Category: leadership

What Do You REALLY Want to Know?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on What Do You REALLY Want to Know?

Data, data everywhere – but what does it MEAN?

We can measure a lot of stuff – opens and clicks and visits and time on page and community engagement scores and number of members and average tenure and number of attendees and satisfaction scores and followers and fans and shares and who’s talking about this and reach and RTs and responses, ad infinitum ad nauseum.

In fact, we can measure just about everything at this point, if we’re dedicated and have reasonable tech systems. So we drown in data, inundate decision makers, and produce analysis paralysis.

We lose sight of why we were tracking all this stuff in the first place: to make an impact. To drive decisions. To change our behavior and our organizations.

So the next time someone says, “Let’s start tracking this new metric!” make sure to ask why. Why do you want to track this? What are you looking to accomplish? What are you trying to decide? What impact with the data have on our organization? How will what you discover change your behavior?

Remember, the flip side of “you can’t change what you don’t measure” is “measure what you value, or you’ll only value what you measure.”

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.

Reaching Detente With Your Chapters

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on Reaching Detente With Your Chapters

One of the truisms of association management is that national/chapter relationships are often…fraught. Even though we’re all ostensibly on the same side, it doesn’t always feel that way. Each side feels like the other is holding out on the them or trying to gain advantage, and the lack of trust that results makes it hard to communicate and to work together for the good of the organization as a whole and, ultimately, the profession or industry you serve.

How do you get past this?

I was recently chatting with some colleagues who were working through this exact problem. Details concealed, of course, but a little background. The organization has chapters in every state. As is common, some are quite strong and many are less so. The national provides staff support for chapters, but it’s in the form of two staff members who are both in DC (and in the eastern time zone).

The national wants to switch to an “account executive” model, dividing the country into regions and locating a regional chapter support manager in each of them. Those regional managers would still report to the national membership director, but they would work remotely and be charged solely with supporting the chapters in their region (so they would really work FOR the chapters).

Sounds great, right? Unless you’re a strong chapter that’s worried that this is a power grab by the national. And there is one chapter in particular with a strong, nationally-known executive and a full staff of their own. The national staff is concerned that she will lead the revolt that will doom their plan to help struggling chapters by providing better overall support and coordination.

What we realized is that this apparent negative could actually be a huge advantage. But it would all depend on the approach. Going to the strong chapter executive with, “This is the plan that we, the national, in our great and mighty wisdom, have devised for you, the poor little chapters, and you’ll accept it whether you want to or not!” would result in disaster. It turns her into an opponent immediately. “My chapter is just fine, and we don’t need your help/interference, thanks.”

But, if the national approached the strong chapter executive with this as a POSSIBLE idea to provide better support for the chapters that they’d very much like her to PILOT for them before they consider rolling it out to all the chapters, suddenly, we’re on the same side of the table working together to solve a problem.

Of course, the national has to be genuine. The program really IS a pilot and is open to modification – or even being dumped – based on the experiences of the beta group, which should probably consist of some or all of chapters in the strong chapter executive’s region. The staff person would remain at the national headquarters during the pilot, but he would switch his work schedule to better align with the region’s time zone. And if the beta testers came up with a better idea, the national would pilot that as well.

What kind of tiger-style management-fu can you deploy to start standing next to your chapters facing issues together rather than standing opposite them and *being* the issue?

The Eternal Butts in Seats Debate

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on The Eternal Butts in Seats Debate

What do you notice – and reward – in your staff? Time at desk? Effort? Results?

As you’ll soon discover, I’m pretty clearly in one camp.

Some places focus on hours. Were you there at 9 on the dot, did you take extra time at lunch, did you leave early?

And for some particular positions, that might make sense: retail (where you have posted store hours), customer service (where the phones/email accounts are supposed to be staffed certain hours), reception (where the desk is supposed to be staffed certain hours), shift work.

Raise your hand if you – or your staff – do one of those things.

Let’s face it: if you’re reading this blog, there’s a good a chance you’re what’s known these days as a “knowledge worker,” someone who is valued for the knowledge she brings to a particular field of expertise.

So since knowledge workers are valued for expertise, it makes sense to measure them by results, right?

This concept is captured well by ROWE – the Results Only Work Environment.

Unfortunately, too many of our organizations are mired in a 1950s-era mentality that we judge people based on whether or not they’re putting in their hours. And making the leap to evaluating based on outcomes can be scary.

The thing is – as with many issues in the modern office – it’s a management issue.

What would it take to stop evaluating people based on “was he in his seat from 9 to 5 every week day?”

  • Flexibility – obviously, this is not something that’s going to work in a rigid culture.
  • Trust – you’re not going to be able to watch your people every minute, since they’re going to work when, and where, it makes the most sense for them.
  • Clarity – I think this is the real rub for most offices. We measure people based on butts in seats, or effort alone, because we have no clear, measurable, concrete goals for them. “Did you work at least 40 hours (and the right 40 hours) this week?” has to stand in, because we have no idea what we actually need our staff members to accomplish day to day, week to week, and year to year.

But if you can manage to make the switch – and make no mistake, it does require a major cultural shift, at least for most offices – it can accrue tremendous benefits to your organization. ROWE has been proven to reduce stress, increase productivity, increase health and well-being, and reduce turnover. And that makes complete sense when you think about it: your staff members get to dump their commute entirely (or commute at off hours, or only some of the time), work when they’re at their most productive and in the environment that makes them most productive, and manage their personal lives in ways that make sense, which makes them happier, which in turn makes them more productive.

So what are you waiting for?

Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 7 Comments on Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

I just got the latest issue of CEO Update (v. XXI, #537, December 16 and 30, 2011) in the mail. Either as a result of the slowdown in hiring or the changing needs of the market or both, CEO Update is a lot more than just job openings these days. They’ve expanded their coverage to do some actual reporting on the state of the association industry.

So I open it up to the centerfold, which is the Top 25 CEO Quotes of 2011.

25 people

2 women

23 men

0 people of color

…

For those who don’t want to do the math at home, that’s 8% women, 92% men, 0% non-white (that last one was pretty easy to calculate).

When I was actively supporting the CAE study program (2004 – 2010), we used to tell candidates to plan to answer questions on the exam from the perspective of a 65 year old white man. In 2009 (? possibly 2008), someone got offended, so we removed that from our advice. In retrospect, I think we did the candidates a disservice, because even though it may not be PC to point it out, it *remains* true.

Do I sound pissed? Good, because I am.

And I’m not just talking about throwing in some faux-United Colors of Benetton “diverse” stock photo here. This goes deeper. The CEO Update editors sat down and thought: “What were the best CEO insights of the year?” And they came up with insights from 25 white people.

Some worry that associations as a concept may be at risk due to social and technological changes. I think that if, after all these years, this is the best we can do, maybe we deserve to be extinct.

Dare to Think BIG

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Dare to Think BIG

During Jeffrey Cufaude‘s ASAE11 Ignite presentation on living a sustainable life, he quoted Mary Catherine Bateson: “we’re living longer but thinking shorter.” And I got thinking about the concept of thinking small.

Associations are under tremendous pressure right now. The economy is not getting any better. Social media, to quote Jamie Notter and paraphrase Clay Shirky, is kicking our asses. Generational shifts are battering our traditional membership and leadership models. Peak oil and global climate change are beginning to affect our society in countless ways, one of which may very likely be to cripple our traditional educational and networking models. What volunteers are looking for, and the hoops they’re willing to jump through in order to get it, has changed in ways that render traditional board and committee service models obsolete. Information is no longer scarce, and even the most backwards and self-delusional associations can’t pretend to hold a monopoly on it any more.

Everything in our environment is whispering: “Protect your ass. Guard your turf. Trust no one. Rock no boats. Prepare for the worst.”

In other words: “Think small.”

Sure – think small, and watch your organization die.

Now, as Jamie has pointed out, your association – my association – has no inherent right to exist. And if the best thing for your profession/industry/community/audiences is for your organization to die, then get on with it and decrease the surplus population.

But if you do believe that your organization brings something useful and good to some group of people, now is exactly the time to think big, take chances, rock the boat, make change, and see where it can take you.

It’s easy to be afraid now – a lot of shit is going down. But if we can get past the fear and be courageous and willing to take risks, we have HUGE opportunities to do better by our members, our professions/industries, our audiences, and maybe even the world. As my good friend Catherine says: “What are they going to do – take away your birthday?”

At the end of his Ignite session, Joe Gerstandt asked us: “Do you approach life from fear or from love?”

It’s time to choose.

Innovation: Small Staff v. Large Staff

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 9 Comments on Innovation: Small Staff v. Large Staff

In the past 14 years, I’ve held a variety of positions in association management: senior staff in a mid-sized professional academic society, senior staff/acting CEO for a small ed-tech association, consulting, and now mid-level management at a large medical trade association.

Each place has had upsides and downsides. The academic society was in my “official” field (from undergrad and grad school), so I was really engaged in the meat of what we did and felt a deep personal connection with my members. I had the opportunity to manage a fantastic team, most of whom I’m still in touch with 14 years later. But tradition weighs particularly heavy on an august association of PhDs. Even though I had good internal support to try new things, there was only so far we could go. And the annual meetings were murder!

The small association was nimble and innovative, and I had pretty much totally free reign to try anything I wanted. We turned on a dime and had an AMAZING mission and community. Unfortunately, resources – staff, time, money, capacity, space – were a constant problem. Comes with the territory, but we constantly struggled to figure out ways to push all our great ideas forward on the cheap (or preferably, the free).

Consulting brought lots of fun, exciting variety, and I got to meet and work with terrific people from all sorts of associations, finding out about worlds I never would have encountered otherwise (and I got to work with a metallurgy organization staffed and led by a bunch of guys who reminded me a lot of my dad, which rocked – I love engineers!). But I was often in the position of turning over a bunch of (hopefully) useful recommendations that would have an immediate positive impact, with an “OK! Let me know how it goes!” It killed me to mostly not be able to help make change happen.

Large organizations allow you to be more specialized, so you develop deeper expertise in your areas of responsibility. Resources are rarely a serious impediment. And once again, great mission (there may be a theme here). But decision making can be glacial, and it’s often not entirely clear who needs to be involved in a given decision until you’re down the path and someone’s upset they’ve been left out.

So here’s my question for you, association peeps: how does one bring some of the good things small staff organizations enjoy with regards to new ideas and nimbleness to a large organization?

That’s not rhetorical – I’d really like your thoughts.

Honesty, Leadership and Professional Opportunity

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 6 Comments on Honesty, Leadership and Professional Opportunity

I’ve only had two opportunities to work directly with volunteer groups while at NACHRI, and both times I’ve apparently put my foot in my mouth (and gotten reprimanded for it) because I answered a direct question honestly (some would, I’m sure, say bluntly) rather than giving the politically correct answer (which to me feels an awful lot like lying).

And I’m starting to wonder: is it me or is it the system? A lot of associations complain that our volunteer leaders are disengaged or make unrealistic demands or just don’t understand the reality in which we operate. But is it our fault? Are we, in an effort not to hurt anyone’s feelings or upset them, holding back too much information?

And this is far from just a NACHRI thing – I’ve seen it at every association I’ve worked for or with as a consultant. If we can’t be honest with our members about the hard realities, how on earth can we expect them to be willing and able to make hard, realistic choices?

Ultimately, of course, I’m starting to wonder what kind of (presumably negative?) effect this tendency is likely to have on my long-term career prospects. I’d like to be a CEO/ED some day, but if it requires not being honest with members or volunteers about something that affects them, I’m not sure I can do it.

Maybe I’m seeing this too black and white. But it doesn’t feel that way. And maybe we need to trust our members and volunteers to be the grown ups they are and realize that they don’t need to be handled with kid gloves, and ultimately, it benefits neither them nor our organizations.

What Does the Future Hold?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

At the recent CAE Celebration, Marsha Rhea led us in a futurist thinking exercise, which seemed apropos as this is the 50th anniversary of the CAE.

After flying through some pretty densely packed slides, she divided us into groups that were to look ahead to 2020 (10 years), 2040 (30 years) and 2060 (50 years).  Apparently, looking 30 years ahead is pretty wild stuff for professional futurists – they usually stay more in the 3-10 year range – and 50 years is considered downright crazy.  But we forged ahead anyway.

I happened to find myself at a “2040” table with people who were all quite a bit older than I was (most started in association management sometime in the 1970s).  New CAE and (NACHRI colleague) Sue Dull observed astutely that people were having a hard time not just projecting what’s happening now (virtual meetings, blurring of work and life, telework) out into the future.

I didn’t say much (shocking, I know) because the rest of the group couldn’t seem to wrap their minds around things like:

What will all this mean for associations?

To quote Sue again (she’s really smart!):  humans will have to come up with new ways of affiliating.

By 2040, the Millennials will be in their 40s/50s and will be running our organizations.  Assuming GenX iconoclasts don’t kill them first.  And Millennials are big on respect for authority, institutions, and hierarchy, which could mean a real renaissance for associations.  There will also be a pressing need for humans to collectively organize ourselves to address the above problems.  And – at least so far – government officials have shown themselves distinctly disinclined to address anything that might hurt their chances of winning the next election.  We will need someone to lead us, and nonprofit organizations could fill that leadership vacuum.  Assuming we survive the larger global forces at work.

Accountability – it’s not a dirty word

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Two things have struck me recently (or perhaps I should say “stuck in my craw”):

Associations are generally warm-n-fuzzy(er) than for-profits.

Associations like to be collaborative and engage in consensus based decision making, but sometimes someone has to stand up and say you WILL do this or you will NOT do that. And there have to be consequences for non-compliance. There has to be a balance, but it has to be just as OK to use the stick where warranted as it is to use the carrot. We’re not children – or at least we’re not supposed to be – we’re grown up professionals.

Associations like to acknowledge effort, and we all know we’re always going to be at least somewhat at the mercy of our boards and other volunteer leaders.  But, to quote Yoda:  “Do or do not. There is no try.” What you tried to do doesn’t matter.  What you accomplished does.  There might be attenuating circumstances, and if there are, mention them.  But focus on results, not what you wanted to happen or what you planned to happen or what, in an ideal world, would have happened.

What do you to keep the focus on mission, results, and being accountable for your actions on a daily basis?  What do you ask of the people you supervise?  What do you ask of your boss?