Competition just might be the shot in the arm your organization needs

1 July 2026 Leave a comment

Competition is almost a dirty word in the not-for-profit sector. After all, mission-defined, not-for-profits thrive under a governing paradigm of collaboration. Collaboration is the lever they use to expand the resources and energy available to advance mission and associations are defined by mission, not market dominance. Business success and revenue are necessary means to that end, not the mission itself. 

But still, correctly perceived, competition might just be the shot in the arm your association needs.

The proper response to competition requires a different mindset

Competition does not need to be predatory or adversarial. Your goal is not necessarily to beat the competition or cut into the competition’s market share. Your goal is to advance your own mission effectiveness and organizational sustainability. It can often be approached through a classic blue ocean strategy, rather than  the more typical red ocean variety.

The key is being aware enough to notice who might be doing something different or better than your own organization, maybe even endangering your association’s position, and learning from it.

  • Are there tactics and strategies you can learn from them and apply to your own association? These lessons can be used in a manner that the competitor may never even be aware of or concerned by. And they might offer insights into the unique market position your association occupies and how you can be more effective in offering entirely different products, services, and value propositions.
  • Is there something your association is uniquely situated and has the capacity to do better for a constituency relevant to your organization? Maybe there is some element of their market that is too small for the competitor to give full attention to, leaving you more capable of customizing, targeting, and serving better.
  • Or is the competitor too strongly entrenched, established, and resourced for you to take on directly? You are better off accepting that reality, adjusting your own strategy, and avoid wasting time, attention, and resources chasing a market you have little chance of success with or displacing a Goliath strong enough to withstand David’s slingshot. 

A non-association case history

By the early 1930s, Duke Ellington’s band reigned supreme at Harlem’s Cotton Club while it was helping define the new music that would come to characterize the swing era. But Ellington’s orchestra had its shortcomings in terms of precision, discipline, and consistency in performance. As the groundbreaker who offered something wholly new, it didn’t matter. It was arguably sloppy, but there was nothing to compare it to. It wasn’t until the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra arrived at the Cotton Club in the mid 1930s, with his close attention to the quality of musical arrangements and rehearsing, that the value of more consistency and precision in preparing and performing swing became apparent. (And make no mistake: the fact that Lunceford was the more craft attentive band leader did not mean his band didn’t swing. It did. In new and exciting ways.)

Ellington learned from what he saw and heard. He didn’t abandon his own artistic vision, or even worse, try to imitate the Lunceford style. He remained authentically and uniquely Ellington. And arguably precisely the things that Lunceford introduced (careful arrangements, disciplined rehearsals and performance) became hallmarks and strengths of the artist Ellington would eventually become and the artist we remember today: the master arranger and composer who crafted brilliant musical books and built bands capable of executing his vision in a manner unlike any other artist.

In a strictly commercial sense Ellington and Lunceford were competitors. They were competing for the mindshare (or perhaps more accurately, ear share) of the musical public.

But I doubt taking audiences away, one from the other, was the primary driving force for either musician.  

Rather, the emergence of Lunceford (and others) injected awareness of new, artistic possibilities and a very, very powerful introduction of energy to a market leader in danger of being rendered obsolete if it remained complacent.

If you must frame this as Ellington versus Lunceford, then in a narrow sense Ellington won the battle. I would wager that everybody (regardless of their level of awareness or interest in jazz) knows the name of Ellington. And while Lunceford is by no means a forgotten artist, even some avid and informed jazz lovers I know would probably recognize the name but confess no familiarity with his body of work (captured for history in the form of recordings).

Ellington had more lasting success. He achieved more fame and a more substantial place in music history. But that’s not the point. Ironically, a part of that very success can at least in part be attributed to something Ellington saw in Lunceford: precision in preparation and discipline in performing big band jazz. 

Ellington didn’t beat Lunceford. He went to school on him and used what he learned to achieve a place in history uniquely his own. 

An important acknowledgment. The history of jazz and the nature of influences is much more complex than this brief summary suggests. But I think the example proves the point, even if it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Be aware but thoughtful

So you absolutely do need to be on the lookout for emerging “competition” in your association’s domain. But when you see it, your first response shouldn’t be to immediately draw daggers and lean into head-to-head competition. 

  • Take a pause first to see what the competition is doing well that might help you be better.
  • Don’t abandon your unique role and try to morph into a mere replication of a competitor you can never displace.
  • And even if you are the current dominant player, don’t dismiss the smaller competitor who can never take you down, but might have something unique that can be applied to your own authentic mission.

Disclaimer

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

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

Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with , ,

They’re not entirely wrong …

9 June 2026 Leave a comment

Those are possibly the four most important words to keep in mind when you find yourself in an argument.

Science versus MAHA

While listening to a recent Why Should I Trust You podcast I was struck by an astonishing comment from Sheryl Gay Stolberg, the lead reporter for the New York Times covering science and healthcare. (She also has a long and distinguished career covering politics.) In the podcast, she was discussing Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr. and the “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

“Kennedy would say, ‘well, all these public health officials say vaccines are safe and effective. And we know that’s not true’.

“And, you know, he kind of has a point about that. I mean, some people are injured by vaccines, just like any drug. You know, they carry side effects.

“So to make a sweeping statement that all vaccines are safe and effective is also, I would say, imprecise. And what I have tried to do in my coverage is to bring some precision to these debates in a way that is understandable for people.”

This observation was astonishing because it was unexpected. But on reflection, what was truly astonishing was that on first hearing it felt in the slightest bit inflammatory or unreasonable.

I recognize that merely by quoting this, I place myself at risk of instant dismissal for treasonous disloyalty to my own personal (and I believe) informed confidence in the general safety and efficacy of vaccines.

But my point isn’t about vaccines at all. I could imagine conversations like this around any issue of disagreement on any topic of importance in which the participants are deeply and, most significant, emotionally invested. Questions of politics (immigration policy, vaccine policy, whatever) or even questions about who is or is not allowed membership in your organization.

Precision and context – not generalities and absolutes

It is about the inherently unproductive nature of what passes for public discourse on any and every policy issue that people care deeply about. The same thing that sometimes passes for debate in association boardrooms when important issues around mission, values, or legacy are at stake.

The villain here isn’t that disagreement exists. It is that the ensuing argument is too often based on generalities and absolutes when, as Stolberg pointed out, what is called for is precision and context. Too often, combatants are triggered by a litmus test that instantly governs every word that comes out in response: “Are you for me or against me?” This framing demands a take-no-prisoners approach aimed at beating your opponent to death … and usually devolves into little more than slinging slogans at each other and attaching a disparaging label to them. It amounts to a reflexive rejection of any validity to any of their concerns that ends discussion before any discussion has even occurred. There is nothing left but the shouting.

To be sure, there are extremists on the fringes of many arguments who probably can’t be reached. But having a serious and honest conversation about an issue in controversy starts with acknowledging the possibility that there just might be a legitimate kernel of truth in what your opponent has to say and looking for it, rather than instinctively going into attack mode.

Returning for a moment to the vaccine divide: if we can acknowledge and agree there is some element of risk we open the possibility of dialogue on the something we can agree on: that risks, even if extremely limited, deserve to be addressed and minimized. Because harm, even if limited to a small number of individuals, is no small thing to the people harmed. If we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any risk at all, we abandon intellectual honesty and lose credibility. And most tragically, end the possibility of positive progress.

“We’ve forgotten how to argue”

G. K. Chesterton is a writer I greatly admire. He was a fierce and uncompromising defender of his (sometimes unpopular) beliefs but was genuinely loved and admired by even his bitterest opponents in thought. I don’t always agree with him, but I am always enlightened.

He liked to distinguish between a quarrel and an argument. He despised the former and relished in the latter.

And here’s the distinction he drew. A quarrel is a fight. It’s object is to win. The object of an argument is greater understanding. Getting to the truth. The whole truth. And in Chesterton’s view, the principal objection to a quarrel is that it interrupted the opportunity for a possibly important and productive argument. The problem isn’t that there is disagreement; it is that people have forgotten how to argue.

In practice a good argument calls for something very difficult: intellectual humility, even in the face of hostile and unreasonable opposition. 

It starts by framing the area of disagreement with precision: understanding the possibly valid and unaddressed concern that your correspondent brings to the table. And it requires showing real empathy for the opponent and their need. Skip this step, and you lose the possibility of seeking areas of agreement.

Constructive arguments, not quarrels

Chesterton was extremely close to his brother. In his Autobiography he wrote: 

Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end. I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled. 

So the next time the temperature rises in a conversation, take a beat. Imagine the speaker is someone you care deeply for. And listen with precision for their pain point rather than defaulting into sweeping generalizations that ignore their concerns. The more consequential the issue, the harder it is to maintain that mental state. 

And the more critical it is to do so.

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.

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

Stewardship

15 May 2026 Leave a comment

It’s not a word one often hears in the context of association values or strategy. Maybe it should be.

It more typically arises in the context of environmental or religious affairs, but it’s a concept that deserves serious attention in organizational leadership.

Author and consultant Jeff de Cagna has made it a key finding from his community dialogue on “The Future of Association Boards,” arguing that elevating board performance “demands boards refocus their energies toward stewardship, i.e., leaving their associations better than how they found them for the benefit of [both current] stakeholders and successors. Stewardship is a higher calling than leadership and requires boards to focus their attention on building and sustaining a consistent practice of foresight to which all association stakeholders can contribute and through which today’s decision-makers can demonstrate their care for successors.” Thinking for the future; not just managing for today.

That makes sense. Adopting a leadership mindset that worries more about what the members (and board members) who will come after us will need and value than what we, ourselves, appreciate and desire from our associations. Are we focused on the right things for future boards and members, or approaching leadership through the blinders of immediate, operational urgencies and need? And on an individual level, what will future members (and board members), many of whom we may never meet, think of our time of service? Will they thank us for what we did or curse us for what we failed to do?

Now there is a trap here

Too often, associations worship blindly at the altar of change and transformation as ends in and of themselves.

But that can create a mindset where only wholesale, radical disruption strategies are considered, change for the sake of change when a more nuanced approach might be more effective. Stewardship includes the feature of conservation: preserving what is good and worthy of preservation.

There are constants

Mission, purpose, and values are things that seldom if ever require fundamental overthrow. But means to honor and preserve those ends need to constantly be kept in mind and acted upon. That is stewardship.

Now, many times in my career I have been described as a change agent, and I am OK with that. I am not afraid to make drastic changes, swiftly (and in the most severe cases, even ruthlessly), when they were necessary, due to immediate threats or where elements of the system weren’t working in a way that was holding back or might even endanger the entire enterprise if allowed to persist. 

But absent such an immediate and even existential threat (the pandemic comes to mind) it is better to maintain an appreciation that change is a constant, not a one-time goal. And effective change includes preserving what is of value and approaching its care with constant improvement. Sometimes and in some areas nurturing evolution is more appropriate than revolution.

(New CEOs in particular need to act with humility and a modicum of patience. I never approached a new engagement with the mindset of massive change on day one. No matter how good your due diligence, you don’t know the people, the systems, the programs well enough to assume you have the right answer before you get there. At best, you have theses to be tested.)

Now there is a trap here, as well

Complacency. Ignoring processes and programs that are working well enough as if no adaptations or improvements need be looked for or considered.  

The urgency for change is a spectrum

It comes down to achieving a balance: changing what isn’t working, advancing and improving what is. This requires honestly assessing the status quo. Don’t ignore or delay changes to the things that need to be fixed. But approach even those cases in a manner that recognizes those aspects worth preserving. Acting decisively when faced with a change in reality and exercising foresight in order to anticipate and address changes in the operating reality before they reach crisis levels. But not throwing out the baby with the bath water in the name of some abstract concept of change or transformation as necessarily a good to be pursued for its own sake. Equally important is not responding to long-term trends by rearranging the deck chairs on your ship. Work always with foresight: future needs understood from a clear-eyed appreciation of the current state; things as they are and are becoming, not as we wish they would stay.

Stasis is deadly. So is assuming that today’s orthodoxies remain valid. Change is constant. But it isn’t necessarily a totality. Your organization needs to be always evolving and responding to changes occurring and mindful of trends that might not be impacting you now but will overtime if ignored. Sometimes that demands entirely fresh approaches. Sometimes that demands radical and immediate action. 

But don’t lose sight of the opportunities to evolve and grow in a measured way. And engage your leadership and your members in a constant dialogue over what will be needed in the future, and how do we get there? That will leave them prepared to understand and accept necessary change when it occurs.

Disclaimer

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

AI may have been used to generate the image accompanying this post. I do NOT use AI to generate or edit drafts.It more typically arises in the context of environmental or religious affairs, but it’s a concept that deserves serious attention in organizational leadership.

Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

We keep building it … and they don’t come

15 April 2026 Leave a comment

I have a confession to make. I have experienced conference apps both as an end user (conference attendee) and as a conference provider. I have also been both a user and provider of apps meant to streamline membership interactions, such as association member services, purchases, publications, discussion forums, content libraries, and the like. Some of them were really first-rate apps in terms of their ability to make user access to member and conference services frictionless and powerful.

I hated them all.

They all shared one fatal flaw and deterrent to user acceptance. They all were separate applications. One more icon on the already crowded home page of my iPhone (and one that is far from the first thing I think to check when I glance at my phone). Even the turbo-charged meetings app, with its sophisticated ability to keep me informed of formal and informal events of interest and can create a plan to follow them. Even with its ability to connect to other conference attendees, get notifications, provide directions, and handle schedule changes. To take advantage of all that, I have to leave my normal mode of operations and live within the association-provided app. Real life just doesn’t work that way.

I don’t want to have consciously shift from my normal mode of operations into association mode. I don’t want to have to open a conference app to see my conference schedule. I want it dynamically integrated into whatever calendaring and time management tools I use every day. I don’t want to have to think “I wonder what my association can do for me today” before I get the benefits of the technology the association has invested in. Chances are that your members don’t want to either.

It’s not realistic to expect your members to “live” in your association’s application ecosystem all the time in order to benefit from the technology you’ve built, no matter how good your technology is. I live my life by the calendar (Outlook), task management (Reminders), email (Outlook), messaging (Apple Messages), search (Duck Duck Go) and other systems on my phone. None of those systems are context specific. They all integrate nicely with each other. That system is already present, always present, and encompasses all my roles in life (professional, personal, volunteer roles, hobbies, and interests) without me having to think about or look multiple places. If I need to think about looking somewhere else (e.g.; go into a conference app to see my opportunities at the meeting or go to the membership portal to see what conversations are going on in the forums), chances are I will forget to do it. If I need to think of the association app as the place to start a conversation on a matter of professional interest within the association’s domain that was triggered somewhere else in my everyday tech environment, I probably won’t do it. And even if I do send myself off onto the island that is the association or conference app, the minute I get a message or notification from my day-to-day world, I am going to abandon the association island and dive back into my everyday ecosystem. And even the most valuable, timely, and important thing the association app is following disappears from my awareness. Awareness I won’t get back unless and until it occurs to me to go back onto the island to look for it.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. But it does take a change in perspective. Instead of introducing a new, “best in class” mobile association product, service, or feature that does it all, think about connecting with your members where they already are.

Want two very rudimentary and widely deployed examples where this has already happened? Think about the seminar registration system that lets me add the event to whatever calendar I use (and does so with all the relevant information I need about time, place, confirmation number, etc. contained in the calendar event), without ever leaving the email that prompted me to register in the first place. Think about the forum digest posts that push all the discussions I have flagged as relevant into one email in my email reader of choice without making me decide I am going to check out what’s going on in the forums.

But the technology of automation should and is increasing in its capacity to allow us to do even more. Like the ability to save individual conference events into my everyday calendar rather than a conference app, does it with a single click, and in a form that remains actively connected to the source, so any changes in time, room location, or whatever that event management subsequently makes is reflected automatically in my everyday scheduling app. Or an online forum reader that condenses all my content venues in a single daily digest, rather than one from the membership forum, another from the journal(s), and allows me to add as many additional discussion forums/content sources from unaffiliated providers as I want to. And maybe even does so by topic, not source, along with suggestions of topics in areas of the forum I am not signed up for that actually relate to topics I have shown an interest in[1].

A recent post from ASAE put it this way: make the shift from creating apps to integrating apps.

This has implications both for technology internal to the organization (how your staff engages with and leverages your data and content capacity) as well as to connecting and engaging with the membership you hope to create more value for by serving them better.

To be sure, it’s easier to do internally. Your internal data and IT infrastructure is a closed system that you exercise end-to-end control over, with a limited, fixed, and fairly stable cohort of users.

But the real power will come with integrations that connect the tools your members are already using with the value your association can add to their lives.

Stop thinking about creating a “one stop shop” for all things association, one place where your members can (but also must) come to for everything you have to offer; start looking for ways to be useful with functionality that shows up in the places your members already happen to be. Don’t make them come to your store; put what you have to offer on the shelves in the stores they already visit.

[1] The typical design of association discussion forums is self-limiting and self-defeating. It is based on general identity (by position or area of interest). If I am a CEO, I get made part of a discussion board for CEOs, as if every CEO everywhere is concerned about the same issues. So if I am a CEO currently in need of information on a financial or tax issue, I have to go searching for the CFO section to get more specialized input. Worse still, I might be tempted to post the same question multiple places, spawning multiple conversations that aren’t connecting with each other.

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.

Filed under Uncategorized

Why ‘Trust the Experts’ Isn’t Working … And What Might

1 April 2026 Leave a comment

A few months back, I wrote about “Truth Under Fire” in an age of decentralized information, public distrust in institutions and credentialed authority, and AI/social media-driven echo chambers that value divisiveness and conflict over reasoned dialogue and mutual benefit. 

In that post I asserted ‘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.’”

Nowhere is this more in view than in the field of science. I recently stumbled upon a fascinating post from a scientist and communications specialist (Rick Borchelt) that resonated with these ideas. It deserves to be read in full, but in summary:

Borchelt had just returned from the 2026 American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting feeling deeply discouraged. His core critique was that the science community has largely failed to absorb decades of research on science communication and is poised to repeat its past mistakes.

He cited two specific pieces of the literature to bolster his point: 

  • John Ziman’s 1991 paper debunking the “knowledge deficit” theory: the idea that the public just needs more facts and better storytelling to trust science.
  • Sheila Jasanoff’s work in the early 2000s calling on scientists to abandon the positivism (all truth derives from observable phenomena and scientific inquiry) that has resulted in the perceived hubris of expertise that only reinforces the non-expert’s distrust.  

His bottom line: rather than showing some humility, rather than acknowledging that sometimes past (and even validly reached) scientific judgments have been proven wrong overtime, and most importantly, rather than approaching disagreements with respect for the other side’s concerns and a genuine commitment to mutual understanding, the science community appears ready to double down on polarizing public protests that assert science’s superiority over all comers. He sees this as exactly the wrong response to the current moment.

It’s a pointed critique from an insider, someone who is himself an AAAS Fellow and career science communicator.

And I fear that Borchelt (an apparently accomplished and respected scientific communicator himself) may place too much confidence in the power of effective communication to fix things. The atmosphere of distrust may run too deep for that. As ASAE’s ForeSight work has stated: “pressure on the truth is not a passing data or communications problem. It is a core leadership challenge.” (I suspect Borchelt would probably agree.)

But as I stated in my earlier post, “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 [someone an anti-science] advocate in the first place.” Because it isn’t necessarily that they disbelieve science. They just don’t believe the people who assert they are its spokesperson and must be listened to. And they don’t care about your science; they care about their problem and see little evidence that you do, too.

We have to break that cycle of zero-sum advocacy (I only win if you lose) from both sides in order for civil discourse to occur … the kind of discourse that might lead to restored trust and actually advancing the common good. 

I should emphasize that although in most cases bad information is simply misinformed opinion, that isn’t always the case. Too many times those relying on “authoritative truth” are not acting in good faith, deploying expertise designed to mislead and misdirect. (Think of the tobacco industry’s efforts to challenge the science around the health effects of smoking with alt-science of their own.)

And this “truth under fire” environment is absolutely NOT happening only in the field of science: And it’s NOT only happening on the scale of “Capital S Science vs. the MAHA movement.”

Every day ANY professional seeking to apply their advanced skills and truly authoritative knowledge to serve a valid need faces the same challenge. 

To cite just one example: a legal professional dealing with a client or potential client who is wondering why they should use their services rather than just using free AI to generate a will or other legal document. “Trust me, I know what you need better than you do” is not likely to be a winning strategy there, either.

 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. 

Filed under Association Advocacy Tagged with , , , , ,

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 , , , , ,

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