Category: management

You know you need help with something, but you’re not sure if you should hire a consultant, a contractor, a vendor, or add a staff position. How can you decide?

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a discussion about this with association colleagues representing all those background and options.

We did come up with some good questions to help you figure it out:

• Do you want someone who can be “brutally honest” in telling truth to power?
• Do you need this skill set every day forever or do you just need it for now?
• Do you need this skill set full time or part time?
• What will the IRS think about the way this person is classified?

Working in reverse order:

IRS

The IRS will be displeased if you try to classify someone as 1099 if they really work for you. There are a variety of tests the person has to pass – here’s a good summary – but an easy test is: Does this person have or actively seek other clients?

FT v PT

Plenty of small associations don’t need a full time dedicated staff person for things like IT support, HR, finance, even maybe running your conference or membership renewals. Those are all good candidates for outsourcing, to a contractor, vendor, or even an AMC (association management company).

Forever v For Now

You may not need active guidance on strategic direction every single day. You do need implementation of your strategic direction every single day. Setting your strategy may be a good place to engage a consultant, not least of which because we have the advantage of perspective – we’ve seen a LOT of associations representing a LOT of different professions and industries. Executing your strategy requires staff, and it requires those staff members to understand not only where you are and want to go, but why.

“Brutally honest”

Boards of directors are sometimes suspicious of consultants. “Why are we paying this person all this money for something we could’ve done ourselves?”

Well, one, you didn’t do it yourself, which is why you need me to do it for you.

Being a bit less flip, sure, association staff or volunteers could compile and review data and documents, talk to members and other audiences, benchmark against other associations, and do sector and trend research. But do any of them actually have the time to do that? Staff members have, you know, their day-to-day JOBS, and so do volunteer leaders.

But in a larger sense, while it is OFTEN the case that staff members tacitly know what needs to happen, consultants can explain WHY it needs to happen by doing all that data work and research, and because of our knowledge of and exposure to lots of different organizations. Ideally, the consultant is a compliment to the staff on knowledge, insight, and even execution.

As one of my fellow consultant participants in the conversation put it: “I’m not here to replace your job. I want coach and train staff into implementing my recommendations, which is the thing that will actually make the difference, not the report itself.”

Photo by Paola Aguilar on Unsplash

Another observation that has fascinated me since my earliest years in associations is: Who’s allowed to make the call?

What do I mean by that?

Well, if you search for “stories of outstanding customer service,” all kinds of lists come up, compiled by HubSpot and Forbes and RingCentral and others, referencing all kinds of things from dentists to bicycle shops to yoga studios to rescuing a forgotten bridesmaid’s dress to creating a prayer room on the fly to implementing a great idea from a small child.

What do they all have in common?

The sentiment that provided the title of the original post I wrote on this topic in 2011: Be Human.

How does this apply to associations?

As I wrote in that original post:

…your senior staff can always make exceptions based on member needs and doing what’s right, but that’s totally unhelpful, since they are rarely the ones dealing with the immediate need in the moment. If your line staff members aren’t empowered to make decisions and do what they need to do in the moment to make things right for a member without worrying about being punished afterward for not following the rules, any statements your organization makes about being member-focused or providing excellent member service are so much bullshit.

Thirteen years later, I still stand by that.

In my very first job in associations 27 years ago, I stepped into running a membership department staffed by dispirited people for an association with declining membership. A big reason for ALL of that was that the association had a reputation for poor customer service that was a factor of staff who were NOT “empowered to do what they needed in the moment to make things right for a member without worrying about being punished afterward for not following the rules.”

So that was one of the first things I changed as leader of that team, with the promise that any blowback from anywhere else in the association for any decisions my team members made would stop with me. They were promised – and I delivered – 100% “the buck stops with Elizabeth” immunity.

Did it work?

Yes – by the time I left the association seven years later, not only had we arrested the slide, we’d grown membership by more than 50% AND fixed the cultural issues within the team.

Empower your people to do the right thing, to be the ones to “make the call.” You won’t regret it.

Photo by Adrià Crehuet Cano on Unsplash

One of the observations that has fascinated me the most over my years of consulting is this question: Who’s allowed to be honest?

What do I mean by that?

Well, let’s flip it around.

Have you ever hired a consultant for your association?

The answer is probably “Yes.”

So then you’re likely familiar with the phenomenon of: In her report, the consultant includes something that you or someone else on your staff has been pushing for months, maybe years, and it’s been like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear. But all of a sudden, when the consultant recommends it, there are all these people standing around saying, “Hey! Did you just hear that tree fall down?”

And there are reasons that The Powers That Be in your organization are more willing to listen to the consultant. She has experience with multiple association clients. She’s done research. She’s “objective” (well, none of us is truly objective, but she at least has no vested interest in a particular outcome).

But it’s still frustrating, right?

I know, because I’ve experienced it myself as staff and even written about it previously.

As I wrote in that post:

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?

What I meant by that was: When staff does tell leadership, particularly volunteer leadership, the truth, when they give their most accurate assessment of a situation and their best recommendation for a course of action, what happens?

Who’s allowed to tell the truth? And, perhaps more importantly, who does your leadership (paid and volunteer) actually listen to? And if staff are repeatedly ignored or even punished for sharing those assessments, particularly when it’s bad news, and providing those recommendations, what happens?

Remember: Whatever behavior you reward is what you’re going to get more of.

Alternatively: Show me what you reward, and I’ll tell you what you value. 

I’m not trying to put myself out of a job here, but your staff members at ALL levels know things leadership doesn’t, see things senior leadership isn’t privy to, and have good ideas. But if you’re constantly shutting them down, don’t be surprised if they disengage or decide to take their talents elsewhere.

Photo by Andrew Yu on Unsplash

Associations tend to default to a formal tone in communications. It feels safe. It can be hard to nail being appropriately funny, and no one ever got in trouble for being excessively formal, right?

Well, no.

A colleague recently shared some “tips” that had been sent to presenters for an association virtual event by the virtual event provider. The goal appears to have been to help the presenters look and sound good, and at least some of the points they made were useful ones about lighting and keeping your energy up and reducing distractions. All valid.

The problem was the tone. In an effort to sound “professional,” the vendor sounded condescending.

Further, as any Black woman can tell you, “look professional” has often been weaponized in racist ways to criticize hairstyles that are protective for natural hair and to “other” anyone who isn’t a cis white man. Also, “ladies, wear makeup.” C’mon, man!

The backlash caused a large problem in a small organization, with at least one board member resigning, people pulling papers from the event, and calls to stage a competing crowd-sourced event on Zoom.

What if they’d made the same points with a little lightness of tone?

For example: “Unless you’re going for an ‘I’m in the witness protection program’ vibe, make sure your lighting is coming from in front of you (not overhead or behind).”

Or: “It can be hard to keep your energy up in an empty room. Maybe invite your pet to be your audience?”

Or even just a simple: “We’ve all been in the situation of thinking something was out of camera range when it wasn’t. Remember to do a visual check before presenting to make sure all appears as you’d like it to.”

Or, even better: “We know a lot of you now have a lot of experience with presenting in a virtual environment. Share your tips to help your fellow presenters have a good experience at….”

In short (something I write and talk about a lot): be a real person with your members, not Business Writing 101 Bot.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash