Category: personal reflections

What Do You Believe In?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
The phrase "Passion Led Us Here" on a sidewalk with two people standing by it (you see their shoes)

I’m pretty much just re-upping this post, because it’s a good one.

Back in 2011, Bisnow published an article that included this quote:

When you ask most people about their jobs, they tell you what they do and how they do it, but not why. “Why you do what you do is what makes people lean in closer,” Mary [van de Wiel] says. For example, Duarte, a company which creates presentations for many high-profile speakers, describes itself on its website by saying, “We love whiteboards, sweet design, vegan cookies, bacon cheeseburgers, the afternoon regroup, and the 4 am idea. We believe in the power of a great story to move an audience and the power of an audience to change the world.” It does not say Duarte is the leading PowerPoint design firm in the world. Mary says: “You get a sense of who these people are, and you say, ‘Yes, I want to work with them.'”

In our 2015 whitepaper Leading Engagement from the Outside-In, one of the keys to engagement Anna Caraveli and I identified was Organize Around Shared Purpose.

Sadly, far too many association mission statements are something along the lines of:

The Widget Association, a nonprofit membership association founded in 1954, is the leading voice for the widget industry. We represent and advocate for 9,000 widget professionals worldwide. We advance the profession through education, networking, and advocacy.

That is BOOOOOO-RING.

Contrast that to one of our case studies, the Society of Hospital Medicine: Revolutionize Patient Care.

Short. Succinct. Inspiring.

(They’ve complicated it somewhat since then, I would argue NOT for the better.)

As I originally wrote in 2011:

What is your association’s mission statement? Does it truly reflect what you believe in? Would it make anyone excited about joining your cause? If not, what can you do to change it to more truly reflect what’s great about your organization?

I believe those questions are even more pressing, more important now, 13 years later.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Filling Your Well of Ideas

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Filling Your Well of Ideas
woman sitting on brown rock

With a significant portion of the association community (although not me) in Cleveland this week for ASAE24, I’ve been thinking about ideas and how we all go about getting them.

One of the challenges of solo consulting is that solo consultants need to generate a lot of ideas – for our clients most importantly, but also for articles and blog posts and conference presentations and whitepapers and ebooks and LinkedIn and all those other places we’re tasked with creating “thought leadership” for the community – while, sometimes, operating in a bit of a vacuum.  It’s not as if we have colleagues we’re with every day where we enjoy those moments of inspiration that come from serendipitous interactions, often not as a result of “so where do YOU think the future of AI lies?” type conversations so much as of “I just read the most interesting book” type conversations. And even for folks who work in teams, in an era of pervasive remote work, those types of chance interactions don’t happen the way they used to.

How do I fill my own well of ideas? 

  1. Several years ago, I realized that I needed to schedule one event per year solely for my own professional development. When you’re a consultant, it’s easy to fall prey to only attending professional development events where you’re being paid to speak (or at least getting a comp registration and travel funds). And that’s understandable – when paying to attend an event comes directly out of one’s own pocket, it’s wise to limit those expenditures – and, as I wrote several years ago, when one is at an event where one is being paid to speak, it’s also wise to participate as fully as one is able (go to sessions other than your own, talk to people). But for those paid gigs, I realized that I tended to be primarily focused on making sure I delivered good value for my clients, so my attention was mostly on prepping to give a good session, and I often can’t stay much beyond the day on which I give it. So I made attending one thing that’s just for me, where I just participate, both a schedule and financial priority. Aside from the opportunity to focus only on my own learning, I also get to relax into conversations and relationship building with other participants in ways that seem less accessible when I’m there as a “sage on the stage.”
  2. I am a voracious reader, and rarely of business books, which I find to be largely a waste of time. I still read the print newspaper every morning. I subscribe to (and actually read) a variety of high-quality magazines, from the New Yorker to MIT’s Technology Review to The Atlantic. I read fun fiction. I read literary fiction, including books that have been translated from other languages. I read quality non-fiction. I re-read books that changed my life at earlier stages of my life. One of the things I’ve missed about the return to relative normalcy post-pandemic is I have less time to read now. Not that I’m eager to go back into lockdown, but I do miss the slower pace that allowed more time for reflection. Relatedly….
  3. Unplug. Regularly. One of the habits I’ve lost from the lockdowns was taking a daily walk. At the time, it was one of the few options available for exercise and for leaving the house, and I was dedicated – rain or shine, heat or cold, I was out there. Stanford University researchers conducted a famous study about a decade ago that demonstrated that walking specifically increases creativity. Since I’ve resumed more typical forms of exercise, sadly, my daily walks have vanished, and I find that I’m doing a poor job of setting aside time for letting both my body and my mind to ramble, away from technology and other distractions. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson there.

As I also wrote in that earlier post:

Our brains, our psyches, and our hearts need time away from the electronic hamster wheel. Different people need different amounts of time away and at different intervals of frequency, but we all need some time out to process, think, recharge, and refresh.

Where do you go for inspiration?

Photo by Jesse Bowser on Unsplash

Pay It Forward

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
white ceramic mug full of coffee on a wood surface that reads "What Good Shall I Do This Day?"

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my 27 years in association management is:

When somebody hits you up with a request for a favor in a professional context, ALWAYS try to help them out, or connect them to someone who can.

Call it good karma, or ninja-level networking, or spreading the love, or paying it forward, or whatever, but people remember that you tried to help them and that you know people.

Someday, you’ll need help, and if you’re known as a person who tries to connect people with solutions to their problems, you won’t even have to call in chips – people will line up to help you.

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

Velvet Rope or Come Party with Me?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Velvet Rope or Come Party with Me?
group of people at a Holi celebration throwing gulal

Scene one: I’m in New Orleans on vacation wandering down Frenchmen Street in Faubourg Marigny looking for a good place to hang out and hear some tunes on a Wednesday night. First stop: the Spotted Cat.  It was so packed I couldn’t get in the door (literally), so I hung out on the sidewalk with a WIDE mix of characters (and nobody does “characters” like NOLA) for a while enjoying the music wafting out…for free. At the band break, I decided to move on, and down the street, I heard the sweet strains of Shamarr Allen’s trumpet pouring out of Cafe Negril. There was a short line, as the guy at the door struggled to keep up making change for the $5 cover when everyone kept handing him $20s. When I got inside, the crowd ranged from middle aged and older white people to hipsters from the neighborhood to a “professional hugger” from Austin (Keep Austin Weird!) – all ages, all races, all styles of dress, everyone just hanging out and grooving to the Underdawgs. Vibe? Awesomesauce, even before the generous pour, reasonably priced cocktails.

Scene two: One of my spouse’s co-workers moonlights as a DJ in DC. He was spinning at a chi-chi lounge on a recent Saturday night, and we thought we’d swing by and see him. So we roll up only to spot a velvet rope, two scowling bouncers, and a LONG line. Vibe?  B-A-D BAD.  And totally unwelcoming.  And definitely *not* groovy.

So what’s the connection to associations?

  • What does your organization look like to an outsider?  Not someone on staff, not someone who’ s been a member for a million years, not someone who’s served on your Board – someone who doesn’t know you at all but might be interested in what you provide?
  • Are you welcoming to everyone or only to the “right” people?
  • Do you make it easy for people to get access to what they want and need, even if they aren’t an “insider”?
  • Do you let people participate at the level they want to, even if that’s the equivalent of standing on the banquette outside the club just grooving to the great tunes for free?
  • What’s your barrier to entry?
  • What’s your association’s reputation in your industry, profession, or community?
  • Are you affordable to people of lesser means or lower professional stature who might benefit from what you offer?

In short: Are you groovy or snooty?

Photo by Adam Whitlock on Unsplash

Focus in a Distracted Era

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Two people sitting next to each other on a bench in a lovely nature setting, both looking at their phones

I recently had the opportunity to attend my first Prometheus Retreat (more on that in a minute), and it got me thinking about the concepts of connection, distraction, unplugging, and focus, issues I’ve written about here before.

Twenty association executives (CEOs and EDs, AMC leaders, and consultants) gathered at a lovely resort in Pennsylvania to ponder some Big Issues together: AI, DEI, nurturing the next generation of association leaders, the role of voluntary membership associations in an increasingly polarized society, and, of course, boards boards boards.

At our closing circle, one of the other newbies mentioned that an experienced Promethian had, upon seeing her take out her phone to respond to email early in the retreat, advised her to put it away. My fellow newbie expressed her deep gratitude for that advice, which she chose to follow and which she felt dramatically improved her experience.

As I wrote back in 2009:

The thing about being “on” all the time is that it can seriously interfere both with our actual face-to-face relationships (and our ability to form and nurture them) and with our ability to really *think* about stuff. We’re not multitasking mavens – we’re just distracted…all the time.

“Connection” is ubiquitous today. We all always have a tiny super computer in our pockets that lures us with games and amusing (or infuriating) videos and the infinite scroll of social media platforms and “I’ll just take 30 seconds to answer this email right now and get it off my plate.”

But that doesn’t come without a cost. We’ve all seen – or been – the distracted spouse, parent, friend scrolling our phones rather than paying attention to the person in front of us. We’ve all experienced the Pavlovian response to the new email notification that “is just going to take 30 seconds” and yet interrupts our focus on whatever it was we were doing before it arrived for FAR LONGER than 30 seconds – that “switch tasking” (a more accurate descriptor than “multi-tasking”) can consume as much as 40% of your productive time.

How do we ensure that all this wonderful tech serves us rather than the other way around?

Some of the practices I follow include:

  • Turning off nearly all notifications on both my computer and my smart phone
  • Using time blocking for tasks that I know will require significant uninterrupted focus
  • Confining work, to the greatest degree possible, to my actual physical home office (I am fortunate to have a dedicated room)
  • Not keeping my phone on me at all times (a privilege of not having school-aged children)
  • Resisting the siren song of false urgency (just because someone wants something right this second does not necessarily mean that they need it right this second, aka “A lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”
  • Identifying a few trips each year where I am NOT working (and letting clients, partners, and my various volunteer gigs know that WELL in advance)

What practices have you found to be helpful in preserving your ability to focus in a distracted era?

Photo by Gigi on Unsplash

Becoming a Leader

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Scrabble board spelling out Lead, Team and Succeed

There’s plenty of advice on what it takes to be a good leader, but in my own experience, it doesn’t matter how curious or analytical or resilient you are if people don’t trust you enough to follow you. How do you make yourself worthy of that trust?

1. Praise in public, correct in private.

This encompasses a number of things:

  • Catch your people doing good stuff.
  • Make sure the people “above” you know when the people “below” you think of or do something great.
  • Remember that good ideas can come from anywhere.
  • There’s no such thing as too much praise.
  • Saying thank you is free.
  • Make sure your people know that you have their backs.
  • Be generous – GENEROUS – sharing credit.

2. Be willing to take risks.

Refusing to make a decision IS a decision. The only decision you’ll ever make in life that you can’t change later is the decision to have kids. Whatever you’re considering is probably not *that* serious.

Ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if we do this?”AND “What’s the worst thing that could happen if we DON’T do this?”

3. Behave with integrity.

People have to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can trust you. That doesn’t mean you’re never going to screw up. But when you do, own it and FIX IT.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Of Crowdsourcing and Cassandras

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Of Crowdsourcing and Cassandras
different people's hands on a tree trunk representing working together to accomplish a shared goal

Reupping this post I wrote back in 2009 about crowdsourcing, because my larger point is, I think, even more relevant in 2024.

Jeff Howe, who is credited with coining the term “Crowdsourcing,” was the opening keynoter at the 2009 ASAE Technology Conference, where he mad the point that no matter how smart the people around you are, most of the smartest people work somewhere else.

Crowdsourcing, he went on to explain is a result of:

the perfect storm of the amateur renaissance, the open source revolution, democratization of production, and the rise of online community.

As I wrote at the time:

AND THAT’S ALL LOVELY, really it is. And it’s happening whether we want it to or not, in our new world where the locus of community is less about geography or biological relationship than it is about affinity. And most people have a desire to create something. But I have to wonder: What about the people who lose not only their jobs, but their careers? 

Eventually you’re the last guy making buggy whips and then the industry folds because no one needs buggy whips anymore.

At the time, I was worried that Howe had no answer, which then – and now – seems to me to be the crux of the matter: There are some highly technical skills that probably can’t be crowdsourced. But if there’s always someone willing to do what I do for free, then what?

In an era of gig work and generative AI, this only seems more pressing.

On the gig work front, there are multiple problems. Most significantly, the workers themselves are often exploited, with no OSHA protections or wage guarantees. But also, have you noticed that your rideshares are a LOT more expensive lately? Because the model may always have been to push the cab companies out of business by offering the service WAY below actual cost and then, once cab companies were disempowered and consumers were accustomed to summoning rides via an app rather than a raised arm or whistle, to jack up the price. Which revenue, may I remind you, is NOT necessarily going to the workers. “Disruption” at work, and it may be coming for the profession or industry your association serves, particularly with the rise of generative AI.

Speaking of, those services are ALSO being offered below cost – even, in many cases, for free. And we’re starting to see professions being disrupted – copy writers, technical writers, bookkeepers, data analysts, paralegals (Pew has done a VERY detailed analysis of professions, and the demographics of the people in them, most at risk). What happens when you’ve fired all your marketing coordinators because you can get ChatGPT to do that work for you for free? One, something tells me ChatGPT will no longer BE free. Also, what’s then the on-ramp for becoming tomorrow’s Chief Marketing Officer?

I don’t have any answers either, but I think it’s a conversation that needs to be engaged.

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

Ask Better Questions

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Definition of charente from Dictionary.com: a meeting in which all stakeholder in a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map solutions

I recently had the opportunity to participate in Association Charrette, a project of Vista Cova, facilitated by Lowell Apelbaum. Most commonly used in design focused industries (architecture, urban planning, landscaping), charrettes

“…serve as a way of quickly generating a design solution while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people. The general idea of a charrette is to create an innovative atmosphere in which a diverse group of stakeholders can collaborate to ‘generate visions for the future’.” (Wikipedia)

In its Association Charrette form, it’s kind of a cross between an un-conference and a retreat. The community of roughly 20 association professionals that forms for the event chooses the topics, and, as Lowell constructs it, the goal is not to solve the problems, but to frame the issues through multiple rounds of extended questioning. Which, as you might imagine, can be a bit frustrating for people who are generally paid to identify and solve problems, but it’s a useful exercise to undergo, to suspend the need for an answer and just stay with the process of questioning for an entire weekend. Also, as Lowell observed, the first questions you ask are often not the most insightful ones – it takes time to get beyond the obvious questions and get to those that will inspire new ways of thinking.

The issues this particular Charrette community chose:

  • Trust, within the context of the well-documented loss of trust in institutions and expertise, and how that might impact associations
  • Community and belonging, and associations’ role (or not!) in creating them
  • Structure
  • Emerging tech, particularly AI (in light of the recent advances demonstrated by ChatGPT and the attention being paid to them)

Again, the point wasn’t to try to answer or solve or fix any of these things, but to think through the kinds of questions we need to be considering as an industry as these forces impact us, our members, their customers, and the professions or industries we serve.

One thing that was new since the last time I was able to participate in Charrette was a “Mastermind group-lite” session on Saturday night. Each participant had the opportunity to submit a vexing problem (professional or personal) that was affecting her individually (NOT her organization) and then get 15 minutes to be the focus of the attention and ideas of four other participants.

If you’ve not had the opportunity to be a part of a Mastermind group, I highly recommend it. When I first launched Spark more than ten years ago, I was fortunate to be invited to participate in a Mastermind group, and it was invaluable.

What is a Mastermind group? It’s a group of 4-6 people who provide peer mentoring to each other about whatever the group forms to address. (In our case, it was how to be successful as a solo woman consultant in the association industry, but it can be about anything you want to learn or improve.)

You commit to meeting with each other regularly, and in each meeting, each participant “checks in,” and then the bulk of the meeting is focused on one person and her challenges (where obviously, you rotate who is the focus). The other participants provide concrete, actionable advice based on their experience.

It requires vulnerability – if you just want to pretend that everything is AWESOME all the time, Mastermind is not for you – the ability to take in advice that might challenge you or make you uncomfortable, the willingness to act on that advice and report back honestly about what happened, and the generosity to be the giver of advice and focused attention (rather than the receiver) next time around.

Top Ten

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Red running track with white lane markers counting up from 1

All in one post/place!

10. Five Tips for Success with Ad Hoc Volunteers

Original Post (2014)

Updated Post (2022)

9. Why Is Membership the Only Relationship?

Original Post (2013)

Updated Post (2022)

8. Membership 101: Effective Renewal Cycles

Original Post (2018)

Updated Post (2022)

7. Membership 101: Exit Surveys

Original Post (2018)

Updated Post (2022)

6. Explaining Marketing to a Kid 

Original Post (2014)

Updated Post (2022)

5. Ten Tips for Creating an Effective Marketing Piece 

Original Post (2013)

Updated Post (2022)

4. Five Ways NOT to Brainstorm

Original Post (2014)

Updated Post (2022)

3. Getting the Most Out of Your Consulting Partnerships

Original Post (2013)

Updated Post (2022)

2. Strategic Planning v. Strategic Thinking

Original Post (2013)

Updated Post (2022)

1. Membership 101: The Welcome Series

Original Post (2017)

Updated Post (2022)

What did we learn?

A lot of my original posts held up pretty well – that’s probably why they’re in the top ten, because ten years later, they’re still relevant – and, experience being a good guide, I was able to bring some additional nuance to some of them.

Thanks for coming along on this ride with me, both in the narrow sense, as I revisited these posts, and in the larger sense, as I’ve gone through the adventure that is running my own consulting business to the association industry these last ten years.

Photo by Charlie Wollborg on Unsplash

1: Membership 101: The Welcome Series

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on 1: Membership 101: The Welcome Series
Welcome in bright rainbow colors

And finally, coming in at #1 in the Spark All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts (and it wasn’t even close): Membership 101: The Welcome Series.

First written more than five years ago, this post remains the first or second most visited page on my entire website month after month (thanks, Google Analytics!).

Once again, I’m finding that the advice I provided, gleaned both from my own years as a membership director and my time working with clients, holds up: Create a drip campaign, mix your methods, keep it personal, focus on building a (hopefully long-term) relationship, and make sure you have calls to action to respond to and then pay attention to those responses.

In the interim, the lovely folks at Kaiser Insights and Dynamic Benchmarking have come out with two reports (one from 2018, and an update just released this fall) with data that backs up a lot of this advice, while also sharing some good practice metrics that my clients have found useful, such as:

  • 3-3-6 pacing: three communications in the first week, one a week for the remaining three weeks of the first month, then one a month for the next six months
  • 3-5 tactics: associations CAN use all kinds of tactics and platforms to communicate with (new and loyal) members, but you should probably stick with 3-5 so as not to spread your marcom team too thin, so you can develop expertise, and so your members know where to look for you

In fact, Amanda Kaiser just hosted a “launch party” for the updated study earlier this week, with Matchbox Virtual Media hosting many of the artifacts of that event.

As I’m thinking about how things have changed since the original post – and how they haven’t – I’m particularly intrigued by the responses to the “challenge questions” from the launch party (you’ll need to log into the Matchbox platform to get access to the Jamboards with the responses).

One of the biggest things that’s STILL holding associations back with regards to connecting with our newest members is: Most associations offer LOTS of benefits, but most members join for only a few of them.

The problem is, how do you learn which benefits any given member needs to help her solve her most important problems and achieve her biggest goals? 

Which gets back to my advice in the original post. You can do a great job creating a multi-channel drip campaign that shares your benefits (NOT features) one at a time and doesn’t ask your new member to spend more money too early, BUT if you aren’t paying attention to what happens next, you’ll never answer that important problems/biggest goals question, which means your new members will never get past that “awkward newbie” stage and connect both with the solutions your association provides and with the community of people you’ve gathered together (aka “the rest of your members”) that creates the magic that keeps them coming back year after year.

So yeah, you have to do the hard, unglamorous work of looking at your data periodically to see what messages on what platforms are resonating and with whom, and what actions are being taken and by whom, and then use that information to inform your next steps in relationship-building.

Or, as I closed out the original post:

[A]ctually develop an actual relationship as if you’re an actual person and so is she. Then, when that renewal invoice does arrive, her decision will be an easy one, and you’ll have a successful renewal.

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash