The Association Renewal Blog

What Got You There Won't Get You There

Ram Charan has an article in HBR about culture change at Home Depot. Granted, Home Depot is slightly larger than most associations (HD reached $40 billion in sales faster than any company—even Wal-Mart). But there as an important point Charan makes in the article I want to highlight. It isn’t revolutionary. You might argue it’s common sense. But I find it’s not common enough, so it bears repeating.

The point is in the following quote from the article:

What got Home Depot from zero to $50 billion in sales wasn’t going to get it to the next $50 billion.

Looking in from the outside, that seems logical, but when it is your own organization, it doesn’t always feel that way. If you’ve been working hard to make your association a success over the last five years, and I came in and told you the very things that worked for you are now destroying you, would you believe me? Remember, you are currently very successful! And I’m coming in, HBR in hand, telling you to change. How would you react?

Truthfully, If all I did was come in waving a business magazine, telling you to change, then you should ignore me. But when are you taking the time to look at how your current, carefully crafted culture is creating conditions that weaken performance? When something is working, will you tolerate someone questioning it?

Time to Get Real

Jeff and I have found a wonderful book called "Getting Real." It is written by the people who have created 37 Signals, a software company that makes some pretty cool web applications (like Base Camp, for project management). They also have a nice blog that I have seen quoted often in the blogoclump, called Signal v. Noise.

Technically, the book is about how to write better software programs. It describes their philosophy for writing the code, launching the product, etc. But they also realize that the philosophy has a broader appeal and application. Here's a quote from the introduction:

In this book we’ll show you...

The importance of having a philosophy
Why staying small is a good thing
How to build less
How to get from idea to reality quickly
How to staff your team
Why you should design from the inside out
Why writing is so crucial
Why you should underdo your competition
How to promote your app and spread the word
Secrets to successful support
Tips on keeping momentum going after launch
...and lots more

The focus is on big-picture ideas. We won’t bog you down with
detailed code snippets or css tricks. We’ll stick to the major
ideas and philosophies that drive the Getting Real process.

I think you can see why this book caught our attention, even if we're not writing web applications. We'll definitely be sharing more of their insights through this blog. The book is only sold as a downloadable PDF. Remember, they write web software, so it is formatted to be quite easily read on your computer. Check it out.

Leadership and Hierarchy

The March cover story of Associations Now is about creating a “CEO Factory” in your association. The basic argument is that it is a good thing if many of your senior staff end up leaving to become CEOs at other associations. I would agree with that statement in that it implies that you’ve got a bunch of senior people with the ability to lead an entire organization working for you (at least, until the moment they leave). That is definitely a good thing.

But I do want to challenge an underlying theme in the article about leadership and hierarchy. This is a bit of a long post, so follow the link below to read the rest (but don’t worry Ben, I think the whole post comes through in the feed!).

More on the strategic planning counter offensive

Jamie makes most of the case in response to those who argue that strategic planning is still a useful investment of association time and resources.  But I want to surface an even more fundamental disconnect that I believe is the central issue we must address if we're going to make any progress in this critical conversation.  Here it is in a nutshell:

Strategic Planning Counter Offensive

I think that those who are firmly rooted in traditional strategic planning are starting to get annoyed by the “strategic planning is dead” mantra. I’ve seen on the listserves and in the magazines some push back: some are arguing that traditional strategic planning is still the way to go (even better: they say the critics don’t fully understand the importance of strategy!), or they argue that they have modified traditional strategic planning to address concerns that have been raised (that it only happens on a schedule, that too few are involved in the process, that you can’t change it once it is developed, etc.).

To use one of my favorite phrases: I’m not convinced. I see them trying to re-engineer the traditional strategic planning process, but they are ultimately ignoring the fundamental criticisms of the process: it’s too centralized, strategy and planning are fused into one process, and the whole thing is too dependent on the consultant. Modifications to the centralized, external and fused model might make it incrementally better, but more likely it will simply make it more expensive.

NATO must stop the madness!

Apparently, the leaders of the National Association of Theatre Owners are hellbent on pursuing a course of action that, in the long run, promises nothing but ruination for both the association and its members.  On New Year's Eve, I wrote about this issue with the faint, post-Yuletide hope that the organization might get wise and abandon its ridiculous plan to ask the FCC for permission to jam cellphone signals in movie theaters.  My hopes were dashed this morning when NBC's Today Show presented a segment on the association's cockeyed crusade, which included an interview with NATO head John Fithian. (Unfortunately, I cannot locate the segment online, so the link is simply to the Today Show page on the MSNBC website.)

What NATO is proposing is simply an awful idea.  It's terrible from a public safety point of view.  It is a disproportionate response to what I think most people regard as an irritating yet manageable issue, kind of like killing a fly with a surface-to-air missile.  Worst of all, this senseless scheme completely misses the real issue driving the decline in moviegoing:  it is not a good value for the dollar and hasn't been for quite some time.  I urge NATO's leaders to abandon this effort and re-channel the organization's energies and resources toward greater creativity and innovation.  In other words, stop the madness!

Tracking association social media usage

As you may know, Jamie and I are totally jazzed about the value of social media for associations.  I have certainly not shown much restraint on the subject, and I think it is useful for us to get a better handle on how many associations are using blogging, podcasting and other social media tools.

To facilitate this effort, I've created the Association Community Blogs and Podcasts Wiki as a master list of associations that are working with social media.  If your association is doing something in this arena, or if you're aware of an association that is, please visit the wiki and add a link! 

NOTE:  Please keep in mind that we are looking to include association-sponsored blogs on this list, not blogs such as this one, that discuss association-related issues.

Content Creation

Related to my last post (and Ben’s question) about the Long Tail, I found an interesting tidbit on the Business 2.0 blog that makes reference to the online game, Second Life.

This is a game where players have created a virtual world with lots of virtual “stuff” that gets bought and paid for with virtual (and sometimes real) dollars. According to the B2.0 blog, in the last 30 days 240,000 items were created generating a $6.5 billion “internal” economy. As they said on the blog:

If Second Life had to pay programmers to replicate all of that content development it would cost $400 million a year.  One thing created in the game is the Bingo-like game Tringo, which is now going to become an actual Game Boy title.  So what's virtual and what's real? And does it matter?

I’m not suggesting that the answer for associations is to create an online game to get people to generate content (although I wouldn’t rule it out either!). But I think it does reflect Jeff’s point that there is a “wellspring of new stuff” out there and you don’t have to access it only by paying people to develop it. They didn’t orchestrate Second Life in order to develop new Game Boy titles. That potential “hit” is simply a byproduct. But they were successful in creating an environment where many, many people created many, many things.

So I do think people will create content for other people. But we may have to check our assumptions about what that content looks like and how it will be used.

More on Long Tail

Many, many thanks to Ben Martin for his thoughtful blog post about the “Long Tail” article Jeff and I wrote, as well as to Kevin Holland for his response. Here is just one reaction:

Ben cites a maxim posted by Bradley Horowitz that 1% are creators 10% are synthesizers, and the other 90% are just “users.” Associations, I think Ben is arguing, won’t have enough members who are willing to create the wide range of content that is needed for the long-tail dynamic to work. He also suggests they may not do that for free.

I may be misinterpreting them, but those statements seem linked to the paradigm of the “head” of the power curve, not its long tail. Associations seem deeply rooted in the notion that it is their role to collect and anoint the “best” content for their members. These are the “hits.” There’s nothing wrong with hits, and I think associations should continue to develop them. In the context of hits, that one percent of true experts feels confident enough to create this knowledge, and the others don’t, I agree.

But I don’t think that will play out if associations actually developed a space for a more niche-based long tail of content. In fact, the whole premise of the long tail is that you are NOT creating content that you expect 90% of your universe to want. And you, the association, are not responsible for really overseeing or directing the creation of the content (which seems to be the dominant paradigm right now for associations, and makes some sense in a hit-based world). In the long-tail world, your role is to create access, to help people locate what they are looking for. To the extent you can create an environment where like-minded folks can come together and generate niche content useful to them, that’s great too.

I think more people will be creating content precisely because they KNOW it is not designed to be the “best” for the masses. I also think there is probably a lot of content already out there that we just haven’t found yet. Because technology is allowing more access to the long tail, there is the potential to really change broad, popular understanding of what content is “okay” to create and disseminate. I think the associations that figure out how to create the “architectures” (as we say in the article) that will connect the long-tail content with its application can see some real success.

In the spirit of DUMB...

In the spirit of our DUMB meme, we offer for your consideration our latest counterintuitive abbreviatory construct:  LAME.

Leaders Aren't Making Excuses

We think it's pretty timely and pretty important.  We will have more to say on it soon.  We hope you'll have something to say about it now.