Get Me Jamie Notter

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.

The Trouble with Hierarchy

In one of the (many!) amazing "Big Idea" posts that have been going around, Scott Briscoe on Acronym talks about hierarchy. Scott says we shouldn't hate hierarchy--we should hate the lack of leadership from people at the top of the hierarchy. Good leaders, he argues, will empower staff so they end up not complaining about hierarchy because it doesn't get in the way.

I agree there's room for better leadership, but I pushed back in the comments arguing that the system and structure will often trump the good intentions of individuals in authority positions. And I disagreed with his suggestion that without hierarchy you waste an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out who gets to make what decision. That could happen, of course, but I could probably throw the "not with good leaders" argument back at him!

As usual, though, I think Scott and I have more overlapping thoughts on this subject than conflicting ones. Hierarchy serves a real purpose, as does open collaboration and problem solving. Organizations have both because they both are in service of the enterprise getting things done and being effective. But I push back against hierarchy because in general its reality is falling WAY short of its intention, and not just because of ineffective individuals. Hierarchy in organizations was designed in a completely different era. We don't have to get rid of it, but we need to address its weaknesses in a deep way, not a "tweaking" way and not in a "but a new individual leader will do it differently" way.

Hierarchy is to organizational effectiveness, as strategic planning is to strategy. It explains and documents things in simple, objective and measurable ways...and it sucks.

And just like strategic planning isn't "the problem," hierarchy isn't the problem either. The frame of the debate gets in the way of insight in both cases (please let's not start a "hierarchy is dead" conversation).

Hierarchy simply is, but my issue is that we are over-reliant on hierarchy in most organizations, and we are weak in our capacity to get the right people together to solve the right problems. That doesn't mean we need to get rid of hierarchy, but I think there is some potential in doing that at least temporarily in order to develop some insight about how to better solve our work problems. Kind of like the example I gave as a comment to Maddie's big idea post about getting rid of internal email. One company did that for 48 hours so they could learn other ways of doing things that (it turned out) were more effective.

Get rid of hierarchy so you can learn why you really need hierarchy (and where you were just relying on it as a crutch).

Big Idea: What If Only You Could Change Associations?

I read and think a lot about associations. I care about associations. It's my career. I want the best for associations and I like to push associations into being better, more effective, more strategic, more human. So when Acronym challenged everyone to come up with a "big idea" this month, I was ready to answer the call. Joe originally suggested we frame it as a "what if" question. What if associations...

• abandoned hierarchy
• didn't charge dues
• learned from college recruiters
• cold-called their members.

I'm liking what people are writing. But Elizabeth Engel's post inspired what I'm writing here, where she suggested that every staff person be required to pick up the phone and call a member just to get to know them and what they care about. We pay lip service to being focused on members and member needs, but do we really know? As individuals? Do we do anything about it?

Which brings me to my big idea: what if only you could change associations? What if the path to creating a better association community was, in fact, built on thousands of individuals choosing different behavior. Because it is. And you are one of those individuals. 

So what are you going to do differently?

I think it's important that we think about how to make "associations" better, but for all the valuable thinking we do about improving associations, the actual behavior change we engage in as a community is fairly pathetic. At least that's where we need to build our capacity. So my big idea is to throw a little Smokey Bear on you and ask you to change your behavior. I ask you to actually change what you're doing in ways that support our lofty visions for an evolved association community. Pick something, and do it.

If you hit the standard roadblocks (they won't let me, I don't have buy in, I don't have time...) then choose a different behavior. The time may not be right for everything...but it's ALWAYS right for something. Do something, and learn from it. And THEN think about it and write about it. But if we don't start changing our behavior as individuals, I fear our community may become increasingly marginalized.

Associations Next

Cleaning my desk, I came across my notes from Jeff De Cagna's ASAE Annual Meeting Session that I think was titled "Associations Next." There was more to his program than my notes, obviously (you can actually view his session online), but even the notes are worth thinking about on an ongoing basis.

Jeff argued that there are six paradigms facing associations, each with a principle that can guide them as they try to deal with what's going on (and in the session we got into the detail of "practices" based on those principles, but I don't have notes on those). Take a look at the paradigms and principles and think about what they mean for your association:

Paradigm: Membership is a commodity
Principle: Meaning is the business Case

Paradigm: Contribution is King
Principle: Embrace Simplicity

Paradigm: Networks trump hierarchies
Principle: Govern from the outside in.

Paradigm: Control is history
Principle: Strategy demands learning

Paradigm: Innovation is everywhere
Principle: Embrace diversity

Setting Ourselves Up for Failure

A lot of what we do in the work world (and at home for that matter) is attempt to get people to say "yes" to us. We need agreement or approval from other people before we can do what we want or need to do. That is simply a fact of life in any system, and it applies at all levels--CEOs, Boards, Managers, line staff, as well as external stakeholders like consultants, vendors, etc.

There is a problem, however. In order to get other parties to say yes to us, we tend to inflate, sightly, their expectations. It's not intentional deception. We just over-accentuate the positive of what we want to do or the project we want to happen. This is particularly true when there are money or resources involved (like a consultant trying to get a gig), but it's true across the board. It's easier to get agreement from the other party if we are optimistic and positive about the results. This typically means we only share half of the story or half of the information, because we simply wouldn't mention the parts we are unsure about or any possible negatives. That decreases their chances of saying yes.

When we do this, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Expectations, it turns out, are important things, particularly in terms of brain chemistry. Joe Gerstandt referred me to a Psychology Today blog post about expectations and brain chemistry. The article points out that when we have expectations and they are not met, it has a big impact on our brain, even if they are very small things, or things we weren't particularly aware of. One example was going to the bank to handle something quickly and discovering a long line. You had the expectation (realistic or not) that there would be no line and you could move through quickly, so when that expectation isn't met, you get put into a bad mood. Specifically, it causes a decrease in dopamine in the brain, and that causes the bad mood. Of course the opposite (having your expectations met) will increase dopamine levels. Dopamine is central to the "toward state, to being open, curious, and interested." 

So on a regular basis at work, we raise expectations going into a project in order to get agreement or approval, which may get us the approval but sets us all up for a group dopamine deficiency when those expectations aren't met, even slightly. Consciously or not, the people who said yes are later frustrated by not having their expectations met, and we rarely have people in the work place who are in a "toward state" or open, curious, or interested.

What do we need to change this?

One, we need more truth. We need that other half of the picture that we don't get when people are trying to get us to say yes. But that feels risky, doesn't it? So before that, we probably need more trust. If there were more trust in the system--if you felt that the other people and groups you were working with would regularly safeguard your interests, you'd tell more truth and be clearer about expectations, and the perception of failure would decrease.