Build, Partner or Buy?

19 March 2026 Leave a comment

It’s a classic strategic decision faced whenever an enterprise sees an opportunity to expand its product and service offerings. This is true of for-profit entities as much as it is for associations.

You identify an unmet (or under-met) need within your core membership or target audience and feel it is an opportunity to increase the value proposition of your association. It aligns with your mission and values. It could increase the revenues available to invest in mission-driven functions that are not themselves financially self-sustaining (such as advocacy and public awareness). It could achieve some other non-financial, mission-based return on investment, such as increased member engagement and loyalty. It might even do a little of both. (We call those opportunities “no-brainers.”)  

That’s the easy part. 

Disciplined Business Planning is Necessary

And not always something even your high performing association is necessarily resourced to do. But you need to do your homework. Is there actual data to support that the market is real? Gather it. Test it. Hard.

Be realistic about your areas of strength and the areas where you are lacking. Coming up with a great idea is easy. Passion for and belief in the concept is critical. But the actual and opportunity costs of any new venture are significant. Commitment needs to be informed and not purely emotional (and not based solely on a brainstorming session by the board). 

  • Is there a real need for this offering and is the market reachable? (The gap between “there are millions of people who could use this and benefit from it” and successfully penetrating a market is huge.)
  • Do we have something unique and otherwise absent from the market to bring to bear?
  • Is there anybody else already offering it or better positioned to do so?
  • Do we have the patience, resources, and discipline to see it through?

Assuming it passes those tests, you have three choices:

Create the New Business Line Within Your Association

Pros: Total control and you reap all the benefits from a successful new product or service launch. 

Cons: You also assume all the risks. Moreover, it takes patience. And it takes resources.

It takes time to create and reach any market with a new offering. And that effort will divert significant management and operational time and attention from your existing programs, as well as consume other tangible resources for a (potentially) long period of time before you start to realize the benefits. Do you have the organizational resources to sustain and does your board have the patience to take the time necessary[1]?

Too often, “do it ourselves” is the default approach for association boards. Why is that often a mistake? Because while your association may have unique value components (your brand reputation in the field you are targeting, your unrivalled expertise and knowledge of the field, established relationships), executing usually requires knowledge and expertise totally unrelated to the field you represent and not currently resident in your organization. 

I once led an association that had designed a truly impressive re-purposing of its body of knowledge for the benefit of the general public. No doubt, we had the content expertise to answer questions that consumers needed answers to but had no ready means to confidently answer for themselves. What we lacked were the dollars and the expertise to mount a viable, global mass marketing campaign. We were really good at leveraging social media and websites for people who were already aware of us and who knew we were the go-to source for easily accessible and fully credible information. But on a scale akin to Google or LinkedIn? We lacked the resources and skills to scale our web resources and pierce the noise of mass market communications. We built it; they did not come[2].

Partner with an Entity That Has Resources & Capacity in the Areas You Lack

Pros: If you can find a partner whose capacities complement the assets and value you bring to the table, this can accelerate your ability to get to market, reduce your costs, and shares the risks involved in a new product or service launch.

Cons: You end up with a piece of the pie, not the whole thing. And if your partner is a for-profit entity, there is an inevitable tension between the financial return-driven and mission-driven business paradigms of the two partners that could sour the relationship over time. There is always the risk that you (or more importantly, your board) might chafe at lacking total control of anything with the association’s name on it that might impact your brand reputation. Boundaries between WHO is responsible and WHO has final decision-making authority for WHAT aspects of the joint venture is not always clear, particularly when something external to the offering (your partner’s acquisition by someone else, a new competitor, or some other change in the marketplace) requires pivoting from the original strategy.

Nonetheless, a lot of the typical association non-dues revenue sources fall into this category. Think association-sponsored insurance plans. But there are plenty of more complex joint ventures between associations and between associations and for-profit entities that I could cite.

Buy it

Pros: If there is someone else already doing (or trying to do) what you aspire to do, acquiring them is potentially a turnkey solution requiring only limited re-engineering. You get to market fast with the same end-to-end control as a new build. 

Cons: Costly up front. Negotiating the deal and integrating the new entity requires a degree of business management expertise that is not generally resident in an association staff. (Albeit such expertise is readily available on a contract basis.)

Regardless of Approach

In all these cases, you may be entering a red ocean of incumbent competitors with similar offerings that, while not as uniquely customized to your membership’s needs, enjoy superior market presence and awareness.  Don’t under-estimate them or over-estimate the extent and power of your association’s brand.

And there is always the danger of mission creep. If the new initiative wildly succeeds (or you lack the discipline to cut losses on one that is failing), it can overshadow your association’s actual reason for being.

So What Is an Association to Do?

  • Build for the long-term, if you have or can realistically acquire all the necessary skills and capacity.
  • Partner if you need to move fast.
  • Acquire if you have the financial resources and management capacity to successfully execute.

And always, only if there is tight alignment with mission.

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] I recently saw an association CEO job posting in which “diversifying revenues” was listed as a YEAR ONE goal. Unless there is some pot of gold and a printed roadmap to the end of the rainbow, it takes longer than that.

[2] Happy ending: We eventually sold the product to a mass market-based enterprise for a tidy profit.

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

Politics as the Third Rail of Constructive Dialogue

18 February 2026 Leave a comment

In a recent thread on ASAE’s Collaborate discussion platform a highly (and rightfully) respected member of the community postulated a conceivable (and dire) scenario of AI’s possible long-term impact on society, citing sources which made the scenario plausible. 

But here’s the thing. Plausible. Not inevitable. Intended to open a necessary dialogue, not shut it down.

Foresight Explores Possible Futures; It Doesn’t Make Predictions

It is vital that we constantly keep in mind the distinction between exploring possible future scenarios and making predictions. Strategic planners should be doing the former, not the latter. Making predictions is a dangerous game that can lead them to shut down avenues of thought prematurely and to their long-term detriment. If their prediction is wrong, their whole strategy collapses.

Considering possible future scenarios (even the most extreme ones, positive or negative) can trigger useful strategic insights into what we need to be doing in the here and now. They don’t require us to bet the future on the likelihood of any one of a multiplicity of possible future scenarios being the one that actually plays out. They allow organizations to maintain a necessary posture of nimbleness. 

Risking the Litmus Test Response 

Add any hint of a political element to your scenario, and things get touchy.  Any discussion of anything remotely political in today’s environment risks having your contribution attacked or (on closed platforms) even censored for being unacceptably political. 

But even if tolerated, the element of politics risks something that, in my mind, is far more serious. Positing uncomfortable possible scenarios exposes you to what I call Litmus Test responses: baseless judgments made about what the scenario you shared indicates about what the reader assumes its content says about whether you are “with us or against us” politically.

Not Everyone Joins Your Conversation with the Same Intentions

Therein lies the source of the problem. When we enter into public discourse, we can approach it from a number of different postures and with a number of different purposes. It can be an exercise in foresight. Or it can be an exercise in advocacy.  And the catch is, your readers might not be operating from the same posture you took in writing it.


When you engage in online discussions with the intention of stimulating an exercise in foresight, you are likely to attract responses from those less interested in strategic foresight and more interested in advancing their own (legitimate) agenda of stimulating political action.  

I emphasize legitimate since such activities are certainly values-based (whether I share those values or not). And I always assume the good intentions of the poster (regardless of whether I personally agree with their agenda or not). But the purpose of this kind of public discourse is to convince. It is a strategy of reduction, not expansion. It is intended to use a scenario to move you to a particular position that supports their views and hopefully provokes political/social action and activism of a particular bent.

Like I said, legitimate. Even vital. Just different. And comingling creates misunderstanding and conflict, not understanding.

A Covert Damper on Speech?

The thing that stood out (and saddened) me most about that thread on Collaborate was the very obvious discomfort of the original poster: an individual I know to be deeply serious, well informed, qualified, and responsible. A person who had something useful to add to a discussion that could advance acting with foresight. But who was clearly concerned over how his comments might be taken or that they might get his post taken down.

It resulted in a posting that was vague and in-direct. Exactly the opposite of what is needed for an informed exercise of strategic dialogue (or activism, for that matter).

It struck me as an example of a different kind of chilling effect on the free exercise of speech. Subtle and covert, but no less unfortunate than any overt action to silence the opposition. 

But I Might be Wrong

Intellectual honesty requires me to acknowledge that I am guilty of reading the Collaborate post in a manner that aligned with my own interests and purpose. But I don’t know the mind and heart of that writer. In writing this, I made the assumption that his intent was foresight. It could just as likely been intended as advocacy. Either purpose is righteous. 

And either way, the concerning factor is this:

What kind of discussions are we not having because we are afraid to engage in them? And what is that costing us?

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. 

Filed under Association Advocacy, Social Media & Associations Tagged with , ,

Generations or Career Stage or Brave New World?

5 February 2026 Leave a comment

I have always been skeptical of the literature generalizing generational differences. They tend to define changes in behaviors, preferences, and attitudes based on year of birth as if these were hardwired, evolutionary changes in DNA that emerged in the species at fixed points in time. It always seemed to me that career stage (regardless of year of birth) was a far more meaningful factor in trying to understand where individuals were coming from. But I have reached the conclusion that neither are sufficient frames of reference for understanding the workforce.

I have come to appreciate the more significant impact that macro-level disrupting changes can have on all generations and levels in the workforce. How are they impacted and how do they respond to it? In short, the current lived experience is more impactful than either year of birth or career stage.

It’s about more than just technology and tools

You’ve all seen the online clickbait: “If you recognize what these pictured items are, you were definitely born before X date.” Rotary telephones, floppy disks, physical Rolodexes, etc. 

But it isn’t only technology and tools that date you. At any age, you can always learn new tools. There are historic changes that affect the entire workforce even more profoundly. Epoch defining events, like world wars, economic depressions, 9/11, and the pandemic-shutdown permanently changed the world and required each of us living in it (regardless of generation) to reassess the nature of our relationship to that new world in every aspect of our lives. The workplace isn’t immune.

What constitutes normal?

It is only human nature: what we are accustomed to feels normal. Any macro event that fundamentally changes the nature of things is going to cause those used to the way things were before to feel like the new reality is abnormal. The longer the period you were able to work, grow and advance in the pre-disruption environment, the more abnormal the new world feels. 

For those who never experienced what normal used to be for the role they currently find themselves in, the new normal feels like a given, even if it is a given that they are still actively struggling to grasp and understand. But it’s all new to them; they don’t have as many established habits to unlearn.

For those with work experience in their current roles both pre- and post-disruptive change, the period of uncertainty over what the rules of the road are or ought to be is equally unsettling, regardless of their generation. 

The simple march of time means an increasing proportion of the working population are now digital natives. They never lived, let alone worked in a world without computers. Those who had to live through and adapt to the emergence of a digital world are increasingly, if not already a small minority. It’s probably well past time when those in this category need to just get over it. There are more pressing issues to deal with.

The post-pandemic reality

The same can’t be said for the adjustment to a post-pandemic new world. It’s still too new and too unsettled.

A small but increasing portion of the population in the workforce never worked under pre-pandemic shutdown conditions. While more seasoned workers are struggling to adopt to a “new normal,” these individuals are totally unfamiliar with the “normal” their more tenured colleagues experienced and are trying to cope with losing.

Even those who entered the workforce shortly before the pandemic lockdown have had less experience acclimating themselves to the old normal than their more seasoned co-workers. They are less hardwired into the old normal, but I don’t know if that makes resolving what the new normal ought to be easier or harder to imagine and adjust oneself to.

Maximizing flexibility is the thing we all seem to have agreed on

During a recent CEO dialogue, the usual shorthand for this topic emerged. We tend to lump this into the debate over in-person, all-virtual, or hybrid workforces. But it is more nuanced than where workers are sitting.

At least in the association space, I don’t think the 100% in-office party has built any kind of constituency.

The pro-all virtual party argues: “We worked successfully in a 100% remote work environment during the lockdown. Why does it need to change?” Assumptions about organization size correlating to success as all-virtual organizations don’t appear to hold, so judging what is most appropriate by organization size isn’t much help.

The pro-hybrid party argues that there has been a loss of social cohesion in the all-virtual environment that is costing the organization in ways that those who never experienced the pre-pandemic normal can’t fully appreciate. 

No employee mourns the opportunity to jettison the cost (in time and money) of a daily commute. No CFO is upset over the opportunity to jettison high office space occupancy costs. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t frustrated when they can’t interact spontaneously and easily with others … that it’s always necessary to schedule a meet up. This is particularly true if they have lived the experience of the kind of serendipity that occurred in a staff working in close physical proximity that was taken for granted in the pre-pandemic world. (You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, as Joni Mitchell sang. And there … I just dated myself in a way younger gens won’t get.).

One thing is clear: whether hybrid or all-virtual, flexibility is clearly the governing value we all seem to be seeking to maximize. It enables a happier and more productive workforce.

It takes more than policy statements

But uncertainty remains the dominant state. Where does flexibility end and organizational synergy begin? Violating norms that aren’t clear to you is a source of fear, anxiety and conflicts. What is expected and what is it reasonable to expect in the desired state of maximum flexibility?  It manifests itself in several specific ways. 

  • When is it appropriate to send an email outside of (previously) normal working hours, with the implicit expectation of response[1]?
  • If my exercise of flexibility in hours worked is different than yours, what happens if our interaction is necessary? 
  • Is a phone call ever better than asynchronous communications and what are the norms for this?

And I could go on.

Simply writing that everyone is expected to be “available” during set, core hours into your employee manual is reasonable, but insufficient.

Similarly, mandated days in-office makes logical sense, but only if the nature of the work that occurs makes being in the office worthwhile. (And I see absolutely no logic to policies that require X days per week in the office – choose whichever days suit you. As if just being in a physical place makes magical things happen for you.) 

The deeper into things you get, the more questions emerge. Second wave questions that have already emerged include such things as:

  • If distant remote employees are expected to travel to HQ for mandatory all-staff events (typically between two to four times per year), who is responsible for their extraordinary travel and housing costs? 
  • How do workers, eager to succeed for themselves and for the organization, get the direction and support needed to be successful, beyond project plans, deadlines and tasks?
  • How do (in particular) early career stage individuals build their professional networks and gain awareness of functions outside their assigned areas?

And there are trivial but amusing examples of the disconnect as well. 

Like the number of employees who, in an environment of 100% remote work, asked if they would get the day off the first time a snowstorm hit. 

And one colleague who got a lot of feedback that staff wanted the performance management system to be less burdensome … in a situation where employees were only asked two open-ended questions, three times per year[2].

But it goes to the issue we should have been addressing all along: how effective is our system of feedback and direction, regardless of the time required to engage in the process? And how consequential our in-office experiences actually are.

One thing seems universal: employees don’t want to follow procedures that seem to them like a waste of time. They never did. But in today’s environment, policies and procedures that don’t make the actual work experience rewarding and productive are even more toxic to the enterprise. And the evidence I have observed seems to indicate many organizations haven’t fully answered that question yet.

Where we go from here

At least four trends (or imperatives) appear to be in play:

  • Clarity and shared understanding of expectations is needed in a system designed for flexibility with boundaries, communicated in a transparent and purposeful manner, not as arbitrary edicts or vague statements of the ideal, left open to interpretation.
  • Better execution of virtual collaboration systems than many (most?) associations have yet to implement, even if they have the technical capacity to do so.
  • Shifting to a more “results only” oversight and performance management approach, rather than time or task measurements.
  • Providing coaching and development support in a separate but complementary manner.

I am encouraged by the evidence I have seen of associations that are meaningfully redesigning both the physical, in-office environment (nod to you, ASAE) and the way they organize work (both in-person or virtually). But too many associations seem to be applying Band-Aids to their pre-pandemic conditions, merely tweaking the old normal, rather than inventing the new. As a profession, we have a long way to go.

Postscript: My reference to a “brave new world” is a bit of a Rorschach test. Did it prompt dystopian dread, as in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel of that name? Or the utopian optimism of the Shakespeare play Huxley took the phrase from (The Tempest)? I wonder if a generational generality might be inferred from that distinction.

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] I know the arguments both for and against “no emails after hours or on weekends.” The actual answer is, it depends.

[2] As someone who for years endured the hours long process of a Paylocity-style goal setting and performance management system, this one made me smile.

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

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 her 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. 

Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

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.”)

Filed under Global Associations, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

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.” 

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

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 , , , , ,

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