Be Strong

July 14, 2010 by Jamie Notter

Once upon a time I was being briefed by a Board President prior to doing some work with their Board. His advice to me, in summary, was to “tread lightly.” He implied that they were a bit of a sensitive group and perhaps skeptical of outside consultant types. I got the sense they didn’t want to be lectured at or told what to do.

And that’s fine. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t like telling poeple what to do (maybe even to a fault). But when I started doing the work, I ended up focusing too much on the “tread lightly” advice. I was quiet, and didn’t speak up, and waited for them to give me things to which I could react. In short, I was passive. And that didn’t serve me or the Board.

I realized, in retrospect unfortunately, that in my quest to not offend or control, I effectively removed all of my power from the equation. There is an important difference, it turns out, between being powerful and being controlling. There is a difference between being strong and dictating.

In general, we need more strength in our organizations. We need more people being powerful–not controlling or dictating–but powerful and strong. This is true of Board members, consultants, and the people whose boxes are at the bottom of the organizational chart. Play your cards. Speak your mind. Make your contribution. Get it done. You can do all of these things while still “treading lightly” if you are aware of the others in the system and engage them respectfully. But holding back and playing small and waiting until later, in most cases, is not the path we need.

Posted in Leadership | 4 Comments »

What if Dues Went Away?

June 30, 2010 by Jamie Notter

Yesterday I wrote a post over on Get Me Jamie Notter about the idea of strategy as a “pattern of investments.” This got Scott Briscoe thinking, and he then wrote a post on Acronym taking that to the next level, suggesting five specific things association leaders could do to develop their capacity for actively changing patterns.

(On a side note, this is what I absolutely LOVE about blogging. I read one blog post, that sparked me to share a fairly brief idea, that sparked Scott to share something… So much insight is generated this way, that just didn’t happen as easily before social media. But I digress…)

I love Scott’s ideas for figuring out new patterns. My favorite was his fifth one: imagine that in 24 months your dues revenue will be down by 75%. What would you do? How would you shift to draw in revenue that was not an obligation that needed to be “renewed” every year? You know you’d need to drop programs with such a dramatic cut in revenue, so which ones would go or be transformed? For everything that is “subsidized” by dues, who are the people that really value it? Would they pay? I think these kinds of questions are excellent ones to answer and would probably prompt a lot of pattern shifting, even if your dues were increasing.

Posted in Leadership, Strategy | 1 Comment »

Making Sense of Engagement

June 9, 2010 by Jamie Notter

My friend David Gammel wrote the cover story in Associations Now in May, and he did an excellent job of taking the feel-good, high-level concept of membership “engagement” and bringing it right down to the operational level. It’s a truism in association management that engagement is a good thing: engagement drives retention, engagement drives growth…but how does that really work?

David presents an “engagement acceleration curve” that clarifies the different levels of engagement and, more importantly, demonstrates a progression from less engaged to more engaged. Often, particularly in small associations, I think we just look right to the end. Who can we get on the Board? Who can we get as a major sponsor? These are very high levels of engagement, which really require a progression through other levels. We might intuitively know this, but I think it helps to be more explicit about it, so we can effectively feed the funnel, so to speak.

I look at some of the associations that I manage and I realize that we are not offering enough effective engagement opportunities at the lower end of the scale. And when we do offer them, there isn’t a clear next step, other than to join or come to an event, which are bigger steps. I also find it interesting that in one case, coming to an event (we do them monthly) one would think would be an easier step than joining (which costs between eight and twenty times the registration fee of one event), yet nearly all of our attendees are members. Hmmm.

Thanks, David, for helping me to think more clearly about these issues in concrete ways!

Posted in Membership | 1 Comment »

Association Social Media Wiki

May 31, 2010 by Jamie Notter

In case you didn’t know about it, the association community has its own wiki for tracking which associations are using social media. It was started by association social media pioneer Jeff De Cagna, but Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish has taken it over lately. Of course it’s a wiki, so the pages themselves are actually created by the users. ANYONE can go on that site and create or edit a page.

I just added a page for NARI Metro DC, one of the associations I manage. I just put in our Facebook Page and our twitter account. Some of the other associations on there have more detailed listings including stories of why they started social media.

So if you’re just dipping your toes into social media, check it out and see what others are doing. And if you’re actually doing social media, then create an account and make a page! (Hint: if you’re nervous about the coding, just find a page you like and copy the source code.)

Posted in Marketing and Commmunications | Leave a Comment »

Creating an SOP Helps Streamline Your Process

May 28, 2010 by Jon Benjamin

Recently I was considering how taking two weeks off from work was going to effect my co-workers. I decided to type up a numbered list describing a few of my procedures for different newsletters. To my surprise, as I was typing I came to a couple of vague areas in my process that needed to be honed in. I realized having a specific protocol can reduce problems and errors on my part, in addition to aiding the people who will be filling in for me while I am away. By writing down simple rules that I normally follow but occasionally skip when I am in rush, for instance, “All text should have a style attached to it”, I am more likely to follow my own rules, especially on those days when everything is in a rush.

Yes, it is a bit time consuming to type up these procedures with enough detail for them to be truly useful, but in the long run you will be glad you took the time. Not only will your company benefit from this resource but your own work will be done with a greater efficiency.

Posted in Creative, Strategy | Leave a Comment »

60-second Super-cool FOLDS

May 20, 2010 by Jon Benjamin

To make a bigger impact, without increasing the cost of direct mail, we have been using unique folds. The trick is to keep the size within the post office standards and keep the quantity fairly low. Unique folds can be expensive for higher quantities since they generally need to be done by hand. We all know that a lot of direct mail we receive goes directly into the trash without as much as a glance, but if a piece of mail has a unique fold, suddenly the piece has a third dimension, it’s interactive! It is almost guaranteed to have impact.

Foldfactory.com has a great FOLD resource titled 60-second Super-cool FOLD of the WEEK. Have fun folding!

Posted in Creative | Leave a Comment »

You Can Start Slow…But Start

May 4, 2010 by Jamie Notter

Maggie McGary is the Social Media Manager for the American Speech Language Hearing Association, and she recently posted on her Mizz Information blog about the results of the ASHA fan page that she set up in Facebook.

According to Maggie’s post, they started the Fan page about  eight months ago with no goals and no plan, and today it has 20,000 fans. Now, ASHA is a big association and it has a large student base, so I doubt all associations will get this kind of growth, but it points out a key lesson when it comes to social media: get out there before you are clear on what you are going to do in social media. I don’t mean jump into all the tools because they are the newest thing. You still need to develop a strategy. It’s not “if you build it they will come.”

But you are not going to have your strategy all developed first and THEN you launch your initiative. You’re going to be developing it (in part) on the fly because part of the essence of social media is that the users actually get a say in how it develops. But the longer you wait to start and get out there, the longer it will take for you to get the results.

Posted in Marketing and Commmunications, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Peanut Butter and Jelly!

April 16, 2010 by Angela Pike

As the Member Services Manager for a trade organization, I am fortunate to enjoy an excellent working relationship with my Executive Director. As we enter our fifth year of working together, we have had a very fruitful, and successful, professional journey.

Although we have very different dispositions, I believe we function very well as a team. We are like peanut butter and jelly: different tastes and characteristics, but put us together, and we seem to complement one another. Like the jelly, she is sweet (I’m more acidic). Like the peanut butter, I can get a little nutty (she is much more calm). She likes to correspond via email, I prefer the telephone. She is an introvert, I am an extrovert.

But somehow, it works! Despite our very different personalities, we have a mutual respect for each other and, more importantly, we both possess a drive and a desire to do our very best to ensure optimum service and results for our client.

To quote Dr. Steven Covey, author of the best-selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, “ Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” I believe that we have used that approach to build a very effective team. Our client has also benefited from our ability, and willingness, to work well together and produce results.

Now I don’t write this to blow my own horn (or hers, per procurationem). It is simply my opinion that a good professional partnership can achieve unlimited goals. When people share a similar work ethic, trust each other to get things done (and done right), work cohesively and appreciate each other for their strengths, as well as provide help where there is room to improve, the result is always going to be favourable.

So, hopefully you’ve found your peanut butter or jelly in the workplace. I hope so; it makes for a much happier, easier and productive professional life! It’s an awesome combination!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

You Can’t Schedule Strategy

April 5, 2010 by Jamie Notter

calendar imageThere was a post not too long ago on the ASAE Executive Management listserve that asked about the ideal schedule for doing strategic planning. The bigger issues, the author suggested, like revisiting mission and vision, should only happen every five years or so, and then smaller things could be tackled on a more frequent basis. One of the issues requiring this schedule was the fact that the volunteer leaders were very busy and could only devote so much time to this work. My comment was brief:

Strategic opportunities and crises are both blissfully unaware of our calendars and how busy our elected leaders are.

You need to change your mission at the precise time you need to change your mission.

The question isn’t how often you talk about it. The questions is how would you even know that your mission is no longer cutting it?

There are parts of a strategy process that can be scheduled, but understanding the core value you deliver to members, customers, or clients has to be continuous, because it is constantly evolving. And it’s not just understanding the value you delivered yesterday, it’s also figuring out what the value will be tomorrow. The fact that this work must happen all the time is precisely why you can NOT limit it only to the elected leaders or the top of the org chart. Big decisions can be centralized, but deepening our understanding of strategic value must happen everywhere, or we’ll end up missing opportunities.

We should change our organizational habits in ways that more information to flow to all parts of our system about what is valuable, what is working, and why. We can still make strategic choices and implement programs based on a plan, but questions of strategic value need to be addressed as we choose, do, and, learn, rather than at the beginning or end of an x-year cycle.

Posted in Boards, Leadership, Strategy | Leave a Comment »

inHouse Design Association

March 18, 2010 by Jon Benjamin

If you are an inhouse graphic designer like myself, the inHouse Design Association is a great resource: http://inhousedesignassociation.org

Posted in Announcements, Creative, Membership | Leave a Comment »

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