Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
11 Mar 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Meeting with several association executives last week in DC, I heard a familiar refrain: “We’d love to do this but we don’t have any money right now.” One actually said, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.” The recession has hit associations and, even though they could see it coming from miles and miles away, it’s still no fun when the train actually runs over you.
The good news is they had time to get ready for it insofar as they were able. The bad news is, well, the bad news.
Even as meeting attendance has started to rebound and advertising is coming back in some association magazines, 2010 budgets were set with the lowest possible expectations. Just like with the national budget, the hard choices already made were only the beginning of the hard realities still to be confronted.
Here’s something you may not have heard. The recession isn’t your problem. Recessions end and like being run over by a train, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You survive the big one, you’ll be in better shape than you were before.
The big problem is what’s coming behind the recession. According to Booz & Company, there are six industries in serious need of complete overhaul with none of the tools to pull it off. Demographic, technological, environmental changes will have a much more profound and lasting effect than this little old recession.
Of the six that Booz mentions—chemicals, retail banking, consumer packaged goods, technology, engineered products and services, oil and gas—each has a raft of associations representing it. To this list, let’s just add manufacturing since we all know that that is, as one of my editorial board members says, “at the tipping point. If we lose more manufacturing capacity in the United States, we will never get it back.”
All of this will make associations feel like those inflatable punching clowns my kids used to play with. You punch it, it falls over and pops right back up—until you’ve punched it so hard and so many times, it slows and slows and finally just lays there.
- Recession punch. Become leaner and meaner and set your budget as low as possible to survive. Bounce back 6 to 9 months after the recovery.
- Environmental punch. Members are catching it from all sides on sustainable practices and social responsibility. Launch new programs and services, credentials and standards, all much too slowly and slightly after the fact but still. Ease back up.
- Technology punch. Adopt social media and online community. Try to be cool because that will attract younger members. Struggle back up.
- Demographic punch. Find out that younger members aren’t quite that easy to sell. They don’t just want to be able to talk, they want something to talk about that matters. Try developing content that is relevant, unique, consistently high quality and updated frequently. Slow to get up if at all.
In short, none of this is going to kill you but cumulatively, it will bruise, batter and bloody you until you might wish it had.
Or, something else you might not have heard, you could choose not to become a punching bag and instead actually be proactive instead of reactive. None of this is unforeseen but, unlike the recession, there are things you could actually be doing instead of just waiting for the inevitable to strike.
Are You the Establishment?
21 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
We all hear so much about associations’ difficulty in attracting younger members. They don’t want to hang with the old folks. They have different demands on their time. They’re not at the point in their careers when association membership typically occurs. They’re inventing their own version of community online. The economic downturn means that companies will not subsidize membership for junior staff, and promotions and raises are slower in coming.
All true, or at least partially true. All remediable.
Young professionals sections, career development opportunities, active social networking, entry-level and even job hunter membership rates can go a long way to overcoming the recruitment obstacles of simple demographics. All tactics employed by smart associations, many of which still have trouble attracting the next generation.
So what’s really holding them back?
I was reading something that mentioned “the establishment.” It’s very difficult these days to know what that means, who that is. Bill Clinton called Obama “the establishment candidate” (when Hilary was running against him) and just to prove how nebulous the term is, the New Republic called Mitt Romney the same thing and Jon Stewart said the same of Mrs. Clinton. Vanity Fair ranks the New Establishment of 100 technology power brokers every year while the New York Times says that the establishment is vanishing. But for the sake of argument, let’s say “the establishment” is whoever is currently in charge.
Is that you? Think about it. Aren’t associations in charge of making sure that the status quo stays the status quo? You have to protect and serve the members you have. They are the establishment in your industry or your profession. They don’t really want anything to change. They know it will but, as much as possible, their own interests focus on staying right where they are doing exactly what they’re doing. And then something like the recession comes along that forces change and makes everyone extremely uncomfortable.
Granted it’s not a comfortable situation but maybe part of the problem is that we are so unused to change and how to deal with it. We spend far too much time and energy protecting the current state of affairs. If we expended half that in leading members toward the inevitable changes, we would serve them better in knowing how to deal with unforeseen changes. And, I’ll argue, that in the process, we’d attract younger members. If associations were positioned less as “the establishment,” against which youth always rebels, and more as the agents and partners of change, they would be the dynamic, progressive forces that young people long to be part of.
We’ve all heard Mahatma Ghandi’s dictum, “Be the change.” I’ve already blogged about it once. Young people understand on some level that they are the force of change. If you’re not comfortable with that, they won’t be comfortable with you.
Should Association Executives Serve or Lead?
4 Nov 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
I started asking association executives that question several months ago. You have to serve today’s members if for no other reason than, as one of them said, “that’s what pays the bills.” If you get too far out in front of them, you risk irrelevance in the face of the issues they face today. But if you don’t lead them, you jeopardize both the association’s and the membership’s ability to survive and thrive in the future. You both need to be prepared for changes in the marketplace, the industry, the profession, in whatever niche you play.
The result of all that conversation is a feature in this month’s Associations Now. It’s already up on their site.
The association executives I talked to agreed that no association should serve to the exclusion of leading or vice versa but that one stance is not necessarily better than the other. There are characteristics of each and there is a continuum from one to the other. Most associations err on the side of service—70% to 75% by most estimates—but that to really remain viable, that needs to move to 50-50.
The article also contains a sidebar on how to move the needle up the continuum—to serve today’s members while leading them into the future.
Moving the Needle
A culture that embraces and nurtures calculated risk. At the beginning of every year, the Edison Electric Institute’s (EEI) executive committee develops a list of deliverables. President and CEO Tom Kuhn uses that as an ongoing, real-time strategic plan. Senior management’s compensation is “highly based” on achieving those results.
A way of calculating what that risk will be. The American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) performs constant environmental scanning from four to five major sources. The Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) develops proprietary research data on the metals supply chain that is an extremely accurate predictor of which way the notoriously volatile industry will go.
A separate budget for strategic experimentation. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has its own venture capital fund so that future-facing initiatives won’t drag down the overall operating budget. ACHE launched its Fund for Innovation four years ago to which members are asked to contribute.
A short cycle time from conception to deployment. Kuhn says that being staff-driven speeds decision making and innovation. At both AAP and ACHE, a strongly evidenced-based membership has led to data-driven decision making that is much faster than a consensus model.
A plan for attaining projected results. EEI prepares a quarterly report which culminates in the annual report. “My promise is if I can’t get you a higher return on investment than you can get from another organization, you shouldn’t pay us dues,” Kuhn says.
A ruthless willingness to abandon things that don’t work. ACHE uses zero-based budgeting. EEI uses market-based testing. In either case, programs that are not making money or breaking even, even those loved by some members and therefore subsidized by everyone else, are either eliminated or must become subscription-based. Several years ago, MSCI’s president and CEO Bob Weidner and his vice president of research, Chris Marti, went through the whole list of research programs and asked themselves, “What would you do with this if you were a member company. We eliminated about 20% of research reports,” Weidner says. “No one called.”
Headed for the Door
12 May 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
Duke Energy has left the National Association of Manufacturers. Duke began to evaluate memberships at the end of 2008 as part of cost-cutting measures. Duke also disagrees with NAM’s opposition to the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade policies. Not a manufacturer itself, the Charlotte-based energy company felt that it would have no effect on changing NAM’s mind.
NAM had seemed in lock step with Bush administration policies, pleasing many of its members on issues like energy and climate change but angering them on others like Chinese currency manipulation. With the new administration, NAM and its members may find themselves on the wrong side of many policy initiatives.
American manufacturing is a fraction of its former size but is undergoing a more or less successful reinvention. Leaner, greener and, according to some unions, meaner, the sector employs more than 12 million people in the United States even in the teeth of the global recession.
A founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, Duke and companies like it can vote at more places than the ballot box. Association lobbying, especially in a sector as powerful as manufacturing, has a lot more pull than one man-one vote. In this case, NAM has lost more than membership dues. A little bit of its clout just fell off.
Associations and Inconvenient Geography
5 May 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
I wrote my master’s thesis on economic geography, the theory that as free trade spreads around the world, all boats rise together (a vast over-simplification). The theory also holds that when some boats are caught in low tides, the others will buoy them up. In grad school, we too easily glossed over the (we thought) unlikely case where all tides are low and all boats are mired. The interconnectedness of the world economy, the fact that our fates are inextricably tied to each other, makes this, we hope, a safer, more prosperous world. In the present unpleasant circumstances, we do seem to accept that we got into this together and will have to find a global solution.
Which brings me to associations. Many associations—PMI is an obvious example—are in the happy situation of attracting large numbers of members from around the world, of being able to host meetings and provide programming and services outside the United States, of being, as much as possible, a global organization. Other associations find themselves in the uncomfortable situation of straddling both sides of the globalization argument. Although MSCI, for instance, is a North American association and staunchly behind NAM’s advocacy agenda, some of its members have operations overseas and earn substantial revenues from non-US operations.
When the President says buy American, where do the borders of America stop? An “American” car may have parts from outside the US, may have been assembled outside the US. An “American” car may be a Toyota made in America.
Where does that leave the automotive-related associations? In order to advocate for their industry, they will inevitably anger some of their members.
An association executive once said to me that he knew that the content we create for his organization must “talk out of both sides of its mouth.” The association must be red, white and blue on some occasions and UN blue on others.
This begs the question: Can a trade association be truly global? I found that global trade associations are almost always federations. The International XYZ Federation is made up of the Belgian XYZ Association and so on around the world. Each represents the interests of its members within that country. But where does all of that local interest bubble up into a global solution?
I believe that associations can play an enormous role in helping solve global problems. But I don’t see trade associations doing it as much as they should. Rotary International is a big part of the almost complete eradication of polio around the world. The Institute of Food Technologists is helping make food safe for all of us, not just those in the country where it was produced.
These are big problems. Today there seem to be no small problems. To provide real value to members, to make them part of something they can believe in and want to be part of, associations must step up to solving those problems. And trade associations with their corporate members employing hundreds of people can have more impact more quickly than almost any other entity.
Times are bad. Times are bad for all of us. Association leaders cannot sit head in hands over their own bottom lines. Look up. Look out into a borderless world. Work to lift your boat and the rest of the world may well come with you.
Back to Basics at the Virginia Association of Realtors
21 Apr 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
A year ago, Ben Martin, then director of communications and new media at the Virginia Association of Realtors, was an active blogger, contributor to association trade magazines, a sometime consultant and frequent public speaker. Today, Martin is the vice president of marketing and communications at the association, has given up journalism, cut back on blogging, cut out consulting and is concentrating on what his members need. “I’m so focused on member needs,” he says, “I haven’t really thought about how all this is impacting associations in general.”
“All this” is principally the recession, but also the competition that online communities present to associations and the necessary and, in some cases, long-overdue changes within them. I caught up with Martin at Digital Now in Orlando last week to find out what “all this” has meant to his association.
Q: How is the recession impacting your association?
A: Our membership doubled between the late 1990s and around 2007. We topped at 39,000. Now we’re down 14% from that, 33,500 at latest count. That’s not terrible but it is still a decline. Although it hurts association revenues, this thinning of the flock—here and at other state Realtor associations—is actually beneficial to consumers and our industry. There were a lot of undertrained and “underethical” opportunists getting into the business in the early to mid-2000’s.
Q: These are tough times for Realtors. What are you doing to provide value to them?
A: We’re trying to come up with ways to help members communicate directly with clients. The association is trying to put all the bad news in context and help them communicate to potential buyers the good news about buying now. Interest rates are at historic lows. Home prices are down 30% to 50%. We’re doing a flyer that tells that story and says that, if you can qualify for a loan, now is an excellent time to buy.
We’re also trying to tell the story specific to the Virginia market. The bad news comes from four states predominantly—California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. That’s where prices have fallen the most, where the most foreclosures are happening and where, not surprisingly, most of the risky loans were made. The Virginia market is pretty stable and buyers need to hear that from someone other than their agent.
Q: In The Competition Within, you had a lot to say about online community and the impact that will have on associations. If you couple that with the recession and what that is forcing associations to do—discontinue unnecessary programs, eliminate outdated processes, cut staff, renegotiate contracts—what will the new association that emerges look like? We can’t expect things to go back to the way they were. Everything will be different, including associations.
A: That is certainly true but I’m so focused on member needs, I haven’t really thought about how all this is impacting associations in general. I do think that the more tech-savvy associations will emerge from this stronger, just as I think the more tech-savvy of my members will emerge from it stronger.
The VAR also introduced the Member Outreach program that allows members to invite two association staffers to visit brokerages or local meetings. A list of almost 20 possible topics covers subjects specific to the association, legislative issues, and ways to better manage a real estate office but also covers the future of the industry and social media. The service is free. This is another example of best practices that keep an association close to its members’ needs in good times and bad.
We Need to Talk
13 Apr 2009
by Michael Chevy Castranova
Recession-victim newspapers and magazines in frighteningly growing numbers are shuttering their doors, reducing publication frequency and tossing employees overboard like water being bailed from a sinking ship. Their associations are being slammed, too.
Both the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Magazine Publishers of America canceled their conventions for this year.
I found out about these cancellations from a group to which I belong, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. The notice came in an e-mail in which the AAEC boasted it was going ahead with its own 2009 convention, set for July in Seattle and to be hosted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Except that the Post-Intelligencer ceased printing in March and is online only now. So the editorial-cartoonists association went hat in hand to find a replacement sponsor, which it did in the Herblock Foundation.
The association also made some other smart changes in its agenda (though, yes, the pub crawl remains on the activities list). Instead of the usual experts coming in to enlighten the editorial cartoonists about world events (Guantanamo Bay and the economy have been previous convention topics for discussion), attendees will hear from folk on job searches, new media and graphic-novels publishing, as well as from Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, who knows a few things about selling books. Oh, and there’ll be workshops on Corel and Advanced Photoshop.
The AAEC believes its members, a bunch of professionals also devastatingly affected by newspaper cutbacks, need to meet now more than ever. And this is one association that’s not only making an effort to bring them specific information on what they need to know to stay in the business, it isn’t waiting forever to do so. Its response is quick and pointed.
It presents a good example for all associations to keep top of mind in this changing economic landscape.
Associations Need Twyla Tharp
16 Dec 2008
by Rebecca Rolfes
Skimming through the newspaper the other night I saw a photo of the artists who had won the Medal of Freedom. Most of them looked very happy and honored, although Barbra Streisand reportedly had a difficult time hugging President Bush. On the edge of a chair, looking neither happy nor part of the group, sat a small woman wearing a black pant suit and brown cowboy boots, no makeup, no jewelry, no fancy hairdo. She looked rather grim, like she disapproved or would rather be somewhere else. The woman was one of my heroes, Twyla Tharp.
In a 40+-year career as a dancer and choreographer, Tharp has created some of the most beautiful, innovative, inspiring ballets (although that seems the wrong word for them) of modern times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twyla_Tharp The final sequence in The Catherine Wheel raises me out of my seat with my heart in my throat. Moving On proved that modern dance could win audiences and earn just as much money as a popular Broadway play. Millions of people saw her choreography for the movies Amadeus and Hair. But the thing Twyla Tharp did for me, for me personally, was write the book The Creative Habit. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read it. My copy is underlined and annotated and would be more dog eared if I didn’t love it so much and take such care with it.
This morning, looking for inspiration for a management meeting I have to lead next week, I opened it and found this:
“Venturing out of your comfort zone may be dangerous, yet you do it anyway because our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable.”
The wonderful thing about the book is that it throws you back on yourself. You have no choice but introspection. So, ask yourself:
- Do you know where your comfort zone is?
- Do you recognize when you’re using it as a crutch?
- Why is it dangerous to leave? What’s the worst that could happen?
- Do you leave it? Ever? When was the last time? What happened?
- Are you able to entertain the uncomfortable?
- Better question: Do you find the uncomfortable entertaining?
- Think about the major growth experiences in your life. What did they have in common?
- If she’s right that there is a direct proportion at work, has your greatest growth come from the most uncomfortable circumstances?
- How much growth do you want, i.e., how uncomfortable are you willing to be?
The questions can go on and on. And the answers are particularly pertinent in the current uncomfortable circumstances.
Registrations for conferences have fallen through the cellar. Advertising for magazines, already in trouble, has plummeted. Membership renewals, particularly for trade associations, have fallen victim to corporate cost cutting and disappearing companies. Donations at this traditionally generous time of year have slowed to a trickle. The entire global economy is on hold.
I don’t know about you but I’m pretty damned uncomfortable.
Take heart from Twyla Tharp. (A great interview about creativity in difficult circumstances.) There is more to the present circumstances than teeth gritted intestinal fortitude. Be creative. What does this allow you to do?
It allows you, first and most importantly, to be a leader. Lead your organization, your staff, your board, your members. This is probably not the time for aggressive new initiatives—unless it is precisely the time for them.
Next, it allows you the chance to exert some discipline on processes that may have become lax in more flush financial times. Efficiency, not just cost cutting.
It allows you to talk to your members about the really difficult issues—workforce, cost, fear and, again, leadership—listen to them, and then figure out ways to help them.
And from that will come growth. Maybe not growth in numbers but growth that matters, for you and your association.
Is Your Association Ready for a Gutsy Digital Move?
12 Nov 2008
by Rebecca Rolfes
If you ever want to really make yourself nervous, walk into a prospective client and tell them to totally scrap what they’re doing, go with a digital-only strategy including all sorts of rich media with which they have no track record and—oh, by the way—do it in Chinese. That’s what we recommended to IPC, the association representing the electronics interconnect industry (aka circuit boards).
As IPC grew from a $2.3 million association in 1993 to $15 million today, the circuit board industry left the United States. Today only 8% of circuit boards are made here and the big growth potential for the trade association is in Asia, particularly China.
-
IPC Screenshot
IPC Screenshot
A year after sweating it when I told them to 86 their print magazine, Kim Sterling, IPC’s vice president of marketing and communications, and I made a presentation to the Society of National Association Publishers (SNAP) conference in Chicago. IPC’s new website launched last January and exists in English, Mandarin Chinese and German. Results have been so good on everything from overall traffic to rich media downloads to SEO results, the presentation caught the attention of Folio magazine and will be part of its webinar next week on associations and digital publishing.
We got lots of good questions, but the best one was how we knew whether IPC was ready for such a gutsy move. There were some indications and maybe they’re the sort of thing that can help you figure out whether you’re ready—to go digital only, to go international, to compete for new members rather than suffering a slow decline.
- IPC is the leading standards-setting body in the industry. There are some smaller groups in various places in the world, but IPC’s are the globally accepted standards. So, question #1: Look at yourself critically and ask whether you are a leader. Pick whatever metric really matters but if you can answer yes, then chances are, you’re already comfortable with risk and can judge what gutsy move is right for you.
- IPC had seen significant, consistent growth even in the face of a declining domestic industry. Question #2: Are you growing—not just incrementally increasing but really growing? If so, you know what competition means and how to do it well.
- IPC invested in its future. The association had gone to the considerable trouble of opening an office in China, of hiring Chinese mother-tongue staff at its U.S. headquarters. Question #3: Are you betting money on your future or are you waiting to see what happens next? If you are forward looking rather than protecting the status quo, you probably have the intestinal fortitude to take the leap of faith that something like an all-digital strategy necessitates.
- IPC’s Sterling said something to me before the nerve-wracking presentation. She was talking about executives at another association and she said, “They wouldn’t know a new idea if it hit them between the eyes.” Question #4: Are you open to new ideas? Do you try new things, make adjustments based on strategic goals and the metrics that show whether you’re achieving them? Or do you just tweak what you’ve got and hope for the best?
In the end, gutsiness is knowing why you’re doing something and having the processes in place to make sure that it performs as you expected. Add that to the willingness to stick with something for at least long enough to give it a fair shot. And, of course, the courage to walk away from something that doesn’t pan out and learn from it rather than shutting down and never being gutsy again.
“Going with your gut” should be a very calculated move. If your association’s members are not who they used to be (and in the face of huge demographic and international change, whose are?), being able to make the gutsy play is the difference between growth and ceasing to exist.
I now pronounce you …
14 Oct 2008
by Michelle O'Hagan
From the same post by Riley Bandy on “How Do You Connect?”
The new issue of Associations Now magazine has a great article about ways to improve meetings by increasing interactivity and keeping information relevant and brief. Online meetings, often in the form of webinars struggle with long-term relevance.
“‘Probably the biggest problem with a standard webinar is that it’s a point-in-time event and then it dies,’ says Chris Brogan, vice president of strategy and technology for CrossTech Media.”
A poosible solution surfacing is to incorporate another popular communication media, Twitter, to produce a, well… Twebinar.
“A twebinar utilizes the instant-messaging capabilities of Twitter to replace the standard Q&A period, so participants can comment, or ‘tweet,’ each other about the webinar’s content before, during, and after the live webinar. Further, the 30 experts interviewed for the three debut twebinars on social media conducted this summer agreed to field questions through Twitter indefinitely, allowing participants to establish an ongoing dialogue with them.”
