Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

Be Strong

July 14, 2010

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.

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What if Dues Went Away?

June 30, 2010

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 »

You Can’t Schedule Strategy

April 5, 2010

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.

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Beyond Relevance

February 23, 2010

I am going to be part of a three-part webinar series with the title “Beyond Relevance.” It is being put on by TMA Resources, and it was partly inspired by a blog post I wrote on the Get Me Jamie Notter blog last September. In short, the association community often highlights the importance of being “relevant” to members, and I just don’t think that is enough any more. The first webcast will be this Thursday, February 25th, at 2pm. The other two will be on March 16th and 31st. You have to register in order to take part, but they are free!

Each webinar will be an open conversation among three panelists. This Thursday it will be me, Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation, and Ken Wolff from the consulting firm Achievance. But the conversation is not limited to the webinar itself. TMA has set up a blog just on this topic. I’ll be posting to it later today, as will many of the panelists, and there is also a twitter hashtag: #beyondrelevance.

Come join the conversation!

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Over-communicating: The Art of Saying Things and Then Saying Them Again

February 9, 2010

Yes, the title of this post is redundant, but this is my leadership lesson of the week: over-communicating. I learned this one eons ago, and it has been passed down by probably every guru that has ever guru’d. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.

But when I get neck deep in the work, I forget it. I send the emails out, or we have the Board meeting, or I have the conversation, and then it’s out of my head. I have checked that box. I did my job communicating. I forget that in a week or two I need to send the same message out. I forget that my staff will perform better when I share more information than I think is necessary.

It is particularly important when an association has a decentralized committee structure. A lot happens at the Board level that is assumed to have been communicated down to the Committees. And it was, it just wasn’t communicated enough. We need to remind our leaders (both staff and volunteer) that when you get to the top positions, the decision-making responsibilities are often dwarfed by the communication responsibilities.

Then we should tell them that again.

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Getting to Know Your Client

January 13, 2010

I just got back from a week at one my client’s annual meetings. It’s a big event–1100 people, tons of sessions, four separate Board meetings for me to attend, plus managing staff, committee meetings, and trying to make it to the various receptions, parties and of course those sessions at the bar where all the “real” work gets done.

It’s a lot to juggle, but the bottom line is there is no other way for me to really understand this organization. I’ve read their strategic plan, bylaws, and conference manual. I’ve read the newsletter (okay I haven’t read the Journal; sorry it’s just not my field. But I promise to read it eventually). I read the Board minutes, business meeting minutes, and I even had phone conversations with various Board members. But you don’t really know a client until you see them in action and watch them talking about what really matters to them.

I imagine the same goes for them to some extent. Until they see how I react to them in their context, they’re still guessing about me. They’ve read my resume and maybe even some articles or blog posts I’ve written. But they won’t really know what to do with me until we are able to interact over some time in a context with which they are familiar.

I think we tend to over estimate how well we know the “other” simply by gathering non-experiential information about them.

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Board Composition and Answering the Right Questions

December 29, 2009

One of my clients recently asked me to weigh in on what would be the “right” composition of the Board. They are considering adding permanent positions to the Board (via a bylaws change) so that four different publications editors would be Board officers (they currently have two).

So what do you think? Is this “wrong”? I will admit my initial reaction is a wrinkled brow–why would you need all those editors on the Board? Doing the work of the association (publications) and the ultimate decision making authority (the Board) are two different things. Though I know enough about associations to know that there are probably examples in the industry of every “strange” composition you can think of. I’m not sure there is a “best practice” here (not to mention my general issue with the concept of best practice).

So here’s my advice to this client. Make sure you are answering the right question. The question is not how many editors should have voting rights. The question is, what structure will enable the Board to do its job most effectively. Form follows function. You have to decide what the function of your Board truly is, because only then will you be able to determine the appropriate composition. Like much in association management, our current systems, structures, and processes exist simply because that’s how we’ve always done it. That doesn’t mean they are bad, but they might need to be re-examined.

Does your Board set a direction for the organization, or does it manage competing interests of functional units? Does it make strategic choices, or does it manage the implementation of programs. Depending on how you answer these questions, you could compose your Board in a variety of different ways.

Personally, I think most associations would benefit from a strategically focused Board of directors. For this particular client, publications are very important. But I think there are plenty of ways to ensure the strategic importance of publications is reflected in Board decisions–outside of changing the bylaws and adding permanent director positions.

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I Could Have Had a V8! – Board Orientation 101

December 16, 2009

The other week I was preparing for a Board Orientation session for one of the associations I work with.  Thinking about the association, I trotted out all of the usual suspects, i.e. strategic plan, board structure, marketing plan, budgets and financials, conflict of interest policy, antitrust info, strategic versus operational Boards, Board meeting calendar, etc.  All of the things that make an association exec’s heart sing. Bob Harris, CAE has a great list of all the important topics to cover on his website.

What I forgot from my stint as a volunteer Board member was that as much as I needed to know all of that info, what also mattered to me was the nitty-gritty of how to navigate the meeting. It took the Board’s president-elect to remind me. He filled in the pieces he found difficult at his first meetings. Which airport should people fly into to get to our office in Rockville? What’s the best way to get from the airport to our office? What social events/dinners are usually planned? Are they dressy or casual? What if they want to bring a guest? Who pays for dinners? Who pays for drinks? How do people dress for the meeting? Will breakfast be served? How much time should they allow to make a flight on the way home, etc.

When he added those items to the agenda, it reminded me that for new Board members it’s as much about navigating the system as knowing all of the background that will make them an informed Board member. Once there’s a comfort level with how to get it ‘right’, a new Board member can then focus on the strategic issues before the Board and feel safe in participating at a fully-engaged level.

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