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.

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Ratiocination versus The Age of Reason

14 December 2025 Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poe set the Dupin stories in Paris.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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Dark Days Shine New Light on Profession and Community

7 April 2020 Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A plug for Beethoven and company in times of stress …

5 April 2020 Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here are my suggestion:

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

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

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

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

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

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CEO effectiveness & volunteer boards

6 January 2016 1 Comment

I was recently invited to share one piece of advice from what I have learned in my years as an association chief staff officer on effective partnership with volunteer leaders, for a book soon to be published by ASAE.  After giving  some thought to the matter, for me it came down to what JimiStock_puzzel Collins calls Level 5 leadership: “the paradoxical blend of personal humility and [fierce] professional will.” You need to be able to take your own ego-gratification out of the equation when assessing the association’s strategic needs, but also refuse to make allowances for any limitations that might be present on your board by compromising on the level of leadership their role demands from them. You need to be authentic in giving the board credit for association success and in truly owning any board failure as your own. And never, never, never, letting a setback cause you to doubt yourself or become tentative and risk averse. Take the hit, learn what you can from it, turn the page, and move on. In doing so, you become not only something of a safety net for the board, making it less risky for them to take bold action. You also model the behavior that will enable them to be effective in their own leadership roles.

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Why change is hard and so often goes wrong

16 May 2015 Leave a comment

imagesA member shared this video with me recently, which demonstrates that knowledge does not equal understanding and that it is very difficult to change biases.

http://viewpure.com/MFzDaBzBlL0?ref=bkmk

Watch the whole 8 minutes if you can … there is more here than the initial “hook” of the video: how changing one thing makes even a simple, customary task more difficult.

The video triggered (unpleasant) memories for me of every strategic planning initiative I have ever been involved in, as a staff leader, a volunteer or a consultant.  It makes understandable how quickly and easily a new paradigm, once mastered, can be abandoned … particularly by those who have lived longest in the old paradigm and who are generally the ones in positions with the most organizational influence.

It is very relevant to where my own organization, is right now.  We did things right: engaging members (not just active volunteers) in collecting data on their needs, expectations and aspirations.  We listened with open minds, willfully rejected pre-conceptions, and applied what we learned in an open-minded fashion. We took the time to build broad consensus on future direction and focus long before we tried to reduce it all to words in a strategic plan. We have the knowledge, and understanding, and even buy-in to that new vision and its goals, clearly articulated in a new strategic plan, and being applied with discipline to our actions, programs, and branding messages. But agreement, will, and intention are not enough to keep the new bicycle on course.  And this little video demonstrates why, so often, the final result of even big change often ends up looking a whole lot like what it was supposed to replace.

So take this as a cautionary tale.

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Radical orthodoxy

6 May 2013 Leave a comment

It is something of a commonplace to refer to associations as a kind of family or even to think of our mission-driven efforts as in some ways similar to a religion: an effort to organize like-minded individuals who share a common cause … a cause that is integral to both who they are as individuals (in our case, generally, members of the same industry or profession) and as part of something larger than individual self-interest.  We want our members to be passionately engaged, not mere consumers of products and services.  We want to make a difference and change the world in some way, hopefully for the better.  We even sometimes talk about being “evangelists” for our profession, industry or cause.

That thought came home hard with me while recently reading something about my own church.  Which church is irrelevant and naming it would only serve to derail the discussion in unrelated directions.  It isn’t about what one church believes or how you feel about it.  It isn’t meant to suggest that any of our organizations are as profoundly important as any church is.  Just go along with me for the moment, accepting that a church — any church — is a non-profit, voluntary organization with a mission.  What this commentator said about this church struck me as relevant for associations, too.  Paraphrasing to the point of plagiarism, that commentary ran along the following lines:

Association membership or engagement maintained merely out of cultural habit or legal/governmental establishment “has no future because it does not merit a future.”  A mission-driven organization that does not get out into the world and act upon what it believes sooner or later gets sick “in the hothouse atmosphere of its own self-absorption.”

When any organization gets too concerned about itself — its structure, hierarchy, governance, internal politics, culture — rather than its mission, the purpose it exists to serve, it “falls victim to a kind of narcissism.”  That narcissism leads to an irrelevant and self-referential focus on its own sophistication in form and operation.  This is where organizations get sidetracked by hugely contentious internal matters that, if we allow them to (and how often we do allow them to), become all-consuming efforts around matters that don’t actually matter.

We rationalize it, of course, and make it sound reasonable.  We tell ourselves that it would be foolish to take external actions until we get our own houses in order … until we get the membership model exactly right.  Or governance perfected.  Or whatever.

But where does that leave us vis-à-vis our mission?  Bold action, it is true, means that you risk something.  “Just as things can happen to someone who leaves the safety of home: accidents can happen.”  But isn’t “risking an injured organization far preferable to a sick organization, palsied by self-absorption?”

Such radicalism is “going to take some getting used to. Expect serious disorientation in those ideological redoubts where old battles over now-superceded [self-referential institutional constructs] … remain all-consuming.”

“Some may find it hard to reconcile … radicalism with orthodoxy. But that’s precisely what orthodoxy is: the adventure of radical conversion ordered to mission.”

I realize that these ramblings run the risk of fueling the fires of another pitfall we face:  an overinflated sense of our own importance.  After all, we aren’t responsible for men’s souls or eternity.  Hubris is as catastrophic as self-absorbed complacency.  Maybe even more so.  Associations are important … but we are not that important.

Still … we are organizations defined by mission.  We should be organizations driven by mission.  Keeping our houses in order is important, but only in so far as being better organized and structured, operationally efficient, and philosophically consistent makes us better at achieving our mission.

Start with the end in mind, build capacity, achieve results, as Stephen Covey put it.

But never forget the core purpose, the mission, along the way.  That never changes, and shouldn’t as long as the mission itself remains relevant.  Being radical and orthodox means taking chances with everything else, risking everything else, in a ceaseless effort to be true to the reason the organization was created in the first place: its mission.

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What the world needs is more association executives

19 August 2012 Leave a comment

Closing the ASAE annual meeting in Dallas, author Dan Pink argued that, regardless of profession, we are all in sales. But the characteristics, skills and traits he described as essential for success sounded to my ears like precisely the attributes that distinguish effective association leaders, and differentiate us as a profession.

Read more in my latest commentary in Association Trends: What the world needs is more association executives | Association TRENDS

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Everybody lies

22 May 2012 3 Comments

The series had its ups and downs and wild swings in quality, but there is no question that Fox Television’s “House M.D.,” which came to an end after eight seasons this week, was consistently ambitious and compelling TV.  Held together at its center by the bravura performance of Hugh Laurie in the title role, the irascible, sometimes despicable, but clearly brilliant diagnostician, Dr. Gregory House, the series still managed to sustain an ensemble nature that is rare in dramatic series these days.

House’s catch phrase, “everybody lies,” was so memorable because it was so true.  The lies were (usually) not malicious, perhaps even unrecognized as lies by the patients and family members who uttered them.  But successfully diagnosing the bizarre and hidden ailment always rested on going past what the patient claimed and uncovering the actual facts behind the case — a task House and his team pursued with an astonishing disregard for privacy or simple human decency.

Now I am not suggesting associations should adopt a similarly sociopathic approach to analyzing members’ expressed needs and desires.  But a healthy skepticism that insists on validating what the members say they want with some objective and independent data before committing to a course of action can help the organization avoid sometimes costly strategic, marketing or policy mistakes.

My members (who create the official record of court and deposition proceedings) are engaged daily in capturing eyewitness testimony, most of it delivered with intense sincerity and conviction.  But any judge, lawyer or law enforcement officer will tell you that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.  Everybody lies, House would say.  And the fact that the witness is convinced to their very core that they saw exactly what they say they saw doesn’t change the fact that the reality is often very different. You need to look harder and go further.

Who among us hasn’t been there?  Whenever asked, members at my association consistently say that the kind of programming they would most like to see more of are sessions on ethics.  Yet when offered, those sessions are equally consistent in being the most under-attended.

Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum “trust, but verify,” is a perhaps a kinder and gentler statement of the same principle.  It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to members or that we should stop asking for their input.  But in our market research and strategic analysis, we would all do well to look further and to demand some additional,  reliable and verifiable data before building our grand plans.

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