Tag: Maddie Grant

Book Review: Humanize

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Book Review: Humanize

If you’re one of my regular readers – or someone who knows me IRL – you probably know of my disdain for business books. Generally, they state the obvious or the *painfully* obvious at a fifth-grade reading level, with LARGE print on pages with LOTS of white space. I firmly believe that, with very few exceptions, reading them actually makes you dumber.

So I don’t say this lightly: Humanize is genius.

Authors Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter use the lens of social media to examine our “modern” business, management, and leadership practices and find them au courant…with the Industrial Revolution. At that time, perhaps a mechanical view of the world made sense, or at least more sense than it does now. But social media has spurred a revolution in the way people relate to each other on the individual, micro, and macro levels. The genie’s loose, and he’s not going back.

And while we shouldn’t – and in many cases don’t – even want to go back, our organizations are not keeping pace. Our focus on best practices (imitation) over innovation, a strategic planning process that assumes that the future is knowable and unchanging, human resources management that relies on hierarchy, org charts and knowing (and keeping to) your place, and leadership that’s viewed as some sort of “secret sauce” that individuals either have (so they get to be at the top of the org chart) or don’t (so they’re one of of the proles) keeps us stuck in those old systems and patterns that are killing us.

Maddie and Jamie go on to identify four key qualities that can help our organizations be more human (or, more accurately, stop trying to force organizations made up of people into an assembly line mentality): being open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous. In the meat of the book, they examine how these four qualities, expressed through the mediums of organizational culture, internal process/structure, and individual behavior, have the power to create organizations that, to quote p. 247, “inspire us and bring out the best in us.”

If business people read, accept and implement the ideas contained in Humanize around these qualities and how they can be fostered at the personal, process, and organizational level (hardly a given of course), I believe this book has the power to RADICALLY transform our organizations and, just possibly, save the world of associations in the process.

 

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?

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.

Great quote for a rainy Tuesday

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Great quote for a rainy Tuesday

“Don’t let your imagination and enthusiasm be dampened by organizational politics or institutional caution.”

This is from a white paper on guerrilla social media strategy by Colin McKay (shout out to Mads for the link), but I think it’s applicable FAR outside social media strategy. Every organization has institutional resistance to change. EVERY organization. In some places, it’s greater than in others. But every organization has at least one person who fears change. And most have a LOT more than one. If you are the change agent in your organization (and the fact that you’re reading this means there’s a better than average chance you are), don’t let the forces of “we have always done it that way” steal your thunder.

So Fellow Change Agents, how to you keep your spark in the face of “no”?

“I don’t care about your personal brand.”

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on “I don’t care about your personal brand.”

I’ve been sitting on this quote from Aaron Brazell (@technosailor) since BlogPotomac back in June.

A few thoughts about branding:

NACHRI is currently going through a major branding initiative – consultants, fonts, colors, phrases, brand book, the whole nine yards. But, as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff remind us:

Marketers tell us they define and manage brands. Some spend millions, or hundreds of millions, of dollars on advertising. They carefully extend brand names, putting Scope on a tube of toothpaste to see what happens. We bought this brand, they say. We spent on it. We own it.

Bull.

Your brand is whatever the customers say it is.

Groundswell, p. 78

Which of course leaves me with a lot of questions about branding consultants, the number one being: Are they even providing a useful service? If they’re helping an organization IDENTIFY what their constituents think about the organization, great. If they’re helping an organization figure out what they can do to help their constituents think better of them, great. If they’re trying to tell you what your brand should be, um, not great. I came into the process here too late to be able to tell which one our consultants did, but I sure hope it’s option 1 or 2.

But the larger point is that I think “brand” is too constructed a concept for people. A company has a brand. A person has a reputation. And it’s the sum total of who you are. Ever seen those Facebook pages that show NO personality? Guaranteed that’s someone who’s decided anything other than 100% professional information is bad for his “brand.” You know what else is bad for your “brand”? Coming across as a cardboard cut-out.

Furthermore, in an era where we’re all trying to become stars in the social media firmament, personal brand starts to eclipse corporate brand. Not to name names, but there’s a car company that rhymes with Mord that has a socmed star on staff. What happens if/when he leaves? Whose “brand” suffers? I’m just guessing, but probably Mord’s.

I’m not sure what the answer is, so I suggest you read Maddie on it here, here, or here, and then tell me what you think.

Tagged in the Changeblogging meme

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Tagged in the Changeblogging meme

Mads tagged me in this conversation that originated with Qui Diaz of Livingston Communications.

To quote Qui:

“Changebloggers, as defined by Britt Bravo, are ‘people who are using their blog, podcast or vlog to raise awareness, build community, and/or facilitate readers/listeners/viewers’ taking action to make the world a better place.’ These actions occur across nonprofits, government, corporations and the general civic sector.”

Much like Maddie, I wonder if I really qualify as a changeblogger. We all know about ASAE’s “Associations Advance America” slogan, but we also all know about plenty of associations that are doing “advance the interests of our own industry at the expense of everyone and everything else” work, too. I now work at a place that focuses on promoting the missions of moderate to progressive nonprofits online. But I have often wondered how much one person can do.

I was raised to give money and time to causes I believe in. My parents stressed that no matter how much my own resources might be strained, there are always people more in need. No matter how tight things have been for me personally (and in grad school, things were DAMN tight), I’ve always given at least small amounts of time and money away. Over the years, I’ve tended to focus on women’s rights, LGBT rights, groups that help the poor, hungry, and homeless, animal protection groups, and arts organizations.

Several years ago, I had a bit of an epiphany. I was writing my monthly smallish (relatively speaking) check to a large international environmental protection organization. And I realized that my small contribution would barely register. At the same time, I realized that my beloved DC, land of taxation without representation, gets periodically screwed. Since all politics is ultimately local, I made the commitment to give only to organizations that directly serve my local community.

So even though I am well aware of the severity of global issues, I’ve chosen to focus on doing what I can to make my neighborhood and my city a better place for the people who live here. And I’ll answer the questions below with that in mind:

What is one change – big or small, local or global – you want to see in your lifetime?
Congressional representation for the residents of Washington, DC

Who is already working this issue that you think others should support?
DC Vote, the DC Statehood Green Party, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, Mayor Adrian Fenty, and Representative Tom Davis ( Republican, but a good guy who’s unfortunately retiring at the end fo 2008).

How are you going to use your Web/tech/marcom skills to further this cause? (Or, what are you already doing that works?)
That’s a good question. I’ve participated in all the marches and letter writing campaigns and I educate people outside the area about the situation whenever possible. But I think it’s time to think about how I can put more of my “money” (resources) where my “mouth” (aka this post) is.

BloggerCon and BloggerUnCon

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 4 Comments on BloggerCon and BloggerUnCon

This year was my first BloggerCon. It was also the first year that BloggerCon was part of the official program. So it was kind of a mixed group: long time bloggers about associations like Jeff, Mads, BMart, and JNott (aka McLovin), new bloggers about associations like, well, your truly, and lots of people whose organizations are blogging or thinking about starting blogs about the profession, industry, or issue they represent. So it was a pretty mixed bag.

A few thoughts:

  • This session really demonstrated to me the importance of the social aspects of social media.
  • The typical question about moderating came up. Andy couldn’t be there, since he was giving his own session at that time, so I represented and brought up his/RIMS‘s practice of allowing members to self–moderate through “mark as inappropriate.” The truth about moderating is that pretty much any level of control from absolute to wild west free-for-all can be appropriate, as long as you’re consistent and have a reason for choosing what you choose. (But personally, I’m in favor of writing a strong disclaimer and then letting the chips fall where they may.)
  • I kind of feel like we should be past the “what is all this stuff?” questions at this point. But as was demonstrated in all the social media sessions (including many of the Social Media Labs), we’re not. Educate yourselves people!
  • Participants also asked if an organizational blog won’t result in diluting attention and interest in the organization’s other properties. And the answer is really no. Different audiences are going to want to get information in different formats. If you, as you should, think of at least 3 ways to use anything you write/produce, this is just one more method to get the word out. And it can provide nice cross-promotional opportunities.
  • Voice is key. (This came up in my Social Media Lab session, too.) Your CEO/ED doesn’t need a blog just to have a blog. Only start one if you can make the commitment to write frequently and authentically. Having your PR firm write pieces “from your CEO” is going to come off as fake. Sometimes it’s more useful to see what’s already out there – like maybe some fab member blogs on your profession or industry – and link to them rather than trying to force the creation of community where it doesn’t naturally exist.
  • And it’s OK to mix up format of your posts. It’s not the same as writing articles. Some posts can be be long, some can be short, some can be links, whatevs. They key is QUALITY CONTENT. If you can make it good, everything else is icing.

BloggerUnCon was a completely different experience. It wasn’t part of the official program, and it took place in the out-of-the-way CAE Lounge at the end of the program day on Monday. The information was only in the association blogosphere, too, so it was mostly the people doing the heavy lifting of association blogging. I definitely got the sense that this session was more like previous years’ BloggerCons.

Bob Wolfe kicked us off with a really great question: Why do we blog?

The answers were fascinating.

  • Ben talked about starting his blog to help him when he was studying for the CAE in 2004. Then he realized that he was helping other people, too, and just kept going. And helping people.
  • Matt spoke about how much he enjoyed hearing about other young association execs’ experiences and wanting to contribute to the conversation.
  • Jeff launched his blog as the original Principled Innovation website, after he’d been running the business for over a year, in order to “initiate the converation I wanted to have with the association community about innovation.”
  • Jamie indicated that blogs are better than resumes for getting a sense of who a person really is, as the cleverly named Get Me Jamie Notter would attest.
  • Bob himself pointed out that “thought leaders blog.”

In fact, several people mentioned the importance of blogging in creating a personal brand as an association professional and as a source of professional opportunity. It’s about creating a personal body of work.

Shifting employment patterns means that there are increasing opportunities for those thought leaders who work in or with associations to create and market personal expertise and a personal brand while still keeping their day jobs.

That was a huge driver for me in starting T4P. When I found out with 3 weeks notice that I was going to be laid off this spring, I considered – briefly – kicking off my own consulting firm. And I realized that I wasn’t known in the association community, at least not well enough to start consulting on my own without having to KILL myself to get clients. It was a real eye opener. (Also, I really, really love to write. And have for a long time.)

The conversation then shifted to the idea of voice, audience, and focus. What are you writing about and for whom? The participants had a variety of focuses (focii?) within the association space, but the common theme was the idea of the conversation, and participating in it.

We then drifted into a discussion of some of the technical details of the newly-launched A List Bloggers, in preparation for our plans for (association) world domination, before talking about what role we can – and should – play in convincing The Powers That Be of the power of social media.

The problem is, we aren’t where they are, and we’re not speaking with them in ways they understand. Which I think is a really valuable lesson in member engagement. You can’t expect people (CEOs/EDs or members) to come to you, and you can’t expect them to speak your language.

We have to learn to use terms that are meaningful to the people we want to convince – things like “engagement,” “community,” “collaboration,” and “attracting younger members.”

Even the medium of a Social Media Lab or socnet sessions may be the wrong way to go about this. What we need is to get social media experts on panel sessions about board relations and advocacy and creating vital educational experiences and recruiting and engaging members. Which is why every social media session ends up being a 101 session on “this is a blog, this a wiki, this is a social network” and it’s really, REALLY hard to focus the conversation on the “so what?” We have to get out of the social media ghetto and into the executive suites, the membership departments, the publications areas, the meetings teams.

As Ben put it, “It’s a simple calculation: engagement increases the likelihood of renewal. Renewal increases the likelihood of creating organizational evangelists. And virtual communities are an increasingly popular form of engagement.”

So I leave you with a question: what would your organization look like if your individual staff members didn’t focus specifically and exclusively on your journal, or getting out the renewal notices on time, or managing the membership database, or creating press releases, or your legislative fly in day, but instead worked as fluid team of engagement specialists on increasing engagement in your organization, your industry, your profession, for your entire universe of constituents? What would that world be like?