Category: leadership

The Eternal Butts in Seats Debate

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on The Eternal Butts in Seats Debate

What do you notice – and reward – in your staff? Time at desk? Effort? Results?

As you’ll soon discover, I’m pretty clearly in one camp.

Some places focus on hours. Were you there at 9 on the dot, did you take extra time at lunch, did you leave early?

And for some particular positions, that might make sense: retail (where you have posted store hours), customer service (where the phones/email accounts are supposed to be staffed certain hours), reception (where the desk is supposed to be staffed certain hours), shift work.

Raise your hand if you – or your staff – do one of those things.

Let’s face it: if you’re reading this blog, there’s a good a chance you’re what’s known these days as a “knowledge worker,” someone who is valued for the knowledge she brings to a particular field of expertise.

So since knowledge workers are valued for expertise, it makes sense to measure them by results, right?

This concept is captured well by ROWE – the Results Only Work Environment.

Unfortunately, too many of our organizations are mired in a 1950s-era mentality that we judge people based on whether or not they’re putting in their hours. And making the leap to evaluating based on outcomes can be scary.

The thing is – as with many issues in the modern office – it’s a management issue.

What would it take to stop evaluating people based on “was he in his seat from 9 to 5 every week day?”

  • Flexibility – obviously, this is not something that’s going to work in a rigid culture.
  • Trust – you’re not going to be able to watch your people every minute, since they’re going to work when, and where, it makes the most sense for them.
  • Clarity – I think this is the real rub for most offices. We measure people based on butts in seats, or effort alone, because we have no clear, measurable, concrete goals for them. “Did you work at least 40 hours (and the right 40 hours) this week?” has to stand in, because we have no idea what we actually need our staff members to accomplish day to day, week to week, and year to year.

But if you can manage to make the switch – and make no mistake, it does require a major cultural shift, at least for most offices – it can accrue tremendous benefits to your organization. ROWE has been proven to reduce stress, increase productivity, increase health and well-being, and reduce turnover. And that makes complete sense when you think about it: your staff members get to dump their commute entirely (or commute at off hours, or only some of the time), work when they’re at their most productive and in the environment that makes them most productive, and manage their personal lives in ways that make sense, which makes them happier, which in turn makes them more productive.

So what are you waiting for?

Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 7 Comments on Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

I just got the latest issue of CEO Update (v. XXI, #537, December 16 and 30, 2011) in the mail. Either as a result of the slowdown in hiring or the changing needs of the market or both, CEO Update is a lot more than just job openings these days. They’ve expanded their coverage to do some actual reporting on the state of the association industry.

So I open it up to the centerfold, which is the Top 25 CEO Quotes of 2011.

25 people

2 women

23 men

0 people of color

…

For those who don’t want to do the math at home, that’s 8% women, 92% men, 0% non-white (that last one was pretty easy to calculate).

When I was actively supporting the CAE study program (2004 – 2010), we used to tell candidates to plan to answer questions on the exam from the perspective of a 65 year old white man. In 2009 (? possibly 2008), someone got offended, so we removed that from our advice. In retrospect, I think we did the candidates a disservice, because even though it may not be PC to point it out, it *remains* true.

Do I sound pissed? Good, because I am.

And I’m not just talking about throwing in some faux-United Colors of Benetton “diverse” stock photo here. This goes deeper. The CEO Update editors sat down and thought: “What were the best CEO insights of the year?” And they came up with insights from 25 white people.

Some worry that associations as a concept may be at risk due to social and technological changes. I think that if, after all these years, this is the best we can do, maybe we deserve to be extinct.

Truck Stuck! Now What?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 8 Comments on Truck Stuck! Now What?

I think we’re all familiar with the story of Truck Stuck by Sallie Wolfe. It’s a charming children’s book in which the kids are the heroes, figuring out a creative solution to get the truck unstuck.

Where do ideas come from in your organization?

Or, to be more precise, who’s ALLOWED to have an idea?

In far too many associations, the answer is definitely not “anyone!”

Are ideas only the province of a certain department? The CEO? The VPs? The Board? Are people only allowed to express ideas that relate directly to their own areas of responsibility?

My point? Anyone can have a good idea, about anything, at any time, whether it’s the mail clerk realizing a way to make your direct mail marketing campaign more effective or an IT tech coming up with a great team building idea or kids figuring out that you need to let the air out of the truck’s tires for it to pass.

We need to make sure we give a fair audience to ideas, no matter where they come from.

Treat them all equally, implement them when you can, encourage your staff and colleagues either way, and always, always, always give credit.

Can I Trust You?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on Can I Trust You?

I’ve been thinking about issues related to trust and risk ever since Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant‘s unsession on their forthcoming book, Humanize, at #ASAE11.

During the session, Jamie made a really interesting point: trust and risk are correlated. As trust goes up, risk goes up. In order to lower risk, we also end up lowering trust.

Ever wondered why staff members have such strong reactions to new policies at your association? Voilà. That reads, on some level, like you don’t trust them.

Here’s the thing: we can’t just throw out all our policies and skip merrily along trusting everyone completely and all the time. First of all, my many lawyer friends would be out of business if we did. They’re all smart people, so I’m sure they’d find something else to do. But the unemployment rate is high enough right now.

But also, it’s not realistic. There are people out there who, through ignorance, accident or ill intent, can harm our associations. Our members and the other communities we serve have the right to expect us to do what we can to protect our associations, by preventing what risks we can and being prepared to ameliorate those we can’t.

On the other hand, our staff members deserve respect and professional courtesy. After all, if we can’t trust them even a little bit, why did we hire them in the first place?

I don’t have the perfect answer to this. In fact, there isn’t one. Different organizations have different levels of tolerance for and exposure to risk. If you deal with credit card or HIPPA protected data, you know exactly what I mean.

I think this raises and important consideration for us as part of our own risk calculations. We often focus on the downsides of being more open, more trusting, etc in assessing risk. Do we think about the other side: what is the risk of reducing trust? Now that social media is, to quote Jamie, “kicking our asses” maybe we need to weigh that side of the calculation a little more carefully.

Dare to Think BIG

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Dare to Think BIG

During Jeffrey Cufaude‘s ASAE11 Ignite presentation on living a sustainable life, he quoted Mary Catherine Bateson: “we’re living longer but thinking shorter.” And I got thinking about the concept of thinking small.

Associations are under tremendous pressure right now. The economy is not getting any better. Social media, to quote Jamie Notter and paraphrase Clay Shirky, is kicking our asses. Generational shifts are battering our traditional membership and leadership models. Peak oil and global climate change are beginning to affect our society in countless ways, one of which may very likely be to cripple our traditional educational and networking models. What volunteers are looking for, and the hoops they’re willing to jump through in order to get it, has changed in ways that render traditional board and committee service models obsolete. Information is no longer scarce, and even the most backwards and self-delusional associations can’t pretend to hold a monopoly on it any more.

Everything in our environment is whispering: “Protect your ass. Guard your turf. Trust no one. Rock no boats. Prepare for the worst.”

In other words: “Think small.”

Sure – think small, and watch your organization die.

Now, as Jamie has pointed out, your association – my association – has no inherent right to exist. And if the best thing for your profession/industry/community/audiences is for your organization to die, then get on with it and decrease the surplus population.

But if you do believe that your organization brings something useful and good to some group of people, now is exactly the time to think big, take chances, rock the boat, make change, and see where it can take you.

It’s easy to be afraid now – a lot of shit is going down. But if we can get past the fear and be courageous and willing to take risks, we have HUGE opportunities to do better by our members, our professions/industries, our audiences, and maybe even the world. As my good friend Catherine says: “What are they going to do – take away your birthday?”

At the end of his Ignite session, Joe Gerstandt asked us: “Do you approach life from fear or from love?”

It’s time to choose.

Innovation: Small Staff v. Large Staff

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 9 Comments on Innovation: Small Staff v. Large Staff

In the past 14 years, I’ve held a variety of positions in association management: senior staff in a mid-sized professional academic society, senior staff/acting CEO for a small ed-tech association, consulting, and now mid-level management at a large medical trade association.

Each place has had upsides and downsides. The academic society was in my “official” field (from undergrad and grad school), so I was really engaged in the meat of what we did and felt a deep personal connection with my members. I had the opportunity to manage a fantastic team, most of whom I’m still in touch with 14 years later. But tradition weighs particularly heavy on an august association of PhDs. Even though I had good internal support to try new things, there was only so far we could go. And the annual meetings were murder!

The small association was nimble and innovative, and I had pretty much totally free reign to try anything I wanted. We turned on a dime and had an AMAZING mission and community. Unfortunately, resources – staff, time, money, capacity, space – were a constant problem. Comes with the territory, but we constantly struggled to figure out ways to push all our great ideas forward on the cheap (or preferably, the free).

Consulting brought lots of fun, exciting variety, and I got to meet and work with terrific people from all sorts of associations, finding out about worlds I never would have encountered otherwise (and I got to work with a metallurgy organization staffed and led by a bunch of guys who reminded me a lot of my dad, which rocked – I love engineers!). But I was often in the position of turning over a bunch of (hopefully) useful recommendations that would have an immediate positive impact, with an “OK! Let me know how it goes!” It killed me to mostly not be able to help make change happen.

Large organizations allow you to be more specialized, so you develop deeper expertise in your areas of responsibility. Resources are rarely a serious impediment. And once again, great mission (there may be a theme here). But decision making can be glacial, and it’s often not entirely clear who needs to be involved in a given decision until you’re down the path and someone’s upset they’ve been left out.

So here’s my question for you, association peeps: how does one bring some of the good things small staff organizations enjoy with regards to new ideas and nimbleness to a large organization?

That’s not rhetorical – I’d really like your thoughts.

Honesty, Leadership and Professional Opportunity

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 6 Comments on Honesty, Leadership and Professional Opportunity

I’ve only had two opportunities to work directly with volunteer groups while at NACHRI, and both times I’ve apparently put my foot in my mouth (and gotten reprimanded for it) because I answered a direct question honestly (some would, I’m sure, say bluntly) rather than giving the politically correct answer (which to me feels an awful lot like lying).

And I’m starting to wonder: is it me or is it the system? A lot of associations complain that our volunteer leaders are disengaged or make unrealistic demands or just don’t understand the reality in which we operate. But is it our fault? Are we, in an effort not to hurt anyone’s feelings or upset them, holding back too much information?

And this is far from just a NACHRI thing – I’ve seen it at every association I’ve worked for or with as a consultant. If we can’t be honest with our members about the hard realities, how on earth can we expect them to be willing and able to make hard, realistic choices?

Ultimately, of course, I’m starting to wonder what kind of (presumably negative?) effect this tendency is likely to have on my long-term career prospects. I’d like to be a CEO/ED some day, but if it requires not being honest with members or volunteers about something that affects them, I’m not sure I can do it.

Maybe I’m seeing this too black and white. But it doesn’t feel that way. And maybe we need to trust our members and volunteers to be the grown ups they are and realize that they don’t need to be handled with kid gloves, and ultimately, it benefits neither them nor our organizations.

What Does the Future Hold?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

At the recent CAE Celebration, Marsha Rhea led us in a futurist thinking exercise, which seemed apropos as this is the 50th anniversary of the CAE.

After flying through some pretty densely packed slides, she divided us into groups that were to look ahead to 2020 (10 years), 2040 (30 years) and 2060 (50 years).  Apparently, looking 30 years ahead is pretty wild stuff for professional futurists – they usually stay more in the 3-10 year range – and 50 years is considered downright crazy.  But we forged ahead anyway.

I happened to find myself at a “2040” table with people who were all quite a bit older than I was (most started in association management sometime in the 1970s).  New CAE and (NACHRI colleague) Sue Dull observed astutely that people were having a hard time not just projecting what’s happening now (virtual meetings, blurring of work and life, telework) out into the future.

I didn’t say much (shocking, I know) because the rest of the group couldn’t seem to wrap their minds around things like:

What will all this mean for associations?

To quote Sue again (she’s really smart!):  humans will have to come up with new ways of affiliating.

By 2040, the Millennials will be in their 40s/50s and will be running our organizations.  Assuming GenX iconoclasts don’t kill them first.  And Millennials are big on respect for authority, institutions, and hierarchy, which could mean a real renaissance for associations.  There will also be a pressing need for humans to collectively organize ourselves to address the above problems.  And – at least so far – government officials have shown themselves distinctly disinclined to address anything that might hurt their chances of winning the next election.  We will need someone to lead us, and nonprofit organizations could fill that leadership vacuum.  Assuming we survive the larger global forces at work.

Accountability – it’s not a dirty word

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Two things have struck me recently (or perhaps I should say “stuck in my craw”):

Associations are generally warm-n-fuzzy(er) than for-profits.

Associations like to be collaborative and engage in consensus based decision making, but sometimes someone has to stand up and say you WILL do this or you will NOT do that. And there have to be consequences for non-compliance. There has to be a balance, but it has to be just as OK to use the stick where warranted as it is to use the carrot. We’re not children – or at least we’re not supposed to be – we’re grown up professionals.

Associations like to acknowledge effort, and we all know we’re always going to be at least somewhat at the mercy of our boards and other volunteer leaders.  But, to quote Yoda:  “Do or do not. There is no try.” What you tried to do doesn’t matter.  What you accomplished does.  There might be attenuating circumstances, and if there are, mention them.  But focus on results, not what you wanted to happen or what you planned to happen or what, in an ideal world, would have happened.

What do you to keep the focus on mission, results, and being accountable for your actions on a daily basis?  What do you ask of the people you supervise?  What do you ask of your boss?

Next-Generation Leadership

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 7 Comments on Next-Generation Leadership

JNott recently concluded a great series on leadership skills for the 21st Century, and Acronym has declared May to be Leadership Inspiration Month, and the combo got me thinking:

What qualities will the association leader of the future need?

Rather than putting together some laundry list, I thought I’d focus on the two that seem most important to me:

Nimbleness of Mind 

It took us a while to catch the bug, but boy howdy, do associations love planning these days.  We love strategic planning.  We love action planning.  We love work planning.  We love metrics.  We love data.  We love environmental scanning.  We love SWOT analysis. We love Gantt charts.  We love Microsoft Project.  You’d think we were getting ready to invade Normandy, rather than just trying to roll out the renewal notices on time.

And that’s all great – really it is.  A constant Ready –> Fire –> Aim approach can get you in big trouble.

But the thing is, you can’t plan for everything.  Associations were never the most change-friendly organizations in the first place, and all this process-heavy planning infrastructure is slowing us down even more in a time when the *pace* of change is accelerating.  Rapidly.  News cycles, already 24/7, have been sped up by social media.  Competition from free and for-profit sources is increasing – and neither of those types of groups has to wait 6 months until the next board meeting to even get an idea on the agenda to be considered.

I’m not saying fly by the seat of your pants all the time – that can leave you without the available cash to make payroll at the end of the month.  But I am saying that the ability of our leaders to perform rapid analysis, trust their instincts, adapt, and come to decisions quickly is going to be critical to our ability to thrive as an association community.

Cross-Generational Fluency

We have 4 generations in the workplace at the same time for maybe the first time ever, as younger Silent generation members and Boomers delay retirement, while Gen-Xers are firmly in the middle of our careers, and the Millennials are moving en masse out of their schooling years and into their careers. Even the most cursory review of the available datareveals that these generations have MASSIVELY different ways of interacting with both people and technology. That lack of shared experience and understanding can produce significant friction in the workplace.  Does any of the following sound familiar?

  • That old guy in my office still prints out all his emails and dictates his responses to his assistant!  What’s wrong with that guy?
  • Why won’t those damn self-centered Boomers retire already? Or at least help prepare younger people for leadership positions?
  • Stupid Gen-Xers – they’re so secretive.  Why do they always want to work on their own?  What’s their problem with team work?
  • Why does the 25 year old program assistant think she’s too good to make copies?  And why did she apply for that open director position?  She’s only been here 6 months!

One of the key management lessons I’ve learned over the years is that you need to meet people where they are, not expect them to come to you.  Our leaders are going to have to become multi-generational-lingual in order to be able to get the most out of our teams.  For more on this idea, I highly recommend Karen Sobel Lojeski’s work on virtual distance.

What do you think?  What do our next-generation leaders need to do and be to make sure associations continue to thrive?