What opera has taught me about association management …

20 June 2011 1 Comment

Conflict!  Treachery! Betrayal!  Passion!  No, I am not talking about your last board of directors meeting.  I am talking about opera.

And before you start rolling your eyes and dismissing opera based on the parodies or send ups you’ve seen (Marx Brothers’ “Night at the Opera,” anyone?), allow me to provide a short, painless and mostly lighthearted introduction to my number two passion in life (after association work, of course!).

I was recently invited by the Fellows of the American Society of Association Executives to do a presentation on “What Opera has Taught Me About Association Management.”  In response to many requests, I am happy to make it available here.

To view the presentation click here.

To read the text of the presentation click Script – What Opera ….

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

ISO consumate association professional … plumbers only need apply.

31 May 2011 1 Comment

Suppose you were an association executive with a medical need. You have identified the leading doctors who specialize in the field. The decision is important. Your health is at stake. So you take very seriously the process of deciding which doctor is the best fit to work with you to diagnose your problem and prescribe treatment. You prepare a list of questions to ask each potential care giver about their qualifications.  

I guarantee those questions would not include asking these doctors whether they understood the difference between a 501(c)3 or 501(c)6 tax exempt organization. You wouldn’t exclude a doctor from consideration because he or she didn’t have the Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential. You’re looking for a medical professional, after all, not an association professional.

And yet how many times do associations demand that their chief staff executive hold a degree or even a license in the field the organization represents? This legacy attitude of the association as a guild, best run by a master of the craft, is generally an issue more for professional societies, than for trade associations, but the trades are not immune. I understand it, but it just doesn’t make sense.

A few months ago I had the privilege of moderating a seminar on a new book on association governance called Race for Relevance. One of the key issues the book raised was the need for a competency-based board, selected on the basis of who possesses the specific skills and expertise to make the association a successful enterprise for its members. But I ask you: how can an organization aspire to create a competency-based board when so many associations haven’t even grasped the concept of a competency-based selection of their chief staff executive?

I could provide a large collection of real-world position descriptions, painstakingly composed by CEO search committees, with much input from professional search agents, which provide page upon page of descriptions of the leadership, financial, managerial, organizational and governance competencies required to do the job. But then end with a requirement for a degree or even a license in the trade or profession represented.

I know a lot about the court reporting profession, about the wireless industry, about telephone messaging services, having successfuly served  those fields in a professional staff capacity at their respective associations. Any of my association peers could claim the same about their employment histories. Arguably, there are some aspects of the industry or profession that each of us represents that we actually know better than the average practitioner in the field. But none of us would ever claim to be remotely competent to step in and perform the professional roles or functions that our members perform with distinction every day. That’s not the job we were hired to do. That’s not what we are educated to do. That’s not what the association needs us to do.

Why then, does it seem so logical, so natural, and so “just the way things are” to start an executive search with a statement to the effect: “In search of consummate association professional; plumbers only need apply.”

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Basso continuo

18 April 2011 Leave a comment

Johannes Kepler  described music as one of the four harmonies that hold the universe together.  (Geometry, Astrology and Astronomy are the other three, if anyone cares.) 

And yes, this really does have something to do with associations.

I recently moderated a panel on Hegel. Brown and Davison’s The Power of Pull.  The book contrasts traditional “push” systems (top down, strictly managed and closed production systems, engineered to exploit efficiencies in order to achieve economies of scope and scale) with emerging “pull” systems (more free formed, decentralized, nimble, modular and transitory).  The topic was to what extent associations were or should be pull platforms.

And the musical concept of the “continuo” came into my mind. In renaissance music, it is the droning bass line that supports the melody.  In baroque music, it is usually a low string instrument, like the cello, that provides the harmonic structure that holds the music together and keeps it moving forward while the melody and development occurs elsewhere in the ensemble in a more free form and unconstrained manner.  (You can’t help  but hear it in a piece like Pachelbel’s Canon, and believe me, you HAVE heard that piece,  at a wedding or in a doctor’s office or in an elevator.)  In jazz, this role is usually taken up in the rhythm section (piano, guitar and drums), offering a solid foundation for the wildest and most free form improvisations going on elsewhere in the band.  There is probably a modern equivalent of basso continuo in rock and rap.

And what does this all have to do with associations?  Well my personal conclusion is that associations are the very essence of pull systems.  The voluntary nature of the enterprise, the need for collaboration based on something more than position authority, the networking and community that are central to the association’s nature, the association world’s embrace of social networking …. all of this screams “pull platform.” 

But associations also serve as the basso continuo: the strictly structured, sustaining bass line of activity for the trade or profession that holds up and enables the inventiveness, creativity and innovation.  It isn’t always glamorous.  It isn’t the part of the tune that sticks in your head.  But without these mundane, push features, the melody and improvisation would fall apart and come tumbling down.  

(Still hung up on the reference to Kepler?  He was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer and a key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution whose name is still attached to fundamental principles of planetary motion.)

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