The Staff > CEO > Board Relationship: A Matter of Perspective

29 January 2026 Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about the association CEO’s unique position in governance, situated as it is between professional staff and voluntary directors/leaders. That focused on the CEO’s role in advancing a culture of stewardship at both the staff and voluntary levels. I received numerous comments from CEO colleagues who agreed with everything I said but raised a slightly different and potentially more problematic set of circumstances surrounding board/staff roles. (And I heard more than one horror story about where, in their experience, things went bad, in one case to the point of nearly costing the CEO their job.)

The basic principle is straightforward: the CEO is responsible to the board; all other staff are responsible to the CEO. Staff performance is itself a part of the accountability that the CEO has to the board. 

Most often, all staff hiring, firing, promotion, and compensation decisions are explicitly and specifically delegated exclusively to the CEO in his/her contract. And frankly, in my own experience, I have been pretty impressed by how seriously boards have shown respect for that separation of authority. They understand why it’s so important: the board can’t hold the CEO accountable for staff performance if the board is meddling in the CEO’s autonomy to exercise the authority necessary to building and maintaining a high-performing staff. 

Pretty straight forward in principle. But as my peers’ reactions to that column demonstrated, not always so clear in practice.

The Board’s Limited Perspective of Staff

Where the challenge can arise is a matter of the board’s limited perspective of staff.  Some staff positions are more member-facing than others. These are the staff members that voluntary leaders see and interact with directly. They have direct evidence of how well or how poorly such staff are performing those portions of their responsibilities that are visible to them. The problem is, they are forming a judgement based on only a limited perspective of that staff member. And they only see the pieces that touch them. 

Who Goes Unnoticed?

It’s why I always get so uncomfortable when the board wants to publicly recognize a member of staff for a job well done, even when such recognition is richly deserved. Now, I am all for recognizing and celebrating individual staff everywhere and in every way that it can be done. But when the board or a committee wants to single out the director of meetings for a successful conference, or the director of credentialling for the successful launch of a new certification, or the director of government relations for a legislative win, this can potentially set off negative ramifications elsewhere in staff. 

The board isn’t wrong in perceiving and wanting to acknowledge the performance of a staff member they work with directly. But they can only recognize the performance of the staff members they actually see. Who else goes unnoticed?  There are always others, in less directly member-facing roles who may have contributed as much or more to the accomplishment being recognized. 

There are also staff members whose roles are no less critical to the organization but are largely invisible to voluntary leaders. The only way they will ever come to the board’s attention is if something goes horribly wrong. 

When any staff member who had a material role in the success the board is celebrating are left out of recognition, and whenever a staff member or department feels unrecognized, they feel demotivated, unappreciated, and marginalized.

What Aspects of Even the Staff Members They See Are Hidden from Them?

And my colleagues pointed out an even worse case but not entirely uncommon scenario. There is a staff member the board or committee works with closely and continuously over a long period of time. That staff member is exceptional in the level and quality of support they provide the board or committee. Personal relationships are built. 

But they are seeing only the piece of an iceberg that is above the water. 

What if there are other, legitimate performance, skill, or behavioral issues going on underneath? 

Generally, these issues are minor and manageable. They might be uncomfortable and difficult for the CEO but buckle up. They can and need to be addressed. Most often, with a competent CEO, they are.

An Admittedly Extreme Example

But one particularly egregious case shared with me concerned a staff liaison who was truly extraordinary in meeting the member-facing aspects of his job. An absolute super star. But hidden from the voluntary component he supported were deeply problematic performance issues vis-à-vis this individual’s interactions with other staff. Persistent patterns of behavior that were contrary (and corrosive) to staff values and culture. And at so serious a level that other staff found ways to work around him rather than try to deal with him directly. He was that toxic an employee. 

As the CEO who shared this story put it to me, she had gone to great lengths to coach and develop the employee, providing training and support and encouragement that would allow him to correct his deficiencies and be truly successful at all levels of his job. She admitted that she went above and beyond the lengths she would have gone to with a staff member in a less member-facing role. Still, the employee’s behavior truly rose to a level where dismissal was warranted. But, my CEO colleague added, “how could I fire an employee so universally beloved by every member of leadership he ever supported?” 

Of course, one extreme case does not generalize to the commonplace. But it underlines the critical necessity for the CEO to cultivate a level of awareness, appreciation, and understanding by the board and other voluntary leadership that every staff member is an iceberg and they only see the piece above the water.

Building a Foundation of Trust

This is a matter of appreciating not just the principle at work but earning a solid relationship of trust by the board in the CEO’s judgement sufficient to weather the hopefully rare occasions when such a degree of trust is needed. Despite the cognitive dissonance between what the voluntary leader sees in the employee and the actions the CEO takes, do they have enough confidence in the CEO to accept on faith that he or she knows what they are doing, and that it is truly in the best interests of the organization?

As a CEO, by the time you are in the difficult situation, it is too late. Trust needs to be earned and banked before you need to rely upon it.

Disclaimer

The ideas contained here are my own. I do not speak for any organization or company.

AI was used to generate the image accompanying this post. I do NOT use AI to research, generate or edit drafts. 

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The Board-Staff Disconnect

21 January 2026 Leave a comment

I have always viewed governance as the most critical role for the association CEO, and by governance I specifically mean the CEO’s function as the point of engagement between the board and staff.

There is an element of hierarchy to this, but org charts don’t adequately capture it. It’s a function of communication, coordination, facilitation and empowerment, to be sure. But it goes so much deeper than that. It is all about maximizing the synergy between the professional competencies unique to each side of the board/staff divide. The voluntary board and the paid professional staff each brings skills, knowledge, and expertise that the other lacks and the organization needs. The CEO alone operates in the shared space between them. The success of the enterprise lies on his/her ability to effectively engage with the board within their paradigm and engage with the staff within theirs. 

Most boards recognize and respect the differences between board and staff roles. But the established way of expressing these differences, while all valid, are also insufficient. To wit: 

  • The board sets direction and the professional staff implements. (Sometimes the metaphor of a bicycle is used: the board is the front wheel that steers; the staff is the rear wheel that drives.)
  • The CEO works for the board; all other staff work for the CEO.
  • The CEO leads operations; the board provides oversight.

Like I said, none of these are actually wrong. They are all just incomplete.

And there is evidence that the gap in understanding between boards and CEOs over the effectiveness of these conceptual models is very real. Spencer Stuart released a study that asked “Do you feel the board gives the CEO effective support to address a rapidly evolving and complex business environment?” 43% of boards answered yes, but only 22% of the CEOs did. And in no universe would even the higher number be a passing grade.

So what is missing?

A recently concluded, 18-month community dialogue into the Future of Association Boards (FAB) offers some insight.

Stewardship

First and foremost: There is a missing element in most measures of performance and success. That element is an overarching and explicit commitment to stewardship. 

It’s not about focusing on progress toward established goals (too often captured in strategic plans that end up being fuzzy, aspirational statements burdened with tactical “solutions” that fail to actualize them in a rapidly changing world). It’s not about a glowing “year in review” summarizing accomplishments. Even less about a chief elected officer being able to talk about the accomplishments of “his or her year in the chair.” And of course, you want to be able to do all those things authentically. 

Stewardship is something more. It is about leaving the organization itself better than you found it, for the benefit of both current stakeholders and their successors in membership, on the board, and in the field.

It isn’t that a sense of stewardship has necessarily been absent. It is just that it has too often been one of those “understood” and unspoken obligations and too often taken for granted. It needs to be brought out of the shadows and made an explicit and driving force in every decision.

Foresight

The key to effective stewardship is exercising foresight: more time focusing on anticipating and understanding the next disruption that, if missed, could mean an opportunity squandered or a blow to be suffered. The American Society of Association Executive’s ForesightWorks is a rich source for understanding and framing the kinds of discussions associations should be having.

Foresight has implications for programs and initiatives, but also for the governance structures created to support them.

True Partnership

The key to making stewardship and foresight happen is a higher degree of partnership between boards and staff than exists today. And the key to making that happen starts with a clearly stated and shared commitment between the chief elected and the chief staff officer:

  • With the chief elected officer accepting primary responsibility for improving board competence and performance[1] and 
  • The chief staff officer (and their senior management team) accepting primary responsibility for doing more than advising boards on issues within their specific functional roles, but as meaningful collaborators in the board’s exercise of stewardship and foresight.

And let me be clear: while there are ways that boards need to change[2], the accountability lies squarely on the CEO to create the means and opportunity for this happen. 

Circle back to my opening thought of the CEO as the person with a foot in both the voluntary and professional staff worlds. That’s the tough assignment we all signed on for.

Disclaimer

The ideas contained here are my own. I do not speak for any organization or company.

AI was used to generate the image accompanying this post. I do NOT use AI to research, generate or edit drafts. 

[1] How often can board members end their term in office feeling like the next person in the seat is joining a board better equipped to be even more effective?

[2] While we typically talk about “volunteer boards,” the FAB dialogue brought focus to the fact that while accepting service on a board is voluntary, once you have accepted that role the legal, fiduciary and ethical obligations to the organization (including stewardship and foresight) are the same as those for paid directors of for-profit corporations. That’s why an awareness of voluntary leadership’s accountability for stewardship and foresight is so important.

Filed under The Nature of Associations, The Way We Are Tagged with , , , , ,

What does “going global” really mean?

7 January 2026 Leave a comment

It’s a question that frequently arises in conversations among my association peers. Every one of my associations has been U.S.-based but, to some degree, operated globally.[1]. And what I have learned is, like with so many questions of this kind, the answer always must start with “it depends …”

For a U.S. based association, aspiring to expand globally, I can identify at least four domains of possible activity:

Market and Revenue Enhancement

This is probably where most associations start when they are thinking about going global. What are the products or services (existing, repurposed, or new) that could be delivered outside the U.S. to generate revenue? Major caveat: there always needs to be mission consistency. Approaching international markets purely as potential ATMs for extracting revenue is not only naïve, but almost never successful. And, in my view, it is never legitimate. There needs to be a return on investment to the mission for every association offering. If it also happens to be financially lucrative, so much the better.

In some areas of the world, and depending on the scale of the program, this might require setting up overseas operations just to get in country. But not always.

Even if you are not setting up a satellite office, to be truly effective, operations in the U.S. for delivery overseas of even a single product offering requires more than just a cooperative local member in the target country. An individual member who can provide a facility to host your international event may not have the juice to attract local attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors, or the savvy to accommodate local regulatory requirements, or an understanding of what’s involved in a project of this sort. You need strong and accountable local partners, competent in the business and operational skills you aren’t present to provide directly. (And don’t get overconfident in your own ability to effectively provide marketing, sales and onsite management of operational support half way around the world.) It takes discipline to hold yourself to that requirement.

Diplomatic

Your association may be eligible for membership as the U.S. representative in an international federation. This one is tricky. In many cases the U.S. association is larger in terms of finances, scope of operations, content expertise, and staff than any other member of the federation, or even the combined resources of the federation as a whole. The federation (and its national or regional members) might value the relationship as an avenue of access to information and resources unavailable without you. But exercising your presence with too heavy a hand can cause more damage than good. (The global federation will always harbor the fear that you are after usurping their title as THE international representative of the field.)

On the other hand, if handled with diplomacy and tact, it is often very easy for your association to gain an impactful role within the federation in ways that advance your own parochial interests. Simply being more competent and experienced in association management can translate into appreciated and influential involvement.

Maintaining an actual presence and engagement in international federations is costly, both financially and in the time and attention managing the relationship consumes. Boards are often insensitive to just how much staff time and effort is consumed in ensuring that the President always gets invited to the international meeting and that we respond to every request for a “strategic alliance.” 

But when budgets are tight, the question of “what are we actually getting out of this?” comes up. And the answer is often soft (and suspect): showing leadership, adding prestige. It usually comes down to FOMO.

But sometimes this is something you still need to do; 

  • As a show of solidarity with the profession/industry, 
  • To stay in the loop on what’s going on beyond U.S. borders, and 
  • To enhance your brand. 

Being able to document specific accomplishments linked to participation is necessary.

Beyond any formal international federation, there may be opportunities for bilateral relationships with similar, usually national organizations outside the U.S. My one caveat here is: if you are going to do this, make the relationship specific, appropriately scaled, and one in which both parties get concrete value and are held accountable to each other. 

Don’t fall into the MoU trap, where just having as many resolutions to frame and hang on the board room wall is your metric of success. The management time and attention necessary to maintain even this Potemkin Village of international presence can be significant.

Developmental

This is the one that personally excites me most: delivery of your association’s knowledge and expertise, directly and in service to less developed countries. I am particularly proud of one of my association’s program sending teams of members to meet with their counterparts in countries in the developing world, providing practical support in areas of professional practice and impact. We sent such missions to more than 20 countries over the course of the past decade and provided post-mission (albeit, virtual) follow up and support. This is all cost, no financial return. It is huge for the local community but can’t, by itself, move the needle globally. Yet, to the extent you can provide it, it is the truest form of global mission impact for your U.S.-based association.

Collaboration/Engagement Opportunities for your own Members and Constituents.

This one gets overlooked but can be significant. As noted above, maintaining engagement in international federations is costly. But always remember to factor in the value of the opportunities it creates for individual members to participate in activities, such as research, publication credits, speaking opportunities, committee service, etc. It may be easier for a member to get a speaking role at the federation’s comparatively smaller meeting than national’s mega-conference. (This is particularly important in fields where “publish or perish” is a career imperative.)  This is also a way to identify and develop younger or early career members for future roles in the U.S. association. 

The management challenge here is maintaining meaningful contact and coordination with the individuals thus engaged. They may be your association’s appointed representative on the federation’s XYZ Council, but that does neither you nor them any good if neither is aware of what the other has going on.

In most cases, going global involves some combination of the above. And just to keep things even more interesting, the categories sometimes bleed into each other and can sometimes come into conflict (usually, in competition for resources).

I would be interested in hearing others’ thoughts on the inventory of elements that can go into going global.

Disclaimer

The ideas contained here are my own. I do not speak for any organization or company.

AI was used to generate the image accompanying this post. I do NOT use AI to generate or edit drafts. 

[1] Ironically, the presence or absence of “international” in an association’s name is not always a useful indicator of its degree of global-ness. My first association was the only one with “international” in its name, and it had the least to show for its global aspirations. My three most recent CEO gigs were with organizations that had either “national” or “American” in their names, and these had more substantive and meaningful international presence. (And in one case, this led to changing the association name to remove “American.”)

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Customer or Member?

24 December 2025 Leave a comment

My association faced a challenge common to many if not all membership organizations: the imperative to diversify revenue sources and monetize our content expertise. Attacking that problem led to a shift in our business mindset.

I know many associations are uncomfortable with the word customer. We are purpose driven organizations, not commercial, commodity retailers. True enough. And lose sight of that fact even for a moment at your extreme peril.

But our association had accumulated a vast and unparalleled inventory of assets (content, programs, activities), derived from our unique expertise and designed by and for our membership to advance our tax-exempt purpose. Yet the actual consumers of those products and services already included a huge number of non-members (sponsors, exhibitors, authors, non-member attendees, non-member content seekers, etc.) 

In a word, customers. 

These were people who saw value in something we were already doing. Through their purchasing behaviors, even though they weren’t members, they were advancing our ability to honor our mission by generating needed financial resources.

Breaking the Member/Non-Member Perspective

But describing them as “non-members” is a self-limiting paradigm. It suggests that the best avenue to expanding the market is a “conversion to membership” strategy. This typically defaults to a focus on expanding membership[1] by broadening definitions of eligibility or creating specialty membership categories as the only ways to increase the market for what the association has to offer. But it isn’t the only way. 

So instead of thinking of the world as divided between members and non-members, we simply started thinking of EVERYONE as customers. 

  • Some of those customers choose to buy membership.
  • Some of those customers choose to buy membership AND other products or services. 
  • Some of those customers choose to buy something (or many things) but NOT the membership product. 

Some of that last category of customers are perhaps (and probably appropriately) excluded from membership. But the important thing is to simply recognize that, even if eligible, some aren’t interested and probably never will be interested in purchasing the membership product. Those are the potential customers you are leaving behind if you are marketing exclusively within a membership context.

I am NOT suggesting abandoning membership building strategies. But this simple change in perspective, exposes new possibilities that can be pursued in addition to and in coordination with those efforts. 

Market and Membership are Not Synonyms

So we have customers. Some buy membership. Others do not. They are all part of our potential market if we just define the product offerings in a way that appeals to their needs and is not limited to those intended to establish a membership connection[2].

This line of thinking was heavily influenced by Amith Nagarajan’s The Open Garden Organization (2018), but the idea that everyone is a customer, some of whom might buy membership and others who never would, had already been planted (pun intended) in my mind before I read it. It’s a book worth looking into if it is not familiar to you and I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Amith for helping me crystalize and articulate the strategy within my association.

This customer paradigm led to:

  • A comprehensive, disciplined, and hard data-driven assessment of the market for every product (including but not limited to membership) in our existing portfolio[3];
  • Enabling us to start separately defining who were potential customers for each marketable offering (including but not limited to membership); in order to 
  • Define marketing strategies customized for each.

This analysis, in turn, led to an association rebranding, market repositioning and name change.

Changing How, Not What

Adapting a customer mindset didn’t require changing WHAT the association was offering (although ideas for new products and strategic unbundling of existing offerings will certainly emerge). Rather, it brought precision to HOW we packaged, priced, and marketed each existing offering. It wasn’t about finding something new that needed to be created[4]. But it vastly increased the horizon for how and where we might access new customers for our existing inventory of offerings (including but not limited to membership[5]).

Not just: what do we need to do to attract more customers as members? (Though we still need to do that.) Instead: what are we already doing that might resonate with those for whom membership is not desired?

Strengthening the Membership Value Proposition

Perhaps paradoxically, thinking of membership as just one of many products available to customers, does not devalue membership. It in fact preserves and protects the membership product itself. Membership remains the organization’s core purpose, its reason for being, and its engine for new value creation. It is what empowers us to achieve, collectively, what members of the profession cannot achieve on their own. 

But rather than diluting the value of membership by trying to make it more attractive to more people with a looser connection to our mission (a questionable marketing strategy at best), our crown jewel (membership) can be stewarded and thrive, immune from mission distractions into new features of membership that often lead to mission creep. 

And viewing membership as a unique product (or bundling of products) made the need to adapt unique marketing and pricing of even the membership product clear. Effective membership marketing requires something different than effective marketing of more transactional and consumable offerings. Membership appeals for different reasons. Adopting marketing approaches specific to this product offers the promise of increasing our effectiveness in how we actually go about increasing membership.

A Blue Ocean Strategy

This customer paradigm also (at least in theory) reduces the threat to adjacent (and usually much larger) membership organizations. We weren’t coming after “their” members to make “us” their membership home. It was just looking at some small segment of their membership that marginally overlapped with ours for customers who might be interested in buying something other than membership that we had available. Offerings that were well within our scope and capacity, but in most cases, were too marginal to the larger, homebase organization’s mission for them to effectively satisfy themselves without losing focus[6].

Ergo, minimized potential for counterproductive membership competition and redundancy of products in the market. It’s a blue ocean rather than a red ocean strategy. 

It is still early days, but the potential exists, if trust can be built, for future, multi-association collaborations to cooperatively and better meet the needs of that small sliver of customers where overlap exists. But first things first. We needed to get started.

Disclaimer

The ideas contained here are my own. I do not speak for any organization or company.

This case study describes something that was still in its earliest stages when I left the organization. There was still a huge amount of work to do to execute the strategy described. Time will tell if it is sustained or successfully realized.

The opinions expressed (and any errors) are entirely my own.

AI was used to generate the image accompanying this post. I do NOT use AI to generate or edit drafts. 

[1] Too often, expanding membership really ends up reducing the close connection to our core and causing mission creep, which ends up undermining the unique membership value proposition you started with. 

[2] Non-member pricing of a la carte membership offerings is a baby step in this direction but is still locked in a market=membership paradigm. Increasing membership remains a valid, even critical function. It is just a separate and different strategy than the one I am focusing on here.

[3] We didn’t just ask our board who they thought “ought” to value what. They were one, but only one of the segments focus grouped or surveyed. Then we tested their assumptions with wider surveys and focus groups.

[4] That is a separate and equally critical imperative for every association.

[5] I know that is the third time in two paragraphs I’ve used that phrase. But thinking of your portfolio as “including but not limited to membership” is critical to the customer mindset. It’s how you condition yourself to view every offering with your membership as but one of the potential markets for it.

[6] In the interest of full disclosure: many of those adjacent organizations were understandably skeptical that our strategy wasn’t a threat to them. Seeing how it leaves them a clearer field to focus on their own core competencies and membership value proposition will only occur if our actual actions match our intentions. 

Filed under The Nature of Associations, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

Ratiocination versus The Age of Reason

14 December 2025 Leave a comment

Although Edgar Allan Poe is most famous for his poetry and tales of the macabre, as an author he was so much more than that. The horror tales and poetry are but a tiny portion of a body of work extending to criticism of current events, literature, art, architecture and design; satire; historical fiction; proto-science fiction; travel narratives; and even serious mathematical[1] and scientific investigation[2].

He is, with justification, often cited as the creator of the modern detective story. His three tales featuring Auguste Dupin introduced the concept of the amateur investigator and an approach to solving mysteries (he called it “ratiocination”) that influenced nearly every writer of detective fiction since. But is there more going on here? His mysteries, and not just the Dupin stories, can also be viewed as explorations of the limits of the intellectual and scientific ideals of the Age of Reason and its dogma that reality can be fully explained purely through scientific observation and the application of human reason.

From a blog post on the Dupin stories, I found some interesting analysis, quoted from Murray Ellison’s Masters Thesis on “Poe and 19th-Century Science” (Virginia Commonwealth University, 2015). I would love to find that document to read it in its entirety, but the blog quotes it extensively, as I will also do here.

“A ratio compares the relationships between two quantities. Poe develops a new system for establishing relationships between unknown events and the motives or solutions to complex problems. Dupin expands the use of accepted nineteenth-century classical investigation techniques and adds hyper-observation and intuitive leaps of imagination to arrive at new solutions. He understands that clues and events are not always understood simply by the way that they appear.”

In his Dupin stories the formal investigative authorities represent the Enlightenment voice. Their failure to solve the crimes (which Dupin does, often from his armchair) demonstrates the limitations of their approach.

“With the same understanding of the evidence that the police hold, he provides new metaphoric solutions. His methods of unraveling crimes are unorthodox and appear to the police as irrational. Dupin presents the details of these cases directly or through an unnamed narrator to give readers a glimpse into his ratiocinative thinking … Dupin separates the relevant from the irrelevant. He focuses on unexplained deviations from the normal, anticipates the actions and thoughts of his associates and opponents, and embraces information that, at first, appears to be external to the case.” 

“As a non-professional detective, Dupin mocks the inferior crime-solving techniques of the paid Parisian police officials. The prefect appears in each of the Dupin stories and … thinks he has the perfect solution to the crime. However, Dupin is always skeptical of his approach and solutions.”

“The police are symbols for his criticisms of the professional scientists of the nineteenth century.”

Poe set the Dupin stories in Paris.

“Perhaps, he … made this choice because many French scientists and philosophers [of Poe’s time] epitomized Poe’s criticisms of these intellectual ideas of the nineteenth-century Age of Reason[3]. They rejected dogma and sought ways to find objective knowledge. They believed that truth could be best be verified by observation and scientific investigation. Among the ideas that Poe attacked in his detective stories was the irrational belief that man could ultimately attain near stages of perfection, and that he could control his environment [entirely] by scientific methods. Because of these contradictory views, it is hard to determine if Poe proposed ratiocination to address crime, or if he was mocking the irrational faith that the Age of Reason thinkers had in science.”

No one familiar with the vast range of Poe’s corpus of work would make the mistake of concluding that he was opposed to science and reason. His scientific writing is notably rational and often prescient. He even often used fiction to expose scientific hoaxes of his day and to provide well-reasoned explanations of the actual, scientific truth. 

“In his three tales of ratiocination, Poe demonstrates that Dupin’s methods of scientific reasoning are superior to those of the police. He is critical of the established authorities and power structures.  … He believes that scientists [of his time] are limited in arriving at new solutions in the same ways that the police are limited in solving crimes.” 

So, his view seems to be that while science and reason are critical, science and reason alone are insufficient. It takes a spark of genius that goes beyond mere observation and reason. Poe isn’t anti-science or anti-reason. He merely seems to have viewed that too absolute a reliance on the science of his day leaves important variables out of the equation.

Science has advanced mightily since the mid-19th century. The fruits of scientific observation and reasoning are accumulative and provide a far sturdier foundation for what is demonstrably knowable to work from, making it easier to avoid any shortcomings of the past. Perhaps his views are relevant only to a critique of the limited state that science had reached in his own day.

But one wonders what Poe would make of the state (and limits) of scientific advancement achieved today. And what hobby horses of hubris and limited thought would be the target of his critical skewers?

While generative AI has been used to create the accompanying graphic, I do not use AI tools in composing the content.

[1] Among his earliest paid journalism was a cryptography challenge, boasting that he could break any coded message submitted by the paper’s readers. “He received nearly a hundred secret messages from all over the country. Poe solved them all, except for one. And that coded message he proved to be ‘an imposition,’ a jumble of ‘random characters having no meaning whatever.’” (A Love of Mystery Is Woven into our Biology, and Edgar Allan Poe was the First to Find the Formula for a Very Specific Dopamine Hit.)

[2] Poe’s “Eureka” (1848) posits that the universe began from a singular, unified state and expanded over time, long before the formal development of the Big Bang model. Later scientific discoveries moot nearly all the details. He got “what happened” wrong, but some of Poe’s concepts align surprisingly well with modern cosmology.

[3] There is an alternative possibility. The source article also observes that Matthew Pearl, in his “Introduction” to the Dupin Mysteries, notes that “Poe introduced Detective C. Auguste Dupin, of Paris, France to literature more than five years before Boston had established the [United States’]  first professional police department.” 

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Adaptive Leadership: It Will Never Be One-and-Done

10 December 2025 Leave a comment

I had the opportunity today to participate in a very stimulating ASAE Academy session on “The Adaptive Leader.” Some thoughts emerged …

To start with a statement of the obvious: organizations are more than their structured resources. They’re made up of people. And no matter how clear the mission and how abundant or well managed the systems and resources (financial, human, intellectual property, technology), it all is for naught if the people aren’t effectively supported, empowered, and engaged within the workplace.  

But people are complicated. They can’t be systematized. 

That challenge is not new, it’s just most severe today.

The session pointed out that, currently, there are five generational cohorts in the workforce. Now I am personally skeptical about generational categorization. I think length of experience in the workforce is a more determinative factor than year of birth. But the two things do largely correlate, so maybe that’s just semantics. My only caveat is that while any system of categorization can provide context, all are prone to over generalization. None provide an adequate and reliable solution that can be rigidly and uniformly applied to the leadership dilemma. 

So, regardless of how you categorize in order to try and understand them, there are many varieties of life experience in your workforce today. Each brings different needs, expectations and preferences to their role.

One thing is common to ALL of them: they are all coexisting in a workforce struggling to adapt to massive, recent disruptions that haven’t been fully resolved in an environment that continues to face new disruptions at a rapid and unrelenting pace. Things aren’t going to settle down and provide us more certainty any time soon.

There are the obvious external disruptions, from technology (including but not limited to AI), to changing market conditions and business imperatives, and combustible societal and political factors.

But many associations are all still coping with even the basics: an incomplete adaption to a post-COVID workplace and lack of comprehensive agreement on how we are meant to work today. And just as with generational categorization, here we are equally prone to oversimplify: is the “right” approach work from home, return to the office, or hybrid? And while hybrid seems to be the golden mean, exactly what hybrid form, structure, and processes are meant to apply eludes any clear and universally applicable judgment. Flexibility is desirable, but how flexible can we be, and meet both individual and organizational needs? There is no one right way, and many associations are still struggling to find theirs.

So we’re trying to get things right in unsettling and uncertain times. That is not a condition that is conducive to getting the best from people. 

To be sure, what we see in the workplace today is just the latest phase in a decades-long evolution from hierarchical, rigid structures of direct authority to more flat, collaborative hierarchies. In that sense, none of this is new.

But we are experiencing it in a particularly acute moment of disruption and uncertainty.

It is all happening so fast and on a massive scale.

The seminar left me with two, overarching take-aways;

  1. This isn’t going to be solved in a one-and-done manner. We all hunger for a fix that will last at least as long as the models they replace. But it won’t be that simple. It is a truism only because it is true: our only constant is change. We need to be adaptive today, tomorrow and consistently into the future. And the future is coming at us faster than ever.
  2. Senior management needs to be humble and self-aware. Staff is looking to us for a degree of clarity and certainty that, frankly, we cannot provide for them. While, with maturity, we may have a higher tolerance for ambiguity, senior management is also struggling to find the right norms of operation as a team themselves. And we are people too, just as vulnerable to doubts and uncertainty as people are in the structures lower down in the overly simplified concreteness intended to be conveyed in an organizational chart. 

But as leaders something more is called for from us. What we are called to do is approach these conditions with a reality-based, but constructive and positive attitude. Not naïve sophistry, but not defeatism either. Acknowledge rather than downplay or dismiss the validity of what people are feeling. But also act in firm assurance that, while we don’t have absolute answers to all their concerns now, this is solvable. 

That solution won’t come as edicts from on high; they will have to be crafted collectively. Something is called for from every member of staff, not just the c-suite. But the promise of reward is there.

Oh, and then there is the dynamic of effective leadership as a staff and the contiguous dynamic of effective leadership from voluntary governance.

It should be fun. It is certainly a challenge. 

While generative AI has been used to create the accompanying graphic, I do not use AI tools in composing the content.

Filed under The Nature of Associations, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , ,

Truth Under Fire

3 December 2025 Leave a comment

Associations (the good ones, at least) have always served society by providing a trusted and reliable source of information. That would seem to be the key role we have to play in our current environment of decentralized information, public distrust, and AI/social media-driven echo chambers that value divisiveness and conflict over reasoned dialogue. 

We (often rightfully) believe we have the hard, objective truth that the public and society so desperately needs. Why aren’t they listening? 

ASAE foresightworks, backed by rigorous methodology under the auspices of the ASAE Research Foundation, offers continuous strategic intelligence on drivers of change. Its latest release, “Truth Under Pressure,” offers useful clarity and actionable suggestions on this matter. To cite just one of its many insights: “As you convene members and constituents, you have an opportunity to advance open dialogue in pursuit of a common truth … Your [association’s] position as a credible convener could be compromised, however, when your events appear to be self-serving or pursue limited ideological agendas.” 

The same could be said about how associations collect, analyze, and communicate its truths, and, in particular, how we respond to misinformation when we see it. 

We are long past an environment where we can simply put out the data and trust the facts to speak for themselves. The truth demands effective advocacy.

Too often, however, no matter how pure our intentions and our intended tone, our advocacy is received as “You are wrong. Trust us. We know better than you do.” Even worse, too often, the message is communicated in overly aggressive language that communicates: “That’s misinformation and you’re an idiot for listening to it.”

That isn’t going to get us where we are trying to go.

I have recently been listening to a really impressive podcast, “Why Should I Trust You?” It regularly convenes prominent spokespeople for those promoting a “counter truth” around public health issues. It treats its guests and their points of view with respect. It doesn’t debate or attack their beliefs.  Instead, to quote the podcast’s website, “We hear from people who are wary about public statements, recommendations and studies coming from what they view as an elitist and conflict-riddled scientific establishment. And we hear from those in this establishment who fear the consequences of what they see as a dangerous trend towards anti-expertise.”

The podcast’s approach is subtle but strategic: they are not debates, fact-checking every point; rather, they move the group to a discussion of the outcome/concern we share in common: a public health system that better serves those who feel excluded or that they have been harmed by the current system. That allows a discussion that shifts from conspiracy theories that feed off justifiable fear and distrust due to their (negative) lived experience, to applying objective and sober statements of what is knowable that might actually address the source of their pain.

[My only caveat about the podcast. It rightfully refuses to reduce the dialogue to soundbites.  Just what is needed to get past trading slogans and memes. But, while thoroughly engaging, they are long. I fear there are people who are reachable but might not have the patience to listen.]

On a recent episode on autism, Holden Thorp, editor in chief of Science, observed: 

I think there’s another important issue here, which is that scientists prioritize scientific information. To us, that’s the most important information. But it’s not the only information and knowledge in the world.

There’s people’s experiences, there’s sociology, there’s politics, there’s religion. So we’re always making what to us seems a perfectly logical — but some people see as arbitrary — decision that we’re prioritizing scientific knowledge over everything else. But the experiences that April and Jennifer [two other panelists, described as “MAHA moms”] have h/ad are just as valid.

And when we treat scientific information as always prioritized over somebody’s experience, then that just makes people trust us less.

[Holden’s blog post on his participation in the podcast offers thoroughly reasoned arguments for the exact same point I am trying to make here.]

Let me clear, I am not advocating compromising our rigorous adherence to scientific truth but rather deploying it in a way that acknowledges the validity of the other side’s concerns. Not “me right; you wrong.” But “here’s something we know, specific and tailored to your specific concern, that might lead to the solution you are hoping for.” It isn’t about winning the war between my facts and your misinformation. It’s about applying what can be known, reliably, to fixing the thing that made you a no doubt well-intentioned but possibly counterproductive advocate in the first place.

The tweet-wars will no doubt continue. But if associations are to truly serve society, something more and something different is required.

Returning to ASAE foresightworks: 

The bottom line is that pressure on the truth is not a passing data or communications problem. It is a core leadership challenge that will shape your association’s credibility, influence, and member value. Taking proactive steps now will position your organization as a trusted source in an environment of contested facts.

“It isn’t about winning the war between my facts and your misinformation. It’s about applying what can be known, reliably, to fixing the thing that made you a no doubt well-intentioned but possibly counterproductive advocate in the first place.”

While generative AI has been used to create the accompanying graphic, I do not use AI tools in composing the content.

Filed under Association Advocacy, The Way We Are Tagged with , , , , ,

Dark Days Shine New Light on Profession and Community

7 April 2020 Leave a comment

The National Society of Professional Engineers vision is “a world where the public can be confident that the engineering decisions affecting their lives are made by qualified and ethically accountable professionals. Professional Engineers (PEs) are involved in everything. They may not be the people the public sees on the front line, but they are always there, supporting and contributing to the quality of life of every person, every day, in important ways. Often, however, these contributions can only be fully appreciated after the fact.

At the time this is being written, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. By the time you read this, things will hopefully look much brighter and more hopeful.

Nonetheless, right now is a true test of the professional engineer’s commitment to health, safety, and welfare. PEs are uniquely qualified to address many of the problems faced by society in the wake of the coronavirus breakout. This is especially true as we move forward to a time of rebuilding to recover from the crisis. (And we will recover.) More importantly, it is true as professional engineers work to prevent something like this from ever happening again. It is important, now more than ever before, that we band together and use all the resources provided to us through our community.

This crisis has forced PEs to learn to carry on in new ways, when the traditional work environment has been taken away. And the professional engineering community has responded heroically. Every day they are continuing to do what they can, overcoming challenges and disruptions—and what they can do is proving to be a lot.

On the most basic, operational level, the staff and volunteers of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) are now routinely using technology and communications tools that have probably been on our devices for years, but we never used before. We’re learning how to use them effectively.

What we have learned about being more effective and productive under duress are skills we need to preserve and carry forward once life returns to normal, even as we reintroduce the vital element of direct human interaction.

NSPE itself is not immune from the impacts that have rocked the general economy and commerce in our country. Virtually overnight, streams of revenue have slowed or been cut off entirely; invested financial reserves have dropped precipitately in value; and there is no way to predict how long these conditions will prevail, or whether the worst might be yet to come. This event is bigger than NSPE: Each and every one of you is facing equally existential challenges to your families, your employers, your homes, your neighborhoods, your livelihoods.

But the organization has responded quickly, made difficult and often painful decisions, and implemented aggressive cost-saving measures across the board to ensure sustainability of operations in the face of these challenges. Those necessary steps are usually measured in dollars, but there is a human cost as well. We have made reductions in staff both in areas where the volume of activity is down and in areas where some level of value creation and delivery can be sustained, but at a reduced level. Remaining staff has made sacrifices, too, accepting reductions in salary, even as they are called upon to do more to make up for their colleagues who are no longer here.

But we remain focused on what this is all for: The mission of NSPE is too important to put on hold for a virus. Even as we all deal with difficult and disruptive times, NSPE leadership, volunteers, and staff are resolute and firmly committed to doing the very best we can to be there for our members and customers, delivering relevant and important benefits in this time of need.

All of it—the painful cuts as well as the adaptation to keep vital services flowing and to create new ways to support our members—are aimed at sustaining operations in the short-term, continuing to deliver maximum value wherever we can, and staying strong in order to seize the opportunities for rapid and vigorous recovery when this crisis is passed.

But at times like this, we are reminded that the national society alone isn’t enough; a state society alone isn’t enough. You need that entire network that includes all these elements. I have come to understand with new immediacy how right the NSPE strategic plan was to ground itself upon the concept of a single, integrated membership, supported by seamless services provided through state and national societies and local chapters in concert and collaboration—even when external circumstances make that unbelievably difficult.

But “network” is really just another word for community. Community is just an abstract word for a group of individuals. Interdependent and interconnected. Where benefit created anywhere benefits everyone, and harm suffered by anyone, anywhere, diminishes each of us.

Or, as John Donne put it nearly four centuries ago: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, [the whole] is the less.”

Filed under The Nature of Associations, The Way We Are Tagged with

A plug for Beethoven and company in times of stress …

5 April 2020 Leave a comment

I was always someone who recognized the critical value of diligently providing for personal solitude as an element of leadership effectiveness. (There is a pretty good book on this subject if you are unconvinced: Lead Yourself First, by Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin).

The coronavirus pandemic would seem to have made solitude the new norm. But this enforced solitude is no guarantee of productive solitude.

Yes, we find ourselves in isolation, but the very technology that is the basis for sustaining some semblance of business continuity during this period of social distancing and stay-at-home orders (in my experience, at least) is actually increasing the noise and distraction. (How many hours did you spend on Zoom today?)

This 24/7 connectivity coupled with the natural yearning for human engagement is making it harder to do precisely what is demanded of us now as leaders in the face of such massive external disruption and existential personal and professional jeopardy. In crisis, our responsibility as leaders demands that we make space and step back to ensure that we are not merely reacting in the moment. Reflection is necessary to making difficult decisions wisely, with analytical clarity, creativity, emotional balance and moral courage.  

Exercise, meditation, prayer, and music are the frequent escape routes to such deep reflection.  

Many people who don’t normally listen to “classical” music may already be listening to it more in these stressful times. Its meditative qualities are obvious even if you know nothing about its nature, historical context, style or structure (as endlessly fascinating and absorbing as those things are to some people, myself included). 

If this is unfamiliar territory for you, a few words of advice to help you find your way.

First and most important: don’t buy into the big lie: that you need to study, learn and become an expert before you can enjoy or benefit from this music.  That is a fallacy promoted by cultural elitists to feed their need to feel superior. Music (all music) speaks directly to the soul and speaks in something other than words. Its power and content are accessible to anyone who is open to it.

True, the words used to describe the different forms and elements of classical music can be a little intimidating, like the unfamiliar language used to describe the offerings on a menu when you try a new style of restaurant for the first time.  But it need not frighten you. 

A symphony is just a single work for orchestra. It is made up of separate movements (often, but not always, four in number). Movements are just like chapters in a book.  

A concerto is really just a symphony with a featured solo instrument. Again, it is generally made up of multiple movements (often, but not always three in number), organized like chapters in a book.

A sonata is a single work for a specific instrument (without orchestral accompaniment) consisting of multiple movements. (The same term is also used to describe the internal structure of some musical forms, but you need not bother yourself with that.)

Nothing to be afraid of there. And nothing you really needed to know before tapping into the restorative potential of the music.

But I point it out only to make you aware that there is a reason the composer combined those separate “tracks” into a multi-part work. You can choose to read a single chapter in a book and find it edifying. Same with a single movement from a symphony, concerto or sonata. But realize that you are sampling just an excerpt of something larger.  The composer didn’t just throw random pieces of music together in random order and call it a symphony, any more than an author threw together random chapters in random order and called it a book. I’ll come back to this, but sometimes just an excerpt is like small plates in a restaurant – tasty, but you are missing the satisfaction of a planned, full menu, where carefully chosen appetizer is paired with salad, followed by a main course, and topped with dessert.  

Next, you are faced with the (very often Italian) words used as titles for individual movements within a larger work.  These are merely descriptions of the musical content of that “chapter.” Words like adagio, allegro, scherzo, etc. do have specific meanings related to the technical nature of the music. (Grossly oversimplifying: adagio means played slowly, allegro means played fast, scherzo means light and playful, and so on.) But again, you don’t need to know why its tagged that way to respond to the music itself. I only point it out because, it might be helpful in identifying more music from the vast classical catalog that you would like. (To use yet another food analogy, you don’t need to know that a specific seasoning or ingredient is what makes you like a particular dish so much. But knowing you like that ingredient could help you find new dishes you will probably also like.)

So here are my suggestion:

  • Look at the late 18th through the 19th century (generally labelled the classical and romantic periods). There are exceptions, of course, but the music of these periods is characterized by its accessibility. It has heavily influenced the music written for many movie soundtracks and if you loved Game of Thrones or Star Wars or Schindler’s List or The Godfather much of it will have a familiar feel.
  • Some people find earlier music of the 17th and early 18th centuries (the baroque period) more abstract, and some of it can be austere. But don’t hesitate to sample it. There is music of deep profundity to be found here too, as well as music of exquisite exuberance, if you need a pick me up.  (Again, the determining factor is what you respond to, not what some “expert” suggests you “need” to appreciate.) 
  • Go ahead and start with the big names (Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc.) and the popular hits so often packaged in those “100 Masterpiece” collections that used to be advertised on late night TV. There are reasons people who may have heard nothing else by Beethoven immediately recognize the opening of the fifth symphony. This is not a time for cultural snobbery – just because its popular doesn’t mean you lack musical refinement. It’s still great music.
  • Look for the adagios.  These aren’t the big, dramatic, heroic movements from longer works that you are most likely to have heard before. They are generally the gentlest, calmest and most soothing movement within multi-movement compositions.  Try, for example, the third movement of Beethoven’s ninth symphony (the “Choral” symphony) or the second movement of Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto (the “Emperor” concerto). Both are adagios.
  • If you find something that speaks to you, look for more by the same composer, or movements that are similarly labeled, or works in the same musical format. For example, if you find solo piano speaks to you more than orchestral works, stick with piano in your search. If vocal music sends you shrieking for the door, skip opera and stick with the orchestral stuff. If the adagio from one Mozart piano concerto appealed to you, most of his other 22 concertos also have an adagio movement you could check out.

These are useful signposts, not absolutes. Just because Mahler (who falls outside any of the historical periods of music cited above) wrote incredibly moving adagios doesn’t mean you’ll respond equally to anything else he wrote. Maybe Bach leaves you cold. That’s OK, too. Personally, I would feel impoverished without either of them. But that’s just me. You’re exploring what works for you, not seeking a degree in musical appreciation.

  • Finally, if you want to engage in the music as something more than a pleasant background soundtrack, once you have found your way into a larger, multi-movement work that speaks to you, continue on into the next chapter. That is, keep listening to the next track – the movement or section that follows your excerpt.  In the case of both the Beethoven adagios cited above, these serene movements lead naturally, organically and convincingly into the next movements, which are of considerable vigor and dramatic effect.  

That is instructive too, because we can’t just retreat and remain in solitude: having regained our equilibrium, these spiritual sabbaticals need to feed energy, focus and clarity into action, just as, in Beethoven, the dreamy adagio sets up the stormy and triumphant finale. 

[And a note begging forbearance from any reader knowledgeable about music. Every categorical statement above can be picked apart. Music is immensely vaster and more complex than these generalizations suggest. There are 20th century compositions as accessible as anything from the classical or romantic periods. There are obscure composers whose music is as accessible as anything Beethoven or Mozart ever wrote. There are scherzos that are anything but light and playful and adagios that are positively nightmarish. These are matters for connoisseurs to delight in; they need not create a barrier to those new to this music.]

Filed under The Way We Are Tagged with , ,

Ending Missed Opportunites

6 January 2020 1 Comment

A future-focused profession needs full participation from all people to reach its potential.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a major theme interwoven throughout the National Society of Professional Engineer’s strategic plan. It was also recently enrolled into the NSPE Code of Ethics1. It is increasingly a strategic imperative for any future-focused, proactive profession or professional society. But it can also be a lightning rod for polarizing mischaracterization. So, what exactly is it that we are actually talking about?

Diversity simply means recognizing all the ways in which people differ. It must also recognize that individuals identify with and share multiple characteristics.

Equity is fair treatment and access to the opportunity for advancement for all people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups in the past.

Inclusion is the act of creating environments in which any individual or group feels welcomed, respected, and supported enough to fully participate.

Or, as the University of Michigan’s Robert Sellers more pithily put it: “Diversity is where everyone is invited to the party. Equity means that everyone has the opportunity to dance. Inclusion means everyone gets to contribute to the playlist.”

And these things matter. A 2015 study by McKinsey and Company documented that companies in the top quartile for racial/ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above industry norms. Top quartile companies in gender diversity are 15% more likely to outpace financial returns of less diverse players in the industry. Other studies have only reinforced these findings.

But understanding these matters requires a degree of self-awareness.

So, for the record, I am a white, male, over the age of 55, heterosexual, Christian, with no physical or mental disabilities; a natural-born American, college-educated, professional, who was raised in and continues to enjoy a comfortable economic life situation.

All of these attributes, and numerous others I could mention, contribute to who I am; none of them, taken individually, adequately capture my identity, that elusive but real thing that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently characterized as “the content of…character.”

Many of you may share one or more of the personal characteristics I opened with, but no two of us possess the exact same combination. An analogy to DNA comes to mind. The salient point is that each of us, whether or not we are aware or recognize it, are affected by our own, entirely unique combinations of them in how we think, act, behave, and form judgments.

Some of those characteristics are apparent or can be inferred by observation; many of those characteristics are hidden, and you wouldn’t know that about me unless I explicitly shared the information. Most important to this discussion, however, is that we all make assumptions based on the limited information that is available to us, and those inferences can be entirely wrong. How many of you, perhaps subconsciously, assumed that “Golden” meant Jewish, when in fact my family line back to at least the fifth century is Irish Catholic? It would be possible, if not particularly useful, to wear ribbons to declare what is hidden, but that’s not the point. We are all, each of us, a product of the sum of all of our individual characteristics, whether apparent through observation or hidden.

Let me further offer two concepts prone to being too simplistically understood. Both of these concepts are fraught. They can be and too often are weaponized for political purposes with destructive consequences. But they are nonetheless not only valid, but critical to these discussions.

First, unconscious bias.

Each of us, in any given situation, is driven by biases that are generally hidden and foreign to the other and even to ourselves. (Hence, the use of that modifier, “unconscious.”) And since, in any given situation, each of us is a unique combination of experience and natures, no two of us are influenced by the same set of biases. That is neither good nor bad, it merely is.

The second term is privilege.

Each of the characteristics that make up who I am and that covertly influence my behavior carries with it an accumulation over time of powerful societal and social consequences. These, again, will manifest differently for each of us.

And it would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge that my particular catalog of identities is disproportionately rich in such privileges. That doesn’t take anything away from my personal accomplishments. Again, it merely is.

So, those are conditions on the ground: influences and consequences present in all our interactions and behavior, whether we wish to acknowledge them or not. It would be intellectually dishonest to deny it.

Barriers to women’s participation in the engineering profession are not new. Women now make up over half of the US population but constitute less than 20% of the bachelor’s degrees in engineering awarded in 2017. The number of women who enter the engineering education pipeline but never advance and enter the profession has remained stubbornly high, and the needle hasn’t moved much in decades. In NSPE’s membership, only approximately 10% are women.

The same can be said of underrepresented minorities. African Americans and Latinos constitute barely 12% of the engineering workforce (both licensed and unlicensed), compared to 35% of the total US population. In NSPE’s membership, approximately 17% fall in this category.

And from a membership perspective, attracting and engaging the next generation of engineers is a persistent problem. Approximately 60% of our membership is 50 years or older. What ominous signals does that send for our future?

But numbers and labels are merely the measurable attributes. Much as those of us in the engineering and scientific community love to reduce things to neat and formal systems that can be rationally manipulated and solved, diversity, equity, and inclusion must not be approached reductively. Therein lies the moral jeopardy at the root of some of the most horrific episodes in human history, when people—who, deep down, I truly believe are basically and fundamentally good—collectively made real evil a part of human society. It happened by reducing characteristics to equations that were coercively applied.

We are a product of history. None of the inequities, whether trivial or profound, at work in our lives came about overnight. Small injustices compounded over time and became institutionalized and even sublimated into our unconscious collective and individual biases.

It is important to recognize that, as a society (and for the most part, as individuals), we have made real progress, rising to the challenge and attacking the most pernicious effects of bias head on once we became aware of them at work around us. We have reduced but, alas, not eradicated them completely from their place in our unique personal and shared collective experiences. All of them continue to have some potential or actual continued influence and effect, even if their most ugly manifestations and oppressive elements have been eliminated. Anti-Semitism did not begin with the Nazis, nor did it vanish from us when that regime was crushed. Racial prejudice did not begin in the Jim Crow era in the second half of the last century, nor, alas, did it end with civil rights legislation.

But progress is possible and has been made; this too we must acknowledge.

And the trigger to positive further progress is awareness. We need to see and acknowledge the costs and missed opportunities that the biases at work in our personal, professional, and societal lives impose before we can address them.

Which brings me at long last to the National Society of Professional Engineers strategic plan’s inclusion of diversity, equity, and inclusion. What are the factors that needlessly inhibit or prevent some of the individuals who are vital to the future of the profession and our professional society from achieving full participation in that future? This is a question of both justice and self-interest. Where are the social and professional assets that are being left behind, assets that could be productively invested in our shared mission? And what can we do to unlock that potential?

We have progressed at least so far as to identify the challenge as it persists today and will manifest in our future. The positive reception that NSPE’s strategic plan has received demonstrates that our commitment to the ideal is real. We not only believe in it; we want it to be more than just a slogan on a bumper sticker.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion within NSPE and the engineering profession can be achieved without descending into blame and recrimination when we are aware of our roots but not trapped by them. Focused on the future. That is the task we have set for ourselves.

1 NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers, Section III, Paragraph 1(f): “Engineers shall treat all persons with dignity, respect, fairness and without discrimination.”

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