Today I saw one that probably should have been the cover graphic for our book.

But my biggest “Doh!” moment was this: at the end of the discussion, I was thanking everyone for giving up their break time and talking to me about it, and someone said, “No, we want to thank you for coming here – nobody has ever asked us what we thought about it before.”

I mean, I knew this was true, because I have made it my number one priority for us staff to have a real presence at all of our events and for all of our members to know who we are and be free to talk to us about anything. But to have someone actually say it, point blank, made me realize that there is a HUGE cultural shift that I need to make happen, where all members and students are made to feel part of our community, not just the core few who are involved the most. And all it takes to make that shift start to happen, is to be able to show that I care what each of them has to say. Which I do! So I will keep asking.

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?

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.

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.

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.