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.
February 9th, 2006 at 07:08am
David
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.
February 8th, 2006 at 09:04am
Jamie
Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect and Great Ideas keynote, advocates that great ideas are generated at the Intersection of different fields, cultures and perspectives. Yet, how often do we expect great things from our perpetual homogeneity?
As a case in point, I recently posted to the Great Ideas Blog about a meeting my husband’s engineering consulting firm held where they were trying to generate new business models for revenue generation. Guess who attended the meeting? A bunch of engineers who’ve worked at the firm 10+ years. Oh, and they were all 40+ year old white men. How many barrier-busting ideas do you think were generated there?
It’s easy to chuckle at the absurdity of that, yet consider the last group of staff or volunteers you brought together. How diverse was it? And by diverse, I don’t mean that you have one token minority. By the way, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was the token Gen Xer on a committee several years ago. I didn’t even realize it at first (or I’d have declined the offer). We had one meeting where we did brainstorming and prioritization of activities, but that was really all I contributed to. As the year passed, I recall thinking the committee was really inactive and hadn’t accomplished much. Then, I read a report and realized that the “committee” had actually accomplished a lot. Several key initiatives had been lead by senior committee members. I just hadn’t been involved in the program of work. I know that this group had just conducted research on the generations and that inclusion of Gen Xers was a priority for them. It’s too bad they really missed the boat in their implementation! Okay, I digress. Back to the point, how truly diverse is your board? Committees? Staff?
It’s tempting to surround ourselves with others just like us. It’s natural, it’s comfortable. But what’s the likelihood that it’s going to generate anything extraordinary? Or is it more likely they’ll all sit around agreeing with each other and the status quo?
How often do we purposefully hire staff or recruit volunteers of different backgrounds? Different cultures? Different ages? Different personalities or styles? Yes, heads may knock a bit, but out of that collision may just come a few (or many) great ideas.
And when those new volunteers or staff members start to question the status quo, resist the temptation to roll your eyes with frustration that they just don’t understand “how things work around here.” They don’t, and that’s a good thing. They haven’t yet been struck with the “we’ve always done it that way” disease. Shield them from infection, and their new perspectives may just transform your association IF you let them.
January 24th, 2006 at 09:52pm
Mickie
Anyone managing associations knows that when groups of people work more smoothly together, the organization’s results are bound to improve. Everyone agrees that a high-functioning team is a good thing.
The typical response, however, when an association has a team or a staff that does not seem to be performing at its best, is to do some “team building” with the team in question. This often means paying a large sum of money to a trainer or consultant who will bring the team to an interesting location for a one- or two-day off-site meeting where the team can get to know each other better, play some fun games, learn some interesting concepts about trust or communication, and head back to the office refreshed and “built” as a team.
Unfortunately, that is all a lie. While the team will have fun and will learn interesting and useful concepts, it is highly unlikely that the team will be any more “built” than it was before the retreat. How many times have you gone on a team building retreat, and when you get back to the office the team is more effective together for a period of approximately three months before it reverts back to its old, dysfunctional patterns? Teams are “built” only when they can consistently perform better than they were before. It is unlikely you can achieve that after one retreat.
Real team effectiveness is based on deeply rooted patterns of interaction that do not emerge simply because team members “get along” well or have fun together. Building teams is best accomplished by helping teams to actually identify and work through real work-based problems. This may include some skill building or discussion of new concepts, but it must always be done in the very real context of getting work done. Associations need to take team building more seriously by making it a part of ongoing management concerns. Build team performance into management performance reviews. Provide ongoing internal and external resources to support teams in identifying and building more successful work patterns. Allow teams the space to tackle the tougher issues like conflict and accountability, rather than encouraging them to merely get along better.
If you want to bring your senior management team to a resort for a weekend and have them do trust falls with each other, more power to you. But don’t pretend this is teambuilding. It may be a nice reward for the hard work your people have put in—they will likely emerge refreshed and relaxed. But keep the teambuilding real and make it an ongoing part of the work of your association.
December 19th, 2005 at 06:03am
Jamie
Why is everyone afraid of conflict? Board, members, committees, staff groups, leaders, followers—the one thing they all have in common is that they are afraid to confront each other with conflicts or significant differences in opinions.
For example, an association executive recently asked advice from colleagues on a listserver about what to do about a committee co-chair who had “done a lot of work…but stepped on lots of toes and caused extra work for staff.” The incoming president was suggesting not reappointing this person as co-chair.
Instead of dealing with the conflict, the first response is to end the relationship. Unfortunately, this response is typical. At all levels of associations people bury conflict. They hide it. They ignore it. They pretend it isn’t conflict. They lie about it. If it gets really bad, they raise the stakes and take actions that simply remove the possibility of the conflict emerging again (e.g., ending the relationship). Anything but confronting it head on (like, for example, having a candid conversation with a volunteer about how his behavior is upsetting other volunteers or staff).
It is true, of course, that everyone has had experiences of being in conflict where the situation got uncomfortable, tense, maybe even painful and frustrating. That’s why we run the other way. But remember—just because conflict has been unpleasant, doesn’t mean it always will be. Conflict is a natural part of every single human system, so instead of trying to avoid it (which is impossible), how about learning how to deal with it more effectively?
It isn’t rocket science. It takes a little bit of knowledge and perhaps some skill development, but mostly it takes the courage to simply try a new approach. Start small on the less “important” conflicts, and as you make progress you can tackle the bigger issues. But above all, start. The cost of ignoring conflict can be overwhelming.
When conflict is avoided, the real issues never get out on the table. A pattern will then emerge in your association where the “norm” is to hide what you really think (or at best vent about it at the water cooler). So at meetings, people talk around the difficult issues, retiring to their offices without a clear sense of what was agreed to or what they should do next. In fact, in cultures where conflict is routinely avoided, being “accountable” becomes quite difficult, and results suffer—all because we were afraid to deal with conflict.
So it may feel like it would be less painful to avoid that conflict, but don’t be fooled. In the long run you will suffer more by avoiding it. Start paying attention to the conflict in your association. Notice where it happens and notice when you and others avoid it. Then start the work of changing the pattern, and prepare yourself because the first step in changing the pattern will be for you to try dealing with your conflict differently.
December 2nd, 2005 at 09:13am
Jamie
I’m sitting here in NYC, attending a conference on innovation, and I’m thinking about things we can do to increase the likelihood of innovation in our organizations. Of course, there are many things we need to do, but eliminating all standing committees is a really simple and really high leverage idea.
Individually, each association committee is a pocket of bureaucracy. The totality of an association’s committee structure is the underpinning of an organization’s “infrastructure of the status quo.” So let’s shake it up! Here is a prescription for an alternative architecture of “collaborative groups” that I think can work for virtually every association:
1. No more than 6-8 members per group.
2. An equal number of staff and volunteers working together.
3. No chairs; co-facilitators, one staff and one volunteer rotating on a monthly basis.
4. A duration of no less than three months and no more than four months.
5. At the end, the group can reorganize and continue if the work requires it, but it must turnover at least half of its membership.
6. No reports, only conversations.
7. Everyone in a group gets to evaluate the contributions of every other member.
The idea here is to change the dynamics of collaboration and decisionmaking in associations by challenging the assumptions of how staff and volunteers should relate. True creativity and innovation emerges when there is shared respect for a diversity of views and “who’s in charge” is much less important than “who’s got a great idea?”
If we’re going to work on projects, we should work on them and complete them as quickly and intelligently as possible. If the original group assigned to work on something can’t get it done, then new people should be incorporated because new ideas likely are required. The result of group work shouldn’t be a report, but some set of outcomes. The role of the group should be engaging others in conversations about them to ensure they are the right outcomes.
Finally, this more flexible architecture should make it possible to develop both staff and volunteers and move them around to a variety of learning opportunities. The only way that we will help our people grow is by giving them feedback on where they already excel and where they need to do further work. Who better than group colleagues to do such evaluation?
Now, I know that everyone who reads this will want to come up with a hundred different objections to the idea. But let me invite you not to do that. Instead, try to improve it. Ask a different question: how could this work? That is a step in the right direction.
December 1st, 2005 at 07:51am
Jeff
We sometimes hear leaders in associations from both the staff side and the volunteer side debating the pros and cons of being “member driven” versus “staff driven.” We have yet to hear a compelling argument that rules definitively in favor of one over the other. It seems to vary by context, with the bottom line containing an unsurprising mix of responsibilities for driving divided between staff and members.
The debate over staff versus member driven, however, is really just a reframing of the more basic question: who is in charge? And while we agree that there is no singular or simple answer to that question at the macro level (the macro answer is “it depends”), this should not provide association leaders with an excuse for avoiding this question within their own, specific, micro-level situations.
To be successful, association leaders must clarify and pinpoint a specific answer to that question within their own context, and that is not just at the Board meetings, where the staff versus member paradigm would expect the topic to come up. Confusion about who is in charge appears elsewhere in the association’s business as well:
Staff
Association leaders often espouse “flat” organizations, valuing input from everyone, even suggesting “consensus” decision making. At the same time, however, they structure their organizations hierarchically, where reporting relationships define authority in a clear and vertical fashion. You must confront this contradiction so staff will understand when they have input and when they do not. There is room for broad input, but do not hide the fact that a very few actually have the decision making power on major questions. You need not concentrate all control in the hands of the managers, but be truthful and clear about areas where control is not shared, and everyone will work more effectively.
Related Organizations
When associations create related organizations (often driven by benefits of a different tax status), they too often create independent Boards and structures of organizations that they intend to be literally “subsidiaries” of the association. It is easy to focus on the purpose of the new organization, its mission, and empowering the new Board that is set up to lead effectively, and in doing so avoid the “who’s in charge” question entirely. The two Boards then operate for years, even decades, without confronting huge contradictions in expectations and purpose. Each Board feels it is in charge, yet it never confronts the issue head on.
It takes courage to confront these “who is in charge” conversations, but remember: while the conversations may be difficult, they won’t kill you, and the longer you put off having them, the more difficult they will be.
November 28th, 2005 at 05:00pm
Jamie
I am sometimes asked why associations need to bother with innovation. Why can’t associations simply do what they do, and focus on running their “businesses” as smartly and soundly as possible? It is a reasonable question, but a naive one, because it assumes that doing what you’ve always done as well as you can is enough to succeed today. Unfortunately, we live in a time of profound discontinuity and even well-run companies led by highly competent executives suffer under such conditions. Don’t believe me? Just ask Sony what happened to the Walkman or, more recently, with the music CDs that included spyware. Even a popular and financially successful company such as Google is facing growing criticism for some of its strategic and operational decisions.
What does this have to do with innovation and its role in associations? Innovation is not only every association’s solitary strategy for achieving meaningful growth, it is every association’s hedge against the bitter realities of an unforgiving marketplace. How does the Google brand thrive (and the company’s stock rise) even when some of its products fall flat or raise the hackles of the business press or digerati chattering classes in the blogosphere? It is Google’s reputation for continuous innovation that creates a powerful halo effect with end users. A genuine organizational commitment to innovation has benefits that extend far beyond the actual creation of new value for customers, which, of course, remains the first and best reason for making it a priority.
When association leaders adopt a more strategic perspective to taking risks, i.e., stop viewing it as a zero-sum game, both the necessity and possibility of innovation will become clear. In the meantime, I’ll keep advocating for it at the top of my lungs, and I’ll continue to be asked why associations need to be bothered with it. God, I love this job! :>)
November 27th, 2005 at 07:34pm
Jeff
Leaders, and I mean real leaders, do not make excuses. Real leaders take responsibility for whatever is going on in the organization-good or bad-regardless of whether they are actually responsible for creating those circumstances. Real leaders recognize that today’s success, no matter how robust it may be, will eventually run out of steam. After all, no organization thrives in perpetuity, yet complacency is a rather common and extremely deadly affliction of the successful enterprise. On the flip side, real leaders recognize that today’s decline will get worse if intelligent decisions are not made in an effort to reverse the trend. Real leaders think clearly about what is, while also thinking creatively about what is possible. Real leaders don’t wait for conditions to irrevocably deteriorate before taking some form of action, even if that action involves risk.
So here is my question: does your association have any real leaders?
I know that posing such a direct and difficult question will raise the ire of some in our community. To be honest with you, however, we can’t worry about that because if there is anything we really have to change about associations, it is the absolutely gaping leadership gap. From my perspective, while we definitely must address significant shortcomings in the way association staff leaders are prepared for their roles, the bigger challenge for the community is with our volunteers. Throughout my career, I have been witness to extraordinary shortsightedness on the part of volunteer leaders who really should know better. In recent years, as the work of associations has become more complex and volunteers have become busier, the problem appears to have become more acute. How much longer will our community tolerate this myopia?
It is important that we not treat this inquiry as merely rhetorical. The association community must develop a next generation of staff and volunteer leaders who do not need to be persuaded to the belief that renewed success will be achieved only through radical change. In upcoming posts, I’ll have more thoughts on how we can do that.
November 26th, 2005 at 08:48pm
Jeff
Performance evaluations certainly sound better in theory than they do in practice. From an organizational perspective, it makes perfect sense, in theory, to monitor and evaluate the performance of employees. Those who do not perform well could be corrected or terminated, thus improving the overall performance of the system. Those who perform exceptionally well could be rewarded, providing incentives for others to increase their performance. The process, in theory, seems straightforward: sit the employee down with the supervisor, perhaps with the assistance of a written form, and identify a set of goals and objectives, or standards at the beginning of the year, and then meet again at the end of the year to measure results against those standards.
That’s a nice fantasy, isn’t it? This “theory” of performance evaluation is unfortunately riddled with questionable assumptions and an incomplete understanding of human systems and how they work. Conventional wisdom has told us for years why we need to do what we have been doing, and it is time we start challenging this wisdom based on wisdom we have gained from our actual experiences in organizations.
Conventional wisdom: when employees know their performance will be monitored and evaluated, it will motivate them to perform better.
Experiential wisdom: performance evaluations do not motivate people—they only scare them, and fear is never a good motivator in organizations. At the end of the day, people are afraid of getting “dinged” in their evaluation. It is psychologically uncomfortable to have a “superior” give you a bad grade, so your focus turns to things that will cause you to get a good grade (not necessarily things that will help you develop or help your organization’s performance). With your attention on avoiding a reprimand, you end up actually lowering your sights to the level just above that mark.
Conventional wisdom: we need the performance evaluation system to document poor performance as legal cover to our terminations.
Experiential wisdom: yes, you need to document poor performance, but no, you do not need to do it through the performance evaluation system. Try creating a separate system specifically for documenting poor performance and keep your performance evaluation system focused wholly on employee development and organizational performance. Once people know that their evaluations can be held against them, trust disappears, and with trust goes open expression and communication. Without open communication, the performance evaluation system cannot work.
So take a look at what your experience in your organization is telling you, and use that to redesign the performance evaluation system. Clarify the intent of the system, and revise the structure accordingly. Allow for more frequent evaluations of performance. Allow for feedback to flow in all directions (yes, bosses, it is useful to be evaluated by your subordinates). Give people the time they need to implement the system effectively. And when you are done, use your newly acquired experiential wisdom (not conventional) to make the necessary modifications.
November 21st, 2005 at 08:47am
Jamie
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