Category: innovation

Walking Your Talk on Innovation

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | Leave a Comment on Walking Your Talk on Innovation
Two pairs of legs and feet - one wearing black jeans and black high-top Chuck Taylors, the other wearing blue jeans and grayish blue high-top Chuck Taylors - against a background of a wall with graffiti in shades of orange and blue

I recently participated in a virtual roundtable where the topic of conversation turned to non-dues revenue and the need to experiment with new ideas in a time of rapid change (it may be trite to point out that the pace of change keeps accelerating, but that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate).

One of the participants observed that membership organizations that are experiencing growth generally have a process in place to encourage innovation. And, in fact, his own organization was “leaning in” on innovation, but he was worried they wouldn’t be successful because they lacked a process to guide them.

Of course, I immediately thought of lean startup methodology.

But I also found myself thinking of Jamie Notter’s contributions to the recently-released Spark collaborative whitepaper, Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch. Jamie astutely observed that, often, associations want to do lean startup, but the culture won’t allow us to.  One of the key cultural challenges he identified was “incomplete innovation.” He went on to point out:

“This is arguably the biggest cultural challenge for implementing lean startup. This pattern, which is very common among associations, is one where a culture values the concepts of innovation (e.g., creativity, future focus) more than the practices of innovation (e.g.,experimentation, prototyping, beta testing). In other words, we’re talking the talk around innovation, but we’re not walking the walk (which is why the innovation is incomplete).”

What are the practices you need to embed in your organization to be able to walk your talk on innovation?

  • Testing new ideas
  • Experimentation
  • Risk taking

Does that sound scary?

It doesn’t have to be.

Learn more about this and the other culture patterns and practices that can impede your innovation efforts, and what you can do to overcome your culture roadblocks and innovate successfully by downloading the free whitepaper here.

Photo credit: Aedrian Salazar on Pexels

Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | Leave a Comment on Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch

Ten years ago, Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate and I co-authored Innovate the Lean Way, a free monograph designed to introduce lean startup methodology to the association industry, explain why we think it’s a good fit for us, and share some stories of associations using it successfully to test out and develop their ideas for non-dues revenue programs, products, and services.

Last fall, with the paper’s 10 year anniversary approaching, G and I thought it might be fun to revisit the topic, this time with a focus on what we’ve learned in the past decade of working with concepts, tools, and techniques of lean startup (which we still think is a very useful tool to assist associations’ non-dues revenue efforts).

That new monograph, Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch, is ready and available for download at https://bit.ly/LeanAt10.

As you might guess from the title of this post, one of the main things we’ve learned (spoiler alert) is that it’s not the concepts, tools, and techniques that are the hard part – with a little time and effort, your team can learn them and become proficient. The hard part is the culture change, which explains why, in this iteration, we worked with Jamie Notter, who you may know for his excellent work on culture and culture change, to explore what you need to know and do to create a culture that will support and encourage innovation as a practice, enable you to take effective action, provide organizational clarity, and develop the courage to engage difficult conversations.

The whitepaper also includes:

  • Case studies with the American Association of Veterinary State Boards, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, and the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians.
  • A sidebar of lean startup methodology tools.
  • A series of thought questions for you to use to spark discussion with your team.
  • An extensive list of resources in case you want to dig deeper on any of the topics addressed.

As is always the case with the Spark collaborative whitepapers, it’s 100% free, and you don’t even have to provide any information to download it – you can just have it, no landing on a mailing list you didn’t ask for or having to dodge calls from us.

Are You Lean-Curious?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | Leave a Comment on Are You Lean-Curious?
Small brown and white owl perched on a branch in the woods with a quizzical expression on their face

By this point, most executives have probably at least heard of lean startup methodology. You may even know that it’s used for product development, and, in the association context, particularly applicable to ideas for new non-dues revenue programs, products, or services. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Build-Measure-Learn cycle, or the idea of the Minimum Viable Product. Maybe someone has mentioned vanity metrics versus Metrics That Matter (and you can hear that capitalization in their voice) to you.

  • But what, really, is lean startup methodology?
  • Where did it come from?
  • What do all those terms mean?
  • How does the methodology work?
  • What tools exist to support the methodology?
  • How does it apply to associations?
  • Are any associations using it successfully?

Answers to all these questions and more can be found in Innovate the Lean Way, a monograph I co-authored with Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate (of NCARB at the time, now of the American Society of Appraisers) ten years ago. Yes, it’s still relevant, and G and I think that associations would still benefit from learning how to ensure they’re heading the right direction as they think about an audience of customers or members, the problem they’re trying to solve for that audience, and their potential solution to that “problem worth solving.”

Are you read to dive even deeper? Check out my new Lean Startup Series of services.

Regular blog readers may also notice that I’ve been revisiting lean startup concepts pretty regularly over the past several weeks. There’s a reason for that, which will be revealed next week. (Can’t wait that long? Click here.)

Photo by Dominik Van Opdenbosch on Unsplash

Retooling Your Business Model

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Retooling Your Business Model
electric car charger plugged into a silver car

Earlier this week, Associations Now profiled a recent report from McKinley Advisors, Business Model Innovation, in which they identify five innovation elements that can provide the revenue that fuels your association’s ability to achieve your mission:

  1. Value – rethink your value proposition
  2. Revenue – pursue new pricing strategies
  3. Community – provide opportunities for relationship-building, both online and in-person
  4. Reach – expand your thinking beyond just your members
  5. Operations – get your own house in order to support all this

These are all good points.

But how do you actually do those things?

One possibility: lean startup methodology.

Lean startup allows you to jump start your innovation practice and non-dues revenue via a structured process that can help you to learn whether you’ve identified the right audience, whether you’ve selected a problem that’s both real and significant for them, and whether your audience is willing to use – and pay for – your great idea to solve their problem.

Remember: It doesn’t matter how quickly you’re moving if you’re headed in the wrong direction.

Learn how Spark can help.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

 

Big Risk, Big Reward

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Big Risk, Big Reward
two red dice with black dots

This is IT. You’ve just come up with THE game-changing idea for your organization. It’s going to transform your profession or industry, bring in more members, or dramatically increase your non-dues revenue.

Upside: potential HUGE reward.

Downside: equally HUGE risk.

But we’re associations. We’re risk-averse. So don’t do it, right?

WRONG.

Part of making a big impact is being willing to make a big bet. But be smart about it, and find ways to reduce your risk.

Do your homework on your audiences. Craft a business plan that helps you surface your assumptions so you can test them. Create a prototype. Run beta tests. Get member input, and not just from your board. Invest. Determine in advance how much you can invest before you need to start seeing a return. Have a plan B and a plan C. Define what success looks like. Be ready to capture what you learned, whether it works or not. Iterate. Know what your exit strategy is.

You only get so many opportunities to take the big leap, so choose carefully. If you do, you’ll start a virtuous circle where you get MORE opportunities to take those game-changing risks because you know how succeed AND fail well.

Want to learn more about how your association can do this successfully? Check out Spark’s lean startup consulting options, and get started innovating better today.

Photo by manas rb on Unsplash

Think Like a Startup

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Build-->Measure-->Learn cycle graphic in blue and orange

“What would it look like if our associations acted like a startup?”

I was honored to be featured on a recent Professionals for Association Revenue podcast with my client Chrissy Bagby, Chief Strategy Officer, American Association of Veterinary State Boards.

Chrissy and I talked about the principles of lean startup and how AAVSB is using them to identify a real and significant problem for new audience and beta-test potential solutions to find the one that will work for that audience, at a price they’re willing to pay.

Check it out at https://mypar.org/podcast/aavsb-innovation-startup/.

Prefer to read about it? Check out Innovate Smarter on the PAR blog.

Want to learn more? Check out Innovate the Lean Way, a monograph I co-authored with Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate (currently Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President, the American Society of Appraisers, although he was at the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards at the time) in 2015.

Image credit: Steve Blank

Truck Stuck! Now What?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 8 Comments on Truck Stuck! Now What?
Book cover, Truck Stuck, by Sallie Wolf, illustrations by Andy Robert Davies - cartoon style drawing of big red truck stuck under an overpass

I think we’re all familiar with the story of Truck Stuck by Sallie Wolfe. It’s a charming children’s book in which the kids are the heroes, figuring out a creative solution to get the truck unstuck.

Where do ideas come from in your organization?

Or, to be more precise, who’s ALLOWED to have an idea?

In far too many associations, the answer is definitely not “anyone!”

Are ideas only the province of a certain department? The CEO? The VPs? The Board? Are people only allowed to express ideas that relate directly to their own areas of responsibility?

My point? Anyone can have a good idea, about anything, at any time, whether it’s the mail clerk realizing a way to make your direct mail marketing campaign more effective or an IT tech coming up with a great team building idea or kids figuring out that you need to let the air out of the truck’s tires for it to pass.

We need to make sure we give a fair audience to ideas, no matter where they come from.

Treat them all equally, implement them when you can, encourage your staff and colleagues either way, and always, always, always give credit.

Do Your Incentives Make Sense?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Do Your Incentives Make Sense?
Blue question mark on pink background

I was recently chatting with a newly hired membership director. Their association offers both individual and group membership, and they were looking for ideas on ways to increase individual recruitment and retention.

We had a great conversation and shared lots of potential ideas they could pursue.

But one thing jumped out to me immediately. Their group memberships (80% of their members) are paid by companies. Their individual memberships are almost universally paid by the individuals. And the individual memberships cost more and offer fewer benefits.

Spot the problem?

The association has good reasons to nudge people towards join as groups. Having the entire team as members is better for the member organizations, and administering group memberships is easier for the association. So just flipping that equation – dropping the price for individuals and offering them more in the way of benefits – would be counter-productive.

So what we discussed as a solution was to find what’s common among the individual members that’s not among the members that join as a group.

  • Are their companies smaller?
  • Are they from different industry segments?
  • Are they in a different career stage?

Once the association can figure out what makes those individual members different, i.e., answering why they are joining as individuals rather than a group in the first place, they can develop offerings that address those different needs. If they’re able to do this carefully and well, charging more, less, or the same as the group memberships won’t matter – the members will segment themselves appropriately based on their needs.

Do the incentives you offer your audiences make sense to them? If not, what are you going to do about it?

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Most People Don’t…But You Do!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Dual-screen of Bart Berkey and Elizabeth Engel recording the Most People Don't...But You Do! podcast

I was honored to join Bart Berkey on the Most People Don’t…But You Do! podcast recently.

Our conversation centered around the importance of asking tough questions and, even more so, how to deliver tough answers in a way that is direct yet empathetic, which makes it easier for people to embrace change.

Bart and I discussed challenges and strategies within the association industry, including membership management, revenue generation, and non-traditional fundraising methods, with an emphasis on practical solutions, critical thinking, and asking tough questions to drive meaningful change.

We concluded the session with a focus on the essential role of associations in society and the continuous need to adapt and innovate in response to evolving environments.

Download the episode at:

Associations Evolve: 2025 & Beyond

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Associations Evolve 2025: Answers for Associations text over a grid of author headshots

The latest edition of Associations Evolve just dropped.

I’m honored to be included with 39 of my very smart association peers in this FREE annual publication, packed with advice designed to help associations worldwide get ready for what’s next in an environment of ever-accelerating change.

Inside, you’ll find:

  • Strategies for embracing AI without losing the human touch
  • Fresh takes on membership models that engage and inspire
  • Real stories of resilience and innovation from associations worldwide
  • Practical tools to help you adapt and thrive

Plus my piece, Innovate the Lean Way, introducing the key concepts in lean startup methodology and explaining why I think it’s an ideal approach for associations to take to evaluating new ideas for non-dues revenue programs, products, and services.

Whether you’re planning for the future, navigating technological shifts, or rethinking member engagement, this journal has been designed to spark ideas and provide practical guidance.

Download your copy at: https://bit.ly/AEJ2025.