings, your education, your membership activities””it’s only a question of how much. This year becomes last year plus three percent. This may generate results in the short run, but this approach removes innovation from the equation, so it will certainly fall short over the long term. Like every living thing, organizations (and their strategies) must change.

Second, it reinforces those “silos” that everyone complains about. Each department creates its own goals by itself, so it stands to reason that implementation will be a solitary activity as well. This can actually inhibit cooperation and information sharing. Departments can create priorities that eventually come into conflict, but as you were focusing on your department’s goals, you missed the opportunity to resolve the issue early on (when it was easy to resolve), and now it is a crisis. This is typically perceived as the “other” department letting you down, which creates an even deeper divide between departments.

Third, it inhibits a truly strategic reaction to changes in the operating environment. Sometimes a key strategic issue will emerge that impacts only one department””but that is rare. Strategic issues affect departments differently, but when each department plans and implements independently, you are unable to get a coordinated response. For one department it is a crisis, but for another it is a low priority, so they do not respond on the same time schedule, slowing the response time for the whole organization.

The solution to this problem lies first and foremost at the top of the organization. The CEO and the heads of each department must create opportunities for cross-program strategy generation and implementation. While there is certainly a portion of the senior manager’s attention that focuses exclusively on their department, if they do not devote time to hashing out overall organizational priorities on a regular basis, they will fall into the silo trap. When the senior team can work effectively through cross-program priority setting, they can then manage their own department’s priorities and actions more effectively.

Tags: Strategy, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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There was a quote in the winter 2006 Journal of Association Leadership that reflects a fundamental stumbling block in the association community. In the commentary to an article about strategy making, Adrienne Bien expressed concern about the resistance the author encountered when bringing a new approach to strategy to his association:

“For most associations, this resistance would be a red flag, as we tend to avoid conflict and steer away from disruptions to the volunteer structures that are the backbones of our organizations.”

Forget just the volunteer structures: associations steer away from disruption. We want things to go smoothly. We want things to go as we planned them. We want the activities of the association to unfold predictably, resulting in universal acclaim and positive feedback.

And then there is real life. In real life there are disruptions. Yes, we can plan, and we can certainly strive to do things that people find valuable (maybe we’ll get all “fives” on our evaluation sheets!). As life unfolds, however, we are bound to find disruptions. People don’t show up. The program is not making participants happy. The staff does not like the new initiative we just announced.

At that moment, you need to embrace the disruption, rather than avoiding it. Disruptions are infinitely more valuable than your stack of “happy sheets” with all fives on them. Disruptions open your eyes to new possibilities. Disruptions support you in confronting the truth. Without disruptions, you would continue to do what you’ve always done””even if it isn’t working.

Avoiding or ignoring the disruptions is certainly tempting. At the first sign of disruption, you can look the other way. You can silence the disruptive voices. You can stop asking questions, in order to avoid disruptive answers. That feels more comfortable. By focusing on the positive messages, you feel good about the way things are going. If you need to, you can explain away the disruption””they don’t know what they are talking about, they are not a representative sample.

Don’t do that. Resist the temptation. Ask yourself which is more important: comfort or success? Your chances for success increase proportionally with the amount of information you let in, and by avoiding disruptions you close off a critical channel of information, resulting in missed opportunities for growth and change. The next time you have a disruption””even one in your volunteer structure””move towards it instead of away from it. Learn more about it. Ask questions. Dig deeper. The decisions that emerge will be smarter.

Tags: Innovation, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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The association community is almost obsessed with strategic planning. Although more room is now being given to the dissenting opinion that perhaps the way we have always done strategic planning is no longer serving us, there are still many out there who stand unquestioningly behind their two-day retreats, their SWOT analyses, and their thirty-nine-page, three-ring-bound strategic plans that effectively become “credenza-ware” for the next two to three years.

There are many problems with traditional strategic planning, and we address several in this book. One critical problem is literally the combination of those two words: strategic and planning. Everyone agrees that associations need strategy. Without a clear strategy, the association would simply wake up each week, look at what is right in front of them, and respond to that. We would expect less than ideal results. A strategy exists to guide decision making and should reflect careful thinking about how and why the association will succeed.

Organizations also need planning. It’s not enough simply to know where you are headed. If you ignore the details of how you are going to get there, then you are likely to end up in a significantly different place, or at the right place, but at the wrong time.

But combining strategy and planning (as is done in traditional strategic planning) is very dangerous, because strategy and planning are very different things. The strategy is incredibly important and relatively stable and constant. It should take a significant amount of information and conversation to produce a strategic change. Planning, on the other hand, does not have that weight. It is a means to an end, and should be much more flexible. But when we combine strategy and plan, we end up adding the weight of the strategy to the plan, and this creates dangerous inflexibility.

Consultant and author Jeffrey Pfeffer recently wrote about a CEO who was heading toward failure because he had “convinced himself that his strategy was the only way to go.” As Pfeffer said, “if you become so attached to your course of action that proving it right becomes more important than your overall success, chances are you are not going to succeed.” (Business 2.0, November 2005)

When plans are too tightly linked to the strategy, then they actually invite blind commitment (“but it’s part of the strategic plan””we can’t change that?!”). While of course your planning process should involve an awareness of and discussion of the strategy, there needs to be some distance, so everyone will be clear about when they are making a strategic move versus when they are modifying a means to an end. The trick is to think and act strategically while modifying your plans, and to do that we recommend simply, but powerfully, changing your language. Talk about strategy. Talk about planning. But do not talk about (or do) strategic planning.

Tags: Strategy, The Way We Lead, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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