Golden's Rules for Associations

ASAE Key Award

30 June 2011 Leave a comment

I am thrilled and humbled to learn of my selection to receive the American Society of Association Executive’s 2011 Key Award, the highest honor ASAE offers. “The Key Award honors the association CEO who demonstrates exceptional qualities of leadership in his or her own association, and displays a deep commitment to voluntary membership organizations as a whole.”

Words cannot adequately express how much this recognition means to me. Of course, any CEO’s achievements are a function of their entire staff team’s collective performance and reflect the contributions of countless mentors, colleagues and associates. So my heartfelt thanks to the village it took to earn this honor.

See ASAE’s press release here. Additional press coverage of this award can be found in the “Press Clippings” section of this website.

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

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 The Nature of Associations, The Way We Are

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.”

Filed under The Nature of Associations Tagged with association profession, role of associations, The Nature of Associations

Open or closed?

17 May 2011 Leave a comment

The online world is divided into two camps over that one.

One camp thinks there should be no restrictions or guidelines around who participates in online communities. Everything should be open to everybody. If someone with a completely different set of experiences shocks you with an idea or perspective that never would have occurred to you, that’s precisely what makes social media such a vibrant and empowering place to live, learn and grow.

Then there is the group that says being part of a boundary-less and restriction-free community is fine, but who also like gated communities, where they can gather with people who share the same expertise, face the same professional challenges, and operate in the same environments that they do.

Both viewpoints have their merits. It would be nice to be able to say “to each their own” and leave it to personal preference, but often the two world views collide in the same, online space. And if it is the association who is providing the platform, that can put you in the crossfire.

Not too long ago, a member with a long and distinguished career in the profession, but who was no longer involved in day-to-day management, expressed frustration that she was no longer eligible to participate on the association’s managers’ listserv. It isn’t like all her wealth of knowledge and experience got erased just because she was no longer working in a management capacity.

She also observed there is a danger in engaging in artificially defined exclusivity. It can lead to insular thinking and moribund elites. It assumes that no one outside our self-defined group has anything useful to say (or critical for us to know) about our world. To thrive (or even just survive), this member argued, members need to be open to what is going on around them, not just to the prevailing views and orthodoxy of people who see the world and think just like they do. And she has a point.

But on the flip side, I understand the preferences of other members who want access to communities of interest limited to those who actually fit that community’s definitions. They observe (correctly) that the association does have forums that are open to all comers. Whether you are a member or non-member, whatever segment of the profession you operate in, whether you are a student, new professional, veteran or retired … it’s all the same.

They just want somewhere else they can go to as well, where they don’t have to filter and guess whether a post offering advice on their workplace problem comes from a well-intentioned member who is operating in an entirely different environment and who knows nothing about the day-to-day reality facing someone in their industry sector.

Open or closed, the debate will continue. And with the technologies evolving and changing even as we experiment with these new communication modalities, the debate over how we debate is likely to persist even as we conduct the debate itself over what it is we started the conversation about in the first place.

Filed under Social Media & Associations Tagged with Social Media & Associations

Paradigms

10 May 2011 Leave a comment

I recently suffered a very sudden and very significant loss of vision. Happily, the condition was fully correctible. Nonetheless, during the period of impairment I learned some very interesting things about how the brain works and we perceive the world.

I discovered that when I was in familiar surroundings, my brain could reach back to stored memories of how things were supposed to look. In the familiar confines of my office or home, I hardly noticed the lack of clarity in my vision. My brain was able to easily recognize the settings and the people I encountered and adjusted things to make it feel like I could see better than I actually did.

When I went on a period of extended travel, however, and found myself in unfamiliar surroundings, the visual impairment felt like it became more severe. Everything was a total blur. I felt disoriented and at a loss.

Scientists talk about the concept of paradigms: the frame of reference that causes the human brain to routinely “fill in the blanks” and add information to what we are actually, sensually perceiving. When that additional information is accurate, it actually improves our grasp of reality, as was the case when I was navigating my office and home with my fading eyesight.

But sometimes the information that our governing paradigms add to our perceptive abilities can be misleading. We can essentially see what we are expecting to see, not what is actually before us.

And paradigms don’t just have the power to change — and distort — visual perceptions. I have seen paradigms at work within human interactions as well.

When that happens, at a board meeting, or a staff meeting, or a legislative meeting, it can start an argument where there is no disagreement. The conversation never gets to the available, mutually beneficial solution because the parties are too distracted arguing over perceived differences that exist only in their conflicting paradigms.

Or, put another way, if we remain at loggerheads, locked inflexibly into opposing positions even where there is no real impediment to a satisfactory solution, we will never get to a position of strength, from which we can successfully negotiate an acceptable outcome on the issues that truly do matter to us.

Sometimes, you just have to let go of your paradigm.

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

Inquiry or advocacy?

29 April 2011 Leave a comment

There are two kinds of public policy research: there is inquiry and there is advocacy. In the case of advocacy, you start with an answer and go in search of the facts that will bolster and support your position. In the case of inquiry, you start with a question and let the facts lead you where they may.

It is important to understand the difference. I have seen too many cases where association lobbying efforts have gone horribly wrong because someone got so excited about the case it was possible to make for their desired outcome by carefully selecting their facts that they ignored even the most obvious data that could be used against it. And their beautiful, fact-based strategy collapsed the first time it was challenged.

Effective association advocacy requires both forms of research. Before the association begins to craft its legislative or regulatory strategy, it needs a good, clear headed and pragmatic understanding of what the facts of the situation actually are. It is like the intelligence gathering that gets done before you plan a military campaign. Just because naval warfare is your particular strength, you can’t start planning a water-based assault on your enemy without first checking into whether key targets are accessible by water.

If the inquiry is open and honest, you sometimes learn something unpleasant that you won’t like hearing. But that can be even more important than getting the answer you wanted. If naval warfare is your particular strength, but the rivers are too shallow for your ships, that is a setback. But you’re better off knowing it before you’ve committed your navy.

Sometimes the research merely confirms what you already knew. Understandably, that kind of research often gets criticized by members as a waste of time and resources. But if the stakes are high enough, if the issue is of life and death importance, it doesn’t hurt to verify and confirm the reliability of the assumptions you are betting the industry’s future on. To further torture the naval warfare metaphor, it might be “obvious” that the city you need to capture is accessible by the river. “We don’t need some high price mapmaker to point that out.” But before putting your military personnel’s lives on the line, it would be nice to know for sure and to have maps with the river depths precisely charted for your ships to follow.

Both forms of research require intellectual honesty. Spinning the facts to serve your purpose to such an extent that you distort reality is not an example of either inquiry or advocacy research. In fact, it isn’t even research at all. It is
dishonest salesmanship masquerading as research. And the only mark you are duping with the deceptive sales pitch is yourself.

Filed under Association Advocacy Tagged with Association Advocacy