Tag: ASAE

Recruit the Whole Person

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

I was recently chatting with the smart and talented Andrea Rutledge (Executive Director of the National Architectural Accrediting Board) about membership recruitment.

Andrea’s been a volunteer with ASAE’s research committee, which supports the work of the ASAE Foundation, and we specifically got talking about the Future of Membership project. She said that one of the things that had most struck her and has been on her mind since the reports came out was the concept, raised in the University of North Texas study, of “recruiting the whole person.”

The UNT study was a bit different than the other research projects: rather than doing surveys or case studies, the UNT team did in-depth ethnographic-style dives into the lives of a handful of international graduate students. What they discovered in all cases was that the Decision to Join was not an individual one.

It’s easy to dismiss this finding: small sample size, people with different (possibly less individualistic) cultural backgrounds, in the limbo land of being a grad student, where you’re no longer an adolescent, but you’re maybe not quite fully an adult yet either.

In short, “that’s nice, but doesn’t reflect the reality of my association.”

Really?

Do your members pay their own dues, or do their employers pay?

Even if they pay their own dues, do they make financial decisions in a vacuum, or do they have spouses/SOs/dependents who are involved in those decisions as well?

Are they entirely and solely in control of how they invest their time, or do bosses or elderly parents or kids or other commitments influence whether it’s acceptable for them to be gone for conferences or committee meetings?

We think that the join decision is a simple one: Mary, we want to offer you X benefits that will help you in Y ways for Z dollars – yes or no?

In reality, the decision to invest the money and time in our associations, rather than the myriad other ways those resources could be invested, is likely not being made by individuals acting completely alone, uninfluenced by anything other than our shiny marketing materials. You may also need to convince a supervisor that the money your member is requesting for membership will return something that will make him better at his job. You may also need to convince a spouse that the time you’re asking your member to invest will provide enough career benefit to merit his absence from family and community activities.

Is this even on your radar? What are you doing to “recruit the whole person”?

 

Giving Tuesday Thoughts

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

#GivingTuesday heart

#GivingTuesday is not a huge thing in associations – although the ASAE Foundation has done some nice work on social media drawing attention to their donors today (more than directly asking for donations). But it’s ENORMOUS for fundraising/cause-oriented organizations. It doesn’t really kick off the holiday giving season – trust me, they’ve been laying the ground work for their holiday campaigns since before Labor Day – but it does often give a big boost to their efforts.

I rarely time my own charitable giving to fall on the actual Giving Tuesday, but it has got me thinking about giving, and I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned over the years:

One, my dad taught me that, no matter how little you have, give some of it away. There’s always somebody worse off than you. Even when I was a poor starving grad student, I followed that advice, and those few dollars I could afford to give didn’t make any difference in my household finances, but made a HUGE difference in my outlook on life. Generosity is ultimately a little selfish – it makes you feel rich in ways that have nothing to do with how much cash is in your pocket.

Two, my mom taught me that you don’t have to (just) give money – you can give time, too, which is sometimes more meaningful. That’s not to say don’t give money (see point one above), but also think about other ways you can give. Do you knit? There are national groups that collect hand knit items for the homeless, and your local shelters probably do, too. Have some outgrown coats sitting around? Same thing. Give time in your local community. Do a fundraising race or other fun event. But get involved.

Three, I had an epiphany a few years ago: I could give $100 to a large international organization and it wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket of the cost of their next direct mail campaign. Or I could give locally, to organizations doing good in my own community, and see that money have a direct and immediate impact. Rather than giving $25 to every WWF or Red Cross solicitation that comes your way, save up that money and give larger amounts to local organizations working on issues that are important to you and will have a positive impact on your own community and neighbors.

Think globally, but give – and volunteer – locally. You’ll be glad you did.

Three Keys to Inspire New Ideas from Staff

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

What does it take for associations to succeed at innovation?

I’ve been doing some research on innovation initiatives in associations for a client and had written a bit about it for the Spark blog a few weeks ago. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mark Athitakis from ASAE about what I’d learned in a little more length, and he wrote the following piece for Associations Now. They’ve graciously given me permission to share it.

The best ideas for your association may come from your employees, but how do you get those ideas launched? Money matters, but so does trust and support.

Your staff has ideas about new services your association can provide for members. Some of those ideas may be very good ones. Problem is, how do you help get those ideas organized and tested?

Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE, CEO and chief strategist for Spark Consulting, has recently been interviewing leaders at associations that have launched internal innovation and new business development programs. “We talk about innovation in the association world a lot,” Engel says. “I wondered what was happening. Is anybody doing this well?”

The answer is yes, though not without some serious effort. Engel’s research uncovered three common elements of successful programs.

1. It needs its own funding. Success here, Engel says, requires “paying attention to opportunity and then being able to do something about it now, not in 24 months when you can finally make room in the budget.” The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, for instance, maintains a $500,000 fund that’s used annually to invest in new ideas from staff. That includes hiring people dedicated to working on it, as opposed to burdening current staff with new duties.

2. It needs a clearly defined process. A marketing staffer may have a brilliant idea, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she has the financial know-how to put together a business plan to show how it might work. The three associations Engel studied each had a clearly defined process for staff to propose an idea, institutional support for making the proposal, and a clear set of benchmarks for it. “They’re asking, ‘What criteria do you need to meet in order for this thing to continue passing the test?’” Engel says. “It can be a revenue criteria, but it doesn’t have to be. It has to be clear what standards you’re going to need to keep going.”

3. It needs institutional support. This can be trickier than it seems. Chuck Cochran, CAE, ASHA’s chief staff officer for operations, says the association launched its own program in 1997, during a reorganization. ASHA was in silo-smashing mode, looking to flatten hierarchies, make board activities more transparent, and involve staff in more of the decision making. “The culture change in the organization was huge,” he says.

That kind of hard-won trust and transparency encourages staffers to come forward with their ideas. “I can’t imagine what [the program] would be like if there was distrust,” Cochran says. “People would be afraid they’re going to be zapped.” Cochran estimates that today about 80 percent of the ideas proposed via the fund are successful—that is, proved themselves financially viable after three years and became part of the regular operating budget.

You don’t get to that point, Engel says, without leadership endorsing the concept. “The CEO or executive director has to be supportive of the decision,” she says. “Senior leadership has to say, ‘Yes, this is a good thing.’”

But practically speaking, you also don’t get there without money, and not every association has half a million dollars available to road-test a new idea. Cochran encourages associations to look at the status of their reserves; if they’re in excess of 50 percent of annual unrestricted operating expenses (the typical target for reserves), those excess dollars may provide the start-up costs for a fund.

Because new ideas may require dedicated staff, the amount of money matters. But Engel suggests that even a smaller-scale effort is worthwhile. “It’s a lot easier to find a spare $500,000 set aside for your innovation budget if you’re ASHA than if you’re a $2 million association,” she says. “The raw amount of money doesn’t scale. But the concept—if all you can set aside if $5,000, even if you can get 5 percent time, that part of it is scalable.”

Does your association have a program to encourage staff to propose new ideas, and how do you make it work? Share your experiences in the comments.

Reprinted with permission. Copyright, ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership, July 2014, Washington, DC.

Mission Driven Volunteer Q&A

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

During our February 27 Higher Logic Learning Series webinar on The Mission Driven Volunteer, there were several questions Peggy Hoffman and I didn’t have time to answer. That’s not cool! So we answered them for this blog post.

What is the certification for volunteers at c3 organizations?

PH: It’s the Certification in Volunteer Administration (CVA). Find out more here.

Can you share the MACPA volunteer grid they used to assess their program?

EE: The grid is on page 11 of the whitepaper (get your free copy at bit.ly/13Wwe1F), and I’ve reproduced it below for your convenience.

Grid the Maryland Association of CPAs used to evaluate their volunteer program

 

 

 

 

 

PH: It’s also in the rebuilding the volunteer spirit handouts, which can be found on the Mariner site at bit.ly/1dLyzkm.

Are either of you aware of any new research going on in this area?

EE: I’m guessing you mean “more recent than The Decision to Volunteer” (which came out in 2008)? A number of the studies cited in the whitepaper are of more recent vintage (see page 22, “Additional Resources”). Some of the best sources we found include:

PH: ASAE also conducted a subsequent study based on The Decision to Join in late 2011, and it confirmed a number of critical elements originally reported in DTJ and DTV, namely that younger generations are joining and participating, that members are pro-social, and that they generally prefer adhoc roles. Find out more in ASAE’s resulting book 10 Lessons for Cultivating Member Commitment.

As an aside, Associations Now just reported on the latest CNCS reports that indicate that volunteering is down in 2013. There isn’t clear indication of why, but also remember that this study looks at community volunteering, which is different from association volunteering. We do know that people have less time and more work responsibilities, so it makes sense that volunteering is down and will continue to be until we create accessible volunteering.

Any tips on recruiting for larger commitment volunteering, like authoring a magazine article?

PH: Part of the puzzle lies in the support for volunteers, by which I’m including both “support to get the job done” and “rewards and recognition.” To entice volunteers, make sure they know what resources and help are available, and make sure that volunteer work is celebrated. In this particular case, what support do you offer? How available is your editor? Do you offer a chat with the editor to talk through the potential article? If tracking down annotations or links or securing permissions is needed, can staff assist? How do you recognize authors? Do you have an authors’ reception at an annual meeting or other event? Do you spotlight authors on your website? Can authors reprint without charge? Make the deal sweet and shout it from the rooftops.

EE: What you need is a ladder of engagement. Just like you shouldn’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, so you need to create and deepen your relationship with your volunteers over time. Micro-volunteering and adhoc volunteering are fantastic, low-pressure, low-commitment ways for your volunteers to test the waters. Some may decide that that’s as far as they want to do – you’ll be put in the “friend zone,” to extend our dating metaphor. But some will be eager for additional tasks. They want to keep seeing you. Your job is to create that engagement path that gradually deepens involvement on both sides, until they get to the point that they’re comfortable making a larger commitment to you, and you’re comfortable that they’ll follow through when they do.

A barrier trade associations face is the idea that we have the “right (senior) person” from the company to serve in the volunteer role. Any suggestions for encouraging staff and volunteers to be more inclusive in their thinking and open positions to more junior staff with enthusiasm, interest, and time to contribute?

PH: Sometimes the easiest way to change staff thinking is by immersing them in the new model. So, try getting a few of these junior staffers involved and then show your staff the results. The other strategy is to have the senior staff recommend their junior staff as volunteers.

EE: That’s a tough question, because what you’re really talking about is culture change. I urge you to review the National Fluid Power Association case study on pages 13-15 of the whitepaper. Part of their major charge in changing up their volunteer structure was driven by exactly this: the need to engage people at their member companies beyond the C-suite and to help everyone involved get comfortable with that fact.

We get plenty of people raising their hands to volunteer, but few actually fulfill their commitments. Do you have any advice?

EE: Have you talked to the people who “flake out” to ask what happened? You’re likely to discover a variety of reasons for not fulfilling volunteer commitments. Some are out of your control (the potential volunteer changed jobs or got really busy at her current job, had a baby, had to care for an ill relative, etc.). But some are in your control, and are often related to not properly preparing your volunteer for what she was going to experience. Perhaps the job wasn’t as advertised, or it took more time than advertised, or the volunteer felt that the work she was tasked with wasn’t meaningful, or there are political/interpersonal problems on the committee or task force, etc. You can’t fix the problem if you don’t know what it is, and the only way to find out is to ask.

PH: Elizabeth is dead on … you need to ask. Also, if we’re talking about a critical role, consider adding a step in your process where the volunteer signs an acknowledgement of their job. This helps clarify the job and more firmly commits the volunteer.

Our volunteers mirror our membership, that is, they’re mostly Boomers. How can we get more Gen-Xers and Millennials involved?

EE: As described in the “Generational Differences” section of the whitepaper, you need to construct volunteer opportunities that mesh with their wants, needs, and capabilities. And you need to ask them, and not just via a generic “call for volunteers” email that goes out to your entire membership. If Gen-Xers and Millennials only see Boomers represented among your volunteers, they’re likely to assume that’s all you want and will accommodate. Just as you do for membership, actively and intentionally recruit them for volunteer positions.

PH: The research also tells us that Millennials are inspired by people they relate to who are older, so make sure that you are leveraging the Boomer members: are they available to your younger folks? Are they asking your younger folks to get involved?

Gen-Xers, research tells us, are inspired by entrepreneurial approaches and celebrate individual effort and risk-taking. Can you see those characteristics in your association brand?

We have started to use more high-tech ways of working with our volunteers (webinars, social media, video conferencing), which our younger members like but our more mature volunteers have trouble with. How can we help them?

EE: Research demonstrates that Millennials enjoy cross-mentoring more mature colleagues, particularly around issues related to use of technology. This presents a terrific way to build relationships between the generations, to create micro-volunteering opportunities for your younger volunteers, to allow them to develop the professional skills they seek through volunteerism, and for your Boomer volunteers to learn new skills as wekk.

How do we find out what motivates our volunteers?

EE: I know I sound like a broken record, but you have to ask them, and don’t be shy. Solicit feedback from your volunteers every chance you get and in every way you can think of. Some associations are starting to do annual volunteer satisfaction surveys, and that’s great. But you have so many opportunities to gather more informal feedback. Add it to a conference call agenda, or just chat about it casually while you’re waiting for everyone to join. Ask when you’re at an in person meeting, or when you’re going out for drinks after. Ask when you’re on the phone one-on-one checking in on the progress on the project. Ask via a quick poll. Don’t be afraid to talk to your volunteers about their experiences! How else are you going to learn?

PH: And start earlier with this asking! When a person first joins, find out his hot buttons so you can begin to build the connection between the decision to join and the decision to volunteer immediately.

Can you provide some examples of micro-volunteering?

PH: The easiest way to find these small jobs is to look at your volunteer positions and analyze the tasks. You will find a myriad of jobs that are short-term. A classic example is the publications chair. ASAE turned that on its head by creating the “writers pool,” an email group that helps their editors find story ideas and contacts.

EE: They’re almost limitless. You can ask people to suggest topics for your newsletter, magazine, blog, webinars, or conference, or vote on topics others have suggested, a la sxsw. You can ask people to rate an article or comment on a blog post. You can ask people to post a question or an answer to your LinkedIn group, private community, or listserv. You can ask people to make a personal call to a new member, welcoming her to your association. You can ask people to serve as welcome ambassadors at your chapter events, or as meeting buddies for first-timers at your annual conference. You can ask attendees to share their thoughts at a Town Hall meeting at your next event. You can ask people to take a poll or short survey. You can ask people to share your content through Facebook or Twitter. You can ask them how they’d like to contribute to your association. Truly, you’re only limited by your imagination.

You’ve convinced me. How do I get buy-in from the rest of the staff at my association?

PH: Why not use the whitepaper, as well as The Decision To Volunteer, as discussion starters? Pull together a staff meeting where you ask the question: how can we get more members involved? And show the ROI, namely that just one small activity increases a member’s average net promoter score substantially, from 38% to 44% (10 Lessons for Cultivating Member Commitment). Involvement increases retention; track that in your organization and share the results. Also, use testimonials from staff showing how volunteers helped get the job done.

EE: We’re back to that culture change thing again. One of the best ways to start, though, can be to do a small-scale experiment. For instance, the next time one of your committees comes up with a new project idea, run with it, but with a task force instead. Or ask if you can experiment with a “members welcoming new members” micro-volunteering campaign for six months. Or run a Town Hall meeting at your next conference and use it to create a series of blog posts or webinars. Make sure to document how things go, and share your successes and lessons learned widely at the end of the process. And then move on to your next test, and see if you can convince one more person on your staff to do the same.

Anything we missed? Leave it in the comments, and we’ll get right to it!

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

The presentation Peggy Hoffman, Eric Lanke, and I recently gave at ASAE’s Marketing, Membership and Communications Conference on volunteer engagement was about learning to manage volunteers by being a volunteer, aka “Walking a Mile in Their Shoes.”

I addressed this topic by sharing my story of volunteering with the National Capital Area Food Bank as a means of illustrating the following points:

  • Learn by doing: What can we learn about what works, what doesn’t work, and what our volunteers need to be successful by volunteering ourselves?
  • Have a defined task: Do your volunteers know exactly what you need them to do?
  • Create clear expectations: Do your volunteers know what constitutes success at their volunteer tasks, and how they’ll know when they’re done?
  • Match skills to opportunities: Do you work to find out what your volunteers are really good at and really passionate about before matching them with assignments?
  • Ensure their time is well spent: Do you respect your volunteers’ time?
  • Show that their efforts are appreciated: Do you make sure your volunteers see the impact of their work? Do you report back on what happened with the ideas and recommendations they provided?

Per our session design, I then asked attendees to apply those principles to answering the following question: What have you learned from your own experiences as a volunteer that you can bring to your role as a manager of volunteers to improve their experience with your association?

Our session participants came up with some great advice:

One woman talked about her experiences as a soccer mom to point out that we need to be careful not to over-complicate or over-manage the process. If people want to volunteer, make it easy for them to contribute and get involved. Be ruthless about stripping away any unnecessary hurdles.

Another attendee warned us, based on her time serving on the PTA, to beware death by meetings. It can be hard for 100% volunteer organizations to find good facilitators, but that’s critical to respecting your volunteers’ time. When people are forced to waste time in long meetings that go nowhere and accomplish nothing, they quickly become disillusioned and disengaged.

One participant referenced phone banking to raise money for a college alumni association to illustrate the importance of communicating with your experienced volunteers. If processes, procedures, goals, policies, etc. change, new volunteers won’t know any different, but your experienced volunteers will be confused, and, again, potentially turned off to volunteering for your organization.

What have you learned from your own experiences volunteering that you can apply to your association work to help you do better by your volunteers?

Down with Budgets!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Down with Budgets!

And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Example one: a recent discussion on the ASAE Collaborate executive list about trying to balance the annual budget cycle with making room from innovation.

Example two: this week, Jeff De Cagna did a webinar on his new e-book Associations Unorthodox. It focuses on six radical changes Jeff recommends associations make to position ourselves for the future. Shift #3? “Eliminate budgets.”

The problems with budgets (at least as we currently construct them) include:

  • They’re mostly backwards looking, based entirely on what happened last year, plus or minus a few percentage points.
  • They’re constructed and approved sometimes as much as 18-24 months before the money allocated it actually going to be spent.
  • They treat estimates like certainties, and then allocate every penny of expected revenue.
  • We use them to evaluate staff, holding our teams to meeting our budgets to the penny, and evaluating them on how well they do.

Extra revenue or less expense is always OK, of course, but extra expense? Even for an amazing opportunity or really important strategic investment? Well, you’ll just have to wait until the next budget cycle comes around. 18 months later, when you can actually spend the money, the opportunity has flown.

Why do we act as if budgets are set in stone? Why don’t we treat them as an estimate that’s open to revision based on changing circumstances? Or, as Jeff suggested, allocate some buckets of money to be spent on our organizations’ top strategic priorities, then leave it up to the staff and volunteer leaders responsible for those priorities to figure out what are the best investments in programs, products and services to meet those priorities?

Of course, that requires that you have ways of measuring the success or failure of what you’re doing other than “we met/didn’t meet budget this year.”

Did I just answer my own question?

 

You Say You Want a Revolution

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 8 Comments on You Say You Want a Revolution

There’s a bit of a fracas currently occurring around the selection of James Carville and Karl Rove as opening keynoters for the 2012 ASAE Annual Meeting. To me, it raises a much larger question: how does a member change the direction of the organizational ship, if s/he’s not happy with where it’s going?

In every protest movement, from the largest (the Occupy movement, justice for Trayvon Martin) to the current ASAE contretemps, there’s the initial, “I’m outraged! Who’s with me?” moment.

And the “rabble rousing” portion is vital, because you have to figure out how big your cohort is.

But you have to move on to campaign stage, or you just get mired in complaining.

There are two key questions any protest group must answer:

  • What do we really want? (aka, What would fix the problem or compensate for the harm?)
  • What are we willing to give up to get it?

Then you have to calculate your “n” to figure out how many supporters you need before it’s worth the institution’s time to pay attention.

So using the Carville/Rove situation, let’s look at some examples:

Small “n” resolution: Let’s say the group of displeased members wants, in the future, for keynote speakers to be selected by a representative group of members, or at least for that group of members to provide a list of choices or to vet ASAE’s list of choices. Since that would come at virtually no cost to ASAE, the group of members wouldn’t have to risk/threaten much, and the “n” required to support the proposal in order to get the institution to pay attention would be relatively small.

Large “n” resolution:  Let’s say the group of displeased members wants ASAE to provide an alternative keynoter or at least space and promotion if the disaffected group secures an alternative keynoter (maybe someone like Gwen Ifill?). That’s a significant cost, in money, hassle/logistics, and damage to reputation, so the group would need a large “n” that’s willing to threaten/risk something fairly major, like paying for the keynoter themselves, or canceling registrations and demanding a refund, in order to get the institution to pay attention.

But in the end, what each person has to ask her/himself is this: how much does this mean to me? Am I willing to die on this hill? And then put up, or shut up.

Super Swap Recap

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

About two weeks ago, ASAE-GW held the latest Super Swap. This one had a slightly different format: in the morning, we had three short presentations, each of which included some structured activity/discussion time, followed by a table topic networking lunch, followed by the more traditional concurrent swap sessions.

Kylee Coffman kicked off the day with a presentation about creativity. Best statements:

“All I want to be is someone who makes new things and thinks about them”

“I’m smart, I’m brave and I’m strong.”

Then she led us through the same word association exercise Shelly Alcorn used to help us kick off 2012 right, and, unsurprisingly, just about everyone was channeling spring and new beginnings.

Then I presented on “so long and thanks for all the fish.” For the exercise, I divided the room into four groups and gave them each a task regarding retired and retiring members:

  1. Create a category of membership that offers realistic benefits at a realistic price
  2. Plan a fundraising campaign that uses their skills, experience and contacts to good advantage
  3. Design a mentoring program that focuses on industry/profession skills and knowledge for young professionals
  4. Design a leadership mentoring program for volunteer leadership succession planning

Finally, Adele Cehrs helped us all think about opposition strategy. Our associations need to scan trends and plan in advance how we’re going to address big ones, negative or positive.

Her tips included:

  • Don’t ignore lies about your organization
  • Address misperceptions directly
  • Learn from negatives
  • Identify your own preconceptions
  • Understand your own weaknesses

She urged us to try to answer the question: “What are your competitors NOT talking about?”

The lunch discussions were a little bumpy because ASAE staff was trying to turn the rooms, and it took a long time for everyone to get through the lunch buffet line. Maybe box lunches next time?

In the afternoon, I chose the session on free and cheap tech tools, led by Rhea Steele. She, in turn, drew a lot of her content from Beth Z, aka “Your Nerdy Best Friend.” Rhea pulled together a great list of the tech tools people shared in the session that were in addition to Beth’s tools, and I’ll bet if you tweet to her, she’ll share them with you, too.

 

From the Humanize chat

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Wow, the #ASAETech chat on Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter’s new book, Humanize, was almost two weeks ago, and I’m just getting around to sharing my thoughts. Hey, #Tech11 had us ALL booked solid last week, right?

For those who aren’t yet familiar, the book is about transforming our organizations from a mechanized paradigm to a human paradigm by being open, generative, trustworthy, and courageous. I’m reading the book now and will likely have more to write about it as I progress, but for now, a few things struck me during the December 2 chat.

Lindy Dreyer made a great observation during the chat: being open is something most of us aren’t allowed to practice at lower levels, so when we move up in organizations, we’ve never worked that way before. I think she’s right, and it applies to the other key elements of being human in the workplace as well. Why do the bad systems perpetuate themselves? Because more experienced workers train newer workers and pass down “we have always done it (or not done it) that way.” This may present an opportunity, as un-mentored Gen-Xers move into leadership positions as the Boomers start retiring (some day). (That’s assuming any of us resist the lure of starting our own gigs long enough to be available for those leadership positions, of course.) We haven’t been as fully inculcated to being closed and opaque, so there might be a chance to break out of this pattern.

Maddie Grant observed that perhaps the reason there’s so much discomfort with social media in workplace is because it lights our passions, and we’re not comfortable with passion and emotion in the workplace. Of course, this immediately made me think of Joe Gerstandt’s work, and his fantastic “Fly Your Freak Flag”session at the ASAE Annual Meeting in August. The upside of forcing people to keep their passions out of the workplace is, obviously, things run more smoothly if everyone’s dispassionate. But there’s a downside, too:  you will NEVER get people’s best efforts if all your incentives point to smooth efficiency. Passion is messy, but it’s also where the juice for good ideas lives.

Jamie Notter provided my new favorite saying: “Proceed until apprehended.” It expresses the old “ask forgiveness, not permission” idea, but far more succinctly and elegantly. LOVE!

Finally, the closing keynoter at #Tech11 was one of the authors of the seminal 1999 work The Cluetrain Manifesto. As a result, I popped over to their website and re-read the 95 Theses (scroll down to get to them). Working my way through Humanize now, I realized: we’ve been saying the same damn thing for 10+ years.

Is anyone listening?

Idea Swappin’

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

This week’s Super Idea Swap at ASAE was great, as usual! We had lots of new faces – and plenty of familiar ones – and sessions with different topics than we often see.

I chose to participate in the session on diversity in the morning, led by Constance Thompson from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Clinton Anderson, from the American Psychological Association. In the afternoon, I participated in the session on generations in the workplace, led by David Miles from the Miles LeHane Companies.

My top takeaways included:

  • When pairing up mentors and padawans, stop putting like with like (Asian man with Asian man, Latina with Latina, etc.), and look at people’s professional goals and who can best help them meet those goals.
  • Diversity is about how we’re the same and different. Inclusion is about using diversity to make us and our organizations better.
  • DJ Johnson shared two great tools: the diversity wheel and the concept of the diversity paradigm by Roosevelt Thomas.
  • If you don’t measure it, you can’t change it – getting data from our audiences is key to becoming more diverse as organizations, but we have to be transparent about why we want the information to allay people’s fears about sharing it.
  • We have to let people express the “who cares?” thoughts, since stifling those uncomfortable conversations helps no one.
  • Conflict is a sign of diverse voices, which, to a group that has been historically homogenous, feels threatening.
  • The decisions of a heterogeneous group take longer, but tend to produce better outcomes.
  • “Do you know next?”