Get Me Jamie Notter

Associations 3.0

As I said yesterday, I’m catching up on reading, so I'm only now getting to the March issue of Associations Now. The cover story of that issue is by Jeff about the "next traditions" for associations.

I'm hoping everyone has read the article by now, because it's really important. If you haven't, go read it now. I certainly enjoy pushing back on Jeff's ideas, as I have in the revolution "smackdown" in the last few posts. There are plenty of areas where he and I disagree, or are, at the very least, not convinced.

But not in this article. I don't know of anyone who cares more about associations than Jeff, so he is constantly looking at associations from every angle trying to figure out what needs our attention. In this article he points to six huge gaps in associations. These are gaps that I think escape the attention of many association execs, frequently even the good ones. When you're trying to get the trains to run on time, you can miss these. I know it takes a lot just to make sure things get done in associations these days, but Jeff has identified six areas of attention that are really important to thriving organizations. You rarely find really superior organizations without these qualities, in my experience. So I would challenge you, if you're in an association, to honestly take stock of where you stand on the six areas that Jeff mentions. They are:

• Curiosity
• Care
• Imagination
• Choice
• Courage
• Responsibility

And I don't mean being curious every now and then, or caring sometimes, or using your imagination when things slow down over the summer. These are things that need to be built into the organization at multiple levels. You should see them all the time. Of course if you don't see them, the good news is they are things that you can start doing today—even if the rest of the organization hasn't come around yet. Start adding these elements into your daily work, and then notice what impact it has. Push conversations with others, particularly those in authority, about where these elements are missing and how to strengthen them. There is so much value in these elements—so much that can set you apart as an organization. They need your attention.

Killing the Sacred Cow

I am catching up on reading--just getting to the March issue of Associations Now--and in the CEO to CEO section in the back, they ask the question "If you could slay any sacred cow at your organization, what would it be?" Nelson Fabian of the National Environmental Health Association has a super answer, so I'll quote it in its entirety:

Strategic planning. Most new board members come in assuming that such an activity is necessary. At every new board member orientation, I challenge this assumption (and sacred cow). In my opinion, the very idea that in a fast-paced world as ours, one can predict the future and then build plans, staff performance measures, and public postures around it is a total illusion. Yet, I see many associations running to the sacred altar of strategic planning and signing blank checks for consultants to lead them to the Promised Land. We prize strategic thinking, strategic directions, strategic interests, and the like, but I'm proud to say that we have no strategic plan. There are some good books out there that have helped us to think this way: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning [by Henry Mintzberg (Free Press, 1994)] and Leadership and the New Science [by Margaret Wheatley (Berrett-Koehler, 2006)] are two. Most importantly, our association is growing and is fun for almost everyone involved.

Don't Forget to Have Fun

People who work with and for associations work very hard. Most of my consulting is in the "association space," so I can vouch for this first hand. So to those of you working in the association community, I have a message:

Have fun!

Having fun is a part of being human, therefore it should be a part of work. In that vein, I want to point out a new group that has formed primarily (although not totally) with fun in mind: Young Association Professionals, or YAP.

It is starting as a Facebook group, and who knows where it will go. In the spirit of Web 2.0, we don't particularly have a plan for this—we're just experimenting. Even the "Young" part is optional (they let ME in didn't they?).

YAP is having its first DC-based happy hour on May 13th. Check out the Facebook group and join us.

Helping People Change

Maddie and Jeff have written some very thought-provoking posts in the last week or so that have been framed as revolution vs. incremental. The posts are really good, and I do recommend reading each one. Here they are in order:

• Jeff started with a post about strategic imagination.
• Maddie then disagreed with some of the points (though agreed on many), arguing that you will lose a lot of association execs of you talk about revolution.
• (In there, I wrote a post suggesting associations choose between change and mediocrity, but I suggested the change needn't be a revolution and linked to Maddie's post).
• So Jeff responded with this post, saying the revolution is definitely at hand
• Maddie, loving a challenge, responded here, saying that we agree there is a revolution, but we disagree on how to engage associations in participating.
• Jeff responded (also to Ben's comment) with a post about association growth, that is tied into the revolution discussion.

That’s a lot! More than I can respond to in a single post, in fact, but for now I want to make one point about how people experience change.

I think a point that Maddie was getting at that didn't get picked up in the other conversations is that different people will experience the same change differently. The change may be revolutionary, but some people may not feel like it is a revolution. And if they don't feel like it's one, it is kind of pointless to argue with them that it IS one. The goal is not to be right about the existence of a revolution. The goal is to help people successfully navigate the change. At least that's my goal when I am consulting, frequently. And when I am helping people to change, I try to view it from THEIR perspective.

For instance, I have changed a lot over the years. I'm not the same person I was twenty years ago, or even five years ago, or even one year ago. But over the last twenty years, every day has simply been the present for me. I dealt with things in the moment. The change—the revolution—is only apparent when I look back and reflect.

Now sometimes, because I'm smart and am aware of my environment, I would ratchet up my change. There have been times where I have done some major rebuilding and reinvention in my life, where I made more radical changes in response to what was happening. But even so, it didn't always feel like a revolution to me at the time—it just felt like something I needed to do.

Helping people through change requires meeting them where they are. You can still push them once you're there, and when things are changing rapidly and radically, they will NEED YOU to really push them. But in order to push them, you need to be close to them—right next to them, in fact. That means seeing the world as they see it and, if they give you permission, partnering with them in the change. Remember: it's their change, not yours.

What I am Reading

Before I forget, Joe Raasch, of the Happy Burro Blog, tagged me on a "What are You reading" blog chain letter, so here goes. Also, for some reason I'm supposed to quote sentences six through eight of page 123 on the book I'm reading.

The current read is: The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees) by Patrick Lencioni. For you Lencioni fans, you know that he writes a fable before he delivers his model, so you won't expect much from the excerpt:

And with that, the chain reaction began. Tristan and Migo started flipping chairs. Carl hit the lights.

Exciting, huh? But the book is awesome. The story is about a retired CEO that gets interested in a small Italian restaurant and works to make it so the people actually like working there (and he moves on to do the same at larger companies too). Then at the end he presents his model. Short version: people hate their jobs because: (1) they don't know how to measure whether they, individually, did a good job that day; (2) because they don't understand how they make a difference in other people's lives; and (3) because nobody really knows who they are. Immeasurement, irrelevance, and anonymity. I'll write more about the book later.

Of course that's a book on the work side of my life. On the personal side, I'm reading Pema Chodron's Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion. Come to think of it, that SHOULD be a work book, now shouldn't it? As a bonus, here's 6-8 on page 123 (actually 5-7; there are only seven sentences on that page):

Begin with being willing to feel what you are going through. Be willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of yourself that you feel are not worthy of existing. If you are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if you even aspire to stay awake and open to what you're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best you can in each moment, then something begins to change.

Next on my reading list, both professional and personal:

What Were They Thinking: Unconventional Wisdom About Management, by Jeffrey Pfeffer
The Future of Management, by Gary Hamel
The Valkyries, by Paolo Coehlo

I tag the following bloggers who, of course, have the right to completely ignore the tag:

Jeff Cobb
Bob Wolfe
Lindy Dryer
Helen Mosher
Lisa Junker

Love Your Customers and Members but Ignore Your Employees?

I listened to a virtual seminar last week that ASAE & The Center put on about engaging members and staff of younger generations. Since I have a book on the topic, I was interested to hear how this author, Michael Muetzel, tackled the subject. I am pleased to report that at least this guy is toning the hype down. He warned everyone about generalizations, he acknowledged that there are differing interpretations of start and end years, and that it should be based on generational attitudes/values rather than demographic statistics. And he never mocked any of the generations. If anything, he apologized too much when he thought he might be saying something negative. All that was refreshing.

After the overview, he focused mostly on how to engage younger people in the workforce, and he made a provocative point: if the younger generation feels entitled and doesn't want to "pay their dues," then...okay. Don't make them pay their dues. That's the way they are, so deal with it.

This is not a typical reaction! The typical reaction is to tell these kids to grow up, to explain that they don't understand the work world yet, and, if you're lucky, you might even hear the story about how I had to walk to school in the snow when I was a kid! I believe it was uphill both ways, too.

Here’s the root of his point, though. In doing his research, he came across companies that were very proud of the fact that they were always a step ahead of their customers in terms of identifying and satisfying customer needs. In other words, if you give the customers what they want, then you'll be more successful (duh). Obviously this applies to associations as well, in terms of members. You try to understand them, anticipate their needs, wow them, impress them, satisfy them.

But when it comes to your younger employees, you usually just scratch your head and tell them they need to grow up and change (and be more like you). I'm exaggerating a bit, but there is an element of truth here. In general, employees are not given the same "status" that customers or members are given. We just don"t have to care about them as much, satisfy them as much, or respect their needs, wishes, or desires as much.

Why is that? There are lots of studies about how disengaged the workforce is. During the seminar I tweeted some of the stats that he gave us: according to a Gallup survey, 71% of employees are not particularly engaged at work. A Careerbuilder survey suggested that something like 84% of people hate their jobs (although they have an interest in saying that, I think).

So everyone hates their job and isn't engaged. And we don't think that's a problem? Do you think your organization would perform at the exact same level if everyone there were engaged and excited about their work? I tend to think your performance would improve (and honestly I'm kind of surprised I have to spell this argument out). Muetzel showed a statistic at one organization where they saw a 3.44% increase in net margin as a result of increased employee engagement.

So if your younger employees are suggesting that they are not willing to wait ten years before seeing an increase in their job responsibilities, what will you tell them? To keep quiet and get back in line? That in your day everyone had to wait ten years? To stop bothering you because you have important emails to answer?

Or would you view that as important data? Would that be on your radar screen as something that this generation of employees is concerned about, and you’d start to look at your organization and your systems so that you could better serve this important constituency? If you manage people, how much of your time is deovted to figuring out how th make THEM happy in their jobs? I’m not saying you have to do everything your employees say. But the power of engagement is an untapped resource in an era when we've squeezed the efficiencies out of almost everything else. This is also what Lencioni's most recent book is about. More on that later this week.

People versus Systems Association Style

Last week I blogged about people versus systems, and Jeff De Cagna added the following comment:

Jamie, let's take this conversation into the volunteer realm, in which associations do not have all of the flexibility they would like in choosing "the talent." What is your advice on how we design association systems that can withstand marked inconsistency in the quality of the talent working within them?

How do you design a system that can deal with inconsistent quality of the people? The short answer: you accept mediocrity and move on.

Seriously, if you KNOW that you will have mediocre talent on average, then you should prepare yourself for mediocre results and mediocre systems. Why would you expect anything other than mediocrity under those circumstances?

But that's too depressing, isn't it? So here is my advice:

Change the way you run your organization.

You and your volunteers should change things so you can capitalize more on people's strengths. If you have a mixed bag of talent on the volunteer side, then don't put them in charge. Or, more specifically, get clearer on how the volunteers can best contribute to leadership, and redesign your leadership systems so that you more consistently get the right people meeting together and making decisions together so that maximum value is created (and see Jeff's writing on this).

This will mean, of course, that your association won’t look exactly like the association of yesterday. Gasp! I know, it's hard to imagine, but you have a clear choice: mediocrity or change. Choose one. The change doesn't have to be a revolution, but there definitely has to be change (we have a word in English for systems that don't change, by the way: stagnant).

And don't forget: you (execs) are not changing them (volunteers). You are not changing the system and then helping them to adapt (the traditional definition of change management, or change enforcement, as I like to call it). This is something you all will do together. Even if they are mediocre, they are integral parts of the system, so you must engage them in the redesign. Help them see how they can best contribute. Be more curious about them and what strengths they bring to the association (as you look closer, you may change your tune on the whole "mediocre" thing too). Challenge your own assumptions and take a closer look at your strengths (and weaknesses).

Bottom line: your volunteer pool is mostly beyond your control AND it's arguably more of a force in your system than you are. Move towards it. Engage it. Work with it to redesign the systems in ways that downplay the weaknesses and harness the strengths. It will stir things up, but the infusion of energy will likely be a good thing. And I would predict that in the long run if you get people engaged and working to their strengths, and it becomes an energetic, exciting place to be, then the best and the brightest will start knocking at the door.

You don't control the talent. You simply create a place where the talent want to be.

The Danger of the Bubble

There has been some conversation on the ASAE listserve about social responsibility and the environment: in short, can we change the way we do things (flying all over the place to attend meetings, for instance) so that we are better aligned with our goal to preserve the environment. There were several people who expressed a message along the lines of "well, we can only do so much," which, of course, has some important truth to it.

But it reminded me of a presentation that Peter Senge gave at a conference I attended last year, where he referenced  the metaphor of being "in the bubble." First he used it in the context of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. He argued that the dot com bubble grew and then burst primarily because the people inside it failed to let in information from outside the bubble. To illustrate, he repeated a generalized conversation from that era between a dot-com techie and an executive from a traditional, established business:

Establishment: I don’t get it. Your company has no revenue but your stock doubled last quarter. My company, on the other hand, had millions of dollars of profit and our stock went up 1%.
Dot com: Yeah, but we had three million hits on our web site.
Establishment: What does that mean?
Dot com: You see?! You just don’t get it!

The point that Senge made was that when you are in a bubble, the bubble will grow and grow and eventually burst—but only if you continue talking ONLY to people who are also in the bubble. If you shut out people who have a different perspective, and surround yourself with other people who already have your vision and view of the world, you get the crash of 2001.

Senge's ultimate point is that most of us are currently in the bubble when it comes to the environment and global warming. We grew up with expectations about how we will live and what is possible and what is convenient or inconvenient. In the case of the environment, there just aren't a lot of people outside the bubble to talk to--we ALL grew up in it. Although Senge suggested one population: children.

He told a funny story of some national figure on television asking a twelve-year-old girl her views about the environment, and she responded with "Well, it looks to me like you drank your juice…then you drank ours." THAT is outside the bubble talk.

Now, I am not about to start a global warming debate on this blog. My point is about being aware of whether you are or are not in a bubble—about the environment or anything—and fine tuning your radar to sources of information and perspectives that lie outside of the bubble.

And one thing that should set your "bubble radar" off is if you find yourself saying "Yeah, but there is only so much we can do."

Good People Make Better Systems

Chris Bailey wrote a nice post a few days ago about systems versus people. He quotes two of my favorite authors, Pfeffer and Sutton, who argue that systems will trump individual effort, so before you fire that bad person, try redesigning systems or jobs.

Steve Roesler then chimes in with a question: if that's true, then should we give up on hiring the best and the brightest and just hire adequate people to run our good systems?

My answer: you don't make a good system out of adequate people. In my interpretation, the systems we're talking about are human systems, so who you have as the humans is terribly important. I agree that you can't overcome poor system design with your talent, at least not in the long term. But on the other side, your talent plays directly into the system's functioning and, more importantly, its design and continuous redesign.

The one quote that Chris shared suggests we "try redesigning systems and jobs" before firing someone. I agree, but remember, that's not the boss redesigning systems on high like the Architect in the Matrix. Systems are ultimately redesigned by the whole system itself. Certainly the top of the org chart has a specific role to play in redesign that is different from other players (and may have more authority on many decisions), but if you don't see how the individual parts play a role in redesigning their own system, then I think you are missing a big piece of how systems work (or at least how they work well).

That is why you will need the best and the brightest—because they will be just as responsible for creating the best systems as you will be.

It's Okay If They Leave

Seth Godin wrote a blog post about why blogging helps you become a better writer. Here's one point that particularly caught my attention:

4. It's okay if you leave. Bloggers aren't afraid to include links or distractions in their writing, because we know you'll come back if what we had to say was interesting.

I bring it up because I think it is particularly relevant to associations, but also to the whole "myth of control" conversation about social media. It's just another example of how our old paradigm (we must control, they must not leave, we must keep them, what is your retention rate...) may not be serving us as well as it used to. What if it is okay for them to leave? What if the door isn't locked, and they can come and go when they please (because with the Internet, that's actually true)?

It also reminded me of a post that Sue Pelletier wrote referencing John Moore's work about brands and would you "miss them" if they were gone. Sue referenced the thought as "scary" for an association or an association's meeting. Gasp! If we weren't there, the people would find other organizations or meetings to go to?! Yes. They would. And they always will. Just like the blog. I will leave to find other things to read because there is so much good writing out there. But as long as you keep doing something of value for me, I will come back. I may upset the marketers, but (to me, anyway) it's not about brand.

I wouldn't miss you, the association, or you, the brand. I would miss the valuable interactions I have with you. Of course, I probably wouldn't miss them too much, because I can easily find value elsewhere. In Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind, he argues that right-brained concepts are going to drive the economy in the near future, and one of the drivers is "abundance." This ties in. It is very easy to create value for people these days (thanks to the Internet). When value is scarce, then you build a powerful organization by figuring out how to get people in and then not want to get out. It’s a long "trip" to the next value stop, so you stay where you are. Or at least the costs of leaving to find new value outweigh the benefits of the value you are receiving.

That's not true any more. But I don't think that's so bad or so scary. Let them leave, but keep figuring out how to provide the most value. This could even include pointing them to valuable things that are not yours! If you provide value, then they'll come back.