Category: leadership

The Lean Startup Changes Everthing

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on The Lean Startup Changes Everthing

I’m excited to share the launch of the seventh whitepaper in the ongoing Spark whitepaper series, Innovate the Lean Way: Applying Lean Startup Methodology in the Association Environment.

The whitepaper addresses a simple (but not necessarily easy) concept. To quote my co-author, Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate, Director of Information Services for the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards:

“There’s no bigger waste than investing resources working on the wrong thing.”

Given associations’ tight resources, that type of waste is the last thing we can afford. Lean startup methodology, which moves beyond lean six-sigma process innovation to address the challenge of innovation, has taken the business world by storm in the last several years, with businesses of all sizes and life stages using it to experience greater success. Our contention is that associations can benefit from applying this methodology as well.

Innovate the Lean Way shares the basics of lean startup principles:

  • Business model canvas
  • The build-measure-learn cycle
  • Minimum Viable Product
  • The pivot

And the stories of four associations that are using lean startup methodology effectively to improve their innovation efforts:

  • The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: Pivoting from Lean Process Improvement to Lean Startup
  • IEEE: The Power of the Pilot
  • NAFSA – Association of International Educators: Combining Design Thinking and Lean Startup
  • NCARB (Guillermo’s organization): Learning with Lean

Our goal is to help association leaders understand the benefits of applying this technique in your own organizations to eliminate waste, validate your learning, and innovate faster and more successfully.

I’ll be blogging more about the whitepaper in the coming days, but in the meantime, pick up your free copy at http://bit.ly/1NJJzkJ, no divulging of information about yourself required.

Don’t forget to check out the other FREE Spark whitepapers, too:

Innovate the Lean Way

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

“There’s no bigger waste than investing resources working on the wrong thing.”

Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate, Director, Information Systems, National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB)

Given associations’ tight resources, we can’t afford to waste time pursuing the wrong thing. Lean startup methodology (as opposed to lean six-sigma) has taken the business world by storm in the last several years, with businesses of all sizes and life stages experiencing success following its principles of building the minimum viable product, measuring what happens, and learning whether to proceed, stop, or pivot.

I’m excited to share that the newest Spark whitepaper is launching NEXT week. It’s co-authored with Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate and it applies lean startup methodology in the association sphere. Our position is that the keys to lean startup methodology – the Business Model Canvas, the Build-Measure-Learn cycle, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and the Pivot – are just as valuable and useful to associations as to the tech startups where the concepts originated. We think this same process can be used successfully by associations, and we have the case studies to back it up!

We’ll be launching the whitepaper with a FREE webinar Wednesday, October 21 at noon ET as part of the YourMemebrship.com Thought Leader Series. Join us to learn how you can apply this technique in your own organization to eliminate waste, validate your learning, and innovate faster and more successfully.

Oh – and check back here next week to download the actual whitepaper (also free).

Recapping the Outside-In Engagement #Assnchat

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Recapping the Outside-In Engagement #Assnchat

Anna Caraveli (The Demand Networks) and I had the opportunity to guest moderate #assnchat on Tuesday, July 14, with discussion focused around the issues we raise in our new whitepaper, Leading Engagement from the Outside-In (download your free copy at http://bit.ly/1GPNUM6).

In case you missed it, here’s a recap of the high points of the conversation.

Q1 How do you currently learn about your audiences? How do you share that knowledge internally?

People up brought up a lot of the usual suspects: demographic data collection, emails, calls, surveys, focus groups, online profiles/subscriptions, and event evaluations.

Partners in Association Management had a great response:

Q2 How are you capturing and sharing learning from less formal interactions?

Brandon Robinson asked:

We all agreed that it did, and Lowell Apelbaum added:

Partners in Association Management also keeps something they call “back pocket lists”: good ideas that couldn’t be implemented at the time someone came up with them that they reserve for a more suitable time.

Q3 What do you know about the outcomes your audiences seek? How are you helping them achieve those outcomes?

This question launched some observations about different generations in the workforce and the association having different goals, with Karen Hansen also pointing out:

We also talked about the whole “what keeps you up at night?” question (which is one of Anna’s favorites), and Lowell Apelbaum observed:

Q4 How do you discover what your audiences really value? How do you use that information?

People had lots of good suggestions here, ranging from pilot programs to trial and error, asking them, tracking behavior, observing what they spread/share/talk about/promote, and Ewald Consulting went kind of Zen Master on us:

That’s deep, man.

 

Q5 How do you facilitate building authentic relationships w your audiences? Between members?

 

Lots of great chatter here, too, but Karen Hansen had a simple, powerful response:

Treat members like human beings?!?! Radical concept!

Q6 How do you develop new products/programs/services? How do you collaborate with members on this?

Lowell (who was really on a roll today) had another great response for this one:

When we got to question 7, we kind of heard crickets:

 

Q7 How do you encourage collaboration between audiences and association? Among members?

 

Opinion was pretty much universal that this is a big struggle for associations. Kait Solomon pointed out:

Q8 How do you currently define engagement? Is your definition adequate/satisfactory?

Where Kait also observed that “engagement” has become a buzzword, and I quoted Ed Bennett, who recently pointed out that if there’s no ring involved, we probably need to stop talking about engagement and focus on what we really mean: conversation, talking, listening, relationship.

Q9 What do you do with members once you engage them? What’s the next step/goal?

I’m going back to Lowell again:

Our final question, which is the challenge I’m going to leave you with, too was:

Q10 What is one action you could take today to start your association on the path to outside-in engagement?

Not sure how to answer that? Check out the whitepaper at http://bit.ly/1GPNUM6 to get some ideas!

Leading Engagement from the Outside-In

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Leading Engagement from the Outside-In

I’m excited to share the launch of the sixth whitepaper in the ongoing Spark whitepaper series, Leading Engagement from the Outside-In: Become an Indispensable Partner in Your Members’ Success.

Co-authored with Anna Caraveli (The Demand Networks), the whitepaper tackles the question: if engagement is so critical to associations (and we would argue that it is), why aren’t we doing a better job of it?

Of course, associations have always been “about” engagement, and in the past several years, we’ve had a renewed focus on engaging our members and other audiences. The thing is, most of us aren’t really doing it well. Could that be because we’ve been thinking about engagement all wrong, focusing on what we want members to do and how we define value? Leading Engagement from the Outside-In describes a radical shift in our understanding of engagement, one based on an approach that encourages us to view the world from our audiences’ perspective, focus on the outcomes they want to achieve, build authentic relationships, and harness the power of collaboration to co-create the value our organizations provide.

Speaking of, I’ll be blogging more about the whitepaper in the coming days, but in the meantime, pick up your free copy at http://bit.ly/1GPNUM6, no divulging of information about yourself required.

Don’t forget to check out the other FREE Spark whitepapers, too:

 

Turning Good Ideas Into Action

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Ansoff Matrix Template

Looking to increase your association’s revenue?

Growth can come about either through acquiring new customers/members or increasing sales to existing customers/members. And you can sell either existing programs, products, and services or new programs, products, and services.

In short, Ansoff’s matrix.

The thing is, associations often struggle with this. Why?

I would argue it’s because of a lack of clarity, a lack of commitment, and/or a lack of execution.

Image credit: Edraw

Review: When Millennials Take Over

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

“Every 20 years or so, a new generation enters the workforce, and the rest of us, quite frankly, freak out about it.” 

Cover Image - When Millennials Take OverI recently had the opportunity to read a review copy of When Millennials Take Over, a new book by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant designed to help us get past the freak out and to a “ridiculously optimistic” view of the future of work.

Their basic thesis is that the environment in which our organizations operate has changed – we have to move faster, with less hierarchy and more sharing of information, and learn how to be digital native institutions.

Sounds hard, right?

Fortunately, the Millennials, the generation born between 1982 and 2004, can help us. Although GenX is currently the largest segment of the workforce, within the next three years, the Millennials will be taking over. And that’s a good thing. As Notter put it during a recent book release event sponsored by ASAE: “The goal is not to ‘deal with’ Millennials but to learn from them. It’s not that Millennials are extra special or have all the answers, but they’re a ‘secret decoder ring’ to help us understand and adapt to these changes.”

Notter and Grant have identified four key capacities that they believe will drive the future of business:

  • Digital
  • Clear
  • Fluid
  • Fast

Digital expects widespread customization and personalization, which includes staff as well as customers and members, and continuous improvement. Going digital is not just about how much you spend on technology (although most of us ARE underinvesting); it’s also about developing a digital mindset, in which you design around the needs and convenience of your audiences (both internal and external), even if that makes things harder for the organization.

tl;dr: In the era of Amazon and apps, your old excuses for 20 years outdated tech and processes won’t fly.

Clear demands information at everyone’s fingertips. Millennials have always had the “why” explained to them – that’s how they were raised. The great thing about this is, when our organizations share more information in a more transparent way, we dramatically increase both the speed and the quality of the decisions we make.

Fluid requires us to break out of our silos, not to the point that there’s no hierarchy at all (Google tried that and found it didn’t work), but to the point that teams are flexible and ad hoc, and different people get opportunities to lead based on their skills match with the project and task at hand. That means that EVERY person needs to know what your organization’s key performance indicators, that is, the keys to success, are.

Fast is the end result of all of these. As Notter and Grant point out, not everything needs to be ultra-fast all the time – there is still room for institutional knowledge and deliberation – but speed is important. As Grant observed at that same book release event, think about how quickly you dump a smartphone or tablet app that doesn’t work as expected. We need to move faster on idea generation, creating rudimentary prototypes, gathering information, and improving/scaling, pivoting, or killing those ideas as appropriate.

tl;dr: Don’t do another member survey! And don’t make decisions about what to do based on the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). Create a Minimum Viable Product, and decide what happens after that based on actual data about whether people buy and use it, and what they think about it.

The book makes an excellent companion to Notter and Grant’s earlier Humanize. But where Humanize was a bit heavier on theory, When Millennials Take Over focuses heavily on the practical, sharing detailed case studies of four organizations who exemplify the authors’ four key capacities:

The American Society for Surgery of the Hand, a small membership organization that still manages to invest well in technology, personalize and customize, learn from experiments, and incorporate results-only work environment principles.

Menlo Innovations, a software firm that is so transparent about information that they’ve invented their own resolutely low-tech project management system so that every person knows exactly what every other person’s top priorities are and where they stand on achieving those goals. This lets teams that are ahead of schedule know immediately who needs help and offer it without the intervention of boring project status meetings or project managers or complicated negotiations over email. Menlo even invites clients into the office on a weekly basis so they can see first-hand what’s going on with their projects and make more effective decisions about their own budgets and priorities.

Quality Living, a rehab center for people recovering from brain and spinal cord injuries, that understands the importance of shifting decision-making authority and action to the individuals and groups who are best equipped to be successful in a particular situation, no matter what their official place in the organization’s hierarchy. That might mean that someone very “low level,” who is closest to the patient and her needs, values, hopes, and dreams, directs care for that patient across the entire team of more “senior” people.

Happy State Bank, a community bank operating in Texas, that is able to make good decisions almost absurdly fast thanks to their laser focus on caring and relationships (not exactly traditional for financial institutions). As Notter is fond of pointing out, trust enables speed, and that’s exactly the environment Happy State has created, not just among staff but between staff and customers.

Ultimately, this is about all of us – Boomers, Xers, and Millennials – working together for the good of ourselves, our organizations, and our customers/members. We take turns leading the change:

For every Luke Skywalker (Millennial), there is always a need for an Obi-Wan Kenobi (Baby Boomer), and even an occasional cynical and independent Han Solo (Generation Xer). We know it is cliché, but we’re all in this together.

When Millennials Take Over is available in Kindle and print editions at Amazon.com. For a limited time, the Kindle edition is only $0.99 (that is not a typo), or you can download a chapter as a preview for FREE.

 

Adopting the Mission Command Mindset

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Adopting the Mission Command Mindset

A few weeks ago, the Washington Post ran an article about some of the latest developments in military leadership, and, as part of it, they shared the idea of the Mission Command Mindset.

At its simplest, Mission Command dictates that senior leaders provide guidance and intent — the what and the why — and that subordinate leaders have maximum latitude to design the how. It embodies deep trust between senior and subordinate.

In other words, senior leadership sets the vision, and all the details about how that vision is executed are pushed down to those closest to where the activity is taking place, like so:

Mission Command graphic

All I can say to this is: YES!

Associations NEED this approach, because far too often, we go the opposite way, with senior staff micromanaging every detail of every thing.

Our Executive Directors/Chief Staff Officers are supposed to be the bridge to the Board. Like the Board, they should be focused on the 30,000 foot vision and strategic direction, but often they don’t, and they end up dans la merde, losing their focus on where the association is trying to go overall, and in the process, working a million hours a week.

“But I can’t trust my people to do a good job if I don’t insist that they let me review every single marketing email before it goes out!”

(That’s an actual recent example from a $100M annual revenue association client.)

Look, if that’s really the case, then you either:

  • didn’t hire the right people
  • didn’t get them the right training
  • don’t understand that just because someone does something a little differently than you might doesn’t mean that they’re wrong

I’ve written about this before around the concept of being willing to unplug, but the point is that your staff members know things you don’t by virtue of being close to the situations they’re dealing with on a daily basis. Which the US military apparently understands, and their situations are often life-and-death. Don’t you think you can trust your staff to send out a marketing email without getting five layers of approval first?

Image credit: globalsecurity.org

Three Keys to Inspire New Ideas from Staff

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

What does it take for associations to succeed at innovation?

I’ve been doing some research on innovation initiatives in associations for a client and had written a bit about it for the Spark blog a few weeks ago. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mark Athitakis from ASAE about what I’d learned in a little more length, and he wrote the following piece for Associations Now. They’ve graciously given me permission to share it.

The best ideas for your association may come from your employees, but how do you get those ideas launched? Money matters, but so does trust and support.

Your staff has ideas about new services your association can provide for members. Some of those ideas may be very good ones. Problem is, how do you help get those ideas organized and tested?

Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE, CEO and chief strategist for Spark Consulting, has recently been interviewing leaders at associations that have launched internal innovation and new business development programs. “We talk about innovation in the association world a lot,” Engel says. “I wondered what was happening. Is anybody doing this well?”

The answer is yes, though not without some serious effort. Engel’s research uncovered three common elements of successful programs.

1. It needs its own funding. Success here, Engel says, requires “paying attention to opportunity and then being able to do something about it now, not in 24 months when you can finally make room in the budget.” The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, for instance, maintains a $500,000 fund that’s used annually to invest in new ideas from staff. That includes hiring people dedicated to working on it, as opposed to burdening current staff with new duties.

2. It needs a clearly defined process. A marketing staffer may have a brilliant idea, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she has the financial know-how to put together a business plan to show how it might work. The three associations Engel studied each had a clearly defined process for staff to propose an idea, institutional support for making the proposal, and a clear set of benchmarks for it. “They’re asking, ‘What criteria do you need to meet in order for this thing to continue passing the test?’” Engel says. “It can be a revenue criteria, but it doesn’t have to be. It has to be clear what standards you’re going to need to keep going.”

3. It needs institutional support. This can be trickier than it seems. Chuck Cochran, CAE, ASHA’s chief staff officer for operations, says the association launched its own program in 1997, during a reorganization. ASHA was in silo-smashing mode, looking to flatten hierarchies, make board activities more transparent, and involve staff in more of the decision making. “The culture change in the organization was huge,” he says.

That kind of hard-won trust and transparency encourages staffers to come forward with their ideas. “I can’t imagine what [the program] would be like if there was distrust,” Cochran says. “People would be afraid they’re going to be zapped.” Cochran estimates that today about 80 percent of the ideas proposed via the fund are successful—that is, proved themselves financially viable after three years and became part of the regular operating budget.

You don’t get to that point, Engel says, without leadership endorsing the concept. “The CEO or executive director has to be supportive of the decision,” she says. “Senior leadership has to say, ‘Yes, this is a good thing.’”

But practically speaking, you also don’t get there without money, and not every association has half a million dollars available to road-test a new idea. Cochran encourages associations to look at the status of their reserves; if they’re in excess of 50 percent of annual unrestricted operating expenses (the typical target for reserves), those excess dollars may provide the start-up costs for a fund.

Because new ideas may require dedicated staff, the amount of money matters. But Engel suggests that even a smaller-scale effort is worthwhile. “It’s a lot easier to find a spare $500,000 set aside for your innovation budget if you’re ASHA than if you’re a $2 million association,” she says. “The raw amount of money doesn’t scale. But the concept—if all you can set aside if $5,000, even if you can get 5 percent time, that part of it is scalable.”

Does your association have a program to encourage staff to propose new ideas, and how do you make it work? Share your experiences in the comments.

Reprinted with permission. Copyright, ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership, July 2014, Washington, DC.

What Do YOU See?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

About a year ago, the Harvard Business Review did an interview with Maya Angelou. I definitely recommend checking out the entire thing, but there was one thing in particular she said that stuck with me:

Maya Angelou leadership quoteOne of the great dangers of leadership, I think, is the tendency to believe your own hype. If you achieved this great, high, responsible position, it must be because you’re that much better than everyone else, right? You earned it, all by your awesome self!

The thing is, no one exists in a vacuum. You are the sum certainly of the abilities you drew in the natural lottery and how you’ve been able to develop them but also of all the people who’ve helped you and influenced you and taught you and mentored you and led you and followed you and worked with you to achieve bigger goals than any one person could accomplish alone along the way.

And I think that’s what Dr. Angelou’s quote is about. True greatness isn’t running around singing “I AM SO GREAT! I AM SO GREAT!” It’s saying “YOU are so great.” It’s highlighting how others’ ideas helped you. It’s sharing credit. It’s talking about everyone’s contributions at least as much, if not more than, your own. It’s knowing that what you’ve achieved has been the result of many, many people’s efforts and making sure OTHER people know you know that, too.

How many of us, as leaders, are strong and confident enough to do this? How would our world be different if we did?

Image credit: Daily Good

It’s Not Magic!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

I’m in St. Paul today presenting for the Midwest Society of Association Executives’ annual meeting today. Two of my sessions are on familiar topics: The Mission Driven Volunteer and my Carpe Annum IGNITE session. But one’s new: Your Membership Dilemmas SOLVED!

In it, I plan to share the great secret of consulting.

Of course, not everyone can be in St. Paul today, and I don’t want to exclude people unfairly, so I’m going to share the magic trick here, too.

Are you ready?

  1. Ask better questions
  2. Hold out for more alternatives as answers

That really is it. I mean, consultants also bring (hopefully) experience in the field (in my case, associations) and in particular disciplines in that field (membership and marketing for me) and the breadth of knowledge and experience that comes from working with a bunch of different types of organizations and keeping up on the latest research and trends.

But I truly think that what helps us help you is that we focus on asking better questions (one of THE keys to making good decisions) and that we don’t let you settle for the first, most obvious answer – we make you keep digging.

That’s really it.

So now you don’t ever need to hire someone like me again!

Ok, not really (I hope). But if you can build the capacity to think in those terms – ask better questions and push for more hypotheses – you can definitely increase your success with solving problems in-house.