Category: innovation

The Problem: Information Overload

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

From my new whitepaper, Attention Doesn’t Scale: The Role of Content Curation in Membership Associations:

The concept of information overload was originated by futurist Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock as part of his depiction of a world in which the rate of change would accelerate to the point that governments, society, and individuals would be unable to keep up – would, in fact, be “future shocked.”

The new wrinkle is that, while it was always possible for any given individual to publish to the web (assuming, in the early days, she could find a hosting service and learn to write HTML code), technology now makes it simple for anyone and everyone to publish rich multimedia content from virtually anywhere at virtually any time. Hence the zettabyte problem mentioned above, which is estimated to cost the US economy as much as 25% of the average knowledge worker’s day to lost productivity, which adds up to a $900 billion drain on the economy.

Want more? Download your free copy at http://bit.ly/WVpP4a.

Attention Doesn’t Scale

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to present on the topic Attention Doesn’t Scale: The Role of Content Curation in Membership Associations for the Indiana Society of Association Executives. As a component of that presentation, and with Jeff De Cagna‘s advice and assistance, I wrote a white paper on the same topic.

This week, I’m going to be blogging about what’s in the white paper.

My basic premise was:

  1. Information overload, while not a new problem, has gotten so much more severe in the last few decades as to turn a difference in quantity into a difference in kind.
  2. Membership associations are making this problem worse for our members.
  3. But we don’t have to. Switching from an information creation mindset to an information curation mindset is one potential way out of our dilemma.

I’ll be writing  more about each of these points in turn this week, but in the meantime, please pick up a free copy of the white paper at http://bit.ly/WVpP4a.

It’s Not About the Notices

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Membership retention isn’t about renewal invoices: how many you send, when, in what format.

Or at least, it isn’t ONLY about the invoices.

When someone decides to join your association, she’s responding to a promise made – your brand promise.

Your association has promised her a certain experience with your communications, your staff, and your events. You’ve promised to make her professional life better in tangible ways.  You’ve promised to connect her with other professionals who share her goals and passion, who can help her become a better professional, and who she, in turn, can help in the same endeavor. You promised to make her investment of time and money in your organization worth her while. Are you delivering?

Do you know what your brand promise is? Because it doesn’t matter what you think it is. What matters is what your audiences think it is, and how they translate their experiences with your organization.

Are you living up to it? Because if you’re not, it won’t matter how awesome your renewal pitch is, or when you send it, or how many times, or in what format. People will leave. Sure, not all of them – there are some members who will renew virtually no matter what. But everyone else – and believe me, that’s the majority of your members – is at risk.

Got churn? Declining membership? Before you freak out about “should we send 4 or 5 notices?” or “should we start sending them 3 or 4 months in advance?” ask yourself: “are we keeping our promise to our members?”

Yeah, it’s a bigger question and may be a harder problem to solve, but unlike sending an additional notice, it will actually cure the disease rather than slapping on a band-aid.

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?

 

A World Without Boards

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on A World Without Boards

A million years ago back in Dallas (actual time: just over a month), Jeff De Cagna, in his unsession on Associations Unorthodox, has asked us to think about radical questions to ask.

Now I love the idea of a radical question. One of the focal points of my consulting work is that asking the right question is as important as getting the right answer, if not more so. Too often, we ask the wrong question, come up with a truly genius answer, and then end up frustrated when it doesn’t fix the problem. And then we kick ourselves for coming up with a bad solution, when that wasn’t the problem at all. We started in the wrong place, so it was going to be virtually impossible for us to end in the right one.

Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

Here’s my radical ?: are boards the best way to run our orgs? What would the alt be/look like? #asae12
— Elizabeth Engel (@ewengel) August 13, 2012

Now, as my wise friend Leslie White, the excellent risk management consultant, points out: assuming your association is formally incorporated (which about 99.876% of us are), you are legally required to have some sort of board.

(Thanks, Leslie.)

So I guess my real question is: why do they operate as they do?

I know not all boards behave badly. But over the years, I’ve seen personal agendas, ego-based posturing, arrogance, cluelessness, personal aggrandizement, meddling with issues outside their ken, lack of willingness to take appropriate responsibility, and lack of willingness to ask difficult questions, all to an alarming degree.

And I don’t just blame the individual board members. We, as association professionals, do a poor job of properly training and preparing them for board service, and then setting and enforcing boundaries. It’s no wonder they have a tendency to run wild.

The reason it becomes a big problem is that the board has a lot of power.

Why?

It’s not for legal reasons.

And I’m not saying that no board should ever fulfill the common responsibilities of financial oversight and planning and managing the chief staff executive. I’m just asking why we act as if they have to.

I don’t have an answer to the question of a world without boards – or at least, pace Leslie, where board service is dramatically different.

But if we aren’t being well-served by the model (and some of us plainly aren’t), why not look for an alternative?

The Power of the Beta

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on The Power of the Beta

One of the reasons we in the association world can be afraid to try new things is that we worry that if it’s not perfect, the members will freak out.

And for some of your members, that’s probably true.

But it’s not true for all of them.

Some of them would LOVE to be invited to sneak preview a new program, product, service, offer, etc. and provide their feedback.

So what are you waiting for? Go find them!

And when you do, make sure you have ONE new thing ready for them to try out right away, get their feedback immediately, let them know how you used it, and be sure to credit them with helping you in the development stage when you actually roll it out to your full membership.

Your new offering will be better for it, and that member? She knows you love her now, and that equals loyalty.

Process Killed the Association Star

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 5 Comments on Process Killed the Association Star

Jamie Notter recently recapped his notes from the MIX Mashup, an invitation-only conference on the future of work, or, to quote their website:

“What will it take to make our organizations highly adaptable, endlessly inventive, truly inspiring, and genuinely accountable?”

That’s a critical question for all of us to address. Jamie also asked the blogging community to think about the points raised at the conference and to write response posts. This is one.

One of his notes from a panel on “innovation all the time” was:

Genius isn’t hidden. It’s afraid of your processes.

Associations do this all the time. In far too many cases, our default answer is “no.” Why? Say it with me: “Because it’s against policy.” Our default mode is “slow.” Why? Because everything has to run through 3000 internal groups and committees, then it goes to a member committee that only meets twice a year, then it goes to the board, which also only meets twice a year, and before you know it, 18 months have elapsed and the original opportunity? It vanished.

New staff and new volunteers start working with our organizations. They’re full of ideas, energy and excitement. This is her new job! She’s ready to kick some ass, build on what her predecessor did, and take your association to the next level! This is his new volunteer assignment! He’s honored to have been chosen, and he’s now even more deeply invested in your association than he was when he decided to offer his name up as a volunteer, because he made the cut!

And then our reified processes kick in, and the cavalcade of “no” begins.

  • We tried that five years ago, and it didn’t work.
  • We can’t make that change, because we always do it this other way.
  • Our members won’t like it.
  • Our senior team won’t like it.
  • Our board won’t like it.
  • The committee won’t support it.
  • It’s a risk we’re unwilling to take.
  • We’re not comfortable trying it a different way.
  • I don’t have that skill (and I don’t want to learn it).
  • What if something goes wrong? What if it’s not perfect? What if it FAILS!?!?

And, inevitably, that new staff member gets beaten down. Maybe she stays, and she starts keeping her ideas to herself, and maybe she walks out the door and takes them with her. That new volunteer gets discouraged. He becomes the “show pony” committee member, when what he wanted to do was be the “work horse.” He becomes disillusioned, cynical and disengaged. If you’re lucky, he keeps that to himself. If you’re not? Hello, membership decline.

We need to shift our mindset from a default “no” to a default “yes,” even if it has to be a qualified yes.

How do we get there? I don’t have the complete answer, but I do have some suggestions:

  • ALWAYS let people spend some time researching their ideas to see if they’re viable.
  • Create a budget of time AND money, even if it has to be small, to try new things.
  • Quit being so afraid of criticism. If you’re not pissing someone off, you’re coasting.
  • Quit being so afraid of debate and disagreement. You’ll never get to the great idea if people can’t challenge the good enough idea.
  • Build REAL relationships with members and volunteers. The only way you get leeway to try stuff that might not work is by earning it.
  • Remember that the whole environment has changed, and what happened five years ago is not a predictor of what might happen tomorrow, with THIS team and THESE members in THIS situation.
  • Dump your 400 page policies and procedures manual. Follow Adobe’s example of a “fairly open philosophy” (not just about social media but about all your policies and procedures) governed by “guardrails” that keep your staff and organization legally protected while giving them as much freedom within those guardrails as possible.
  • Celebrate failure. Everyone says that, right? How do you do it? Offer a valuable prize (an extra week of vacation?) to the person or team that blew it, and then learned something major and valuable they shared with the rest of your staff.

What do you think? How do we get to “yes” in our organizations?

Why Are We Still Doing Annual Performance Reviews?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Ah the dread performance review. You know the drill. You fill out some far too lengthy form where you’re trying to be “balanced” (whether you’re evaluating yourself to meet with your boss or evaluating your staff so you can meet with them), so there’s some bad and more good. You weigh people against goals that were set 12 months previously, and try to come up with goals that will be in some way useful or to the point 12 months hence. Then you have a fraught, stilted meeting, everyone signs off, and you file the paperwork, sigh with relief, and go back to your normal job.

Why?

“But HR makes us fill out the stupid form!”

You’re right. They do.

Who says that form has to be the alpha and omega of working with your staff to help them develop as professionals?

First of all, unless something good or bad happened in the last week, there should be NOTHING on that HR mandated form that comes as a surprise.

Correct problems when they come up. Coach in the moment. Don’t wait. You may have misunderstood the situation, and even if you were right, and your staff member did screw up, you’ve wasted how much time that that person could’ve been doing things better?

But who says you only get to offer praise once a year? Set goals once a year? Revise goals and expectations once a year? Consider professional development once a year?

That’s just dumb.

Things change. People change. Situations change. Have you ever looked a goal you set a year ago and wondered what in the hell you were thinking? And now you’re bound to the damn thing, whether you will or not? Why? Amend the form. Tell your boss and HR what you’re doing and why.

But most importantly, review performance every day – yours, your boss’s, your staff members’, everyone. Praise, coach, re-evaluate where your organization is going and how you all can best contribute to getting there. Every day.

And yeah, you’ll still have to fill out and file the stupid form. But it won’t hurt nearly as much, and it won’t be the be-all, end-all of making your organization better.

We Are STILL Doing It That Way

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Or, to quote Marshall Goldsmith: “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the long-term prospects of associations recently. Will we survive the changes – technologically driven, generationally driven, ecologically driven, socio-economically driven, etc. – occurring in our global society? If so, how?

Thus it seemed like a good time to take a second look at We Have Always Done It That Way.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, a group of “Five Independent Thinkers” (whose names you probably recognize) got together in 2007 to address the pressing need for change in associations.

The Thinkers address a total of 101 issues that need to change in the ways we:

  • Think
  • Lead
  • Manage
  • Execute
  • Work Together
  • Involve Others

Five years later, what has changed?

I would hope, for one, that you’re no longer storing information like social security and credit card numbers in your association management software. I think most associations are now involved in social media at least to some degree, even if not very effectively.

But I still see a world where strategic planning and strategic thinking are conflated, where we operate in silos fighting over turf and resources, where we do a poor job of reaching out to new audiences (including the elusive “younger members”), where it still takes us too long to make decisions, and once those decisions are made, too long to act, where we never kill hoary old programs (no matter how useless they’ve become), where new ideas (because that’s what “innovation” is) get routinely shot down, where we’re still doing form-based annual reviews, where we’re unable to have honest exchanges.

I don’t think it’s just associations. But I see it here because this is where I am and have been for 15 years.

How do we pick up our heads out of plodding along doing the same old thing and making the same old mistakes every day? How do we get to the place where we’re agile enough to respond to, and even anticipate, the changes in our professional/industry environments and the larger world in such a way that our audiences (which don’t have to be narrowly confined to “members”) literally can’t make it without us, not because we have some sort of Svengali-like golden handcuffs but because we’re so in tune with what they need to be successful and we provide it so quickly and well, our associations are vital partners in those audiences’ success?

I don’t have the answers. But I’m at least willing to engage in the conversation. Join me?

Sections Instead of Breakouts

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 10 Comments on Sections Instead of Breakouts

A few ASAE calls for proposals have hit recently, and it’s gotten me thinking about conference sessions.

On the one hand, associations want to recognize the expertise and knowledge our members hold and give them a platform to shine and a chance to share that knowledge and expertise with their peers.

On the other hand, we all gripe about conferences we attend where all the speakers are volunteers. Some of the speakers aren’t very good, and a lot of the content is shallow or too basic, people seem ill-prepared, the slides are bad, etc.

I’m calling myself out here, too – I’ve been the griper, and the under-prepared speaker that’s being griped about.

Preparing all these proposals got me thinking about learning experiences in my own life. Which got me thinking about grad school, where I taught political theory to freshmen.

What if we dumped breakout presentations in favor of university-style sections?

What would that look like?

You’d start with a fairly traditional presentation by a recognized PAID expert in a given topic. Everyone who was attending would be required to do prep work, familiarizing themselves with a common canon (books, articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, whatever), allowing them to operate from a shared base of knowledge (that would NOT be restricted to the book s/he just wrote that the presenter is shilling). Which means your PAID expert could actually speak at a high level and have some chance of being understood.

After the “lecture,” the larger group would split into discussion sections, which would be led by expert VOLUNTEER MEMBER facilitators, with knowledge of both the topic at hand and how to keep a discussion moving, whose job would be to ask interesting questions and keep the conversation flowing at a high level. And since all the attendees would enjoy that shared base of knowledge from doing the prep work and from the high level presentation, they’d actually enjoy substantive conversations about important topics, as opposed to devolving into the “this is how we do it at my association” (dare I say it?) drivel that usually results from the table exercises at our conferences.

What would that learning experience look like?