The Common Thread

This week we had a technology crisis with one of our clients. It was resolved fairly quickly, but it inconvenienced quite a few people, and some of them were , shall we say, not restrained in their expression of frustration to the staff and to one of our Board members.

The day it happened I got a draft email from the aforementioned Board member which he asked to be sent out to the membership. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was an over-reaction. It over-emphasized the problem and went into great detail about the lengths we would go to in order to prevent anything like this from happening again. I had the fun job of telling him we weren’t going to send it out. The next day I sent out a simpler apology email explaining what had happened and what we were doing about it.

The problem here was that this Board member was taking heat. He had a handful of upset people directing their comments to him, so from his perspective, this looked like a big crisis. When we have people in our faces, it is hard to keep perspective on what’s going on. The same is true when staff is answering a slew of phone calls from unhappy people.

So while we definitely need to respond to the people who are in our face, we also simultaneously need to be quickly scanning the rest of the environment to ensure we have some perspective about what’s going on before we take our next big steps. In our case, the number of unhappy people was a very small percentage of the people affected. While each one of them warranted a careful reply and some extra attention, it wasn’t indicative of a huge crisis, so my next step to that larger group was calm and measured and fairly understated. In fact, after that next email, I got a few responses of thanks and people wondering why others were over-reacting.

Keeping perspective means looking at the small picture and the big picture simultaneously. Keeping perspective means being aware of what data you have at your disposal and processing it quickly. Keeping perspective requires the emotional intelligence to not let your brain get “hijacked” in response to highly charged individuals. It’s hard work.

One of my favorite books is Seeing Systems by Barry Oshry. It comes from one of my fields of study–organization development, and it’s a beautiful book that explains quite clearly how all systems are alike. They are also unique of course, but they follow very similar patterns. Specifically, the people at the “top” of the system (those in charge) tend to behave similarly–no matter WHO you put in those positions. Same for people in the middle, and same for people at the bottom of the pyramid.

Oshry argues that each  spot in the system has its own “burden.” The burden at the top is the burden of responsibility. Because we are in charge, we are the ones who are responsible. It’s our collective butts on the line here. Unfortunately, that tends to push us into wanting more control (I’m responsible for the outcome, shouldn’t I have control?) which, in the end, makes the whole system less effective.

Association CEOs really need to remember this one. We’re the ones to answer to the Board. We are on the phone at the Executive Committee meeting where you have to consider canceling a planned event because of lack of attendance. If things go right, they’ll tell us that we’re doing a good job (and once in a while they’ll acknowledge the staff). If things go wrong, we are the ones to get fired or at least take the heat.

And that’s part of being at the top–but it doesn’t mean we are alone. I have been struggling recently putting together a budget for a client whose numbers are suddenly being hit very hard due to the economy. It’s a tough job to make this budget balance, so I asked for help. I got other staff people here in the office involved, including the staff that works on this client, but also including staff that doesn’t. The more voices I got into the conversation, the quicker the insights came.  I even got a call from across the country from a friend who helped me brainstorm. I’m still working on it, but I made great progress as soon as I let go of doing it all myself.

I’m back from the ASAE Annual Meeting. I’ve already done recap posts on the SocialFish blog and the Get Me Jamie Notter blog, so I wont do one here. But I do want to comment on a post by Marc Mestdagh on the Acronym blog. Marc is from Belgium and has been doing a few guest posts on Acronym. He and some other Belgian association executives came to the Annual meeting this year, and he had an interesting insight after his trip:

If I look back now at my trip, it surprises me to see that on the one hand there seems to be a greater awareness of the importance of associations (the Power of A) and all issues concerning thoughtful leadership, innovation, social media were omnipresent throughout the conference. But if you talk to attendees and look closer to what is really done in practice, I had the impression that what seems to be perceived as strategically important are foremost rather basic issues of association management (membership issues, dues, education programs, etc.).

This worries me a bit–that we talk the talk about cutting edge association leadership, but when we get back to the office we mail out the dues invoices and plan the next networking event. Not that there is anything wrong with dues invoices or networking events, but are we actively connecting what we learn at our conferences to the daily work of our jobs? We certainly pitch this to our members, right? Come to this year’s conference and learn practical skills you can use today! Are we doing that when we go to our own field’s learning events?

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.