Category: innovation

Down with Budgets!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Down with Budgets!

And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Example one: a recent discussion on the ASAE Collaborate executive list about trying to balance the annual budget cycle with making room from innovation.

Example two: this week, Jeff De Cagna did a webinar on his new e-book Associations Unorthodox. It focuses on six radical changes Jeff recommends associations make to position ourselves for the future. Shift #3? “Eliminate budgets.”

The problems with budgets (at least as we currently construct them) include:

  • They’re mostly backwards looking, based entirely on what happened last year, plus or minus a few percentage points.
  • They’re constructed and approved sometimes as much as 18-24 months before the money allocated it actually going to be spent.
  • They treat estimates like certainties, and then allocate every penny of expected revenue.
  • We use them to evaluate staff, holding our teams to meeting our budgets to the penny, and evaluating them on how well they do.

Extra revenue or less expense is always OK, of course, but extra expense? Even for an amazing opportunity or really important strategic investment? Well, you’ll just have to wait until the next budget cycle comes around. 18 months later, when you can actually spend the money, the opportunity has flown.

Why do we act as if budgets are set in stone? Why don’t we treat them as an estimate that’s open to revision based on changing circumstances? Or, as Jeff suggested, allocate some buckets of money to be spent on our organizations’ top strategic priorities, then leave it up to the staff and volunteer leaders responsible for those priorities to figure out what are the best investments in programs, products and services to meet those priorities?

Of course, that requires that you have ways of measuring the success or failure of what you’re doing other than “we met/didn’t meet budget this year.”

Did I just answer my own question?

 

A World Without Boards

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on A World Without Boards

A million years ago back in Dallas (actual time: just over a month), Jeff De Cagna, in his unsession on Associations Unorthodox, has asked us to think about radical questions to ask.

Now I love the idea of a radical question. One of the focal points of my consulting work is that asking the right question is as important as getting the right answer, if not more so. Too often, we ask the wrong question, come up with a truly genius answer, and then end up frustrated when it doesn’t fix the problem. And then we kick ourselves for coming up with a bad solution, when that wasn’t the problem at all. We started in the wrong place, so it was going to be virtually impossible for us to end in the right one.

Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

Here’s my radical ?: are boards the best way to run our orgs? What would the alt be/look like? #asae12
— Elizabeth Engel (@ewengel) August 13, 2012

Now, as my wise friend Leslie White, the excellent risk management consultant, points out: assuming your association is formally incorporated (which about 99.876% of us are), you are legally required to have some sort of board.

(Thanks, Leslie.)

So I guess my real question is: why do they operate as they do?

I know not all boards behave badly. But over the years, I’ve seen personal agendas, ego-based posturing, arrogance, cluelessness, personal aggrandizement, meddling with issues outside their ken, lack of willingness to take appropriate responsibility, and lack of willingness to ask difficult questions, all to an alarming degree.

And I don’t just blame the individual board members. We, as association professionals, do a poor job of properly training and preparing them for board service, and then setting and enforcing boundaries. It’s no wonder they have a tendency to run wild.

The reason it becomes a big problem is that the board has a lot of power.

Why?

It’s not for legal reasons.

And I’m not saying that no board should ever fulfill the common responsibilities of financial oversight and planning and managing the chief staff executive. I’m just asking why we act as if they have to.

I don’t have an answer to the question of a world without boards – or at least, pace Leslie, where board service is dramatically different.

But if we aren’t being well-served by the model (and some of us plainly aren’t), why not look for an alternative?

The Power of the Beta

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on The Power of the Beta

One of the reasons we in the association world can be afraid to try new things is that we worry that if it’s not perfect, the members will freak out.

And for some of your members, that’s probably true.

But it’s not true for all of them.

Some of them would LOVE to be invited to sneak preview a new program, product, service, offer, etc. and provide their feedback.

So what are you waiting for? Go find them!

And when you do, make sure you have ONE new thing ready for them to try out right away, get their feedback immediately, let them know how you used it, and be sure to credit them with helping you in the development stage when you actually roll it out to your full membership.

Your new offering will be better for it, and that member? She knows you love her now, and that equals loyalty.

Process Killed the Association Star

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 5 Comments on Process Killed the Association Star

Jamie Notter recently recapped his notes from the MIX Mashup, an invitation-only conference on the future of work, or, to quote their website:

“What will it take to make our organizations highly adaptable, endlessly inventive, truly inspiring, and genuinely accountable?”

That’s a critical question for all of us to address. Jamie also asked the blogging community to think about the points raised at the conference and to write response posts. This is one.

One of his notes from a panel on “innovation all the time” was:

Genius isn’t hidden. It’s afraid of your processes.

Associations do this all the time. In far too many cases, our default answer is “no.” Why? Say it with me: “Because it’s against policy.” Our default mode is “slow.” Why? Because everything has to run through 3000 internal groups and committees, then it goes to a member committee that only meets twice a year, then it goes to the board, which also only meets twice a year, and before you know it, 18 months have elapsed and the original opportunity? It vanished.

New staff and new volunteers start working with our organizations. They’re full of ideas, energy and excitement. This is her new job! She’s ready to kick some ass, build on what her predecessor did, and take your association to the next level! This is his new volunteer assignment! He’s honored to have been chosen, and he’s now even more deeply invested in your association than he was when he decided to offer his name up as a volunteer, because he made the cut!

And then our reified processes kick in, and the cavalcade of “no” begins.

  • We tried that five years ago, and it didn’t work.
  • We can’t make that change, because we always do it this other way.
  • Our members won’t like it.
  • Our senior team won’t like it.
  • Our board won’t like it.
  • The committee won’t support it.
  • It’s a risk we’re unwilling to take.
  • We’re not comfortable trying it a different way.
  • I don’t have that skill (and I don’t want to learn it).
  • What if something goes wrong? What if it’s not perfect? What if it FAILS!?!?

And, inevitably, that new staff member gets beaten down. Maybe she stays, and she starts keeping her ideas to herself, and maybe she walks out the door and takes them with her. That new volunteer gets discouraged. He becomes the “show pony” committee member, when what he wanted to do was be the “work horse.” He becomes disillusioned, cynical and disengaged. If you’re lucky, he keeps that to himself. If you’re not? Hello, membership decline.

We need to shift our mindset from a default “no” to a default “yes,” even if it has to be a qualified yes.

How do we get there? I don’t have the complete answer, but I do have some suggestions:

  • ALWAYS let people spend some time researching their ideas to see if they’re viable.
  • Create a budget of time AND money, even if it has to be small, to try new things.
  • Quit being so afraid of criticism. If you’re not pissing someone off, you’re coasting.
  • Quit being so afraid of debate and disagreement. You’ll never get to the great idea if people can’t challenge the good enough idea.
  • Build REAL relationships with members and volunteers. The only way you get leeway to try stuff that might not work is by earning it.
  • Remember that the whole environment has changed, and what happened five years ago is not a predictor of what might happen tomorrow, with THIS team and THESE members in THIS situation.
  • Dump your 400 page policies and procedures manual. Follow Adobe’s example of a “fairly open philosophy” (not just about social media but about all your policies and procedures) governed by “guardrails” that keep your staff and organization legally protected while giving them as much freedom within those guardrails as possible.
  • Celebrate failure. Everyone says that, right? How do you do it? Offer a valuable prize (an extra week of vacation?) to the person or team that blew it, and then learned something major and valuable they shared with the rest of your staff.

What do you think? How do we get to “yes” in our organizations?

Why Are We Still Doing Annual Performance Reviews?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Ah the dread performance review. You know the drill. You fill out some far too lengthy form where you’re trying to be “balanced” (whether you’re evaluating yourself to meet with your boss or evaluating your staff so you can meet with them), so there’s some bad and more good. You weigh people against goals that were set 12 months previously, and try to come up with goals that will be in some way useful or to the point 12 months hence. Then you have a fraught, stilted meeting, everyone signs off, and you file the paperwork, sigh with relief, and go back to your normal job.

Why?

“But HR makes us fill out the stupid form!”

You’re right. They do.

Who says that form has to be the alpha and omega of working with your staff to help them develop as professionals?

First of all, unless something good or bad happened in the last week, there should be NOTHING on that HR mandated form that comes as a surprise.

Correct problems when they come up. Coach in the moment. Don’t wait. You may have misunderstood the situation, and even if you were right, and your staff member did screw up, you’ve wasted how much time that that person could’ve been doing things better?

But who says you only get to offer praise once a year? Set goals once a year? Revise goals and expectations once a year? Consider professional development once a year?

That’s just dumb.

Things change. People change. Situations change. Have you ever looked a goal you set a year ago and wondered what in the hell you were thinking? And now you’re bound to the damn thing, whether you will or not? Why? Amend the form. Tell your boss and HR what you’re doing and why.

But most importantly, review performance every day – yours, your boss’s, your staff members’, everyone. Praise, coach, re-evaluate where your organization is going and how you all can best contribute to getting there. Every day.

And yeah, you’ll still have to fill out and file the stupid form. But it won’t hurt nearly as much, and it won’t be the be-all, end-all of making your organization better.

We Are STILL Doing It That Way

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Or, to quote Marshall Goldsmith: “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the long-term prospects of associations recently. Will we survive the changes – technologically driven, generationally driven, ecologically driven, socio-economically driven, etc. – occurring in our global society? If so, how?

Thus it seemed like a good time to take a second look at We Have Always Done It That Way.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, a group of “Five Independent Thinkers” (whose names you probably recognize) got together in 2007 to address the pressing need for change in associations.

The Thinkers address a total of 101 issues that need to change in the ways we:

  • Think
  • Lead
  • Manage
  • Execute
  • Work Together
  • Involve Others

Five years later, what has changed?

I would hope, for one, that you’re no longer storing information like social security and credit card numbers in your association management software. I think most associations are now involved in social media at least to some degree, even if not very effectively.

But I still see a world where strategic planning and strategic thinking are conflated, where we operate in silos fighting over turf and resources, where we do a poor job of reaching out to new audiences (including the elusive “younger members”), where it still takes us too long to make decisions, and once those decisions are made, too long to act, where we never kill hoary old programs (no matter how useless they’ve become), where new ideas (because that’s what “innovation” is) get routinely shot down, where we’re still doing form-based annual reviews, where we’re unable to have honest exchanges.

I don’t think it’s just associations. But I see it here because this is where I am and have been for 15 years.

How do we pick up our heads out of plodding along doing the same old thing and making the same old mistakes every day? How do we get to the place where we’re agile enough to respond to, and even anticipate, the changes in our professional/industry environments and the larger world in such a way that our audiences (which don’t have to be narrowly confined to “members”) literally can’t make it without us, not because we have some sort of Svengali-like golden handcuffs but because we’re so in tune with what they need to be successful and we provide it so quickly and well, our associations are vital partners in those audiences’ success?

I don’t have the answers. But I’m at least willing to engage in the conversation. Join me?

Sections Instead of Breakouts

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 10 Comments on Sections Instead of Breakouts

A few ASAE calls for proposals have hit recently, and it’s gotten me thinking about conference sessions.

On the one hand, associations want to recognize the expertise and knowledge our members hold and give them a platform to shine and a chance to share that knowledge and expertise with their peers.

On the other hand, we all gripe about conferences we attend where all the speakers are volunteers. Some of the speakers aren’t very good, and a lot of the content is shallow or too basic, people seem ill-prepared, the slides are bad, etc.

I’m calling myself out here, too – I’ve been the griper, and the under-prepared speaker that’s being griped about.

Preparing all these proposals got me thinking about learning experiences in my own life. Which got me thinking about grad school, where I taught political theory to freshmen.

What if we dumped breakout presentations in favor of university-style sections?

What would that look like?

You’d start with a fairly traditional presentation by a recognized PAID expert in a given topic. Everyone who was attending would be required to do prep work, familiarizing themselves with a common canon (books, articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, whatever), allowing them to operate from a shared base of knowledge (that would NOT be restricted to the book s/he just wrote that the presenter is shilling). Which means your PAID expert could actually speak at a high level and have some chance of being understood.

After the “lecture,” the larger group would split into discussion sections, which would be led by expert VOLUNTEER MEMBER facilitators, with knowledge of both the topic at hand and how to keep a discussion moving, whose job would be to ask interesting questions and keep the conversation flowing at a high level. And since all the attendees would enjoy that shared base of knowledge from doing the prep work and from the high level presentation, they’d actually enjoy substantive conversations about important topics, as opposed to devolving into the “this is how we do it at my association” (dare I say it?) drivel that usually results from the table exercises at our conferences.

What would that learning experience look like?

Book Review: The Back of the Napkin

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Yes, I know this book was published in 2008, and it’s been sitting on my “to read” pile almost that long.

Fortunately, the Association Chat book club got me to bump it to the top of the pile, and I finally read it last month.

The book’s subtitle is: solving problems and selling ideas with pictures, and teaching you to do that is author Dan Roam’s ostensible goal.

Short version: it’s a great concept, but I’m not quite sure how to implement it.

Longer take:

According to Roam, there are three types of people: black pen types (who LOVE to draw ideas), yellow pen types (who are quick to jump in to edit and add), and red pen types (“I can’t draw”). Confession: I am definitely a red pen type.

On the other hand, I also LOVE visual representations of information. I love infographics. I’m always the one urging colleagues to use fewer words and more pictures to share information with senior leadership. I think every organization’s board status report should be a series of 5-10 key metrics that are tracked over time and shared in graphs or charts. I’m the person who infamously talked a panel  for the 2009 ASAE Annual Meeting into doing a presentation with NO words on the slides (that didn’t go over all that well).

So what I’m saying is that, while I am a red pen, I’m also someone eager to be persuaded that representing problems visually can help us solve them and to learn how to do it.

I’m just not sure that this book can get most of us there.

It’s not that Roam doesn’t provide plenty of information and explanation. He spends almost 150 pages explaining six key ways of seeing and five key ways of showing, then placing all that into a grid (page 141 if you have the book handy) that can tell you, based on the type of framework you need and a short series of either/or questions, which type of picture you’re going to need to explain what’s going on and spot a solution.

The second half of the book uses a single case study to work readers through the ways of seeing and showing, the framework, and the questions to get to, in chapter 15, a not-immediately-obvious solution and description of how one would present that solution to a team of executives.

But I still don’t feel like I would be able to apply the techniques he describes successfully the next time I’m faced with what looks like an intractable problem at the office.

Maybe I just need more practice. I have, in my last two positions and since hearing Roam speak at ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference a few years ago, insisted on having a white board in my workspace. I even use it sometimes. And once in a while, it doesn’t even feel forced.

The book does, however, make a GREAT case for hiring Roam to help your organization solve big, hairy problems, assuming you can afford him. And maybe that’s really the point.

Forget the Box! There is no Box!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

How often do you hear the phrase: “think outside the box”?

I’m guessing the answer is: “way too damn much!”

When did we decide that ideas are supposed to live in boxes?

(Well, OK, we can find the origin story, but that still doesn’t answer the question.)

Or that ideas could be divided into “box” (aka “safe”) ideas and “non-box” (aka “risky” or “wacky” or “dangerous”) ideas?

What if we forgot about the stupid box entirely? What if there was no box to confine or exclude our ideas? What if there were just ideas, available to be evaluated on their own merits, not their relationship to some cliched box?

 

Who Are Your Allies?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Who Are Your Allies?

Associations, particularly small associations, tend to suffer from a lack of resources, aka “that’s a great idea, but we don’t have any money for it.” Which can have a seriously negative consequences on impact and what the organization is able to accomplish.

One way to address this is through creating a network of allied organizations.

So how do you do that?

The first step is research. You need to figure out what organizations have similar enough, but not identical, missions and audiences. You’re looking to compliment each other, not to compete. And you want organizations that are at a similar level of influence. Too many orders of magnitude bigger or smaller, and the power dynamic gets out of whack, which can make it hard to find mutual benefit.

The next step is to think through what mutual benefit might look like. What can you offer that they might want? What do they offer that you want? Can you create packages of roughly equivalent value? Possible areas of interest might include discounts for members on programs, products or services, exhibit booth swaps, conference speaking session swaps, mailing list swaps, ad swaps, article swaps, guest blogging, joint products, advocacy alliances, joint workshops or webinars, applying for research grants together…think through everything both organizations offer and look for places you could work together.

Third, you have to make contact. This is where things like LinkedIn can come in handy. Look for a path, ideally, to the person who seems most likely to be able to say yes or no, but also realize that the first person you’re able to connect with might not be the right person to negotiate a relationship. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone, and do be persistent but don’t be obnoxious.

Assuming you find the person with the appropriate authority and willingness to make a deal, the next step is to negotiate something that will work for both of your associations. You want both organizations to have an initial positive experience, so your beta should be structured to make that as likely as possible, which means start small. But brainstorm big. Assuming your first test goes well, you want to have ideas waiting in the wings to expand the relationship.

Lather, rinse and repeat with additional organizations, and watch your association’s sphere of influence expand exponentially.