Category: leadership

Letter to ASAE – ASAE’s Response

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Letter to ASAE – ASAE’s Response

ASAE has officially responded to those of us who expressed concern about the association industry response to the 2016 Presidential election.

Thanks to John Graham and Scott Wiley for allowing me to publicly share their response to the letter that was published on this blog on November 21.

Click through to view the PDF of that communication.

My thoughts:

  • I appreciate the fact that ASAE took the time to respond officially.
  • I also appreciate the fact that ASAE’s response includes a re-statement of the association’s commitment to diversity and inclusion,
  • I commend ASAE for their ongoing work lobbying against the “bathroom bill” in Texas.
  • I am disappointed that ASAE did not address any of the specific requests the author group had made, such as calling on Donald Trump to renounce his divisive rhetoric and the attacks on various groups that have been made – and are continuing to be made – by his supporters, appointing an ombudsman to address questions about issues that might arise from Mr. Trump’s divisive policies, and instituting a more transparent process for forming advocacy and public policy positions.

Should ASAE wish to pursue any of these requested actions, I believe I speak for the entire original author group when I say that we stand ready to assist in any way that we can.

 

Associations and Trump’s Travel Ban

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Associations and Trump’s Travel Ban

Refugees are welcome here sign

Airports and cities large and small erupted into chaos this weekend as Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning Muslims from Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya and Yemen from entering the US took effect.

People with valid entry visas and legal permanent resident status (“green card” holders) were detained at airports across the country. Immigration attorneys flocked to terminals to provide pro bono legal assistance to those detained, and citizens took to the airport terminals and the streets to speak out against this.

This is a crisis for the association industry, as clearly illustrated by the many immediate responses, particularly from STEM associations, who are likely to be some of the first associations profoundly impacted by this order.

The @AssocVoices Twitter account has been doing an excellent job of collecting and disseminating responses from diverse associations like:

Of course, the American Immigration Lawyers Association has been on the forefront of this issue.

Associations need to think about and plan responses for questions that affect us like:

  • Will international attendees be able to come to our US-based conferences?
  • If an international attendee is detained trying to come to your event, what will your association’s response be?
  • Will US-based members who are “green card” holders or here on visas be able to attend conferences we hold outside the US (remember, if they leave they may not be allowed to return)?
  • Will US-based staff who are “green card” holders or here on visas be able to travel internationally for work (remember, if they leave they may not be allowed to return)?
  • Will US-based staff who are “green card” holders or here on visas be able to travel to their home countries to visit family or friends (remember, if they leave they may not be allowed to return)?
  • If members or staff are prevented from re-entering the US after leaving for association-related business, what will your association’s response be?

Edited to add: Ann Feeney, CAE added the following excellent questions during a discussion of this topic on ASAE’s Collaborate community (login required):

Situational awareness

  • What sources are you using for ongoing information? Are there any outside the mainstream news (e.g. law professors, specialty organizations) that you’d strongly recommend?
  • If you’re planning to get professional counsel on the topic, from whom?

Expansion of the list of countries

  • Are you also creating contingency plans for the inclusion of other countries on the list? If so, which? (Some of the countries that I’ve seen mentioned in the context of expansion are Egypt, Indonesia, the Chechen-majority parts of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, eastern Turkey, and the UAE. Alphabetical order, not frequency of mention.)

Conferences

  • Are you adjusting conference attendance projections? If so, is this solely for the countries on the list or are you assuming that other international attendees may be deterred from traveling?
  • Are you talking to conference venues or service providers about options for remote attendance? If so, how would you handle pricing and subsequent revenue forecasts and modeling?

Staff

  • The ethics of diversity and inclusion, as well as the law, call for hiring regardless of national origin, but is the ability to travel freely to any country a key job requirement for any positions? If so, what are the legal and ethical ramifications of taking nation of origin into consideration for hiring?

Recruitment and retention

  • What are the ramifications for board recruitment and retention? For other volunteers?

Communications

  • How are you communicating to stakeholders, given the rate of change about these executive orders, their interpretation, and the legal challenges? Interjecting a personal note,  I’ve personally often found that a tremendous challenge during any times of very rapid change–how do you balance keeping people informed and not over-informing, and providing information in a timely fashion and having to retract earlier information that’s no longer applicable.

What is your association planning by way of response? What is your crisis plan for this?

Edited to add: ASAE has signed onto a letter, prepared jointly by a variety of science organizations, directly opposing the ban.

As of February 9, 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the Trump administration (PDF), leaving the stay against the executive order in place.

Further Election 2016 Association Industry Responses

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

ASAE has posted further clarification of their position on the incoming administration.

While I am heartened to see ASAE specifically mention “…work[ing] with the new administration in a manner consistent with our commitment to diversity and inclusion…,” I believe it to be, overall, an inadequate response.

I should note that ASAE’s response was published before the Letter to John Graham and Scott Wiley came out on Monday, November 21. So it, of course, is not a direct response to that letter. However, ASAE offers nothing by way of specifics as to how we will go about protecting those who are most at risk among our own employers, our members, and other audiences we serve.

Reasonable people of good will can disagree vigorously on policies that impact both business and the public. This disagreement often produces compromise policies that are superior to the original positions of either side.

However, questioning the fundamental rights and full humanity of our fellow citizens and of the citizens of the world is a moral issue around which there can be no compromise.

My co-authors/co-signers may also wish to weigh in with their thoughts, but I remain firm in my position that ASAE needs to take specific steps to:

  • Ask Mr. Trump to repudiate his rhetoric that is in direct violation of our pillar on diversity and inclusion.
  • Ask Mr. Trump to denounce the hate crimes, attacks, and violence that are being perpetrated by his supporters in his name.
  • Appoint an ombudsman.
  • Pledge to increase transparency around and community involvement in how political and policy-related decisions are made.

Among the other specific steps the letter’s authors requested.

MANY associations are taking strong positions that manage to balance pledging cooperation without compromising on their core principles or attempting to normalize behavior and rhetoric that should not be normalized. The SocialFish blog has an excellent post listing and quoting excerpts from some of those statements, and, as I noted yesterday,  associationvoices.com is collecting more. I urge you to follow @assocvoices on Twitter to keep abreast of that conversation and, if your association has issued a statement, to email it to associationvoices@gmail.com for inclusion in the project.

 

 

Association Industry Response to the Election

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

As you may have seen in Associations Now Online, ASAE recently signed onto a National Association of Manufacturers-organized letter of support to President-Elect Trump.

While this has been common practice in previous presidential elections and while this letter was arranged before the election to be sent regardless of which candidate won, several of your colleagues were dismayed by the tone of the letter, as many of Mr. Trump’s statements on the campaign trail and some of his actions since the election are in direct violation of ASAE’s “pillar” statement on diversity and inclusion.

We have written a letter to ASAE CEO John Graham and board chair Scott Wiley, expressing our concerns and asking ASAE to take seven specific actions. While we, as an industry, do need to remain engaged in the political process regardless of who is leading it, these actions are intended to ensure we remain true to our core principles at the same time.

Many of you will not agree with us – and that’s OK.

Many of you will agree with us, but, because of your position in our industry or because of the industry your association represents, will not feel that it’s appropriate for you to sign on to the letter – and that’s OK too.

If you would like to do something, here are some options:

  1. Read the letter.
  2. Sign onto the letter.
  3. Share this blog post or the link to the letter (http://getmespark.com/letter-to-john-graham-and-scott-wiley/) with your colleagues.
  4. Speak out in your own words on social media (don’t forget to use the hashtag #assnchat).
  5. Contact John Graham directly to express your concerns at 202.626.2741 or jgraham@asaecenter.org.
  6. Think about what cause is most important to you – freedom of religion, freedom of the press, climate change, immigration, mass incarceration, women’s reproductive rights – and donate or volunteer your time (or both) accordingly.
  7. Share your association’s story via a new project that’s just launching, associationvoices.com. Email associationvoices@gmail.com to tell your own stories about how your association is taking action to support diversity and inclusion, defend the first amendment, or benefit society as a whole.

 

Letter to John Graham and Scott Wiley

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on Letter to John Graham and Scott Wiley

Monday, November 21, 2016

John Graham, President & CEO, ASAE

Scott Wiley, Chairman, ASAE

Dear John and Scott:

This letter is a call for meaningful community-wide dialogue and action on behalf of a nation at risk.

One week ago, Associations Now Daily announced that ASAE signed a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) letter “to the president-elect” expressing a desire to “work productively” with the incoming administration. While we recognize this same letter would have been sent to Secretary Clinton had she prevailed in the Electoral College, many of us read it as an attempt to normalize a candidate who displayed a level of ignorance, intolerance, and indecency unprecedented among modern major party presidential nominees. Mr. Trump ran an intentionally divisive campaign that included:

  • Proposing a religious test for entry to the United States, which is a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Since the election, Mr. Trump’s advisors have publicly discussed the implementation of a registry for Muslims, which many see as the precursor to internment.)
  • Indicating that he would require U.S. troops to torture enemy combatants and bomb their non-combatant families, both of which are violations of the Geneva Convention.
  • Bragging about engaging in sexually predatory behaviors without consequence because of his celebrity status, boasts which have since been corroborated by more than a dozen victims.
  • Promising to deport nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants, which would cause great economic cost to the United States and its businesses, and untold human suffering.
  • Openly mocking physical mannerisms of a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter who suffers from arthrogryposis, and then denying the incident occurred despite clear-cut video evidence.
  • Threatening to jail his opponent, despite the fact that she has never been convicted of any crime, which is a violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

There is no need to elaborate further. The challenge before us is clear.

 For those of us signing this letter, the most important question is what happens next. On January 20, 2017, a new administration will take office, led by an individual whose character, rhetoric, and policy positions place our country’s most vulnerable populations at even greater risk. These diverse communities include association members, volunteers, and staff who are expecting ASAE to hear their voices at this perilous time. The question is whether ASAE, and by the extension the association community it serves, will choose to listen to those voices and take steps to help protect people who are now under direct threat.

Through this letter, we are asking you and the ASAE Board of Directors to recognize the uniquely dangerous moment at which our country finds itself, and answer our call for community-wide dialogue and action on behalf of a nation at risk. We recommend that ASAE take the following steps:

  • Issue a second letter calling on Mr. Trump to publicly repudiate his divisive rhetoric and policy proposals before Inauguration Day. Consistent with the described process of preparing the NAM letter, we would ask ASAE to seek support for this letter from philanthropic, professional, and trade associations; non-profits; and other organizations across the country.
  • Call on Mr. Trump to forcefully denounce the hateful attacks against women, racial, ethnic, religious, and other minorities that have been made in his name since Election Day as fundamentally wrong and incompatible with our shared American values.
  • Communicate both publicly and privately to elected officials at all levels of government that ASAE and the association community will oppose divisive rhetoric and policies that place the lives of Americans at risk, and create a communications toolkit for individual association members, volunteers, and staff to use as part of their own advocacy outreach.
  • Develop a more transparent and inclusive process of organizational decision-making around ASAE’s advocacy and public policy activities.
  • Appoint an independent ombudsman from outside of the current ASAE organizational structure to whom any association member, volunteer, or staff person can raise concerns, pose questions, or seek advice on how to address the personal or professional issues that may arise from Mr. Trump’s (and his followers’) divisive rhetoric and policies.
  • Work with societies of association executives (SAEs) at the local, state, and regional levels to organize a series of town hall meetings to nurture an open and honest dialogue about the future of our country, with the intention of bringing people from across the political spectrum together as Americans.
  • Integrate into the Power of A campaign and ASAE’s Public Policy efforts a much stronger focus on issues affecting vulnerable populations, and gather and share more information on diversity and inclusion, equity, and social justice concerns.

While none of these measures can fully protect our country’s most vulnerable populations from the power of the Federal government under Mr. Trump’s direction, we believe they will build confidence across the association community in ASAE’s commitment to tolerance, fairness, and decency in our national life, and create new mechanisms for resisting the codification of Mr. Trump’s bigoted belief system into dangerous policies with potentially dire consequences for millions of Americans.

Now is an excellent time to show why associations have always advanced America.

We agree with both the substance and spirit of ASAE’s statement of commitment to diversity and inclusion, which begins with the sentence, “[i]n principle and in practice, ASAE values and seeks diversity and inclusive practices within the association management industry.” In this instance, we ask our association to recognize the urgent need for our profession to work together to take constructive steps on behalf of the entire nation and its people.

There is much discussion today about the long-term relevance of associations. At this uncertain moment in our country’s history, ASAE can demonstrate the significant impact associations can make by taking an unambiguous and just stance to preserve the integrity of the democratic process, protect vulnerable Americans, and defend the future of the American experiment. We hope you will concur and will act decisively for what is right.

Signed:

Elizabeth Weaver Engel, M.A., CAE, CEO & Chief Strategist, Spark Consulting

Sherry A. Marts, Ph.D., President and CEO, S*Marts Consulting LLC

Joan L. Eisenstodt, Chief Strategist, Eisenstodt Associates, LLC, and Past Chair, ASAE Ethics Committee

Jeff De Cagna FASAE, Chief Strategist and Founder, Principled Innovation LLC

Shelly Alcorn, CAE, Principal, Alcorn Associates Management Consulting

Dina Lewis, CAE, President, Distilled Logic, LLC

Mark Alcorn, J.D., M.B.A., Attorney, Alcorn Law Corporation

See who else signed.

Edited: A printed copy of the letter and list of all signatories was mailed to ASAE on Monday, December 12.

What REALLY Drives Success for Your Association?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on What REALLY Drives Success for Your Association?

Information overload – we all experience it personally, every day, with our emails and social media feeds and online media and print media and broadcast media, and that’s hard enough to manage. But in 2016, our associations ALSO struggle with information overload. We have many rich sources of data about our members, our other audiences, and our operations that we can mine in a dizzying variety of ways, so many, in fact, that it can be almost impossible to separate the signal from the noise.

On July 19, Trevor Mitchell (American MENSA) and I had the opportunity to address this topic for DMAW’s Lunch and Learn series, presenting “Defining and Using KPIs for Measurability and Success.”

We started the hour-long webinar by talking about the importance of discovering what REALLY drives success for your association. It’s not always the most obvious thing. For instance, in associations, we often focus on member count, and up is always good, right? But if you have a limited universe of potential members, or you’re recruiting marginal members that lead to a lot of churn, maybe constantly increasing membership isn’t actually a KPI for your association – maybe something like market share (that is, what percentage of your overall universe is involved) or member share (that is, how involved are your existing members) would be a better choice.

We also covered the four key categories of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), the siren song of vanity metrics (and how to avoid it), and the importance of measuring what really counts, all illustrated by Trevor’s stories of MENSA’s journey toward identifying their KPIs and using them to drive decisions and create change.

 

 

The Lean Startup Changes Everthing

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on The Lean Startup Changes Everthing

I’m excited to share the launch of the seventh whitepaper in the ongoing Spark whitepaper series, Innovate the Lean Way: Applying Lean Startup Methodology in the Association Environment.

The whitepaper addresses a simple (but not necessarily easy) concept. To quote my co-author, Guillermo Ortiz de Zarate, Director of Information Services for the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards:

“There’s no bigger waste than investing resources working on the wrong thing.”

Given associations’ tight resources, that type of waste is the last thing we can afford. Lean startup methodology, which moves beyond lean six-sigma process innovation to address the challenge of innovation, has taken the business world by storm in the last several years, with businesses of all sizes and life stages using it to experience greater success. Our contention is that associations can benefit from applying this methodology as well.

Innovate the Lean Way shares the basics of lean startup principles:

  • Business model canvas
  • The build-measure-learn cycle
  • Minimum Viable Product
  • The pivot

And the stories of four associations that are using lean startup methodology effectively to improve their innovation efforts:

  • The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: Pivoting from Lean Process Improvement to Lean Startup
  • IEEE: The Power of the Pilot
  • NAFSA – Association of International Educators: Combining Design Thinking and Lean Startup
  • NCARB (Guillermo’s organization): Learning with Lean

Our goal is to help association leaders understand the benefits of applying this technique in your own organizations to eliminate waste, validate your learning, and innovate faster and more successfully.

I’ll be blogging more about the whitepaper in the coming days, but in the meantime, pick up your free copy at http://bit.ly/1NJJzkJ, no divulging of information about yourself required.

Don’t forget to check out the other FREE Spark whitepapers, too:

Innovate the Lean Way

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

“There’s no bigger waste than investing resources working on the wrong thing.”

Guillermo Ortiz de Zarate, Director, Information Systems, National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB)

Given associations’ tight resources, we can’t afford to waste time pursuing the wrong thing. Lean startup methodology (as opposed to lean six-sigma) has taken the business world by storm in the last several years, with businesses of all sizes and life stages experiencing success following its principles of building the minimum viable product, measuring what happens, and learning whether to proceed, stop, or pivot.

I’m excited to share that the newest Spark whitepaper is launching NEXT week. It’s co-authored with Guillermo Ortiz de Zarate and it applies lean startup methodology in the association sphere. Our position is that the keys to lean startup methodology – the Business Model Canvas, the Build-Measure-Learn cycle, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and the Pivot – are just as valuable and useful to associations as to the tech startups where the concepts originated. We think this same process can be used successfully by associations, and we have the case studies to back it up!

We’ll be launching the whitepaper with a FREE webinar Wednesday, October 21 at noon ET as part of the YourMemebrship.com Thought Leader Series. Join us to learn how you can apply this technique in your own organization to eliminate waste, validate your learning, and innovate faster and more successfully.

Oh – and check back here next week to download the actual whitepaper (also free).

Recapping the Outside-In Engagement #Assnchat

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Recapping the Outside-In Engagement #Assnchat

Anna Caraveli (The Demand Networks) and I had the opportunity to guest moderate #assnchat on Tuesday, July 14, with discussion focused around the issues we raise in our new whitepaper, Leading Engagement from the Outside-In (download your free copy at http://bit.ly/1GPNUM6).

In case you missed it, here’s a recap of the high points of the conversation.

Q1 How do you currently learn about your audiences? How do you share that knowledge internally?

People up brought up a lot of the usual suspects: demographic data collection, emails, calls, surveys, focus groups, online profiles/subscriptions, and event evaluations.

Partners in Association Management had a great response:

Q2 How are you capturing and sharing learning from less formal interactions?

Brandon Robinson asked:

We all agreed that it did, and Lowell Apelbaum added:

Partners in Association Management also keeps something they call “back pocket lists”: good ideas that couldn’t be implemented at the time someone came up with them that they reserve for a more suitable time.

Q3 What do you know about the outcomes your audiences seek? How are you helping them achieve those outcomes?

This question launched some observations about different generations in the workforce and the association having different goals, with Karen Hansen also pointing out:

We also talked about the whole “what keeps you up at night?” question (which is one of Anna’s favorites), and Lowell Apelbaum observed:

Q4 How do you discover what your audiences really value? How do you use that information?

People had lots of good suggestions here, ranging from pilot programs to trial and error, asking them, tracking behavior, observing what they spread/share/talk about/promote, and Ewald Consulting went kind of Zen Master on us:

That’s deep, man.

 

Q5 How do you facilitate building authentic relationships w your audiences? Between members?

 

Lots of great chatter here, too, but Karen Hansen had a simple, powerful response:

Treat members like human beings?!?! Radical concept!

Q6 How do you develop new products/programs/services? How do you collaborate with members on this?

Lowell (who was really on a roll today) had another great response for this one:

When we got to question 7, we kind of heard crickets:

 

Q7 How do you encourage collaboration between audiences and association? Among members?

 

Opinion was pretty much universal that this is a big struggle for associations. Kait Solomon pointed out:

Q8 How do you currently define engagement? Is your definition adequate/satisfactory?

Where Kait also observed that “engagement” has become a buzzword, and I quoted Ed Bennett, who recently pointed out that if there’s no ring involved, we probably need to stop talking about engagement and focus on what we really mean: conversation, talking, listening, relationship.

Q9 What do you do with members once you engage them? What’s the next step/goal?

I’m going back to Lowell again:

Our final question, which is the challenge I’m going to leave you with, too was:

Q10 What is one action you could take today to start your association on the path to outside-in engagement?

Not sure how to answer that? Check out the whitepaper at http://bit.ly/1GPNUM6 to get some ideas!

Leading Engagement from the Outside-In

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Leading Engagement from the Outside-In

I’m excited to share the launch of the sixth whitepaper in the ongoing Spark whitepaper series, Leading Engagement from the Outside-In: Become an Indispensable Partner in Your Members’ Success.

Co-authored with Anna Caraveli (The Demand Networks), the whitepaper tackles the question: if engagement is so critical to associations (and we would argue that it is), why aren’t we doing a better job of it?

Of course, associations have always been “about” engagement, and in the past several years, we’ve had a renewed focus on engaging our members and other audiences. The thing is, most of us aren’t really doing it well. Could that be because we’ve been thinking about engagement all wrong, focusing on what we want members to do and how we define value? Leading Engagement from the Outside-In describes a radical shift in our understanding of engagement, one based on an approach that encourages us to view the world from our audiences’ perspective, focus on the outcomes they want to achieve, build authentic relationships, and harness the power of collaboration to co-create the value our organizations provide.

Speaking of, I’ll be blogging more about the whitepaper in the coming days, but in the meantime, pick up your free copy at http://bit.ly/1GPNUM6, no divulging of information about yourself required.

Don’t forget to check out the other FREE Spark whitepapers, too: