Category: generations

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?

Idea Swappin’

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

This week’s Super Idea Swap at ASAE was great, as usual! We had lots of new faces – and plenty of familiar ones – and sessions with different topics than we often see.

I chose to participate in the session on diversity in the morning, led by Constance Thompson from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Clinton Anderson, from the American Psychological Association. In the afternoon, I participated in the session on generations in the workplace, led by David Miles from the Miles LeHane Companies.

My top takeaways included:

  • When pairing up mentors and padawans, stop putting like with like (Asian man with Asian man, Latina with Latina, etc.), and look at people’s professional goals and who can best help them meet those goals.
  • Diversity is about how we’re the same and different. Inclusion is about using diversity to make us and our organizations better.
  • DJ Johnson shared two great tools: the diversity wheel and the concept of the diversity paradigm by Roosevelt Thomas.
  • If you don’t measure it, you can’t change it – getting data from our audiences is key to becoming more diverse as organizations, but we have to be transparent about why we want the information to allay people’s fears about sharing it.
  • We have to let people express the “who cares?” thoughts, since stifling those uncomfortable conversations helps no one.
  • Conflict is a sign of diverse voices, which, to a group that has been historically homogenous, feels threatening.
  • The decisions of a heterogeneous group take longer, but tend to produce better outcomes.
  • “Do you know next?”

 

 

Next-Generation Leadership

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 7 Comments on Next-Generation Leadership

JNott recently concluded a great series on leadership skills for the 21st Century, and Acronym has declared May to be Leadership Inspiration Month, and the combo got me thinking:

What qualities will the association leader of the future need?

Rather than putting together some laundry list, I thought I’d focus on the two that seem most important to me:

Nimbleness of Mind 

It took us a while to catch the bug, but boy howdy, do associations love planning these days.  We love strategic planning.  We love action planning.  We love work planning.  We love metrics.  We love data.  We love environmental scanning.  We love SWOT analysis. We love Gantt charts.  We love Microsoft Project.  You’d think we were getting ready to invade Normandy, rather than just trying to roll out the renewal notices on time.

And that’s all great – really it is.  A constant Ready –> Fire –> Aim approach can get you in big trouble.

But the thing is, you can’t plan for everything.  Associations were never the most change-friendly organizations in the first place, and all this process-heavy planning infrastructure is slowing us down even more in a time when the *pace* of change is accelerating.  Rapidly.  News cycles, already 24/7, have been sped up by social media.  Competition from free and for-profit sources is increasing – and neither of those types of groups has to wait 6 months until the next board meeting to even get an idea on the agenda to be considered.

I’m not saying fly by the seat of your pants all the time – that can leave you without the available cash to make payroll at the end of the month.  But I am saying that the ability of our leaders to perform rapid analysis, trust their instincts, adapt, and come to decisions quickly is going to be critical to our ability to thrive as an association community.

Cross-Generational Fluency

We have 4 generations in the workplace at the same time for maybe the first time ever, as younger Silent generation members and Boomers delay retirement, while Gen-Xers are firmly in the middle of our careers, and the Millennials are moving en masse out of their schooling years and into their careers. Even the most cursory review of the available datareveals that these generations have MASSIVELY different ways of interacting with both people and technology. That lack of shared experience and understanding can produce significant friction in the workplace.  Does any of the following sound familiar?

  • That old guy in my office still prints out all his emails and dictates his responses to his assistant!  What’s wrong with that guy?
  • Why won’t those damn self-centered Boomers retire already? Or at least help prepare younger people for leadership positions?
  • Stupid Gen-Xers – they’re so secretive.  Why do they always want to work on their own?  What’s their problem with team work?
  • Why does the 25 year old program assistant think she’s too good to make copies?  And why did she apply for that open director position?  She’s only been here 6 months!

One of the key management lessons I’ve learned over the years is that you need to meet people where they are, not expect them to come to you.  Our leaders are going to have to become multi-generational-lingual in order to be able to get the most out of our teams.  For more on this idea, I highly recommend Karen Sobel Lojeski’s work on virtual distance.

What do you think?  What do our next-generation leaders need to do and be to make sure associations continue to thrive?

 

Generations, Leadership and Change

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 7 Comments on Generations, Leadership and Change

A number of things, including this post on leadership mindsets by Jamie Notter, have gotten me thinking about the major forces that I think are currently shaping the association community.

“The economy” and “health care reform” both seem like the obvious answers, right?

Particularly given that NACHRI is a health care organization, and we all keep getting those blast emails “from” John Graham urging us to…well, I actually haven’t paid a ton of attention since I already have my mind made up on health care (the only major thing that’s wrong with the bill Obama signed about two weeks ago is that there’s STILL no public option, and since I lack representation in Congress, what I think doesn’t really matter anyway). But (I digress) no, not health care.

And the thing about the economy is that it cycles. What’s going on now is a difference of degree, not of kind.

People who know me might guess that I’d say, “Social media! And it’s going to cure cancer, assure me a lifetime supply of Jimmy Choos, and get us all puppies!” Yeah, not so much – social media provides a new platform (or platforms, if you prefer), but it’s for a very old school activity: communication.

I think the most important force shaping the association community today is generational change.

As described in the Lifecourse work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, generations (like the economy) cycle, but the key difference is that a large majority of associations have never directly experienced significant generational change.

Most associations were built by, are currently staffed at senior levels by, and have memberships largely made up of idealistic “prophet” Baby Boomers. I think that provides the foundation for most associations, and carries with it some very good and very bad things: the level of commitment we require of our volunteers, the fact that we expect members to happily support “common good” programs, the focus on process over outcomes, the emphasis on mission and the willingness to make personal sacrifices in service to that mission, and even the high value placed on gathering face to face.

Gen-X “nomads” are much more pragmatic – we’re not joiners, and we don’t follow movements. Is the membership model dying? I don’t really know, but if it does die, I think it will be Gen-X that kills it – not the economy or social media, both of which are usually held at fault.

Xers lack patience with the hierarchy of belonging and with traditional forms of engagement and volunteering. If the price of admission involves reading hundreds of pages of rote committee reports and spending long hours in meetings that don’t actually accomplish anything, we’ll form our own groups. Remember the Bush 41 recession of the early 90s, when Xers were graduating? No room at the (workforce) inn? Fine – I’ll just go do my own thing (and invent Netscape in the process).

I think this generational shift will require that our membership models become more limited and personalized, our decision-making processes become more nimble, and our model of volunteering become more focused on outcomes and less on process.

Further complicating the picture is the emergence of the Millennials, a “hero” generation, into adulthood. Heroes value community and teamwork, in direct contrast to the independent and cynical nomadic Xers, and they are much more sanguine about institutions and authority than either nomads or prophets. This “hero” generation is our future.

To quote The Hourglass Blog:

“[D]oes leadership mean something different to each generation, and therefore our leadership systems will constantly change as each new generational perspective comes into power?”

I think the answer is “yes” – our leadership models will have to change to mirror generational change. Given the single-generation life-span of many associations, that will, I believe, be wrenching.

How will your organization respond to generational change? How will we, as a community, respond? How is generational change causing you to think differently about volunteerism? Membership? Mission? Leadership? Or are you even thinking differently at all at this point?