Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

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Buy Low, Sell High

November 19, 2012

Years ago I got some career advice regarding when to find a new job, and it was an adaptation of basic stock market advice: buy low, sell high. In other words, the best time (ironically) to find a new job is when you’re at the peak of your current job (selling high), not when you’re treading water looking for that next opportunity because the current job isn’t working out (that’s selling low). When things are going great and you’re rocking it in your current job–that’s when you will be most employable, etc.

So what does this have to do with associations? Last week we were meeting with a client who was discussing a very successful annual meeting that they have. The client was recounting the history of that meeting and said, basically:

“Everyone was happy with the event. So I figured, it’s time for a re-birth.”

Things were going well, so the client figured that was a good time to change things (selling high). I find that attitude refreshing, and unfortunately too rare in the association world. It’s not an absolute rule, of course. The most important insights are rarely THAT simple. But I think our community has a problem with skewing towards repeating what worked before, rather than staying ahead of what our members really need. One way to keep your focus on what they need is to at least start with the operating hypothesis that if people are happy with it, then it might be time for a change.

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Posted in Leadership, Meetings | Leave a Comment »

2012 Social Leadership Survey

October 17, 2012

A few weeks ago, Maddie Grant and I surveyed 505 individuals about social media and leadership. The survey questions gathered data on their perspectives about social media implementation in organizations, particularly related to leadership and how leaders are leveraging social media for organizational results. The results of the survey, completed mostly by individuals who work in organizations that are actively using social tools, provide some interesting insights about the deep ways in which social media has become a disruptive force in our organizations.

Last night we held a public workshop, where we released the results and then heard from a panel of senior leaders at four organizations, who talked about how their organizations have been integrating social into their cultures and–more importantly–how they have made significant changes to their internal management processes in order to adapt to today’s more social world. Bob Rich from the American Chemical Society talked about how they transformed their strategy process to make it more agile and real to the employees–but were able to do it through a series of smaller (and easier to swallow) process changes. Reggie Henry from ASAE talked about how had staff and members working side by side in creating some new communication infrastructures for the organization–which meant letting go of some control and being okay with failure. Crystal Williams from the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association zeroed right in on failure. She said it was the proudest moment she had all year of her staff–when they failed and learned from it (they’ve been named a “greatest place to work in DC” by the way). And Sunayna Tuteja talked about the challenges of “going social” at TD Bank, where they have 85,000 employees and LOTS of restrictive government regulations.

More details about our survey report, including instructions on how to obtain a copy, are posted over at the Humanize Book site.

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

If you love something, set it free

September 17, 2012

Joe Rominiecki wrote a post on Acronym about big and niche. He starts the post off with a slight dismissal of the “associations are doomed” narrative and concludes that we need to be serious about how associations choose to deliver value (should we try to represent everyone in the industry, or just a niche, maybe both?…).

Then Shelly Alcorn did a follow up post about whether associations are about professions or needs, citing a Young Entrepreneur Council as a new idea to support young entrepreneurs (rather than an industry). Maybe associations could collaborate to support entrepreneurs, she suggests, since it’s not about a single industry?

There’s nothing particularly “wrong” about either post (Joe and Shelly are smart cookies and write good stuff), but I find that I’m reacting to both posts in a similar way. I must be missing something. Because there is a certain amount of drama implied in these posts, with Joe’s reference to “end of the world” movies and Shelly’s suggestion that this “both/and” idea is potentially “game changing.”

Maybe I’m incorrectly inferring the drama, but I really don’t get it. This looks like some simple business decisions to me: who are you going to serve and how are you going to serve them. Every business on the planet is constantly making that decision (and then re-making it as things change). There may not be easy answers (which is one reason why many businesses fail), but the basic need to answer these questions, I would think, is a given for any organization. Why is it such a big deal for associations that we are faced with these decisions?

And that’s when I realized why I was reacting to the articles. It sounds too much like these arguments start from the place of “Associations are in and of themselves important so it is critical we figure out what the mission is, for fear of losing this critically important institution.” That bugs me. I fear we have believed our own spin for so long, that we have developed a sense of entitlement. We are a part of democracy. We are a pathway to human community. We associations MUST to exist, because if we didn’t, things like democracy and human community would be threatened.

No, dear associations, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not that big of a deal.

Sorry, but you’re just not. Democracy and human community are wonderful things, but let’s be clear: they are much, much bigger than our associations. Don’t get me wrong: I love it when associations actually do advance things like democracy and human community. That’s awesome. Keep at it! But democracy and human community are going to be just fine if your association can’t figure out how to stay alive. Don’t confuse our need for democracy and human community with a need for associations.

We don’t need associations. What we need are people to come together and create endeavors that advance our communities. Hey, are you finding that connecting people around a need rather than an industry has some energy behind it? Sweet, go ahead and run with that idea. Are you finding that bringing people together inside a niche in your industry is helping to solve problems, advance interests, and improve lives? Awesome, forge ahead and let us know how it goes. Are you noticing that parts of our model, like engaging members in the governance of the organization, is helping to create deeper meaning for people who are the customers of the association? Yay! It’s nice to hear that we’re doing things that work. But none of that proves (to me anyway) that we need associations. It just proves that advancing our species is a group effort.

We don’t need associations, we need awesomeness. So let’s stop choosing sides in the “are associations under threat” debate and let’s simply get focused on being awesome, recognizing that the definition of being awesome will constantly be changing, morphing, and evolving with the times.

If you love something, set it free. I love the association community, so I hereby let go of my need for it to exist. That frees me up to actually do the work better, and that’s what we need right now.

P.S. If this rant sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote something very similar a year ago, which makes the whole picture even more disappointing.

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Posted in Leadership | Leave a Comment »

Change without a Lot of Resources

July 18, 2012

Allow me to build on Hedi’s theme from the last post of doing more with less. I spoke yesterday to an awesome group of association executives from State CPA societies (I posted the slides over at GetMeJamieNotter). I was making the case for more human organizations and then taking it down a level to what kind of knowledge and skills we need as employees of human organizations. At one point in the presentation, one participant shared a concern that she didn’t have the internal resources in place to really accomplish the things I was talking about. Really developing her people to be able to handle the complexity, conflict, and speed of human organizations seemed out of reach.

I didn’t have a magic wand to give her, unfortunately, but I did point out that there are opportunities to make small shifts (for free) in the way we do things that can go a long way to building internal capacity. The example I gave her was staff meetings. How many of us do long, boring staff meetings that everyone hates? (Be honest…) We typically use staff meetings to report out, but we rarely use them as opportunities to actually learn.

Figure out ways to do the reporting online or via email, and then re-design your meeting structure so that you can help people to learn at every staff meeting. Assign homework to people. Have people other than the boss actually lead the meeting. Tackle complex strategic topics. You may not have the budget to send all your staff to go get advanced degrees, but you can certainly help them learn and grow if you give it just a bit of attention.

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Posted in Leadership, Management | Leave a Comment »

Advocacy on a Shoestring

July 2, 2012

Advocacy, both in terms of representing the interests of our members and in terms of promoting our members and our industry is becoming increasingly important for my association, the Association of Water Technologies (AWT).

Recently, more and more, we have found ourselves responding to various new standards within our industry.  Some of them we agreed with and supported, others we disagreed with, and others, still, we couldn’t take a stand because there wasn’t consensus among the members.  This rash of activity raised our awareness, though.  Initially, we had members and past leaders asking AWT to develop standards of our own to respond to, or counter, these new initiatives.

In analyzing how many resources it would take, both in human and financial capital, to develop a standard of our own, it seemed out of our budget.  Wanting to be strategic in our decision, we created a Task Force to do two things; to do a gap analysis and determine if/where there was a need for a standard that AWT could fill, and to determine if AWT had the human capital available to develop standards in a timely manner.  In the end, the Task Force recommended to the Board that instead of developing our own standards, we partner with a group that already does, as they have the organizational capacity in place.

The other way in which AWT is playing an advocacy role is in promoting our members and industry to our members’ customers.   So, we are working to educate facility managers on how our members can help them be successful.  And we are providing those facility managers with useful tips and information on various aspects of water treatment.

We are also developing educational material for building owners, operators and engineers on how to save money and resources in their operations.  Ours is a niche market that is complex to explain.  Many building operators believe the best and only way to save water (and thus money) is to install low-flow equipment (toilets, sinks).  In fact, there is greater savings to be had with the cooling systems – that’s a harder sell!  Thankfully, we have great members who are helping us develop educational training material that easily explains the technicalities.

So, while we’re a small organization financially, we have found successful methods to give us a bigger voice for our members and industry.

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Posted in Boards, Leadership, Management, Strategy | 2 Comments »

Innovative Culture is not just for Corporate Types

June 12, 2012

When I speak about my book Humanize, I often cite the example of Google and its “20% time.” If you don’t know, Google allows all employees to spend 20% of their time working on any project they want. Seriously, they don’t need approval. Now, they still get evaluated based on contributions to the organization (there goes your plan for spending 20% of your time playing World of Warcraft), and obviously they are spending 80% of their time on Google’s core business, but for that 20%, THE EMPLOYEES GET TO CHOOSE what they spend their time on. That’s signficant decision-making power–power we generally don’t give to our employees. This is part of a culture that embraces decentralization, by extending decision making power (within clearly defined containers) to people in the periphery of your organization, rather than concentrating it at the center.

The downside of sharing this example, however, is that it gives people an out: “Well, sure, they can do that because they are Google and they have effectively unlimited resources.” This out is particularly true in nonprofits and associations, who often feel that the resource-rich corporate world cannot provide us with lessons we can apply in our world.

So at a recent conference (Blogworld Expo), Maddie Grant and I spoke about Humanize, and instead of only giving corporate examples, we actually brought a nonprofit membership organization in to serve as our case study. The organization is NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network. They only have a dozen staff. They are not big and corporate and oozing with money and resources. They are a struggling nonprofit like the rest of us.

Yet they are not like the rest of us. They are crystal clear about their values and very consciously live them in the way they do their work every day. They give program coordinators the power to jump in and tell a webinar presenter to up the energy if they hear on the twitter stream that it’s boring the participants. They write publicly about the parts of their annual meeting that failed. They are not afraid to experiment with programs and learn from them. They let their staff express themselves authentically on social media. They share internal data with members when asked, even if they aren’t sure it will paint a pretty picture.

NTEN is one of the most human organizations we’ve come across. They truly embrace the idea of being open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous (the four human elements we identify in the book). And they did it without a big corporate budget. They did it while still delivering value to their members. They did it while still successfully implementing things like education, networking, and community building. They did all the stuff we other nonprofits and associations are doing…but they built a powerful and innovative culture at the same time.

Strong cultures are not created based on access to lots of resources or a large budget. Strong cultures are created based on disciplined clarity and commitment. First you get really clear on what is valued in your culture. And I don’t mean just high-level, mission-statement clear, with lofty talk of integrity, honesty, and excellence. I mean the discipline to get clear on why being transparent or decentralized, or focused on learning truly matters to the results you seek. And after the clarity, you get serious about the commitment to make it happen. You walk the talk. You do it and live with the consequences. I think that’s what NTEN did. What are you waiting for?

Here are the slides from our presentation with NTEN staffer Amy Sample Ward, at the Blogworld Conference in New York.

Humanize Your Organization

Posted in Leadership | 1 Comment »

Being Strategic About Education

June 5, 2012

Suddenly, the association I work with, the Association of Water Technologies (AWT), found itself with many educational offerings that we provide – or hope to provide – the members.  A good problem, for sure, but one that the Board must now be strategic in thinking about.

We started out with just the educational programming at the Annual Convention.  From there, we added a Technical Training Seminar, and shortly after, a Sales Training Seminar.  This past year we expanded our basic training from one day to three days.  In between we added online training, as well as complimentary webinars.  Now, we are in the process of developing a certificate program and the training associated with that.  At the same time, new trends in the industry and emerging technologies are having us consider three additional courses.  It’s a lot!  But, since we are currently developing new curriculum, it gave us the perfect opportunity to look at all of our offerings.

Our first consideration is the purpose of each educational course.  What is the best way to deliver the content?  Then we think about the content itself.  Is this something that is fairly static information that won’t change often or is it an evolving subject that will need to be updated frequently?  Then we consider our target audience.  Are these people who can be away from the office or do their jobs not allow them to travel?

One of the other aspects we are considering is the fact that everyone learns differently.  Also, since we already have a certification program, we have a need for various methods of earning CEUs so those certified individuals have many recertification options.

The Board will have a strategic conversation on this topic at their next Board meeting.  It will be exciting to then develop our new educational offerings within this well thought-out framework.

Photo source.

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

Deeper Issues Behind ASAE General Session Speaker Choice (long post)

April 18, 2012

Okay, time to weigh in on ASAE’s choice of Karl Rove and James Carville as the opening general session speakers at this year’s annual meeting in Dallas. There have been several very good blog posts about this topic already:

I’ve also had LOTS of conversations with people about it, beyond just those bloggers. I feel like the negative reactions can be bunched into groups.

Group 1: Anger. “How dare you bring that evil bastard in here.”

The angry people I’ve heard have all been liberal, so their anger is directed at Rove. He’s just in a different category for these people. There are plenty of conservatives that they would come and listen to (even if they disagree with the content), but not this guy. He makes their blood boil. I’m not sure if conservatives have the same reaction to Carville, but the bottom line is that this session pisses some people off. They’re either not coming or somehow wish they could disrupt the whole thing.

Group 2: Boredom. “Seriously? I can see these guys on TV for free.”

There is a category of people that either don’t care about politics, or view these two as not bringing anything new to the discussion. ASAE says it needs to give politics more attention (since that’s a major part of association work), but if that’s the case, this group of people is confident you could have picked better speakers (or they just say “meh” about the whole politics topic to begin with).

Group 3: Frustration. “Exactly what will anyone actually LEARN from this session?”

We as ASAE members do what ASAE does: we plan conferences and general sessions and care about education. We think about this stuff. It’s our job. So there’s a group that looks at this general session and is frustrated with its design. It’s weak in terms of education: you don’t learn a lot when the situation is intentionally polarized, and it doesn’t seem connected to other politically focused learning in the conference. It’s also blatantly NOT addressing the much-emphasized priority of diversity and inclusion (yay, two more white men!). This group is frustrated, because we feel we can do better than this.

Hmmmm. So what do we do about all this? There are obviously groups of people who dislike this program choice for pretty different reasons. And I’m sure there are other groups that I haven’t identified, too (not to mention the groups of people who, I assume, are very happy about this program). It seems like an impossible demand to make everyone happy, right? Is this actually a problem we can solve?

True. It should NOT be ASAE’s job to make everyone happy. When that’s your goal, you end up with the lowest common denominator. But maybe that gets us to the deeper issues here.

What is ASAE’s job? Better yet, to take the attention off ASAE for a minute, what is YOUR job as an association executive? I know that’s kind of a “big” question, but let me propose a controversial answer for your consideration:

We have no freakin’ idea what our jobs are as associations.

Now, I can hear the protests in my mind:

Oh, get off your consultant high-horse, Jamie. We do too know our jobs. We’re a big community and most of us are doing just fine, despite the bad economy, and we’re delivering value to members and making a huge difference in our various communities. We know our jobs, and we’re doing them, thank you very much. You can stay in your theoretical bubble about what our jobs are as associations all you like, but here in the real world we have to get stuff done.

I hear you. I didn’t mean you were incompetent. You’re doing your job. ASAE is doing its job too. What I mean is, I fear that this community is really doing the job that was required five (or more) years ago, but we’re not shifting to meet today’s needs at the same time. Think US auto industry in the early 70s.

Our “foundation is cracked,” as Maddie said in a post linking to these discussions, but we’re focusing on what’s right in front of us instead of addressing the real problem. We’re making sure the paint is perfectly polished on that huge gas-guzzling sedan that’s rolling off our assembly line. Great.

In my mind, the Rove/Carville thing is an illustration of that bigger picture issue. ASAE’s job is not just to put on a good annual meeting with big name speakers that get a 4.0 or above on the evaluation. That’s old school: deliver good content and produce a nice experience for people, and you win.

I think the rules have changed. We can all get great experiences and great content in so many different places now. Do you know how many mind-blowingly good presentations I can hear during my lunch hours between now and Dallas at Ted.com?! Certainly more than the sessions I will attend in Dallas. I don’t think we’re really letting that reality sink in. We are planning our conferences and picking our speakers with an outdated vision of success: good evaluation scores and good attendance.

Today’s member wants more. Sure I want good speakers and good experiences, and of course I don’t expect to be thrilled by every choice you make. You don’t have to be perfect. But boy, when I see something outrageous, I’m going to jump up and ask for engagement, and I will expect you to respond. I expect you to change and shift and offer alternatives. I expect you to negotiate with me. I expect you to be transparent about why you made your choices and engage in this conversation, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Why? Why am I being so demanding? Because it’s no longer acceptable for me to be a passive partner with you in my professional growth. I am no longer willing to simply take what I am offered when it comes to my community of professional practice. Everywhere I turn these days, I am empowered with options and customization and engagement. And I like it. My standards have changed, and they aren’t so tolerant of the centralized, scarcity approach that I think too many associations are still embracing. The one where everything narrows down to that press release where you announce your opening general session speaker, hoping for a home run, and ending the conversation right there. And I don’t think it’s just me. Our business has changed–not “is changing,” but “has changed.” And we are being too slow to respond.

In the end, I just don’t feel strongly about the specifics of the Carville/Rove issue, partly because, sadly, I gave up on American politics years ago. But mostly because I am more interested in the broader issue of how associations are adapting to a new reality and a new relationship with their communities, including my deep concern that we are not.

What do you think? Am I off base here? Too far out in front? Maybe. But if so, then I think that’s a space that needs occupying. I’m hoping that as I ride by you, with my steel bike and 45-year old legs, that I might wake you up a little, maybe even piss you off. But either way, you’ll start pedaling faster.

Posted in Leadership, Meetings | 5 Comments »

Managing Volunteer Expectations

March 27, 2012

As association professionals, we have all dealt with the issue of volunteers coming up with too many great ideas. The challenge arises when you have to balance these good ideas and the energy surrounding them with the association resources and budget.

My association, the Association of Water Technologies (AWT), has a very active committee structure. My members enjoy giving back to AWT and come up with some great projects and ideas for AWT to pursue.

Sometimes, though, volunteer expectations and the reality of the budget, time constraints, priorities of the Board or Association resources, don’t mesh. A committee might have a great idea that does not fit with the strategic goals they and the Board set. Or, it may simply not fit into the budget.

We want to encourage creativity from our volunteers. We want to keep them engaged and don’t want to stifle energy. At the same time, we have to keep the vision, mission and goals of the association in mind and also balance the resources. And often, the volunteers are only focused on their committee or project and are not aware of the larger picture or budget.

As staff, we have to manage the volunteers’ expectations. If a Committee is asking for, or asking to do, something that I know will not work or is not a priority of the Board, I explain that to them. But if it is just a matter of misplaced priorities or a lack of resources, instead of outright saying no, I first ask some questions to help them prioritize their idea within the framework of the current projects they are working on. If they still feel their new idea is something we should pursue, I give them some options – either alternatives to their idea, a timeline for when we might look into their idea again, or the opportunity to bring the idea to the Board.

This approach allows staff and the Board to be responsible with the association’s resources and budget. And, it lessens volunteer frustration, while also giving them control over their projects.

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

The Non-Profit Line

March 21, 2012

I’ve been working in the nonprofit world since 1992. I started in 501c3 organizations who survived by charitable donations and grants, and since 2002 I’ve been immersed in the association world, mostly as a consultant but also as an executive director. Over these twenty years, I’ve heard a lot of conversations about the difference between the nonprofit world and the corporate world.

I’ll be honest–I think a lot of it is crap. We throw huge generalizations out there about the differences between these two worlds, and it feels like most of it is based on ideology rather than experience or observation or a desire to generate any real insight. Here in the association world, the corporate world is described almost universally in negative terms. Over there they focus only on the bottom line. They only care about money and products and customers, and they’ll happily abuse people if profit is on the line. We association folk, on the other hand, are the good ones. We care about community and engagement and society, and the money is just a tool we use to accomplish our mission.

I think we’re lying to ourselves. This good guy/bad guy lens on the story is taking us in the wrong direction. It’s distracting us from the issues I think we need to face. And it contains some real inaccuracies in the story too. For example:

1. Associations (and other nonprofits) care about profit. We make it every year and we carefully design our overall program of activities to ensure we get it. In fact, we are “for” profit. We like it. Without it (over time), we go out of business. Because we have a mission that the government deems acceptable, we do not pay taxes on that profit, and we do not distribute the profit to shareholders (we keep it in reserves). But from a profit perspective, those are the only differences (no taxes and no shareholder distribution). We still have a bottom line and we pay ruthless attention to it, just like those evil corporate people.

2. Corporations care about community. Sure, not all of them do. There are plenty out there that focus on products, sales, margins, and survival and don’t give a whipstitch about community or meaning or values. But if you ask me, the ability to thrive with that approach is diminishing, and the smart companies are figuring this out. The smart companies are basically paying attention to the things we association folks have been looking at for years. And here’s the rub: there’s no reason why they can’t succeed doing that. There is no reason why WE are the only ones who can care about that stuff. We can’t draw a line in the sand and say “But we’re the nonprofits. This is the stuff WE do.”

Rather, we can draw that line, but those companies are simply going to step over it, and there’s nothing we can do about that. In fact, I would argue that there is nothing we SHOULD do about that. It’s not about being a nonprofit. It’s about elevating the community. It’s about changing the world. It’s about making a difference to people. Let’s all figure out how to do THAT better and ignore who pays taxes and who doesn’t.

I welcome push-back on these ideas. I just want to push the conversation. What do you think?

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Posted in Leadership, Strategy | 10 Comments »

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