Get Me Jamie Notter

Paying the Price for Truth

Last week I suggested that if you want a culture of truth in your organization, perhaps that needs to start at the top. Several of the comments chimed in with a "you're darn right it does." The top controls resources, the top decides strategy, the top sets the example, so they need to step up and lead the culture change. I get that, of course. The top does have an absolutely critical role to play.

But deep down I wanted someone to jump up and say "NO!" Let's face it: I'm a systems guy and a Gen Xer, so ultimately I don't want the top of the hierarchy to actually be in charge. My honorary brother (and Gen Xer) Joe Gerstandt was up to the task with his comment. I will reproduce most of it here rather than summarize it:

I can no longer support the idea that change/progress/solutions (whether it is a culture of truth, an inclusive culture, innovation, social media or anything else) has to start at the top.

That is simply how we let ourselves off the hook. "I am passionate about the truth, but the powers that be just don't get it."

Bullshit.

If we are passionate about truth (or diversity, or innovation, or flexibility or anything) then we will demand it. That may lead to repercussions, but that is part of the equation with passion.

Leaving our relationship with truth and our other aspirations and values in the hands of those at the top of the pyramid has not served us well. At all.

The solution is not new leaders. The solution is us acting in accordance with what we claim to believe.

Selly Alcorn made a similar point: "Change can come to an organization, but only when those who demand the truth are willing to pay for it."

There is a price to pay for truth. At an individual level, this means rocking the boat. This is true in every aspect of your life, by the way. Living a full life requires rocking the boat. That is a choice. You can choose to live less than a full life (most of us do), and you can find a nice tepid harmony with those around you. Don't push people, don't make them uncomfortable, don't show passion or emotion. Just be polite, kind, nice and reveal about 10% of what's real for you. That's normal and, frankly, it's okay. You should have the ability to choose how to live your life.

Paying the price for truth means revealing at least some of that 90% and working through the consequences that will have on the people in your life, and on you for that matter. You will make some people unhappy. You might spark some conflict. You might have to face some inner contradictions. You will violate what people in general may be expecting of you. You will incur judgments from other people. This is the price you pay for living your life fully. All of this is manageable, of course, albeit hard work at times. Only in very rare cases will living your life fully and telling the truth put your life in danger (but that does happen, by the way). 

Paying this price can yield significant returns, however. There is a lot of research out there demonstrating the dangerously low levels of engagement among American workers, and you can track some hard expenses for an organization associated with the reduced efficiency and high turnover that stems from low engagement. A culture of truth can counteract that. In general, people who regularly express their passion are not the disengaged ones. People who know they can speak the truth and push the issues are not the ones calling in sick on Friday. Paying the price for truth is an investment that pays off big time.

So back to the organization: how do we support individuals in our organizations to invest in the truth? Paying the price is ultimately an individual decision. We can't make that decision for them or institute a new policy that demands our employees bring more of themselves to work. I don't want to "let them off the hook," as Joe suggests, by implying that the top of the organization must change their behavior first, but how else can we support them?

I think that is really where my first post came from. Individuals have let themselves off the hook because I am guessing that in most organizations they are afraid. They say they are afraid of the repercussions of telling the truth. They fear they might get fired or in trouble. Fear lives where the truth is not spoken. It flourishes there, in fact. So regardless of whether the top controls resources or drives culture change, I think that if the top of the organization intentionally speaks more truth, it will counteract fear. It may require you to deal with some new things, but the fear of what they might think, what they might do, will be lessened. It removes an impediment to people telling the truth. It's not the only solution, and it's not even the first solution, but it could be a powerful strategic move in your quest to have individuals start investing in more truth. On one hand, you don't want to let them off the hook by implying it must be done at the top first. On the other hand, you can take away one of their biggest excuses if you start at the top.

The rest of us don't have to wait for the top. We have to dig deep and be willing to pay the price for living a fuller, more truthful life. That will show up in our organizations in many different ways. And you lovely people at the top? You have the same charge. Your truth telling will have some different implications, but it's still an investment that will yield returns.

A Culture of Truth Starts at the Top (?)

I clearly have some issues with hierarchy, and since I'm all about systems, I often find myself pointing out ways that people who are NOT in official positions of power can work to make things happen, change things, etc. In general, if someone says X needs to come from the top of the organization, I find myself pushing back, arguing that while the top certainly needs to do something, you (in the middle, at the bottom, wherever) also can be doing something.

But I wonder if that general philosophy does not apply as much to the challenge of building an organization where more truth is spoken. I've written before about the four different areas that need attention when you're building a culture of truth (walk, talk, structure, and culture). I always thought that gave any system lots of opportunities for building a more truth-friendly workplace.

But I think the issue of speaking the truth is much more closely tied to some built in assumptions about hierarchy and power than I had realized. Maybe this is not something that can come from the ground up. Although eventually your organization will need to undergo changes in individual behavior, public statements, specific processes or structures, none of that really gets started unless the core group (usually senior management) actually lives this new culture and models it. Before anything else happens, the people who are in charge need to make a change, and the people who are not in charge need to see that change in action. That is a prerequisite for all the other important work that needs to be done to build a more truth-friendly workplace.

What do you think?

Leading Broken Organizations

Bruce Butterfield has created an interesting dialogue over on the ASAE listserve when he compared the association community to the struggling/dying industry of newspapers. Maddie posted about it, as did Peggy. Glen Tecker did a pushback post, arguing that we shouldn't compare the plights of for-profit companies to associations because they have such different purposes. Quoting Glen, "Their [nonprofits] mission is to serve; not sell."

First, I'll have to write another post on the notion that for profit companies exist solely for profit. That makes no sense to me because for profit companies are made up of human beings who care about things like quality, meaning, careers, solving problems, etc. The notion that they are all profit-searching robots seems off the mark to me. 

But that's another post. In this post I want to re-focus on Bruce's original points. He was arguing that newspapers were faced with a situation where their industry was dying, and they weren't adapting. He suggests the same could be true for associations, and I don't think the tax status of the two groups is particularly relevant here. All organizations run the risk of dying due to adaptation failure, whether they distribute profit to owners or not.

Read Umair Haque's December "builders manifesto" post. It's fairly mind-blowing. He argues that even the word "leadership" is a relic of the past now. And one of his main points hit home regarding this conversation:

Here's the problem in a nutshell. What leaders "lead" are yesterday's organizations. But yesterday's organizations--from carmakers to investment banks, to the healthcare system, to the energy industry, to the Senate itself--are broken. Today's biggest human challenge isn't leading broken organizations slightly better. It's building better organizations in the first place.

Whether or not my organization/industry's mission is to serve or sell, the bigger question is, is it broken? And I don't mean that in the simplistic yes/no good/bad sense. I mean digging into the complexity of your system and coming up with some deep strategic insight about what's happening and how you need to change, and that includes actually being open to the possibility that the change might be radical. And then translating that insight into some experiments that can give some actual texture to this necessary change, and then building a new organization from there.

Governance Month: "I don't want to be the one who screwed things up"

I have heard this phrase a lot in the context of association governance (which is this month's theme on the Acronym blog, by the way). Jeffrey Cufaude mentioned it in a blog comment recently as one reason why association governance tends to be conservative. They don't take big risks, because people on the current Board who would vote to take those risks don't want to be remembered as the ones that made the bad decisions.

Do you live your life that way? I mean, you are your own Board of Directors and you have a lifetime appointment. It will always be YOU that made that decision. Do you not do it because you don't want to be the one who is blamed if it doesn't work out? Are you worried about what people will say about you, or are you worried about the potential consequences of the decision?

Why do we even allow this kind of thinking on association Boards? How could it be possible that the decisions you make during your term are somehow disconnected from all the decisions that came before it and all that come after it? How is it possible that we could argue that a group of 8 to 15 people are somehow able to make decisions that are exclusively theirs to own, as if the staff, the committee members, the customers, the economy, etc. are not part of the equation. 

Here's my lesson for governance month: stop oversimplifying the role of the Board. Stop pretending that the Board is in charge and the "boss" of the corporation. The Board is absolutely the most senior decision making body authorized by the membership (in most cases). Fine. So it holds that role within a governance system, but that role by itself does not define the governance system. The governance system is complex, and involves a lot of players in both making decisions and implementing them. And the heart of this governance decision is not authority or power--it's learning. 

If a Board votes to spend reserves on a venture that doesn't work out, I don't blame the Board members. I blame a system that was not learning from what it was doing fast enough and clear enough to make better decisions. If you start to tangibly identify your governance system and realize who makes what kinds of decisions and how learning gets passed up and down the chain, then you have a shot at transforming your Board conversations and stamp out any "but I might get blamed for this later" thinking. Take that excuse off the table, and you might get some Boards who behave in ways that don't make us roll our eyes when the topic of "governance" comes up

Love Your Clients

I know some people get a little antsy when you start talking about "love" in the workplace. That's their prerogative. I also know that some of the most brilliant people I know embrace the idea with reckless abandon. I have decided to join forces with those people. Love and passion and deep human engagement are not only acceptable in the workplace, in my opinion, I think they are going to drive the more successful organizations and enterprises from now on. This is not a new idea, nor is it particularly radical. But people seem to be afraid of it. So let's just explore it and take some of the mystery out of it.

Here's one place to try out love: love your clients. If you a consultant or manage associations at an AMC like me, then this can mean client organizations. If you work in an organization of any size, you probably have internal "clients." Either way, you can try this one.

Love your clients.

You know what love means. Assume they have the best intentions. Forgive them when they hurt or annoy you. See the best in them. Sometimes give up what you want or need to make sure they also get what they want or need. Care about their interests. Celebrate their victories. Tell them the truth. 

Note that it's not about emotional expression or anything particularly touchy feely. And it also doesn't mean you have to like your clients all the time. They will drive you crazy some times, just like YOU drive crazy the people that love you. But don't let that get in the way of the love.

Life is short. Love your clients.

Documents Are Not Strategy

Here's a quick lesson that I think needs some reinforcement: your strategy documents are not your strategy. I know that we all know this already, but looking at the behavior of so many organizations, I'm not so sure. We invest so much time and money in producing strategic documents that we hold onto them even if they turn out to be not particularly useful to the whole system.

The primary value of any kind of strategy process, from what I've seen, is in the strategic conversations they generate and the strategic insight that is generated in the conversations. We then try to take that and turn it into some sort of deliverable that we can share with everyone, partly because we genuinely need to share the insight across the system, but partly (let's be honest) because the consultant promised it in the proposal, or someone in charge needs something tangible to show someone even more in charge.

But I think we should hold onto these documents loosely. We should be prepared to trash them six months in if they aren't really sticking with people. We should stay close to the insight and keep having the conversations, because that's what will give you the most powerful documents and the most effective strategy. The documents are good; they are important. But they are not "it."

Year End 2009

As I predicted in last year's final post, I think I did get a little more settled this year. Not that life didn't throw any curves at me, like getting two new association management clients all of a sudden this fall, but I have shifted out of constant crisis mode at work (and in life, come to think of it), and that feels nice. The downside has been very little time for consulting this year, and I plan on changing that in 2010. I said I would blog more this year, and while the number of posts was about the same, I think the quality and depth of the posts has been increasing. Not to mention that I now write on two other blogs!

I said I wanted to get out there more this year (articles, presentations, ebooks), and I did, though probably a little less than I wanted. I spoke at the CalSAE and wrote an article for them, and I was lucky enough to slide in and do a presentation on conflict at ASAE in Toronto, but the article I promised Lisa Junker is still in draft form (sorry Lisa!). And I've now become a speaker on social media, having presented with Lindy and Maddie at ASAE's first Social Media Workshop, and two social-media related presentations in early 2010 already scheduled. 

I'm not one for resolutions, but I do have some clear intentions for 2010. I intend to do more work with leaders who really want to change their organizations. I recognize this is a fairly small market, but I want to find these people and do some good work with them. This is an offshoot of the ideas I've been playing with around "truth," though I don't expect the work to be framed that way necessarily. It's also connected to my social media work. 

I also intend to do more work with organizations on strategy. I've already got this lined up with one of the association clients I am managing this year, but I think it's time to apply my four-word mantra more broadly. The association community is still stuck in a strategic planning rut, and I plan on working with leaders who see this and want something more.

Here's 2009 in numbers:

Miles running: 337 (down 96)
Miles biking: 1,651 (down 519)
United miles: 18,559 (down almost 7,000; no premier; boo)
Following on Twitter: 683 (up 463)
Followers on Twitter: 763 (up 529)
Tweets: 3,322 (1,804 this year)
Facebook Friends: 228 (up 81)
Linked In Contacts: 185 (up 99)
Get Me Jamie Notter subscribers: 501 (up 235)
GMJN Posts: 519 (102 in 2009)
GMJN Comments: 673 (192 in 2009)
GMJN Page views: 47,919 (17,590 in 2009)
Average Daily GMJN Page Views: 28.20 (up 5.60)
Hourglass Blog Posts: 16
Common Thread Blog Posts: 5
Google Reader Feeds: 71 (up 12, but I don't read as much still)
Unread Feed Posts: 270
Email Inbox: 372
Always Done It That Way Books Sold: 1,586 (144 in 2009; not bad for a 2006 publication!)
Generational Diversity Ebooks Sold: 94 (12 in 2009, but I'm giving them away free now)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Why Do We Resist Learning?

I am quite proud that my guest post over on the SocialFish blog on whether your organization is human enough for social media got so much traction that it is third(!) on their post ranks. I'd like to unpack the post a bit over here.

The first point I want to explore is the idea of parallel processes. From the original post:

So even if you figure out the tools, the complexity of organizational implementation can be overwhelming. The big problem with “overwhelming” is that it translates into inaction. It translates to slow. And that’s a problem for social media (and for associations in general, if you ask me). Social media is fast. The game changes quickly, and it doesn’t wait for you to figure everything out first. Yes, you have to figure things out, but you’ll have to do it as a parallel process to the implementation.

The basic notion here (that I think is foreign in too many organizations) is that you can (a) implement something, (b) learn from it, and (c) apply that learning to what you're doing all more or less at the same time. Now obviously it can't all be simultaneous--you have to have DONE something to learn from it. But why is it not more normal to have your implementation and your analysis/learning happening at the same time?

In short, we don't value learning as much as we value doing. We are a doing culture and that's what we reward. That's what we measure. That's why we hire and fire people. Did it get done. It seems we have a strange resistance to learning. People talk a lot about resistance to change, and certainly that's there (it shows up in the "applying what we learned" part). But what about resistance to learning? Why is it somehow uncomfortable to get together as a team and talk about what we learned? And I mean really digging into the analysis, not just a "the participants gave it a 4.1" conversation. 

Turns out those are tough conversations. Egos are on the line. People worry about blame. People fear they might not get resources they used to have. There's one set of reasons why your organization may resist learning: fear, blame, and ego. They stop your learning conversations and people safely focus on implementation instead. 

I think that's a problem. If your organization cannot handle challenging learning conversations like that quickly and efficiently, then I think you'll get left in the dust. You won't be able to implement, learn, and shift in a short enough cycle to stay competitive. There's more to it than better conversations, but that's certainly a good place to start.

Holiday Gift: A New Blog!

I know, I know! You were probably just thinking to yourself, how is it possible that Jamie hasn't created a new blog recently?

Well it wasn't just me. The whole staff at Management Solutions Plus (where I work) has created a blog. Although association blogging is quite established now, we noticed that Association Management Companies were only just getting into the fray, so we decided to jump in as well.

It's called The Common Thread (MSP's tagline is "Where Success is the Common Thread"). It's a multi-author blog, open to every one of our staff, and so far we've got posts not only from Beth Palys (the President and owner of the firm), but Heidi Zimmerman (one of our Execs), Angela Pike (from Member Services), and Jon Benjamin (our graphic designer) have all done posts. Okay, I wrote some too, but you expected that!

Please visit and subscribe and comment and tweet and do whatever other social media verbs you can think of. We are all happy to be contributing the association blogosphere and look forward to the conversation.

Being Serious About Strategy Can Also Be Relaxed

I developed a draft strategy process for one of the associations that I manage the other day. It didn't take me very long, and it's fairly loosely defined. We have five Board meetings next year, and I suggested a specific focus for a "strategic conversation" at each of those meetings. One is more budget focused, one is on external trends, one is on member needs, etc. I'll work with them to make sure work is done between the meetings as well. 

This is a far cry from some of the strategy work I've done in the past, where we helped create separate task forces to design the process and facilitated two-day scenario planning sessions. Of course those were bigger organizations with bigger budgets and staffs. 

But just because this new strategy process is low-key doesn't mean it's not serious. I evaluated where we were in terms of strategic capacity and designed a (simple) process that would increase capacity based on my "four words" of strategy:

Understand. We have been weak in responding both internally to member needs and externally to economic trends. The shift in the economy didn't bring a quick enough shift in programming. So we need to make sure we have better conversations sooner about these things. That's now added to our process.

Choose. Our choices were really only made when we put together the budget, fairly late in the year. I added a focus on choice at the July meeting with some time to clarify the overall strategic direction.

Do. I didn't add much in this area, but part of the strategy work will be to increase communication across committees about activities as they get done, to combat the silo mentality. Committees need to change some of their implementation patterns to support the broader strategy work.

Learn. One of the Board meetings is now specifically focused on learning from what we did the year before. Not just reporting. Learning.

None of this is rocket science, but all of it is going to happen. And that makes it more valuable--to this organization--than rocket science.