The Association Renewal Blog

One Gen Xer's memory of Challenger

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Challenger explosion and I remember it as though it was yesterday.  I know exactly where I was standing when I first heard...at the pay phone outside the principal's office at my high school, West Orange High School, located in northern New Jersey.  It was my senior year, and a friend of mine, Lucia Valentini, looked at me with an ashen face, and uttered the words I'll never forget, "Jeff, did you hear?  Challenger blew up."

Generation X (+/- 10 years)

Thanks to several of the blogoclump members who gave pointers to the Smith Bucklin report on Generations. I imagine that many of us (like me) were pleased to see that it bucked the trend of late and concluded that Generation X are, in fact, joiners after all.

But I encourage everyone to read beyond the executive summary on this one, and, more importantly on ANY publication that addresses generations. When I look closer, I see some troubling aspects of the analysis and the research. Jeff and I are both going to post about this report, since the notion of generational renewal in associations is very important to us. But I want to start by highlighting a critical piece of the analysis in this report.

In their research, they described Generation X as people born between 1965 and 1975. The boomers spanned 1946-64 (18 years). The silent generation lasted 19 years and Generation Y is listed as 1975 or later (31 years!?). But Gen X only gets 10 years? Not only is this illogical, it is inconsistent with what other generational researchers have been saying (although I admit the precise start and end years do vary depending on the author).

There is even a brief piece in January's Association Now magazine that cites a US Postal Service study about generations (surprise: Generation X likes the mail, they conclude!) where Generation X was reduced to 1964-72. Seven years!

I'm not advocating for a specific standard for generation length, but this wide (and bizarre) variety is a real red flag for me when it comes to addressing and researching the issue of generational differences. I'm worried that we are driven by what we want to hear or see or prove and then pile up the data so it fits our expectations.

As I said, Jeff and I will be posting more about the Smith Bucklin report specifically--not simply to challenge its research methodology, but to dig deeper into its conclusions and the implications for associations who want to respond to generational differences.

Strategy Time

Here’s some more on the Mankins and Steele article about Strategic planning and decision making from this month’s HBR.

I said in the previous post that one of the main problems with strategic planning that they identify is the fact that it is done based on a set calendar of activities. Many companies tie their strategic planning into annual budgeting processes. The authors note that it is seen as a “best practice” to link planning to budgeting.

The problem is by doing that, most organizations actually severely limit the overall amount of time on issues of strategy. You “do” strategy before the budget process and then put it aside as you go out and implement. As the authors put it:

A once-a-year planning schedule simply does not give executives sufficient time to address the issues that most affect performance. According to our survey, companies that follow an annual planning calendar devote less than nine weeks per year to strategy development. That’s barely two months to collect relevant facts, set strategic priorities, weight competing alternatives, and make important strategic choices.

Strategic choices rarely emerge based on a carefully planned schedule. Yes, annual budgeting processes should link into strategic conversations, but those strategic conversations need to be happening all the time, not just once a year. The conversations need to happen when the issues themselves come up. It’s fine to schedule periodic conversations as well, but you also need to be able to identify an emerging issue, schedule a conversation that allows you to do the proper homework, and then work through that issue and make a decision—even if it’s not when you scheduled your quarterly strategy review session.

Virtual Seminar

Jeff and I are doing a virtual seminar this Friday in conjunction with ASAE & The Center for Association leadership.

It is a free web seminar that talks about an upcoming "Knowledge Quest" called "Building Organizational Capacity." The KQ itself is an opportunity for a small group of association CEOs and senior managers to explore in depth the issue of organizational capacity building for ongoing renewal and resilience. We'll explain more about it in Friday's program, but the Knowledge Quest will be a six-month program made up of mostly virtual interactions (online conversations and conference calls), beginning in February and culminating in an in-person event at the Annual Meeting in Boston in August.

The virtual seminar will be this Friday, January 20th, from 2:00pm to
3:30pm, and the program is free to all ASAE members. Information on the virtual seminar can be found here, and information on the full program can be found here. You can also read about the full program at the Association renewal site (and there's a prospectus you can download there too).

Hope to "see" you there.

More Decisions, Less Plan

There is another good article by Mankins and Steele in Harvard Business Review this month. The last one I blogged about talked about the “strategy-performance” gap (why organizations rarely perform as well as they say they will in their strategies). This one more squarely challenges strategic planning in the way Jeff and I do.

The first words of the article: “Is strategic planning completely useless?” This is an article I want to read! I plan on posting several times about this one, but let me start with their basic conclusion and its ties to associations. They argue that most strategic planning efforts fail for two reasons: it is typically an annual process, and it is most often focused on individual business units.

What’s particularly interesting is that most of their consulting experience and their research is with very large organizations, yet their conclusions seem spot on for associations. The companies they are writing about have thousands of employees and generate billions of dollars in revenue. Contrast that with the average staff size in the association world of ten—not ten thousand—just ten.

But look at their elements in their conclusion: annual planning processes and a focus on business units. Despite the much smaller scale, this accurately describes typical association strategic planning. In the association’s case, the “business unit” is just the functional area. How many strategic plans have you created that break down by goals for membership, goals for meetings/education, goals for advocacy, etc. These are the equivalents of business units.

And I agree that the rigid adherence to the calendar and the retrospective and structural view of strategic issues definition is a huge problem for associations’ strategies. Mankins and Steele present the alternative of “decision-focused” strategy that is continuous and focused on issues.

More later.

Cutting Edge in Rural Virginia

There is an interesting article in the Washington Post about a turn-around in a small, rural county in Virginia. Smyth county, about 300 miles southwest of D.C., was hit hard when manufacturing jobs were moved overseas. But a focused effort by the community reversed the trend and started attracting employers to the region--including manufacturers.

There were two points in the article that were of particular interest to me and relevant to the concept of renewal. First, the county didn't rely on "best practices." As one official said:

"The folks in Smyth said, 'Let's look at what we are and how we can be that better,' instead of saying, 'We want to be like Fairfax.' "

They created their own success instead of mimicking others'. Second, they ignored conventional wisdom. As the article states,

Local officials also attribute the turnaround to ignoring conventional wisdom. When they were told to look away from the manufacturing sector because it's dying, they did just the opposite. Their first priority was to make sure that the remaining businesses stayed and were given a chance to prosper.

They are now drawing manufacturing companies from nearby states to relocate in Smyth county.

Not all of their problems are solved, but it seems to me they are on the right track, and their deep knowledge of who they are and what their capabilities are is driving their success.

Happy New Year everyone!

It's 2006...how will you make it a fantastic year?